I Am Watching You

“I read somewhere that by your forties you are supposed to care more about what you think of others than what they think of you—so why is it I am still waiting for this to kick in?”

Ella’s narration portrays her as hyperaware of her own flaws and contradictions, which makes her a sympathetic character. Here, she pokes fun at her own propensity of caring too much about what the world thinks of her. Ella’s statement also punctures the assumption that adults grow a thick skin by a certain age.

“And so, I did the sensible thing. I put the phone back down, I turned out the light, and I went to sleep.”

This quote by Ella illustrates the text’s key theme of The Unintended Consequences of Everyday Decisions. Ella makes the simple decision of not calling up Anna and Sarah’s parents, since she feels she may be calling them more out of anger and concern. Little does she know that by not making the call, she is subjecting herself to a nightmare of guilt. The text also invites the reader to consider what would have happened had Ella made the call. It is possible that the girls’ parents may have dismissed Ella’s call or considered her too nosy. It is also possible that Anna may not have been saved anyway.

“To witness the depth of it all, written there, dark and dreadful at the very back of Barbara’s eyes. All day. Every day. No matter how she tries to dress it all up for Jenny with hope and smiles.”

Author Teresa Driscoll captures the despair of loss with these pathos-laden lines. Henry can see that Barbara’s grief at losing Anna consumes her; it is omnipresent and crushing.

“In any case, why was she the one who was expected to look after Anna? Why not the other way round, eh? Because Sarah was from the estate and supposed to be more streetwise? Because Anna could be a bit of a princess?”

Sarah’s observation shrewdly sums up the underlying class dynamic that informs her friendship with Anna. While the girls are very close, Sarah yearns for Anna’s perfect, abundant life. In exchange, the supposedly street-smart Sarah feels pressured to look after Anna.

“In the fading light, it is mesmerizing. A thin line of all manner of lights weaving their way along the track: lanterns and candles and torches too, all glowing a trail in the shadows.”

Driscoll often uses visual and other sensorial imagery to represent relief and hope in a bleak, grim world. Here, the sight of neighbors holding a candlelight vigil for Anna provides the reader—and Henry—tiny bursts of light and hope in the face of a grim reality.

“You need to watch, you see, because it is extremely important—to work out the difference between how people behave when they know they are being watched […] and when they don’t.”

Watching is an important motif in the text, especially highlighted in the interludes told in Tim’s voice. For Tim, watching others is a way of exerting his power and control over them. Although in Tim’s case, voyeurism takes on a pathological dimension, the text invites the reader to consider how contemporary surveillance culture also encourages people to watch, scrutinize, and judge each other.

“How many times has she tried […] to talk to her mother. To take the pin out of the grenade. But it’s always like this. She is dismissed. Shut down. The pin is popped straight back in.”

Sarah uses the metaphor of a grenade to describe the explosion which is bound to follow her disclosure of her father’s sexual abuse to her mother. However, her mother does not ever allow Sarah to pull the pin and let matters take their own course, preferring her daughter to keep quiet. Margaret’s insistence on silence becomes even clearer when Sarah learns she not only knew of her husband’s pedophilia, but she also refused to accept her older daughter Lily’s account of being abused by him.

“New kitchens and new power showers for the holiday cottages? Bring it on. Paying some web designer to upgrade their search engine optimization, whatever that means? That apparently makes sense financially. But fencing? Feed? Tractor repairs?”

One of the important subplots of the novel is Henry’s desire to see his farm back in its former glory. The subplot mirrors Henry’s wish to have Anna back as well, and for life to return to its easy, carefree rhythm. However, practicality—and Barbara—demand Henry invest more in developing his estate as a tourist site than a working farm. The thought makes Henry bitter, as evident in these lines.

“To Henry, this is what makes real sense still. A dog who happily races around the perimeter of every field he visits, returning to his master with a triumphant wag of the tail and meeting of the eyes to confirm that all boundaries have been checked.”

For Henry, the natural rhythm of farm life makes more sense than calculations of commerce. Here, his dog Sammie checking the perimeters of the field symbolizes the communions between humans, domesticated animals, and nature. It also represents Henry’s feeling of oneness with his children, so tragically lost now. What makes Henry’s loss worse is that Anna’s last-known emotion about him was disgust. Through mourning for the idyll of the farm, Henry mourns the high regard in which Anna once held him.

“Because once you become a parent, you learn that love can involve more fear than you had ever imagined, and you never quite look on the world in the same way again.”

As Ella’s thoughts here show, the burden of parental love is a recurrent motif in the text, with Ella, the Ballards, and Matthew all grappling with the conundrum of bringing up a child in a hostile world. While Henry and Barbara experience every parent’s worst nightmare, Ella worries about Luke. Matthew, who as a former police officer has witnessed horrible crimes, stresses about introducing his child to a cruel, arbitrary reality.

“Always hard to go home, isn’t it. She can’t remember who said it, Tim or Paul, but she remembers exactly how she felt as she nodded—sad, but sort of guilty, too.”

Anna’s home acts as a sanctuary for Sarah, to the extent that she has mixed feelings about returning to her own house. However, her journey as a character will involve accepting all aspects of her past and present, and forging a home and community of her own. There is a sinister foreshadowing as well in these lines, since it will later be revealed that Tim often did not go home from the Ballards. He hid at a shepherd’s cottage on the farm to keep an eye on Anna.

“It is so odd that you can stand in a space—a place in which you normally feel so happy and safe—and then suddenly you can stand in precisely the same spot and feel like this completely different person.”

