Stop at Nothing

by Tammy Cohen

  Phil’s face softened, the features blurring around the edges.

  ‘Oh, Tessa, she knows that.’

  Phil was right. There could be nothing gained by trying to find out more about Number Eight. Best to forget I ever saw him.

  I was thinking exactly this after he’d gone and I sat down at the kitchen table, powered up my laptop and sought out that photo of the young James Laurence Stephens in football kit squatting next to a ball.

  That instant tug of anger at the sight of those probing green eyes. The sheer, dense mass of him.

  On impulse, I took out my phone and sent Frances a text, telling her what I’d found out so far. I needed to share the information with someone who understood what it meant that this man now had a name, that he was real.

  After I hit send, I went back to my laptop and called up the Yell page for his painting-and-decorating business and my heart thudded when I noticed there was a reply to my review.

  As my fingers hovered over the link, my mouth was dry. I glanced across the table, my eyes coming to rest on Phil’s half-full tea cup, which made it look like he’d left the room for a moment and would be back to finish it. As if he still lived here. The sight was oddly comforting.

  Calmer, I clicked on the link.

  Reply from J. L. Stephens Painting and Decorating:

  To my loyal customers, please be informed I am in the process of getting this slanderous review removed.

  To the person who posted it, people are tracking down the IP address as we speak.

  I slammed shut the lid of my laptop.

  The IP address. I hadn’t even thought.

  Could he find me? Could he find out where I lived?

  Oh, Emma. What had I done?

  11

  What did we do before Google?

  The morning after Phil’s visit, when I was finally thinking straight, I googled ‘what can you find out from an IP address’. To my enormous relief, I discovered it wasn’t possible to find a name or address, though someone who knew about computers might be able to discover the area the review had been sent from.

  I sent up a silent prayer of gratitude to the god I didn’t believe in and took Dotty out for a walk, even though I actually felt like going back to bed, having spent half the night awake, anxiety binding itself around my brain until every last bit of calm had been squeezed out.

  We walked up to Alexandra Palace, the big London landmark strung out across a hill in the very north of the capital. Dotty adored humans but regarded other dogs with suspicion, so we tended to lurk in the upper part of the palace parkland, where it was less populated.

  It was a Sunday, and though it was only late February, it felt like spring. Already there were yellow clots of daffodils around the bases of the trees, yet still as I threw the ball for Dotty I felt jittery and nearly jumped out of my skin when my ringtone sounded. I usually ignored my phone when I was out with the dog, in case she misbehaved while I was distracted, so it was only when we were on the way back that I glanced at my screen and saw a missed call from Frances. No voicemail. I’d only recently discovered via Em that no one under thirty listens to voicemails any more. ‘So all those times I’ve left you long, complicated messages, you haven’t listened to them?’ I’d asked her.

  ‘Nah. Sorry. It’s not personal, though.’

  I was planning to call Frances back, but I was running late to meet up with Kath and Mari down on the South Bank and it slipped my mind. As it was, my old friends were both there already waiting for me outside the entrance to the vast monolithic brick slab that was Tate Modern. Since Mari and Kath had got Tate memberships, it was something we did quite often on the weekend. A quick whizz around an exhibition, a leisurely stroll around the gift shop then up to the members’ bar for a drink and something to eat. Sometimes we even left out the art and just did the shop and the bar.

  Amazingly, we managed to nab one of the prized window tables in the bar. It was something I never got blasé about, the majestic beauty of that stretch of the Thames with the creamy dome of St Paul’s Cathedral rising up straight ahead above the gleaming steel ribbon of the Millennium Bridge and, to the right, the outline of the Gherkin and the other City skyscrapers probing the watery-blue sky.

  Kath had her iPad out and, despite my vociferous objections, was creating a profile for me on a dating website.

  ‘It’s time, that’s all. You’ve moped around too long.’

