Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
Reese
Nausea rises inside me and I clamp my hand over my mouth.
‘Don’t you dare,’ hisses Victoria.
I swallow twice, bite down on my lip. I will not throw up. I will not be weak.
Turning slowly around the room, I clench my fists, feeling my nails digging into my palms, pressing harder, needing it to hurt.
The walls are covered with pictures of me and Victoria, some clear, some grainy, all of them in colour.
They’ve been taken from only a few feet away and also from what seems like miles away.
My eyes roam the walls, spotting myself dressed in different clothing, in different weather, doing different things.
Stepping towards one of the walls, I study the photos of me outside my favourite coffee shop, somewhere I go almost every day. In one, I have a coffee in one hand and my phone in the other and I’m wearing a red T-shirt and jeans. A weekend outfit.
In another, outside the same coffee shop, I am dressed in my usual work outfit of slimline pants and a floral blouse.
There are photos of me in the supermarket and outside my doctor’s office and going into work.
Photos of me in my car and getting the mail outside my house and sitting in the park on a bench by the playground, watching my children scramble over a climbing frame on a sunny afternoon.
There are photos of me and Nick out to dinner and going for a walk.
And there are photos of my house.
I walk closer to the wall, peer at a photo of a kitchen and then hear myself gasp. It’s my kitchen. It’s inside my kitchen. It’s been taken in the middle of the day.
I drag my phone out of my pocket. This person has been in my house. I need to warn Nick. I need to call the police.
‘I need to call Nick,’ I whisper.
‘Wait,’ Victoria instructs me and I listen to her. Why do I listen to her?
I step closer and study the picture, my breathing shallow.
At the side, on the floor, I can see a blue bucket that I recognise because I see it every Tuesday when Mary and her husband come.
I let them in and leave the house so that they can clean.
They must have let whoever this is in. Why?
What did this person say to make them think they are not a threat?
And then I remember something. ‘The cleaners sent me a message last time they were at my house. They said that the gas man came and he needed to check the meter.’
‘But gas meters are outside the house,’ says Victoria and I feel myself flush at my stupidity. Why hadn’t I remembered that?
‘How do you know that whoever this was is the person they let in? Are you sure they said it was a man?’ asks Victoria, coming over to peer at the picture.
‘That’s their bucket,’ I say, tapping it. ‘They definitely said it was a man.’
‘But a woman picked up the kids,’ says Victoria.
‘So it’s more than one person?’ I shiver in the cold air. This is a nightmare, a hellish nightmare.
There are so many pictures of us that they cover the room from the floor to the ceiling. It must have taken time to do this. It must have taken someone crazy, someone who hates both of us.
Whoever has taken the photos has been walking beside me for months. They have been watching me and my family for a long time. The nausea rises again. I am invaded, violated.
I turn to another wall that I can see is covered in pictures of Victoria, in all aspects of her life as well.
‘Look at this,’ says Victoria and I turn again to where Victoria is pointing.
It’s pictures of the children, of Kayla and Max and Dylan and Cash.
They too have been photographed everywhere, including in their school uniforms, in their playgrounds at school.
How did the person pretending to be Camilla get close enough?
A man alone would raise eyebrows on the school playground but maybe the person was outside school grounds, just waiting for our children to come into view.
Maybe the photographer is a woman? But there was a man in my house?
Or was there? Is the message from Mary just a coincidence?
I feel like I am crazy, like I am going crazy.
Suddenly I am too hot. Sweat gathers under my arms and drips down my sides and my mind is blank except for one phrase that keeps repeating. We are not safe. We are not safe. We are not safe.
‘I don’t know how she’s done this, how this person has done this,’ says Victoria. ‘Have you seen anyone? Have you noticed someone following you? I don’t know how this happened.’
Shaking my head to rid myself of the repeated phrase, I search my mind, trying to remember if I have ever seen anyone with a camera on school property.
But cameras are everywhere. Our phones are cameras and the sight of someone taking a selfie or a picture is so ubiquitous that I barely register it.
Everyone, everywhere is always taking photos.
This could be a parent at school, a person who catches the bus outside my regular coffee shop, a neighbour, even an acquaintance I greet in the street.
But if it was Camilla, if, somehow, she isn’t dead, surely, I would have recognised her?
She could have been in disguise, wearing a wig, but I still feel like I would have recognised her.
‘We need to call the police,’ I say. ‘We need to bring them here and show them this. This is stalking. It’s illegal.’
Victoria is silent, speechless, her hand touching a photograph of Dylan and Cash playing in the front garden, lightsabers in their hands. I can feel her horror rippling through my own body.
‘We need to call the police,’ I say again. And I look down at the screen of my phone.
‘I don’t think you’re going to do that,’ we hear and both Victoria and I turn.
The shock of who is standing in the doorway makes me dizzy.