Are You Watching?, page 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Acknowledgements
A Q&A with Vincent Ralph
A note from the publisher
About the Author
Vincent Ralph has been writing in one form or another since his teens and has always dreamed of being a novelist. He owes his love of books to his mother, who encouraged his imagination from an early age and made sure there were new stories to read.
Vincent has lived in London, Cornwall and Chester, but he now lives in his home county of Kent with his wife, son and two cats.
Follow Vincent on Twitter
@VincentRalph1
#AreYouWatching
For my mother
1
‘My mum was killed by the Magpie Man.’
The guy nods and I wait for him to reply.
When he doesn’t, I say, ‘Fifty-one seconds from home she was strangled to death and left to be rained on all night.’
They say to start with a bang and that’s the biggest one I’ve got.
The man types words I can’t see while the woman stares at me.
‘I was seven,’ I say.
I’m seventeen now.
The man clears his throat and asks, ‘Do you think you’re the only applicant to have lost a parent?’
I shrug.
‘You’re not. But you are the only applicant whose mother was the victim of a serial killer.’
The woman writes something on a notepad and pushes it towards him.
He nods and says, ‘We’ll be in touch.’
2
My name is Jessica Simmons and I’m not your average internet star. But then I guess this isn’t your average internet show.
The adverts say it’s something different – a real look inside the lives of real people. No scripts, no airbrushing, no scenes set up for your entertainment; just you and a camera crew and whatever you want to show.
If this was halfway through the story, rather than the start, I guess you’d call it a twist, because I’m not the kind of person to stream their life on YouTube. You’ll have to take my word for it that this is out of character for me.
Mum was thirty-two when she died, the first victim of a man they still haven’t caught. Number one on a list that now stretches to thirteen.
So, if you ask why I want to be one of the five people to star in a new online show about them and only them, it’s pretty simple.
I want to catch the Magpie Man and this is how I’m going to do it.
3
It’s been so long since Mum died that sometimes I doubt my own memories, even if the house is full of her pictures and her echoes live in the cracks on Dad’s face.
It was Dad who gave the murderer his name. He said the Magpie Man liked shiny things and Mum was the shiniest of all. He said she’d been borrowed.
‘Like a library book?’ I’d asked, and he’d said sort of, but without a date to bring her back.
Now I realize it was for his benefit as much as mine: when a husband loses his wife, the last thing he needs is a kid asking questions.
When you’re seven, you don’t think your dad’s full of shit, because he’s the person who hugs you and kisses you and keeps you safe – why would he lie?
He should have said that was our little secret. But he didn’t, so I told everyone at school that the pretty mums would all be taken eventually, and Dad got called in for that.
Then I’m eleven, getting the bus home from school for the first time, and we pass the shop where Mum used to work. It’s twelve minutes and twenty-nine seconds from getting on to getting off and fifteen steps to the alley.
I dared myself to walk through but bottled it every time.
When I finally did, I counted one minute and forty-two seconds from one end to the other … from short cut to home.
She was less than a minute from safety.
4
There are no rules for mourning.
When Mum died, the house felt grey and haunted and Dad didn’t look like himself any more.
One day all her pictures disappeared, gone as suddenly as she had.
It was Dad’s way of preparing me for a truth he couldn’t speak.
People told him to move, that it was crazy to live near the alley where your wife was murdered. But he ignored them.
I heard him on the phone once, saying he had already lost so much of her, why would he sell his remaining memories? And that night the photos returned, filling every surface.
She was everywhere and nowhere all at once.
I cried but they weren’t real tears. I was copying the sadness of others rather than feeling my own.
I believed Mum would come back, convinced she would be the next knock at the door, the next phone call, the next hug from the line of strangers whose touch felt so different from hers.
People told Dad to send me to a counsellor, but again he ignored them. Grief makes what you have more precious and by then I was all he had left. So he held me tight through his refusal to make our loss any bigger than it had to be.
It was Nan who changed that. She got tired of Dad’s stories and cried if I asked when we could visit Mum in the museum for shiny things. She said I would find out eventually, and the sooner the better, so she told me Mum was gone forever.
I called her a liar. I hated her. And then I cried the sharpest, heaviest, most unbearable tears of my life.
Your grief journey changes when you aren’t looking. It moves in fractions: black shifting through a thousand shades of grey. Eventually, it transforms into something else: a dull ache; a numbness that becomes the norm.
Websites told me to write a note and put it in a balloon and release
I took pictures and hoarded the ones my parents had taken. I drew and painted and wrote shitty poetry and started a Feelings Journal. None of it worked but I tried.
When I was fourteen, I got angry and took it out on a dad who refused to fight back.
Seven years after Mum was murdered and he was still a body carrying around a shattered soul like the newspaper you wrap broken glass in. But it was more than that. He let himself be my punching bag. I treated him terribly and he took it, because he loved me and because he knew that, when the anger comes, it is vicious and all-consuming.
He hid it because he had to. I couldn’t because I didn’t know how.
When I googled ‘the Magpie Man’, I got hundreds of articles but no answers, just the names of all the people he murdered and comments from frustrated detectives.
He’s still out there somewhere, still killing – the monster that took my mother.
And that is why the cameras can’t start rolling soon enough.
5
My phone rings with a number I don’t recognize and when I answer a man says, ‘Miss Simmons? It’s Adrian … from The Eye. We’ve reviewed your application and, although the competition was fierce, we’d like you to be Monday.’
This means that on the first day of every week for a month I will be live online from the moment I wake up until midnight. If I’m not a complete flop, one month will become three.