  ‘I’m fifty-two. All the men my age will be pretending to be forty and looking for women between twenty-five and thirty-five. The only people who’ll click on my profile will be seventy-year-olds who figure I’ll be grateful for whatever I can get.’

  ‘Don’t be defeatist,’ said Mari.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say.’

  Mari had been with her second husband, Niall, for twelve years. He was nine years younger than her and his eyes still followed her around the room as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

  Mari had long dark hair liberally streaked with grey and she never wore make-up as she claimed it brought her out in a rash. At university, Kath and I used to chase her around the flat the three of us shared, trying to daub her with mascara or blusher or whatever else we had to hand, to prove her wrong, but we’d long since given up on that. Besides, whether it was the lifelong aversion to cosmetics or simply good Irish genes, Mari, who had looked like our mothers when we were eighteen, had stopped ageing somewhere around her thirty-eighth birthday. You could already see how she would turn into one of those enviably baby-faced old women, all long white hair and smooth skin and clear eyes.

  ‘A good shag would sort you out,’ said Kath.

  ‘Or quite possibly kill me.’

  Kath frowned and squinted at the screen through her tortoiseshell cat’s-eye glasses.

  ‘I’ve put that you like long country walks with your dog. They always like that kind of thing. Makes you sound non-threatening.’

  ‘Makes me sound like Clare bloody Balding. Anyway, I am non-threatening. And I hate walking my dog. She’s a nightmare.’

  Mari asked me how I’d been and I found myself telling them about James Laurence Stephens. Of course, they already knew all about the attack. In fact, Mari had been the first person I’d called the following morning, when I’d got up, stiff and heartsore, from Em’s floor, having spent the night wrapped in my duvet, watching her while she slept. And Kath had sent Em a box of posh chocolates after the case collapsed nearly three weeks ago.

  So I expected them to be fully supportive, but when I got to the bit about leaving the online review, Kath sucked in her cheeks.

  ‘Are you mad? I mean, are you literally insane? First, you have no proof this is actually the same guy from the video.’

  ‘It’s him. Em was shaking all over when she came home after seeing him. And Frances – you know, the woman who came along and scared him away – she recognized him immediately.’

  ‘And secondly, if it is the right man, he’s a psychopath and you are basically provoking him.’

  When Kath was riled two bright pink spots appeared on her cheeks like a kid’s doll, clashing with her flame-red hair.

  ‘I know, I know. I’ve deleted the review. You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘It’s completely understandable that you want to get revenge,’ said Mari. ‘Bloody hell, I want to get revenge too. Em’s my god-daughter, don’t forget. But you have to go through the proper channels. Take it to the police if you really think you have something. How is she, by the way? Emma?’

  I tensed, fingers gripping on to the handle of my coffee cup.

  ‘Not so good, really.’ I told them about the hair loss, and that letter with the word ‘victim’ underlined again and again, that phrase on the back: I hate myself.

  Mari leaned forward and held my hand.

  ‘Do you think she’d talk to me? It is my job, after all.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No offence, but I’ve begged her to talk to someone and she won’t. She insists
she’s fine.’

  ‘And she probably will be. She’s made of stern stuff, your Em. She’ll be okay.’

  For a moment, as Mari looked into my eyes and pressed my hand, I felt calmer, but then I was distracted by Kath pointing her phone in my face and taking a photo.

  ‘For your profile picture.’

  During the ensuing tussle while I tried to grab the phone to delete whatever monstrous photo she’d taken and she in turn tried to upload it to the site, my own phone started ringing.

  I glanced at the screen. Shit, Frances. I’d forgotten to call her back.

  ‘Hi, Tessa.’ Frances sounded bright and excited. ‘I’m so glad I got hold of you. Listen, can we meet up?’

  ‘Now? Oh, I’m sorry. I’m in town having lunch with a couple of old friends.’

  There was a pause, as if Frances was surprised to discover I had a social life. Then she recovered herself.

