Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

‘Oh, I imagine he already knows all about our situation . They’re messing with me, Neil. Trying to make out I’m mad and an unfit mother so they can get Beckie back. He did try to attack me. Surely the other people in the waiting room could confirm that?’

‘Apparently he stood up, tripped, and you – you went for him, basically. He didn’t attack you.’ His eyes were back on the road, on the brake lights of the white van in front.

‘Okay, maybe he didn’t actually touch me, but he wanted me to think he was about to. So I’d react. So I’d look like a nutter.’

‘He’s not a Johnson.’ His voice was wearily patient. ‘In fact, we know him – Darren, dunno his surname, but he’s the lad who works with Bill Allen.’

Bill Allen was the builder who’d done their kitchen extension last year.

‘His apprentice?’ Neil prompted. ‘Shy young lad? But nice – he made Beckie that wooden hamster from an offcut. The one she has on her windowsill.’

‘Oh God.’

‘He said he was wondering whether he should say hello or not. He got up to go to the toilet and tripped on the leg of the play table and sort of lurched forward – in your direction – and that’s when you…’

‘Kicked him in the balls. Oh God.’

‘I think he saw the funny side. Said he wouldn’t be suing you – didn’t fancy producing the evidence in court.’

‘But – okay, so maybe it was this Darren boy, but how do we know he’s not in league with the Johnsons? Maybe that’s how they found us – maybe he’s a cousin or something –’

‘Flora, they finished the extension a year ago. If that’s how they found us, how come they’ve only now shown up? Of course Darren isn’t involved.’

‘You don’t even believe it was them yesterday, do you? The Johnsons are all sweetness and light and it’ll be lovely when they’re part of Beckie’s life – Let’s throw them a party, in fact, let’s have them all round for a barbeque and get this open adoption rolling!’

Neil didn’t say anything. He indicated left, pulled over onto a double yellow line and stopped the car.

‘Okay. So what do you want to do?’

‘Right. For a start, can we expedite the CCTV installation? Pay them extra to hurry things along? We need to get firm evidence of the Johnsons harassing and intimidating us, and as soon as possible. Enough evidence to get them put away, ideally.’

He nodded. ‘Evidence would be good.’

‘And we need to be writing everything down, like the police said.’

‘Yep, and also… Flora, if we’re ever going to end up appearing as witnesses against the Johnsons in court… We need to be… um… well, credible. We need to hold it together.’

‘No more kicking random people in the balls.’

‘That would help.’ He was drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel. ‘And we’ll also need other, independent witnesses against them. I’ve been Googling their criminal trials and found out their address. Thirty-four Meadowlands Crescent. I was thinking we might go round there and talk to them, but –’

‘Whoa! What would be the point in that ?’

‘ But , I was saying… But , okay, if we’re going down this road, what I’m thinking is we could go round there and speak to the neighbours. See what dirt we can dig up, if any.’

She ignored that if any . ‘Yes! I thought of doing that too! And I was going to ask Saskia if they’ve got a history of using this garage for alibis… And we need to know which of the neighbours to approach – which ones we can trust.’

‘Saskia would know that too,’ Neil nodded. ‘We could go and see her again – talk to her.’

One thing about Neil – he was a scientist through and through. It was all about the evidence. And no matter what theories he might hold, he was always open to changing his mind if the evidence led elsewhere. He knew Saskia was rabidly anti-Johnson, obviously, but he was prepared to listen to her. He was prepared to be open-minded.

‘I’ve been trying to get through to her.’ Flora found her phone in her bag and tried again. ‘Still not picking up.’ She frowned out of the window, at the sun dappling a bank of bright yellow and red tulips in the front garden opposite. ‘But Neil. I don’t think there’s anything we can do to beat them. They’re criminals. They’re psychopaths. I think we’re going to have to disappear again.’

‘No,’ he said at once. ‘We can’t keep running away from this. We can’t spend our lives wondering when they’re going to find us again. Beckie can’t spend her life that way. Especially if… Let’s face it, Flora, we don’t know that they’re a danger to us. Maybe we’d be running from something that doesn’t even exist.’

‘Oh, so you’re just humouring me here? You’re thinking that all this evidence gathering is going to come up with a big fat zero and then I’m going to have to concede that the Johnsons are no threat? I’m going to have to let them see Beckie? That’s not happening, Alec. Not while I have breath in my body.’

‘Hey, I’m not the enemy here, Ruth. If it looks like the Johnsons are a threat, don’t worry, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. And I mean whatever it takes to stop them getting to Beckie.’

She looked at him, this man who was her husband, as if seeing him properly for the first time. The typical beta male. The typical nerd. A ten-stone botanist who couldn’t swat a fly without tripping over his own feet and knocking his front crown off on the edge of the coffee table.

But, ‘Good,’ was all she said.

And as he took her hand, sitting there in their bubble as the lunchtime hubbub of everyone else’s nice normal lives swept past them, she made the same promise to Beckie.

Whatever it takes .

‘Oh, hi, Ruth!’ Neil’s sister Pippa’s voice across nine thousand miles sounded unbearably cheerful. In the background there were other happy voices – she was probably in a bar somewhere. ‘I was just thinking about you! How’re you all doing?’

Where to start?

‘Not great.’ Flora was standing in the garden in the rain, the landline handset pressed to her ear, watching a man in an orange jacket up a ladder, positioning one of the tiny hidden CCTV cameras under the eaves. The glass doors had been replaced that morning and the glaziers had swept up the broken fragments of glass. She could see a few tiny mosaic-sized pieces, though, along the edges of the paving. She pushed at them with the toe of her shoe.

‘The Johnsons have found us.’

‘Oh – fuck!’

‘Yep. They’ve been harassing us, and I’m terrified they’re going to do something… Try to take Beckie.’ She told Pippa everything that had happened.

‘Fuck, Ruth! Fuck! Surely the police can do something ?’

‘The problem is, the Johnsons are wise to all the dodges. They’ve set up alibis for the times the incidents happened – quite honestly, the police don’t seem to have a clue. We’re getting CCTV put up around the house, but… It’s just not safe to stay here now. I’m going to try to persuade Alec to leave, to disappear again, but he’s saying we should stand and fight. Which is ridiculous, obviously – I mean, they’re a family of hardened criminals, murderers…’

‘But there are much stricter laws now, aren’t there, about harassment? The police will have to do something once you have evidence. CCTV is a great idea. Once you get them on that…’

‘They’ll probably just get given another caution. And there are so many of them – even if one of them did get convicted and locked up, that would still leave half a dozen more…’

‘But, Ruth… Say, worst-case scenario, they did take Beckie… they’d have to give her back. There’s no way they’re coming out of this the winners. If they keep harassing you, they’re going to get into trouble, and the police will have to stop them somehow – tag them and stuff like that to stop them coming anywhere near you. They can put electronic detectors on people’s houses now so that if the tagged person comes anywhere near it an alarm goes off…’