Ella’s panicked lines show that Tim’s psychological manipulation toward her is effective. Tim believes in making his targets aware he is watching them so that they grow uncomfortable. Suspecting that she is being watched, Ella’s sense of safety in her shop—her fortress—is compromised.

“He doesn’t want to link his beautiful little girl with work, with the new haunting in his head.”

Highlighting the textual motif of the burden of parental love, Matthew worries about placing his infant in the same universe where young women like Anna vanish, as if in thin air. This speaks to The Pervasive Threat of Violence Against Women and Matthew’s awareness of crime rates and of societal biases.

“He thinks of Barbara and her plum slices. Of Anna turning cartwheels on the lawn. Her little gang round, running in and out of the sprinkler. What he needs is a Tardis to go back. Yes. To a completely different version of it all.”

Henry’s poignant statement reflects his grief. Henry wishes a Tardis—a time travel machine that appeared in the British TV series Dr Who—could take him back to the era before Anna disappeared. At the same time, he knows that reality is unalterable, and he will have to ultimately accept it. Henry’s statement is also an example of the text’s use of pop culture references.

“The problem with lying, he is learning, is that you have to remember the details of the lie. To make them match each time. Each new version is making it more difficult.”

Lies and secrets are a recurrent element in the book, with characters fibbing to keep up appearances or for more sinister purposes. Henry’s perceptive statement highlights the problem with lying; Sarah makes a similar observation elsewhere in the book. Driscoll often uses such acute statements to lend psychological realism to her writing.

“The truth is I keep getting this feeling at the shop that I am being watched. You know—that odd physical sensation, as if someone has ever so gently tapped you on the shoulder to find there is no one there.”

Ella’s feeling of being watched intensifies as Tim ups the ante, moving her secateurs, rattling the doorknob, and frequently parking his car, headlights at full beam, in the lot across from her shop. Ella’s growing fear builds up the claustrophobic suspense of the plot.

“Henry…sits back down on the bed, a new irony dawning. His lifelong battle with flies. Ever since he was a little boy, he has hated to watch them bothering the cattle. Felt just a little bit nauseous to see them crawling toward a cow’s or a calf’s eyes as the poor animal flicks its tails and ears.”

In an example of irony, Henry cannot but help note the similarity between him and his farm animals, tormented by flies. While the animals are in the field and barn, Henry is in a prison cell. The comparison to the animals shows that Henry has been reduced to a beast-like state, attacked by larger, hostile forces. At the same time, Henry is also like the fly which he kills with ease, since the fly symbolizes victimhood and inconsequence.

“The gold-standard for hostage situations used to be to avoid intervention at all costs. Nearly always goes pear-shaped. Biggest risk for fatalities.”

Matthew’s explanation of the dangers of intervention in a hostage situation is also an example of Driscoll’s use of idiomatic, everyday language. The expression “to go pear-shaped” refers to a plan that has failed.

“And so Matthew turned his back on his job. Turned his back on supermarkets who wanted him to chase shoplifters, no matter their age. No matter their motive.”

Matthew’s decision to quit the police force illustrates the novel’s important discussion on police excess and gaps in policing. Ironically, Matthew, who is no longer a part of the force, represents the best version of a police officer in the novel, since he wants to ponder over every choice he makes rather than treat all accused people in the same manner.

“So often this past year I have wondered what exactly makes us the way we are. I don’t just mean the nature/nurture thing, I mean the sum of our personality and the decisions we make. All the thoughts that fire around our brain, even when we don’t want them to. How we handle the issues of conscience and responsibility. Why I blame myself when others wouldn’t.”

Ella’s thoughtful statements highlight the complex human response to big questions of action, inaction, and accountability. She tries to make sense of what disposes her to feel the intense guilt she does, but knows the answer is difficult to ascertain. It could be her temperament, her gender, socialization, or perhaps a mixture of all these factors. The important lesson for Ella is to keep moving forward despite The Psychological Impact of Guilt and Inaction that affects her regarding Anna’s disappearance.

“‘Why Dawn?’

‘Because you don’t like yourself very much, Sarah. And no girl of seventeen should hate themselves. Especially when they have experienced what you have. You need a fresh start, lovely. In my opinion, and it is just my opinion, you need the sun to come up.’”

Caroline, the woman who is in charge of Lily’s community, significantly gives Sarah the name “Dawn” to symbolize a new beginning for her. Caroline notes that Sarah does not like herself—which is at the heart of Sarah’s yearning to fit in—and advises Sarah that the way forward is to accept herself as she is.

“His voice, muddled and mad. And dreadful. That she needs to let him look after her. Watch over her. That it was much better when they were children. Easier to keep her safe when they were children…”

Anna’s point-of-view chapter resolves the mystery of her disappearance but also intensifies the bleakness of the plot. Driscoll uses straightforward—but not overtly graphic—vocabulary to show what happened to Anna. Here, Anna notes that Tim says keeping her safe was easy when she was a child. This shows Tim’s desire to infantilize and control Anna. He cannot accept an Anna who is growing toward independence and womanhood; thus, he kills her to erase her movement and keep her under his watch. Tim’s attitude shows how patriarchal control drives violence against women.

“Guilt, we all learn, has its own rules.”

When Barbara tells Ella she is responsible for her daughter Anna’s death—because it is Barbara who encouraged Anna to be friends with Tim—Ella wants to tell her it is not her fault. However, Ella stops herself from uttering the platitude because she knows it is useless. Barbara will continue to blame herself, at least for a while, because guilt is irrational and consuming. Guilt is also a common emotion after loss, since survivors blame themselves for continuing to live while their loved one is dead.