Be afraid. Someone’s watching.
Eyes on You is the brand-new, unputdownable cat-and-mouse psychological thriller from the Number One international bestselling author Adele Parks!
1
Seven months ago
They told me never to look it up on the internet. A family liaison officer advised me of that, just a couple of days after it had happened. I don’t think she had much experience with kids despite her job title because advising a fifteen-year-old not to do something – telling them it might be ‘too graphic’ or ‘disturbing’, warning that there were some things you just can’t unsee – is basically the equivalent of covering a fluffy blanket with catnip and asking the kitten not to roll up in it.
Yeah, I looked.
Yeah, she was right, I couldn’t unsee anything.
By that point, I believed I’d already seen everything dreadful in the world that there was to see. I believed I knew it all, certainly more than the pale, starchy family liaison officer knew, but I should have listened to her. The memory of it was forever soldered to my soul anyway and then, after looking, new knowledge had to be absorbed; how it was reported, how others would see it. The images were graphic. Brutal. The hammer. The shirt. They came back to me every time I closed my eyes and tried to rest. Over and over again. The blood looked black in the photos, but it was very red in my nightmares. Blood sprayed, seeping, soaking. Like she said, I couldn’t unsee it. No way. I couldn’t unread anything that was written either. I couldn’t forget the accusations, the evidence against, the national condemnation. The words ran through my head the way song lyrics ran through the minds of other teenagers. An earworm, stuck on a loop.
It became easier not to sleep. Least, not deeply or regularly. Not to expect it. To somehow function without it. Functioning became the new bar for living.
As much as she could, my mum kept us away from the trial, only agreeing for me go when I really had to be there.
Despite her efforts to protect us, the trial found us anyway. It followed us into our classrooms, along corridors and into the dining hall and playground. The case followed me to netball club and, I presume, my brother Jamie to Scouts too. I presume this because Jamie was asked to leave Scouts when he pushed another boy so hard that he fell against a wall and had to be taken to A&E for a check-up. A suspected concussion. Mum said that they would not have made so much fuss if any other boy had done the shoving. Rough and tumble was part and parcel of a Boy Scout’s life, surely. But because it was my brother – or, in fact, my father’s son – it became a scandal. The apple never falls far from the tree, apparently. I heard that said, slipped in along side the many other judgemental whispers; although it pales into insignificance when measured up against things like ‘vicious, brutal attack’, ‘frenzied’, ‘multiple blows’, ‘long after she was dead’.
It went on for weeks. Dragged us along with it, like litter pulled under the wheels of a big bus, a discarded plastic bag or similar, trapped and turning and turning; just waiting for the whole thing to stop so we could be spat out. I never under stood why it took so long to present the evidence, considering the verdict was a foregone conclusion, considering he had already been tried by the red-top tabloids. Every lurid, fierce, condemning detail had been pored over. To me it seemed cut and dried long before he sat in the dock.
It was reported as a crime of passion. I think, maybe, that term was initially used by the defence to garner some sympathy for Dad or – if that was too much to hope for – then some understanding of why it might have happened. A journalist hurriedly picked it up, knowing, most probably, that sex sells. But even then, just a teenager, I could see that such a concept was warped. Violence should never be linked with passion; it’s lazy and outdated thinking. Basically sexist in its effort to minimise, almost excuse, the viciousness. The poor guy, she drove him wild; it wasn’t his fault line of thinking should never be tolerated.
The crime of passion narrative didn’t stick anyway. Not in my father’s case.
There was evidence that the murder was preplanned. The weapon, for example. There was no reason for him to have taken his hammer inside the house. He couldn’t explain that. It was the one he’d used to attach a wire lattice to the brick wall that folded around the formal garden where he trained sweet peas to climb. Forensics proved the first blow happened at the bottom of the stairs, but that initial blow didn’t kill her as the blood trail suggested she’d crawled forwards. Tried to get away. Pitiful. Pointless. The distribution of the blood and matter that was sprayed up the hall walls and library door, confirmed she died just outside the library. The prosecution pointed out that there was opportunity to regret, to stop, to call for help.