The show is about real lives with unique twists – that’s what the application form said. It claimed audiences have had enough of the same old formats.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I need to give it my best shot.
I see myself smiling in the mirror and stop, because this isn’t supposed to be a happy moment. It’s just the beginning.
‘When do I start?’ I ask.
Adrian says, ‘Three weeks. We have a few briefing sessions for you to attend where you’ll get to meet the others.’ He sounds like he’s reading off a sheet.
I don’t particularly want to see them, but what choice do I have? I’m guessing they want to be famous rather than get justice, but I’ll go and smile and do whatever has to be done to get my story across.
Anyone can put themselves online these days, but most get lost in the crowd. The trick is to find a stage big enough to be remembered, and this show offers that.
‘We need to meet your father,’ Adrian says. ‘There are some things for him to sign.’
That’s what I’m afraid of, because Dad doesn’t know I’ve applied. He thought my interview was a shopping trip.
‘You’ll have to come here,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t like leaving the house in the daytime.’
This isn’t a lie. Dad prefers it when it’s quiet outside. He shops when the supermarket is empty. He doesn’t like crowds or conversations. Three times a week he works night shifts in a factory, not because he has to, but because we all need to escape sometimes.
I hope YouTube people are too busy to visit normal people’s houses just to get a signature. I hope they send the paperwork and I can forge Dad’s scribble and have more time to wear him down.
But, without a pause, Adrian says, ‘No problem. We’ll see you tomorrow.’
Shit.
Before he hangs up, he says, ‘We have high hopes for you, Jessica.’
I’m glad someone does.
6
Some broken people look fine from the outside, but not my dad. He wears his heartbreak like a second skin, his eyes grey and heavy, his grief shouting over everything else.
‘Hey,’ I say.
He nods and puts his lips together in his best attempt at a smile.
‘I have something to ask.’
He reaches for the remote and mutes the TV.
I take a deep breath, almost chicken out, then say, ‘I’ve applied for a show. It’s called The Eye.’
He sighs and says, ‘OK.’
‘It’s on YouTube. I’ll be filming my life and they need your permission.’
He stares me out, because there’s only so long I can look into his eyes before I want to cry.
‘You’ll be filming your life?’
I nod.
‘And who will be watching?’
‘I don’t know – whoever wants to.’
‘No.’
He unmutes the TV and the sound makes me jump, drowning out the reply I’m planning in my head.
But I say it anyway, a shortened version, a three-word battle cry. ‘It’s for Mum.’
He stares at me and this time I don’t look away.
I don’t care if I cry. I don’t care if, when I look long enough, I see the dad he used to be, mixed with the sadness he fights so hard to contain. I stare until my eyes are burning and I see Dad’s ‘No’ crumble in his mouth.
He turns off the TV, breathes deeply and says, ‘Tell me more.’
7
If I concentrate, I can still hear Mum’s laughter and, if I close my eyes, I can picture Dad’s smile, the real one, the one that could win an argument with a single flash. If I really focus, I can go back to certain moments, ones that didn’t feel special at the time, but are now all I have.
Mum would leave notes around the house for Dad to find: tiny reminders of how much she loved him. Once a slip of paper fell into my breakfast bowl along with my cereal, and when I asked Mum what it said she whispered, ‘Your dad can read it to you when he finds it.’
Then she dropped it back into the box and, when he came downstairs, we watched him find the note and smile.
The message was just one word: Always.
They wore their love like some people wear designer brands. They advertised it with every look, every whisper, every secret smile. People used to say they were made for each other and Mum would grin and say they were made for me.
The bottom falls out of my world every time I think that.
Sometimes I imagine my life if Mum was the one left behind, and I feel guilty because I know things would be different.
She wouldn’t have broken down like Dad did. She would have fought through her pain and lived on.
8
When they arrive, I lead Adrian and his colleague into the lounge and pray that Dad hasn’t changed his mind.
‘Mr Simmons,’ Adrian says, holding out his hand.
Dad takes it like a robot, does the same with the girl and then looks at me.
‘So,’ I say, ‘where do we sign?’
Adrian laughs. ‘Someone’s keen!’ Then he says, ‘You’re very brave for doing this.’
I’m not sure who he’s talking to, so I smile and Dad does his best impression of happy and Adrian says, ‘This is a wonderful setting.’
He’s walking round the lounge, going over to touch things, then stopping at the last minute, nodding to himself and pointing at random places.
The girl must know why, because, whenever he points, she writes something on her iPad.
‘This is my assistant, Lauren,’ Adrian says.
She looks about my age and, when she rolls her eyes, I smile and imagine her being Adrian’s boss one day.
He has a slap-worthy grin on his face and he’s treating our lounge like a film set, but that’s a small sacrifice if it means finding the Magpie Man.
When we sit down, I grip my hands together in my lap, hoping no one sees them shaking.
‘We’re here to explain the process,’ Adrian says, ‘and to ensure you’re fully aware of the … all-encompassing nature of the show.
‘This is about five young adults who have experienced something extraordinary. People with stories to tell. It’s the first reality show of its kind truly for the online generation. The camera crew will start filming before Jessica wakes up. At least that’s what the audience will think. We’ll stage that part. Unless you’re a heavy sleeper. There will also be a highlights package, available any time from the following day. We’ll edit Jessica’s best bits and post sixty-minute videos on her channel every Tuesday morning.’
Dad looks at me and says, ‘You agreed to this?’
I nod and think back to our conversation last night. He heard me out. He sat in silence as I explained why this could help us find answers.
‘If I reach enough people, I might actually find a witness, or a clue, or something,’ I’d said. ‘We can do this. All we need is a platform.’
