Page 27 of Watching You

Eighteen Months Earlier

The painkillers were all she could think about taking for breakfast. She didn’t even want to wash them down with her usual cup of peppermint tea or a glass of orange juice.

Just two extra-strong headache tablets and mouth under the tap for water.

Molly didn’t even know why she was taking them.

She didn’t have any identifiable pain that needed relieving.

They just made her feel more in control, somehow.

They gave her chronic stomachache as well, but that was fine because she got rid of that with …

well, more pills. The woman in her local chemist had started giving her funny looks and suggesting she should visit her doctor if she couldn’t get her pain under control, so the supermarket had become her go-to for the tablets now. Never the same till two days in a row.

The plus side was that she’d lost her appetite completely, so she was saving money on food as well as losing weight. It was every twenty-something’s dream. More cash in her pocket, less weight on her hips. Not that she’d had any excess in the first place.

Mol stared at the canvas, half-finished, in front of her.

She could barely remember starting it. Insomnia had claimed her nighttime hours so she’d begun a fresh painting to get through the small hours and here, now, was a dead rabbit in a tiny coffin, attended by a procession of teary-eyed woodland creatures.

There was plenty left to do, but it had taken shape as if a demon had possessed her paintbrush.

The thought of it made her laugh. There were no demons inside her studio, but there might very well be one outside, watching the door to spy on her comings and goings, leaving little things to rip her heart out and violate her peace.

The police had been keen at first, taking statements, making sure she felt heard.

But Karl Smith was a common name. All the social media posts disappeared as soon as she’d seen them.

The email addresses he’d used were a pathway to nothing.

And the gifts weren’t harassment if she couldn’t prove they were all from the same person.

The rotting fruit might have been a simple mistake.

The dead rabbit on her car windscreen might have been dropped there by a bird of prey.

The silent calls to her work phone were all from different numbers so no pattern could be established.

And she’d never actually been threatened, had she?

He’d never approached her in person. She wasn’t afraid for her life.

Mol lost count of the times she heard an apology followed by the words, ‘but there’s really nothing we can do at this time. Call us if things develop.’

‘Develop,’ she mumbled to the sad animals in glorious oils. ‘What’s that even supposed to mean?’

There was a whole website dedicated to explaining all the reasons why her work was substandard with a domain name hosted on a Russian server, no traceable owner, and in any event, that apparently was the exercise of free speech.

Everywhere else her work could be reviewed, it had been, the negative pile-on losing her the few regular clients she had left, and reducing the value of her work to nothing more than hospital corridor prints.

He stalked her in a million tiny ways that couldn’t be caught on camera or forensically proven. The online world, Mol discovered, was as toxic and mad as a bag of vipers, but removing yourself from it brought soul-destroying isolation.

Seeing her mother so worried about her didn’t help.

The constant glances across the table at mealtimes to see if she was eating enough.

The messages, hourly, if she wasn’t in surgery.

Did she need anything? Want anything? Had there been any more ‘events’, as they’d come to call them?

Was she sleeping? Should they move house?

There were cameras everywhere, at home and at work, that should have made Molly feel safer but that only ever succeeded in reminding her that she was being watched.

In a moment of crazed fury, she’d signed up for internet dating – daring him, almost wanting him, to find her and ask her out so she could look in his eyes and spit her grief at him for destroying her life.

Instead, she’d made contact with a nice man, good-looking but not showy, who taught English literature to children who’d rather be playing football or watching TikTok videos.

They’d spoken on the phone then agreed to go on a date and, while she was genuinely terrified and wanted to do nothing but hide, she’d gone out of sheer bloody-mindedness, promising herself that it would be the dawn of a brave new era, where she would reinvent herself and start living again.

Her date had turned up but found it hard to look her in the eyes, been polite but formal, and when she suggested they move on from the bar to the restaurant they’d agreed on, he coughed a few times and found a reason to speak to her while looking exclusively at the floor.

‘I’m very sorry about this,’ he’d said. ‘Really, I am, because you seem lovely. But the thing is, I did a quick search for you online. I know that’s shallow but when I found out you were an artist I wanted to look at your work.

I wasn’t looking for personal details, I promise.

’ He cleared his throat another dozen times.

‘Um, so there were some videos. Private things that I’m sure at the time you hadn’t dreamed would be made public. ’

‘Oh,’ Mol said. ‘Oh no. They’re deep fakes and I thought they’d all been taken down. I would never … I mean, I have never—’

‘And the problem with that is,’ he continued as if she hadn’t said a word.

It was the only way, Mol thought, that he could get through the speech he’d clearly prepared earlier – ever the teacher – and escape.

‘I’m a teacher at a private school. That’s no excuse and it sounds all wrong.

But I can’t be in a relationship with someone who has that sort of online presence.

It wouldn’t be tolerated. The parents, you see. ’ As if that was a complete sentence.

Mol’s stomach had sunk so low that she thought it might be in her shoes. There was nothing left to say. No point explaining or defending herself to the very nice man who was shrinking away from her as if the mess of her life might be catching.

