I Am Watching You

by Teresa Driscoll

Of course, I really shouldn’t listen in on other people’s conversations. But it’s impossible not to on public transport, don’t you find? So many barking into their mobile phones while everyone else ramps up the volume to compete. To be heard.

I read somewhere that by your forties you are supposed to care more about what you think of others than what they think of you – so why is it I am still waiting for this to kick in?

I find that I need very urgently to speak to my husband. To my Tony. To reset my compass.

You know – held captive by some loon, brainwashed and then finally escaped.

If I had phoned in a warning in the first place. If I had stepped up. Stepped in.

You are not to think like that. You can’t take the world on your shoulders.

Henry waits and they let the moment hang between them. No one knows what tense to use.

‘I’m not sure she knows what she wants, any more than we do.’ She sighs.

We said we would meet at the bar at 2 a.m. for a taxi to go home. She didn’t show . . .

The trouble with not telling the whole truth to the police was, sometimes, a year on, she couldn’t remember exactly what she had said and what she hadn’t said. She was petrified that all this stirring it up would make her slip up . . . and say the wrong thing.

Just a feeling that reminded him of a whole different time, a different version of himself.

‘You can’t think like that,’ Henry says. ‘But the trouble is you do, don’t you?

the time for regret and ‘if only’ is over, and we have to look this in the face now.

You need to watch, you see, because it is extremely important – to work out the difference between how people behave when they know they are being watched . . . and when they don’t. Some people, you see, are much the same whether they are being watched or not. But most people aren’t. You don’t get to find out for sure until you watch a lot.

How many times has she tried to broach it? To talk to her mother. To take the pin out of the grenade. But it’s always like this. She is dismissed. Shut down. The pin is popped straight back in. The pretence remains that their family is just a standard broken family. All very straightforward. Sad but neat. Nothing out of the ordinary. Loads of people get divorced after all.

Sarah looked around the table, watching Anna very closely, and it was like stepping back to watch from inside a strange bubble, realising that this really was their version of normal. Not a show put on for a visitor at all. Anna’s norm. Anna’s very different life.

The truth is I cannot remember when life, for me, wasn’t about flowers. Right from when I was tiny and I used to collect wild flowers on walks with my gran, mesmerised by the colours and the scents and the way you could make the whole impact and mood change by combining them in different ways.

Learning how tulips only look right if you put them in precisely the right height of vase so they weep over the rim. Not too much. Not too little.

I have never forgotten the joy of learning to revive roses with fresh water and cutting the stems super sharp at an angle. The miracle of them lifting up their heads again as if saying thank you.

Because once you become a parent, you learn that love can involve more fear than you had ever imagined, and you never quite look on the world in the same way again.

maybe this guy Karl ties her up. Threatens her. God knows what; victims can get psychologically damaged quickly if the abuse is extreme.

‘Could be Stockholm Syndrome, where the victim develops a misplaced bond through the trauma.’

Lily carries on crying, and Sarah has no idea how to comfort her. They both know what they have to do. They have to go to the police about their father now. They have no choice. Sarah has to tell them everything.

So often this past year I have wondered what exactly makes us the way we are. I don’t just mean the nature/nurture thing, I mean the sum of our personality and the decisions we make. All the thoughts that fire around our brain, even when we don’t want them to. How we handle the issues of conscience and responsibility. Why I blame myself when others wouldn’t.

I’m always thinking, thinking, thinking. A million things competing all at the same time. Constant and exhausting buzz.

With the gloves on, I rip it open. Same as before. Can hear my breath now. Find myself looking around the hall, through to the kitchen again. Can just see through to confirm that the bolt is across the back door. Good.

‘Because she came here like someone who wanted to be invisible. To disappear. That’s why she stopped eating. And then one day, when I saw her painting, I saw this entirely different person. This vivid energy and colour on the page. Spicy. Evocative. Memorable. “Look at me.” And I felt that was who she was meant to be.’

‘Why Dawn?’ ‘Because you don’t like yourself very much, Sarah. And no girl of seventeen should hate themselves. Especially when they have experienced what you have. You need a fresh start, lovely. In my opinion, and it is just my opinion, you need the sun to come up.’