Chapter One
I hate him on sight, this hulking stranger who is being foisted on me. I slam my water glass onto the kitchen counter and glare at my father. “You have to be kidding me. I’m not having this troglodyte following me around twenty-four/seven because of your screwups.”
The bodyguard is standing by the stainless steel cooktop, wearing a dark suit. Does it piss him off, hearing me call him names? He glances at his watch, and if anything he looks bored. Striking and broad-shouldered, but bored.
My father’s ears turn beet red. “Adrienne, you stupid girl. He’s for your protection.” He’s small in comparison to the bodyguard, five-feet-five and with wispy blond hair atop his domed head. I feel a perverse blaze of triumph that I’ve managed to enrage him so quickly. I’ll match him scream for scream. We’ll bring this house down about our ears before I let him have his way.
“If you insist on going to that university,” he continues, “then someone’s got to watch you—or you’ve got to learn some sense. But we haven’t got much hope of that.”
He’s referring to the encounter I had with the Daily Gazette journalists last week. They ambushed me on the street and shoved microphones in my face.
&nbs
p; “Is your father going to step down as editor of the Herald?”
“Do you have anything to say to Connie Masters’s family?”
“Why has your mother left the family home?”
I looked at them, snapping my bubble gum. “I don’t know. Why don’t you all piss off instead?”
I guess I half-knew one of them was filming me, but they’d been dogging me for a week and I just didn’t know what I thought. I still don’t. The paper is my father’s, but the paper made a young woman kill herself? What do I do with that?
When my father saw the edited video all over social media, he flipped. Me, my hair as pink as my bubble gum, excessive amounts of eyeliner, seeming bored with Connie Masters’s suicide.
“It’s your fault they were even interviewing me,” I cry. “I wasn’t in any danger, and I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“You weren’t in any danger then, but you bloody well are now,” my father shouts, gesturing to a stack of printouts and opened letters on the marble counter. Hate mail.
“Go hang yourself you privileged oxygen thief.”
“I hope you DIAF you rich slut.”
“Someone put this little bitch out of her misery.”
It was churning through my Twitter feed in minutes and the comments found me on Facebook and Tumblr soon after. Then someone leaked our home address on a forum and the letters started turning up here.
“You’ve made your bed, now you lie in it, Adrienne.”
“I’ve done this?” I shriek. “You printed stories about her, not me.” I look around for something to throw but the glass I was drinking out of just moments ago has mysteriously moved along the kitchen counter, closer to the bodyguard. He’s young, about thirty, though he’s weathered like he’s been out at sea or in the desert. His eyes rake me like they’re seeing all my weaknesses. I don’t need yet another person hating me or judging me and I’ll go mad if someone like him follows me about all day.
I want to scream the place down, but maybe if I keep my head I’ll be able to convince my father I’m fine on my own. “You’re overreacting. My interview will be buried in a couple of days when you uncover the next sex scandal or whatever.”
My father ignores me and turns to the bodyguard. “Here. You’ll be needing these, I presume.” He stuffs the hate mail into an expanding file and holds it out to the bodyguard, who ignores it. “You’ve got Adrienne’s university schedule.”
“Hey! I’m talking here.” Being ignored ratchets up my fury and I can feel I’m close to losing it. If I do it’ll all be over and he’ll say something like, You’re too emotional, Adrienne. Do as you’re told. Just one more time I try and explain what I want. Doesn’t it matter, what I want? “He’s not coming to class with me. That’s my place.” The only place I feel even remotely happy these days is at the Slade when I’m painting.
“I’ll show you up to your room. It’s on the same floor as my daughter’s.”
Oh, god, he’ll be living here, too. I’ll never escape him. I fist my hands in my hair and scream, “You’re not listening to me. You never listen to me!”
My father continues talking. “I’ve got your security notes to go through tonight, but I think you’ll find that the systems in place in this house are...”
I go on screaming to drown out the sound of his stupid voice. When I look up again the kitchen is empty and the file is gone. I catch my fuzzy reflection in the stainless steel refrigerator door and my cheeks are a mess of eyeliner and tears. I want to run out into the night and just keep going till I’m far away from here, but I can’t because there are a dozen journalists camped out front, waiting to ambush anyone the second they step outside.
I’m trapped.
* * *
The room I’ve been given has a view down to the front door and I can easily get to a window overlooking the back garden, as requested. There’s a desk, and I set down the file of hate mail and take out my laptop. I glance around as it’s booting up. Typical moneyed London town house furnishings: beveled mirrors, handwoven textiles, off-white walls. The bed has too many pillows and the tub in the en-suite has gold clawed feet. The Brecon Beacons feel very far away. Kandahar feels light-years away.
