Ross Armstrong - The Watcher - A dark addictive thriller with the ultimate psychological twist

I go out on the balcony and my gaze runs past the trees to a flock of starlings, dancing around above the reservoir, swooping up into the bluing evening sky. I try to get a better look when they rise higher, hoping the moonlight will give me a better view of the plumage. Then I focus on the moon instead. We used to do that sometimes, didn’t we? It’s so clear tonight. If you look hard enough it actually looks like a place, not just a star or whatever. It’s mad to think people have had their feet all over that big rock in the sky, isn’t it? I know it sounds stupid, but it is weird, isn’t it? Then, absent-mindedly, I let the binoculars run to the block of flats on the right side, Waterway it’s called. All the blocks have got these serene ‘natural world’ names, to convince everyone they don’t live in a pigeonhole in North London and work in new media. We even have a concierge. Don’t ask me what they do. But he wears a uniform. I don’t think he can handle dinner reservations, like in a New York hotel in the movies. I think he mostly signs for post and solves ‘parking disputes’. Of which there are many. It’s that sort of building.

There’s a light on in the penthouse. And I’ve always wondered how big it is in there and I stand and stare. I stare at his Habitat curtains, which I saw in the shop the other week actually. They don’t look super posh or anything. Then I stare at the swing chair he’s got on his balcony, that does look expensive. And then I see him. Look at him. There he is. The million pound penthouse guy. Doesn’t look that impressive. In fact he looks downright odd at the moment. What’s he doing in there? I look closer. I analyse.

His back rises. Up and down he goes. A slight sheen on his back. He’s in his pants. This fair-haired (sweaty) man of average height, who has actual abdominal muscles, which I catch briefly in a reflection, is doing squats with dumb bells in his hands. With his back to me. No idea I’m here. Seeing it all. And he’s in his pants.

He looks ridiculous, a real cliché. He mechanically turns ninety degrees to his right, so I can see his moist, blush aspect in profile. He’s gurning, how bizarre, how odd. It’s like a music video now as Aiden’s ’90s Trip Hop spills out from our bedroom. He dips and straightens mechanically, as if to the music. It’s hilarious – does he have no shame? What curious manoeuvres. What an odd gait. How little shame he has in his natural habitat. Can’t he see that people can see him? If they look close enough.

And then he stands, turns and looks right at me. Without thinking, I duck, and I’m giggling like a schoolgirl. I disappear from his view. Gone in an instant. I peek up again and he can’t see me. I think he’s resolved his mind was playing tricks. He thought he saw something, me and my apparatus, but then resolved it was his imagination or… no, he’s venturing out, arse partially exposed. He’s on his balcony. He’s looking for me, but I’m behind a wooden garden chair, hiding like a child. He can’t see me. I’m safe. I’m in the hide.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Aiden shouts from inside.

Chaff – Fringilla coelebs – Wetlands – Red-rust breast, female – 8 flock – Chirruping but sad-seeming – 16 degrees, light rain – 15 cm.

Oh, shit. I’m in trouble. Aiden called me into the bedroom after the peeping incident and took on a grave tone.

‘We’ve bought our first flat here, Lily, we are pretending manfully… and womanfully… to be adults and you are out there… er, perving on Jeremy…’

‘Can we call him Gregory?’

‘On… OK, Gregory… on Gregory the account manager as he bellows at you in his skintight underwear while the woman below dashes out to see you crawling back inside on your hands and knees…’

I can see him smiling though, all the while. Just that tiny smile in the corner of his mouth that lets me know he still loves me. That it’s all OK really. That little smirk I fell in love with. Followed by the smallest snort and snicker. He’s still there. That man I fell in love with.

I know it seems awful, but it was funny. It’s amazing what people do when you’re not looking. Not the pant squats as such, I understand that, but it was the look. That expression on his face that he must only use when he’s on his own.

It’s like the birds. But they know they’re being watched, they’re ready for it somehow, they’re ‘natural show-offs’. We used to say that. But humans are incredible. They’re these amazing, living breathing things, that get up to things and have these looks on their faces. I’m not going to prescribe spying on people as a remedy for your aches and pains, but I do have to say there is something about it. Just something. Something thrilling.

I think we got in just in time here you know. The whole thing’s being regenerated, it’s a twenty-five year project. And yes, that is another word for gentrification and no I don’t think that’s awful, it’s nice round here, it’s beautiful. And we scraped together the money so we deserve to live here.

I do feel sorry for the people in Canada House, though. Some of them have lived there for thirty years and they’re being turfed out. Half the place is boarded up already. The others are just waiting until they get the shove too. ‘Rehoused,’ they say, but who knows. You hear stories about people being forced to pay rent in new builds they can’t afford. You hear stories of people becoming homeless. Or, worse still, getting moved to Birmingham. That’s a joke, I know you were born in Birmingham. I went to one of the exhibition centres for a conference and it was fine. I mean, nice, it was nice. Yes, I know there’s more champagne drunk per square mile than anywhere else in Britain, so they must be celebrating something. Yes, I know. And they have more canals than Venice. Although I’ve always thought it was the quality of the surroundings people enjoyed in Venice, not just the raw statistical length of the canals, but there we are. But it’s really nice here, you’d like it. It’s so sad to think that people who grew up here can’t stay.

There was a quote in the paper that read:

‘… the people in the newbuilds across the road tend to avoid the people in the old council estate…’

And, if that’s true, it’s awful. But I’m sure it can’t be. I mean, as soon as I got off the Tube today, I crossed to the newbuild side of the road, but that’s because they spray water cannons on the building site, to disperse the dust or something. I didn’t want to get soaked by the mud and brick dust from the houses. It gets in your face and hair. I don’t want to be covered in what’s left of those poor people’s homes. I mean those poor people. Not ‘poor’ people. Poor as in their plight. Not economically. I do. I do feel bad.

But I only mention this because just as I crossed the road… This is awful. Just as I crossed the road I looked up and that’s when I saw her. I looked her straight in the eye. Jean. She’d been used as an example in the Guardian . She’s the one who’d given the quote. There was a photo and a big piece about her feeling like she was

waiting in line for the guillotine, seeing homes demolished all around me. Seeing the building works get closer and closer. As I wait my turn to be slung out. It’s like a death sentence.

It’s awful. It really is. But what did she want me to do as I left the Tube, stay on her side of the road with the mud and brick from those houses spraying me just so I could give her a hug or something? Because, that’s pretty much what I plan to do now actually.