Chapter 18
VICTORIA
Barney’s drunk again. Bloody Felix doesn’t help, plying him with his best whisky and announcing it’s wine o’clock at eleven in the morning.
Sometimes I wonder if Felix tops up Barney’s glass so religiously to stop him picking his brain about investment opportunities.
I’m probably reading too much into it. It’s the way Felix is and always has been.
A bit too eager to share his largesse. Is it because he’s genuinely generous or does he want to remind everyone just how filthy rich he is?
I’ve known Felix for over a decade, and the jury’s still out.
My phone pings on the buggy ride back to Villa Paradiso. A frisson of fear races down my spine and I grip the leatherette seat tightly. Barney must hear it too, because he turns to me with bloodshot eyes.
‘Aren’t you going to check that?’
I attempt a breezy look. ‘Later. I told you, I’m trying to have a digital detox.’ I’m doing no such thing, but he’s so pissed he’ll never remember.
‘What if it’s your mother? Something could’ve happened to one of the kids.’
‘She wouldn’t have sent a text if something had happened, she’d have phoned.
It’ll be someone from work who’s forgotten I’m away.
It’s about time they realised I’m not at their beck and call twenty-four seven.
The problem is, that place would implode if I wasn’t there holding everything together.
’ Falling into my familiar rant about my staff and how they take advantage of me is as comfortable as slipping into fleece-lined slippers after a day in heels.
It also has the added benefit of taking my mind – albeit briefly – off the malicious texts I’ve been getting.
The first was a month ago. One line from an unknown number.
I know what you did.
I replied. Of course I did. Even though I knew it was a mistake.
Who is this?
Radio silence. I’m not stupid. I have a first-class economics degree from Durham, one of the top universities in the country, for Chrissakes. I know how people’s minds work. This person clearly wanted to mess with my head.
The next text came just as I was bundling the kids into the car for the school run two days later.
Don’t think you’re going to get away with it.
I was determined not to reply, keen to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Everyone knows flames need oxygen to flare.
But I was never much good at self-restraint.
I was the child who unwrapped my Christmas presents in fifteen minutes flat, who demolished all my Easter eggs before breakfast. I caved.
Get away with what? Just tell me what I’m supposed to have done!
Only if you say please.
I gritted my teeth and typed a reply.
Please tell me what I’m supposed to have done.
While I waited for an answer, I wracked my brain, trying to remember all my past misdemeanours, perceived or otherwise.
But where to start? School? Uni? The half a dozen charities I’ve worked at since I graduated?
I’m nearly forty-five: I’ve made a few mistakes along the way, who hasn’t?
Boys I two-timed at school. School friends I dropped when I went to university.
People at work I made redundant. None of them my finest hour, but surely to God not serious enough to spark a hate campaign?
Because that’s what it feels like. I’ve been singled out and someone – who, goddammit?
– is playing with me, torturing me, like a cat plays with a mouse.
And I’ve always hated cats. Fickle, aloof creatures.
Narcissists dressed in a fur coat and whiskers.
Dogs are so much more straightforward. Loyal.
Affectionate. Wanting to please. Given the choice, I’ll always choose Team Dog.
I dug out my old school and uni photos, looking for faces that might spark a memory of a transgression on my part.
I even asked for the personnel files of everyone I’ve sacked since I took on the role of chief executive at The Anchorway Trust. One name leapt out at me.
Niall Bennett, an intense young man I dismissed after a complaint from my head of outreach.
Niall had given his phone number to a couple of homeless teenage girls.
When I summoned him to my office, he claimed it was in case they needed help outside Anchorway’s core opening hours.
‘It was misguided, Niall,’ I told him. ‘Misguided and a clear breach of our safeguarding responsibilities. Your actions crossed professional boundaries, which we simply cannot allow. I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.’
The vehemence of Niall’s reaction caught me by surprise. He’d leapt to his feet, railing that Anchorway cared more about rules and regulations than it did about the young people it claimed to serve.
You need a pretty thick skin to survive boarding school, yet even I was shaken by his belligerence; the evangelical glint in his eye.
I tried to find him online, but he wasn’t on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or X. He didn’t even have a profile on LinkedIn. People his age live their lives on social media. The fact that Niall Bennett had no digital footprint was a glaring red flag.
It had to be him.
I spent a couple of days debating whether or not to go to the police with my suspicions.
But, almost as if he knew I was on to him, the messages dried up and for a couple of blissful weeks I told myself they must have been from a random bot on a phishing exercise and they’d moved on after some other poor sop had taken the bait.
I should be so lucky. I was filling a glass of water from the dispenser in the fridge one rainy Thursday afternoon when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I assumed it was Barney announcing he was going to be late home from work again. I was wrong.
hypocrisy / noun – The practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than you actually live by.
I dropped the glass of water on the slate floor.
It shattered, shards flying everywhere and, as I hurried over to the cupboard under the sink to find the dustpan and brush, I stood on a piece.
But the stinging pain in my heel was nothing compared to the kernel of dread unfurling in the pit of my stomach.
Though I might not know for sure who was sending the texts, I now had a pretty good idea what they meant. And I had a horrible feeling my tormentor wasn’t about to stop.
Not until they’d destroyed me.