I shove open the casement window and lean out, taking great gulps of the crisp evening air, my hands tight with anger on the windowsill. It’s not being called a troglodyte—I’ve been called far worse—or the young lady’s tantrum, though that was a sight to behold. It’s her goddamn father.
Why didn’t Mr. Westley tell his daughter he’d hired a personal security officer for her? I doubt he even noticed the look on her face when she came in from class and I was just there, a stranger in her house. She’d been afraid. Fear had shone out of her eyes for just a second, and then she’d smothered it. I saw the same expression in her eyes on that video the Gazette had published. Not the version that’s making the rounds on social media. The full version that you have to dig through YouTube to find. I log into my laptop, open the browser and play it again.
It shows rough, handheld footage of the street outside. Miss Westley is just visible in the distance, a shock of long, pink curls, a neat little blouse and a gray pinafore dress. Almost schoolgirlish, though she’s twenty. She’s got black socks pulled up over her knees and a furry backpack over one shoulder. Her gaze is directed upward at the falling autumn leaves. She hasn’t spotted the journalists yet. Then they’re calling out, running toward her, and she freezes like a rabbit staring down the barrel of the gun. My mouth twists when I hear the questions that I know by heart, and I watch her rearrange her face into an affectation of youthful disinterest. When she tells them to piss off I feel an unprofessional desire to do the same.
I play the version that’s been retweeted and shared thousands of times.
“Do you have anything to say to Connie Masters’s family?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you all piss off?”
And that’s it. But it’s her expression that damns her. Her face is stiff, like they’ve offended her by asking her to think about someone else. Women aren’t supposed to look cold in the face of tragedy. They’re supposed to emote, cry—but not too much. Too much is unstable, suspicious. I don’t know which arbiter of good behavior came up with these absurd rules.
I turn my attention to the folder of hate mail. Some of it is pretty innocuous: I hope you die your a shitty person you don’t have feeligs do you why dont you come out of your ivorey tower and down with the rets of us who know what real life is than you might grow sum feelings.
The worst letters don’t even refer to the Connie Masters scandal. I encounter vile, vicious fantasy after vile, vicious fantasy. I’m going to rape you with a Stanley knife till you bleed out through your—
I make myself read every letter, mentally cataloguing the threats as I go. Kidnap, murder and sexual assault are the worst of them, then stabbing and physical assault. Acid attack isn’t mentioned but I add that to the list as a possibility as it’s easier and cheaper for an ordinary person to get their hands on acid than a gun or a knife. Could she have a stalker? Possibly. There’s a high probability of misdemeanors in the coming days: graffiti on the house, the smashing of windows and keying of cars. Being catcalled or mocked in the streets. Fireworks or feces through the letterbox.
I spread the letters out on the table when I’m done looking at them. Most people who send hate mail or internet hate messages have no intention of taking things any further. The act of posting a letter or pressing send is enough to make them feel heard and validated.
But then there’s the rare individual who finds that sending nasty letters isn’t enough. They get a rush imagining their victim reading the letter and feeling afraid, but that quickly dissipates and they crave more. It’s these individuals who pose the greatest risk, but until they act they present like the more benign types. I look at a surprisingly we
ll-drawn picture of Miss Westley being decapitated, and grimace. Which sort are you? I wonder about the artist.
The final part of my assessment is on Miss Westley herself. The young woman has made it plain that she doesn’t want a personal security officer. All her hatred and fear is directed squarely at her father and I suspect she’s led a spoiled, sheltered life until now. I’ve had spoiled, sheltered principals before but never one who actively resents my presence.
“What did I do in a past life to deserve Miss Westley?” I mutter, reaching for her university schedule.
She has classes at the Slade School of Fine Art over in King’s Cross from nine the next morning. That should be straightforward. All the same, I set my alarm for six a.m. so I’ll be ready and waiting for her in case she tries to sneak out early. I’ve never had a reluctant principal before and think with frustration about the morning run I’ll have to forgo.
I get into bed and try to read a book about the siege of Leningrad, but my head is still swimming with hate mail and irritation. Given that Miss Westley doesn’t want a bodyguard and seems to be spoiled to the point of ruin I don’t suppose that this will be a position I will hold for very long. I give it three days before Mr. Westley gets sick of her tantrums and fires me.