  ‘Oh, how lovely. It’s just that I’ve been doing some investigating and I found out more information. About our guy. I tracked him down on Facebook. His personal account is locked but he DJ’s in his spare time and he has a professional account for that as well as his painting and decorating and, get this, his DJ name is J-Lo. James Laurence. Get it?’

  Though I’d turned away from the table, I could sense Kath and Mari staring at me.

  ‘Actually, Frances, I’ve decided to drop this. My friends here nearly bit my head off when I told them I’d written a review on Yell. Em says she’s trying to move on and put it behind her, and if she can do it, I should probably do the same.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Frances sounded momentarily deflated, but she rallied quickly.

  ‘Of course, you know best. You’re her mum.’

  After we’d finished in the bar, we went to the gift shop, where Kath bought a colouring book for the granddaughter I still couldn’t believe she actually had. Grandmother. How was that even possible? Well, I knew how it was possible. She’d had Jemima when we were only a year out of uni – the product of a brief but very satisfying liaison with a Dutch PhD student. And now Jemima had become a mother herself at not very much older. The thing was, though, I looked at Kath and still saw the girl with the bright red backcombed hair and biker jacket I’d met in the Student Union where we both worked behind the bar to make some extra cash.

  At Bounds Green Tube, I deliberately kept my gaze averted from Regency Parade while waiting to cross the road, focusing instead on the opposite pavement, where a man with a ginger beard was trying to press flyers into the hands of passers-by.

  I was a few minutes from my house when my phone rang again.

  ‘Tessa?’ Frances sounded hesitant. ‘Is it a better time to talk now?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’ I felt absurdly guilty for having been caught out enjoying myself.

  ‘Oh God, no need to apologize. The truth is, I’ve been in two minds whether to call again. Ever since we last spoke I’ve been going backwards and forwards, trying to work out what to do for the best. But in the end I asked myself what I would want in your situation.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  I’d stopped by a house with a low brick wall that separated the small front garden from the street. The heavy lunch, followed by cake, combined with the lack of sleep, made me feel suddenly exhausted and I sank down on to the wall next to an old toaster bearing a Post-it that read ‘Take me, I work.’

  ‘I don’t want to worry you, but Emma has been texting me quite a lot the last few days,’ Frances said carefully. ‘I think she feels a bond between us because of what happened. And of course I’m very flattered that she feels she can confide in me. She hasn’t wanted to burden you because she seems to think you’re fragile at the moment, but the truth is she isn’t over this. Not by a long way. Since she saw him she’s been having nightmares where she’s back by that bus stop, being dragged towards the darkness. She’s scared of walking anywhere, even in the daylight. She says she’s constantly listening for footsteps behind her.’

  I felt a tearing of tissue somewhere deep in my chest.

  ‘I know she’s struggling,’ I said. ‘But why won’t she talk to me? I’m not being rude, Frances, and I’m so grateful to you for being there for her, but she’s only just met you. I’m her mum.’

  My voice cracked on the last word, and there was a brief silence before Frances replied, gently, ‘She’s incredibly protective of you, Tessa. She’s a very special girl.’

  Frances made me promise I wouldn’t say anything to Emma.

  ‘She trusts me, and if she thinks I’ve betrayed that trust by talking to you, she might close up completely. But I thought you ought to know. So you can keep an eye on her.’

  After Frances had rung off, I stayed sitting on the wall, still with the phone in my hand. A couple with a baby in a buggy stopped to consider the toaster, but I hardly saw them.

  I thought of Emma’s pale face across the breakfast table that morning, spooning cereal into her mouth without taking her eyes off her phone screen. She’d been wearing her fluffy navy-blue dressing gown, and her head, poking out from the outsized towelling collar, seemed disproportionately small, like a tortoise’s.

  The radio had been on and the presenters were talking about the latest school shooting in America. ‘What makes someone do something like that,’ one of the presenters asked about the seventeen-year-old gunman, ‘to kids they’ve known all their lives?’