To save her life.
None of these opportunities were taken. He beat her with his hammer until she was unrecognisable. Her husband didn’t know her; she was identified by medical records. What has that to do with passion, to do with love?
Love is doing manual work, day after day, to earn enough money for your family to eat and have a few treats and never complaining while doing so, even if it rained or snowed. Love is crawling on your hands and knees through soft play areas that reek of sweaty feet and childish excitement. Love is turning up at school plays, concerts and parents’ nights; being offended by the teachers that gave bad reports and being sure teachers that awarded A-star grades were ‘dead right’. Love is taking an interest in the names of the boys in the pop band your daughter is obsessing about.
Or that’s what I thought love was.
But my dad did all those things, then fucked another woman and then beat her to death. So what do I know?
I have thought about my father’s crime a lot. Of course I have. I have thought about it more than anything else in the last seventeen years. Thinking about it pushed out thoughts of friendships, hobbies, schoolwork, careers, politics, boys, men. None of those things can compete with the question of how my own dad did what he did. However much I think about it, I don’t understand it.
I guess I should be grateful that I can’t understand. It shows I’m not a psychopath.
I’m not like him.
2
Now
‘It’s looking bad for you.’
‘I realise that.’
‘I’m your solicitor. I’m here for you.’
‘Right.’ She can’t help it, she rolls her eyes, shrugs.
‘What’s that? What does that mean?’ the solicitor asks.
‘People say that, but in my experience . . .’ She trails off.
Best not to say anything she doesn’t have to. The more she says, the more mistakes she might make. She needs to get this right if she’s to be believed. There is no need for her to say that she doesn’t believe people are often ‘there’ for one another. People are, often as not, out for themselves. Best keep that as an internal thought. She knows anything she does say will be taken down and used as evidence against her, isn’t that how it goes? Something like that. Not just because she’s in a police station, clothes covered in blood, but because that’s life, isn’t it? People use stuff against you. Isn’t that why she is here?
‘In your experience . . .’ the solicitor prompts. She shakes her head, slowly. Nothing more to add.
Then the policeman says, ‘OK, so you shot two people today.’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Do you want to explain how that came about?’ She stares at the solicitor. Blank faced, no help. ‘You need to tell me everything. In your own words from the beginning.’
Everything. Is that even possible? Where would she start?
3
Seven months ago
If you consume popular culture in any way, be that through social media, watching TV or films, listening to chat shows or podcasts or reading novels, magazines or newspapers – literally, any way at all – you’d be forgiven for thinking the perennial question of the day for me, a thirty-two-year-old woman, has to be, ‘Where do people meet other people nowadays?’ To be specific, where do people meet people who they want to have sex with; people they want to fall in love with, marry and maybe even have children with?
I can’t be sure if this is in fact the question women gathered in gaggles really discuss. I don’t know for certain because I don’t do conventional friendship groups the way I’m supposed to. School put me off that sort of group mentality, all faux intimacy; presenting as a team, when really more often than not friendship gangs are a nest of vipers.
Shocker, I have trust issues.
I wasn’t always this cagey. Before my dad became a murderer, I had friends like a regular girl, but once he was arrested everything changed. Mothers metaphorically and literally grabbed their kids and almost yanked their arms out of their sockets in a bid to get them away from me. The walls went up instantly, unapologetically and definitively. I’ve never had the energy to scale them or knock them down. It was easier to just accept being penned in, locked out. I’ve always thought it is better to be lonely than pitied, hated or feared. So, I have limited lived experience of girly gossipy chats but, from what I’ve seen when others – uninvited – pour out the machinations of their minds to me, it seems popular culture has trained most of us to be pretty struck with monogamy. Gay or straight or anything goes, people apparently dream of the happily-ever-after.
For fuck’s sake.