She picked up her handbag, pushed her chair back without it scraping the floor and making a noise, took out ￡5 and laid it on the table to repay him for the drink he’d bought her because at least he’d had the decency to show up and explain things to her face, then left without a word.

As she walked past the window she could see him in the bar, staring sadly at the banknote.

And that was that.

Her mobile rang twice then stopped, then four knocks were hammered out on the door to her studio, one-two pause three-four. It was her mother.

Beth Waterfall put on her best happy face as she held up a bag of baguettes and lemonade.

‘Surprise!’ she sang.

‘Mum,’ Mol’s voice was the gentlest of warnings. She didn’t want anyone in her space. It was the one place she didn’t have to pretend to be okay. ‘We talked about this.’

‘It’s lunch. There’s a norovirus alert at the hospital so most surgeries have been cancelled and I’ve done more hours than I should have this month, so they took me off the rota and told me to go home.’

And you didn’t come home last night – those words hung in the air, unspoken. I’m worried sick about my daughter. I know you’re drowning. Why won’t you hold my hand to pull you out of the water, when I offer it to you?

Molly didn’t invite her in but knew there was no way of stopping her, so Beth walked close, hugged her daughter with her free hand, kissed her cheek, and bustled past.

‘Gosh, this place is cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. And you’ve been busy! So many new canvases. Are they all completed? Why are they covered? I’ve never seen you do that before.’

Before Mol could stop her, Beth walked up to the nearest one and pulled away the sheet covering the painting. She gasped, stared, frowned, looked at Molly then back to the picture. When she was finally able to tear her eyes off the image, she turned to Mol aghast.

‘What is this?’

Molly shrugged.

Beth strode to the next covered canvas and pulled the sheet away. And the next. And the next. There were nineteen in all, a few unfinished but most were complete works that could have gone straight into a gallery if they wouldn’t have horrified the patrons.

‘Molly,’ Beth whispered. ‘We have to talk about this.’

‘You’re overreacting,’ she replied, already picking up sheets off the floor and starting to re-cover the paintings.

‘Stop,’ her mother insisted, pulling the sheets from her hands. ‘Darling, these paintings are … they’re—’

‘Just say it,’ Molly told her.

‘Concerning. Disturbing, even.’ Beth walked back to look at the bowl of rotting fruit in the first picture.

‘Brilliant, too. Quite extraordinary. As good as Adriaen Coorte’s gooseberries but a nightmare version, and the hyperrealism is as exquisite as Christiane Vleugels’.

Mol, I know things have been awful. I know it feels like life will never get better, but this goes way beyond a dark frame of mind.

Everything on these pictures is rotting, disintegrating.

And as for the dead animals, birds and fish … ’

‘I’m just processing what’s happening to me. It’s good for me, I think.’

‘But you’ve done so much. Oil paintings of this size and this detail – this would be a lifetime’s work for some artists. Have you been sleeping at all? I’ve never known you produce work this fast.’

‘It’s better for me to be busy,’ Mol said, but her voice made it more question than statement.

‘Oh sweetheart, let’s just move. We’ve talked about it. I think it would be best. We’ll put the house on the market, and I can get a job anywhere in the UK. The south coast is nice. Maybe the New Forest. Cornwall, even. We can go as soon as I’ve got a new job. We’ll rent until the house is sold—’

‘You can’t move away from the internet, Mum. It’s everywhere. He’s destroyed my reputation, my work, my personal life. My name. Cornwall can’t fix that.’

‘Then we’ll go back to the police and we won’t stop until they find this bastard.’

‘God, Mum, would you wake up? I know you mean well but it’s not your life he’s destroyed.

I don’t even know what’s real any more. I see a dead pigeon in our driveway and I’m convinced he threw it there.

If a letter arrives with a ripped edge, I think he’s been going through our post. I walk along the street with my phone camera pointed over my shoulder so I can see who’s behind me.

I can’t see beauty any more, that’s why these paintings exist. I never knew the meaning of the word corruption until this started. My life is over!’

‘It’s not—’

Molly screeched. ‘Yes it is! I can’t date, I can’t go online or go to galleries, I can’t sell my work, I can’t sleep and I can’t eat.

I tried fighting fire with fire and announcing online that I was being harassed but I was just shouting into the void.

He’s launched a hate campaign against me, and he’s very, very good at it.

No one can help me. Not even you.’ She clutched her stomach and fell to her knees.

Beth moved towards her, but Molly held up a warning hand. ‘Don’t.’

Beth looked around at the canvases filled with death and decay, decadently and extravagantly portrayed, so realistic that it was impossible not to want to reach out and touch each scene.

Her daughter, her beautiful, talented adult daughter, was curled up on the floor, forehead touching the cold concrete floor of her studio, broken.

Utterly, utterly broken. For the first time since Beth had become a mother, she was powerless and terrified.

And she knew in her heart that they hadn’t hit rock bottom quite yet.