  I didn’t think Em was even listening, she was so intent on her phone. Then she said:

  ‘I think he must have been very lonely.’

  And I’d thought how she was absolutely right. Loneliness. Disconnection. Feeling excluded from a life in which everyone else seemed to have a place.

  And I’d thought how perceptive she was, my daughter. And how kind.

  What I should have thought was, Why are you worrying about everyone else except yourself?

  I hurried back home, propelled by guilt. But when I walked in through the front door, panting, to be met by a semi-hysterical Dotty, who barrelled into my leg as if she’d been abandoned alone for months, it was obvious Em was out.

  ‘Gone to study at Grace’s,’ read the note she’d left on the kitchen table.

  I sank down on to a chair. For a moment I considered calling Em, just to hear her voice and try to get her to confide in me, as she had done in Frances, but I was mindful of my promise and of Frances’s warning about Em shutting down altogether. Besides, I was glad Em was at her best friend’s house instead of moping around on her own. It was a sign she was feeling better, wasn’t it?

  But all I could hear was Frances’s voice telling me about Em being scared of being dragged into the darkness.

  I fired up my laptop, which was sitting on the kitchen table, as usual. It was old and the battery needed replacing so it had to be more or less constantly plugged into the wall socket, which kind of defeated the object of a portable computer.

  The poleaxing guilt that had followed me home after my conversation with Frances was slowly giving way to a new emotion. Rage was snaking through my veins from the bottom of my legs up through my body, building in intensity as it progressed through until it arrived in my gut like a burning fireball.

  Not only had that man tried to drag my daughter off the road when all she was doing was trying to get home in time for her curfew, now he had destroyed her peace of mind, polluting her day-to-day life, haunting her sleep so she turned to strangers for comfort.

  And he had got away with it.

  I called up Facebook and typed ‘James Laurence Stephens’ into the search box, adding the term ‘Bounds Green’ as an afterthought. He came up immediately. A recent photo, from the looks of it. He looked older, his features harder, more defined, his hair shorter. Bare-chested on a beach somewhere, all dense muscle and attitude and Maori-type tattoos on his bulging biceps.

  Smiling, as if he deserved to be happy.

  There was a sharp, metallic taste in my mouth and I sw
allowed hard.

  As Frances had said, the privacy settings on his account meant I couldn’t get any further, so I went back to the search box, this time entering the words ‘J-Lo DJ’.

  A different photograph. Blurred around the edges in acid tones of purple and green. Him behind a deck with a huge pair of headphones on and his hand up by his ear. I zoomed in on his face, on the deep groove in his chin. Then I shifted the mouse to his hand. There was a ring on his index finger, silver and chunky with a flat surface.

  He looked like he was dancing behind that deck. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  I bet he didn’t have trouble sleeping.

  I bet he wasn’t worried about walking the streets in his own neighbourhood.

  I googled ‘create new Facebook account’ and followed the instructions. I used an old Gmail address and the name of a girl I’d gone to school with, Natasha Barker. I had one of those anonymous shadow figures as a profile picture. The whole thing took less than five minutes, and all the time my blood was pulsing with an elemental rage.

  By the time I’d logged into my new account and navigated back to J-Lo’s page anger was a white-hot knife in my brain.

  Write something … Facebook invited me.

  I’ve tried many times to work out what was going through my head as I sat there in front of my computer scanning the face of the man who’d attacked my daughter. Did I have a concrete plan at that point to drive him away so that she could walk around without fear, so that her hair would grow back and her eyes would shine like they used to? Or did that come later? Did I actually, at the beginning, want only to frighten him, as he’d frightened her? To wipe from his face that arrogant belief that he could do whatever he wanted, to whomever he wanted?

  Whatever the reasoning, I set my cursor in the empty box. Clicked the caps-lock key on my keyboard. Then I wrote a post to J-Lo the DJ.

  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

  12

  ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for coming. I don’t dare tell my friends I’m doing this. They’d be horrified.’