Sorry about the F-bomb, if you are the sort to freak out over words, but really? Why do we still live in that fluffy cloud of hope? From my field research of watching others (anyone – customers or people on the street) and talking to my friends (OK – I mean the other waiting staff), it appears that the reality of dating as a millennial woman is some way off the track flagged by the rom-com tropes and clichés. The Prince Charming thing, break it down – just an arrogant guy with a saviour complex. At best. I have overheard so many late dinner, saggy and soggy pity parties being thrown at the tables I’m serving. The laments are repeated on a loop: where are the good ones? How do we find them? Track them down? Everyone has apparently tried the apps, then deleted the apps and then reinstalled the apps. Many moan about the lack of romance of meeting through an app. They complain about the inevitable artifice and abundant liars as well as the fact most people lack a desire for any real commitment or longevity. It’s a conundrum that if so many people are saying this about ‘most people’ then who is left? Are we just kidding our selves? Are we part of the problem? I think I am. But I think I am the part of every problem. My mum is always talking to me about going to a therapist.
I too have an on-off relationship with the dating apps because I have an on-off relationship with relationships. Romance isn’t a motivator for me. Throughout my adult life I’ve seesawed between prolonged periods of abstinence, then spasmodic episodes of promiscuity. I realise promiscuity is an old-fashioned word, heavily imbued with pejorative connotations and judgement. Fuck it, I can’t think of a better word to describe having sex with strangers in the restaurant loo during my shift break. It sounds tacky and ugly; spot on, it’s both things.
Dangerous too, some might say. Well, I have a fairly high capacity when it comes to risk but I’m not an idiot. I have a system. I’ve found the safest way to manage interactions on apps that offer no-strings attached sex (the only sort of app I’d consider), is to get the men to come to the restaurant when I’m working. I get them to buy a meal for themselves. I don’t want to eat with them, but that commitment to eating means I can watch them for about thirty to forty-five minutes and it allows me to assess if they are the type to want to hurt me. I serve them, maybe chat, see if there is chemistry. If there is, when they pay, I tell them to go to the accessible toilet. We bang out our needs there. It’s safe, efficient and cheap. I am used to the fluorescent light that buzzes over head, casting a sickly yellow glow on the cracked linoleum floor. Occasionally, I branch out. I come across a random guy eating at the restaurant, maybe with his friends, maybe alone, and we flirt. Maybe they ask for my number when I hand them the bill. If I like the look of them, then I write down the code for the lock on the accessible loo and offer the same opportunity. That code is the only number I give out.
Look, I live alone in a squalid flat; I’ve mentioned my dearth of close meaningful friendships, my family are – let’s say – absent, sometimes I need sex to check I’m alive. Don’t judge.
I very, very rarely go to the effort of going home with the strangers I hook up with. It’s not that I’m especially fearful that doing so might lead to my body being found the next morning in a dark alley. As I mentioned, I’m the opposite to risk-averse. What’s that? Not risk-seeking exactly, just a risk-accepter. I have a belief that lightning seldom strikes twice and as I have a father who is a murderer, I’d say statistically speaking, I’m unlikely to be murdered by a stranger. I mean, how many murderers does the average person encounter in life, right? But I am still fearful of going back to someone’s flat or asking them to come back to mine because if I do that then it’s very reasonable to assume they might ask my name, they might want me to stay over, offer to cook breakfast. Basically, it might lead to something.
I’m really scared of that.
Scared of something.
Not too surprisingly most men are happy to accept no-strings-attached sex. As little kissing or chatting as possible is my preferred modus operandi. They get turned on when I mutter ‘No names’ or simply put my hand over their mouths when they want to tell me I’m hot or when they suggest we meet again to do something outside the cubicle. However, a couple of months of indulging in a bunch of these sorts of hook-ups and I remember, it’s all sort of shit. Soulless fucking is hardly ever the workout or the orgasm trigger I’m hoping for. So I go back to going without.
Entirely alone isn’t the loneliest place to be.
So, it’s odd then that I, with my aromantic stance, accept that meeting Oli was different. Completely distinct. Our eyes simply met across a crowded room. Old-school attraction and, notably, this happened during one of my stretches of abstinence. I wasn’t looking for a casual hook-up.
Which was good, because he was never going to be that.
4
I spotted him and watched him find me. Slowly. Like the air between us was moving in waves and he fell into the swell, washed up right in front of me.
In this case, the crowded room was, of course, the restaurant I work at. I mean, where else do I go? He came in with a group. Four of them, all suited and booted. I work in a Korean restaurant that’s part of a small chain. The place aspires to present as authentic and individual while simultaneously rigidly abiding by endless rules passed down from head office, an entity that seems designed to suck the soul out of eating, working, living. The branch where I work is in the East End of London. Not the gentrified bit. Around here it still smells of the dry spices that are sold in buckets, cheap cooking fat, low grade meat being turned into burgers, and occasionally there’s a whiff of the smell of hops as the door of a pub swings open. Normally the people who frequent Oodles of Noodles are low key, chill – by chill I mean broke – but from time to time, the occasional group of bankers or consultants do blow in from the City. I guessed that his group were on a business lunch; no doubt they considered themselves a little wilder, cooler than the rest of their colleagues, otherwise wouldn’t they have gone to Nobu which was around the corner, and a great place to show people exactly how much cash they had to splash?
They weren’t in my section but I took advantage of the fact that Raj, the designated server for that zone, was on an unofficial vape break and I headed over.
‘Hi, guys. Can I get you any water for the table for starts?
Still? Sparkling?’
‘Tap water is fine,’ he said. We locked eyes. That close, I could drink in details. His were big brown eyes. There was a flicker of something serious or even maybe sad about his intense gaze. I immediately found myself wanting to get into that complexity. He had long eyelashes. It’s a cliché to say they were the sort of eyelashes that were wasted on a boy, because they were not wasted; he was aware of them, I was aware of them. No waste involved. The other three guys were wearing wedding rings. He was not. I couldn’t rule out that he might be married as he was wearing one of those posh boy signet rings, with a family crest on, one up from initials. But I didn’t think he was married, and I hoped he wasn’t even seriously dating because that would be a complication.
I already knew I didn’t want to be his other woman, his sloppy second, his side piece. There were endless ways to name the humiliation I wanted to avoid.
‘Actually, the tap water isn’t fine,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard that averagely, water in London is recycled seven times. Think about it, do you want to drink something that has potentially been through seven bodies?’
‘Is that a fact? Ran through all those bodies, hey.’
His retort was probably only supposed to land somewhere on the scale of tease or pedant but he sounded sexy or, at least, suggestive. I wondered if he was also thinking about being inside bodies. Mine, specifically.
‘We’ll take two bottles of sparkling,’ said one of the others, breaking the tension, demonstrating his low tolerance for it as he wasn’t the main player. I left menus with them and went to get the water. I could feel his eyes on me. Following me. I swayed my arse a little as I strode away. I know it’s hackneyed, but there’s a reason women have been doing the swishing-arse thing since Marilyn Monroe first sashayed onto the silver screen however many years ago.
There are times when we want their eyes to be trailing us as we walk away.
When Raj came back from his vape break, I said I’d stay with the table. He glanced at the group of blatantly affluent blokes. ‘No way, if they get drunk, they’ll tip big. My section. Piss off and find your own bankers.’
‘I’ll give you the tip. Give me the table.’
I’m pretty sure he was aware of my accessible loo hook-ups. It was likely he thought I wanted one of them for nothing more than that. Flirting while serving is an art. One that any sensible waiter masters. It’s a quick way to ensure bigger tips and fewer complaints about the food. Normally, that’s the only reason I bother to be anything approaching nice, even the hook-ups don’t require any level of pleasantness. He grinned. ‘I see. Hot. Fine, if it means that much to you. But I get the entire tip and I’m not covering your section. You have to do them both.’
Raj is the milk of human kindness, agreed?
I returned to his table with the water, took the drink orders, went back with the beers, took the food orders, returned with the food, then with the condiments. Appeared another time to enquire about desserts, coffees and finally just to ask, ‘Is there anything else I can help you with? Anything at all.’ There’s a fine line between flatteringly attentive and annoyingly over whelming and that line costs tips. That day, there was way more to play for than tips. It’s a matter of reading the table and making a judgement as to whether I was welcome or not. I knew these guys were enjoying my attentiveness. Wedding rings or not. There was a lot of laughter, questions back and forth, eye contact.
They liked him, his friends. It’s always a good sign. Even if the friends were a bit run of the mill. They stopped and tipped their heads towards him when he spoke. Just a fraction, they probably weren’t even aware they did so. They hung on his every word, laughed when he laughed. Later, when I found out just how wealthy he was, I wondered whether they really did like him or did they just like his money? Very rich people tend to be popular. But I’ll never know, as he couldn’t ever be separated from his wealth.
Each time I returned to the table I drank in a fraction more of him. Let his presence imprint on me a little firmer. I’m a keen observer of people. It’s part of a flawed and futile attempt to get a handle on life, stay a step ahead. Obviously, as the daughter of a vicious killer, I have a higher-than-average interest in what makes a person tick, what it is that makes us human or inhuman. I watch people carefully, hoping I never miss anything again, while knowing I always will because no one can know anyone, no one can fully understand anyone. Not even themselves.
I noted the way he sat, smiled, interacted, intoned. People say that there’s a story in everyone. Well, if that’s the case I’ve found that I don’t want to hear them, least not many of them. Most people are turgidly boring. And if they happen to have great stories to tell it’s usually because something awful has happened that has left them completely screwed up. Me, for instance, I fall into that category. Better if I don’t tell anyone much about me. But with him, I found myself longing to hear him tell his story. With him, yeah, I’d listen. I wanted to piece him together like a jigsaw puzzle. I wanted to collect up everything I could and make a complete picture.
I knew from the get-go that this guy was complex.
He was conventionally good looking, obviously employed, apparently wealthy and while seated at that point – so I couldn’t say for sure – I’d guessed he was brushing six feet. He ought to have been supremely confident. He should have lounged back in his chair, his laugh should have been louder than his peers’, his conversation more fluid. He might even have been the rare sort who had the right to tread into that disgustingly arrogant territory of clicking fingers and point ing when someone comprehends a point being made; yelling, ‘That. Exactly that.’ A gesture that on most is completely dickish but for a few is very sexy and compelling. He was presenting as straight; he was white and male. He could have owned all that arrogance and privilege, wallowed in it, gorged on it, but he did not lean into that advantage.
He chose to be softer than that.
He sat forward, hands beneath the table, no elbows resting, actively demonstrating his interest in what everyone else was saying and doing. His laugh was loud but not annoyingly so and the voice that dominated the conversation wasn’t his, he allowed others to take the stage, showing that he was that special thing, a good listener. I noticed that he stroked his chin a lot. I don’t think this was done in a patronising, wise old wizard way, I think he did it to give him something to do with his hands; his fingernails were bitten down low. His name was Oliver. I heard the other guys call him Oli and Ol. I wondered if anyone ever called him Oliver. I didn’t expect him to ask for my number when I handed over the bill because we were not in a film and because of the finger nail-biting thing.
‘I’m not working tonight,’ I said as I handed the card machine to the guy paying so he could decide how much to tip and whether he wanted to donate a pound to Shelter. I’m not shy but there was a thickness sitting like concrete in my throat. A nervousness. Uncertainty. A great advantage of not being romantic is that my hopes aren’t available to dash, but my confidence can still take a bit of a battering and as I wondered how this was going to pan out, I felt sweat turn the base of my back damp. I hoped my shirt wasn’t sticking to me and exposing my nerves. The comment was so obviously loaded and directed; his three companions fell silent for a moment.
His friends looked at him, then one of them let out a low whistle, glanced at me and mumbled, ‘Mate, you’re in there.’ Just in case I hadn’t been obvious enough. We all waited.
Eventually, after about a thousand years, he said, ‘Right,’ and sort of smiled. Not a full, unreserved happy smile, something that had a shadow of embarrassment or hesitancy. Apology. We all waited some more. I was mortified. I’d blown it. I was too much, too brash. I should have been more careful in my approach with this man who had stories and intensity. The card machine whooshed and spat out the bit of paper no one ever looks at. I waved it half-heartedly at the one who had tapped his card and then I walked away. Feeling like a fucking idiot.