Watching You: A Novel

In the January before the murder, Joey Mullen visits her mother’s grave and shares updates on her life. Recently, she met and married Alfie Butters while working at a resort in Ibiza, and they moved back to Bristol. The young couple are staying with her brother Jack and his wife Rebecca in Melville Heights, an affluent neighborhood in Bristol that Joey has always liked, until she and Alfie can establish themselves.

After returning from the cemetery, Joey briefly interacts with Rebecca, who is pregnant. Despite Jack’s affection for her, Rebecca is not the woman Joey had envisioned for him. From her room, Joey observes an attractive man (Tom Fitzwilliam), accompanied by his wife and son, as they enter the yellow house.

Back in the present, on March 25, Joey arrives at the police station for an interview with Detective Pelham and is questioned about her relationship with Tom Fitzwilliam. She claims that he is her neighbor and is acquainted with Jack and Rebecca. The night before the murder, Joey was present at the Bristol Harbour Hotel, where she admits interacting with Tom for a short time.

The narrative flashes back in time, showing Joey encountering Tom again, which stimulates her curiosity and libido. She contemplates her whirlwind relationship with Alfie, who was once a crush. Their marriage left a void in her “fantasy life,” which Tom now fills.

Joey discovers that Tom, who is 51 years old, is the headmaster of their local state school. At the age of 27, Joey still feels immature, a situation exacerbated when she finds employment at a soft play center called Whackadoo. Despite her embarrassment about her job, Joey likes her manager, Dawn. Following her successful interview, Joey decides to have a drink at the hotel bar, where she unexpectedly encounters Tom. Overwhelmed by desire, Joey senses a “mutual fascination.”

Joey compares Alfie to Tom while in her room. While making her way home the following day, Joey unexpectedly encounters Nicola, Tom’s wife, at the local corner store. Nicola seems polished but brittle to her. Upon returning home, Joey looks across at the Fitzwilliams’ residence and becomes aware of someone moving in the top window.

Ever since his family relocated to Melville Heights for Tom’s job, Freddie Fitzwilliam has been observing and photographing the neighborhood, aided by his digital camera/binoculars. Among the residents, he takes a particular interest in teenagers Jenna Tripp and Bess Ridley. Freddie is also fascinated by Joey, whom he refers to as “Red Boots,” a term that suggests Joey is the owner of the red boot tassel Rose finds in the Prologue.

Jenna Tripp is a student at the school where Tom is head teacher. She lives with her mother, Frances, following her parents’ divorce. Recently, Frances’s mental well-being has been deteriorating, leading to heightened paranoia and a persistent delusion that she is being gang stalked by a large collective. She rarely leaves the house and consistently imagines that small changes in her environment are a result of the gang’s harassment.

Joey examines Tom’s photograph in the newspaper as Alfie arrives home. Shortly after, Alfie proposes the idea of starting a family. Joey is not ready to have a child but agrees to contemplate it.

Freddie watches the Tripps from the window and takes pictures. He mentally insists that he isn’t a voyeur. He just wants to understand people, particularly teenage girls. Suddenly, Frances points directly at him, mouthing the word “you” and startling Freddie.

Frances is convinced that someone in the Fitzwilliams’ house is secretly watching and taking photos of her. Despite Jenna’s attempts to calm her down, Frances firmly believes that Tom is responsible for the stalking and claims to have witnessed an incident involving him on a family vacation long ago in the Lake District. Jenna (mistakenly) believes that her mother’s memory is also part of the delusion.

Joey again sees Tom, this time from a distance. She returns to an empty house and worries about Alfie and his desire to start a family. She glances into Rebecca’s study where she notices a life-size cardboard cutout of her brother, a souvenir from Jack’s pre-wedding stag party. In her room, she watches through the window as Nicola applies face cream in her own house.

Freddie watches Joey return from her job, walking up the hill. She lingers outside his door for several minutes before going home.

In the present, Joey continues her interview with Detective Pelham and confirms that she wears boots with a tassel. She admits going to the hotel to meet Tom but claims they only talked. She left 10 minutes after him and briefly stood outside his house, concerned for its residents, but never entered.

In the past timeline, Joey has drinks with Dawn, her boss, and unexpectedly runs into Tom at the bar. When Tom invites her to stay and watch the band with him, they flirt, and Joey’s sexual fixation intensifies.

Freddie discovers Nicola knitting a blanket for Rebecca. He thinks about her obsessive determination to fit in whenever they relocate to a new place. Despite her effort, she never does. Their frequent moves are a result of Tom’s job as a superhead, a head teacher who specializes in troubleshooting problem schools, employed with each for two years. Freddie resents the way Nicola constantly puts Tom at the center of her life and their household. Later, he witnesses Tom and Joey exit a taxi together. Joey attempts to kiss Tom, who rebuffs her and shows her home.

Freddie asks his father about Joey. Tom dismisses the incident, claiming that Joey was intoxicated, and changes the subject when Nicola enters. Freddie tries to reconcile his ambivalence toward Tom, whom he both admires and distrusts. He remembers other women who have paid his father too much attention.

Jenna meets up with her classmates for their four-night trip to Seville. Her best friend Bess expresses excitement about the trip. She has a crush on their head teacher, Tom, who takes over the job of chaperoning after the Spanish teacher has an emergency. Jenna worries about leaving her mother alone.

Nicola tells Freddie that Tom will be gone on the school trip to Spain. Freddie experiences a sense of unease. He spends his afternoon watching Joey and studying his collection of photographs.

Joey again visits her mother’s grave. She resents the speed with which her father found someone new. Joey uses the grave as a type of confessional and admits to her mother that she feels she has regressed since moving back. She says she did something terrible.

Alfie has gotten a new job as a house painter for the Fitzwilliams, heightening Joey’s sense of shame about her encounter with Tom. She refuses Alfie’s request that she accompany him to his meeting with Nicola. Looking out the window, she sees a small woman (Frances, Jenna’s mother) taking photographs of the Fitzwilliams’ house. She mentions it to her brother, and they discuss Tom. Jack likes him but “can see why he might send some more [...] vulnerable people over the edge. [...] He has this charm [...] as if he could save you from yourself” (73). His insight makes Joey uncomfortable.

In the present, during an interview with Dawn, Detective Pelham uncovers that Joey admitted being obsessed with Tom.

Returning to the past timeline, Tom fixes some problems with the girls’ hotel rooms in Seville and finds a comfortable, private room for Jenna and Bess. Jenna’s irritation grows as Bess raves about the man. Soon after, she notices Tom’s watch, which triggers a memory. She realizes that her mother was right. He is the man on the Lake District coach tour. One day during the vacation, a woman recognized Tom and attacked him.

Freddie overhears Nicola and Alfie’s meeting and notices a change in his mother’s behavior, who becomes cheerful and girlish in Alfie’s presence. He then goes through his photos, focusing on a new girl in town. He is shocked to discover that his pictures of Jenna and Bess have been accessed by someone else.

During dinner, Jenna perceives Tom’s attention to her and Bess as “predatory.” She becomes even more uneasy when she discovers Tom and Bess engaged in a private conversation that evening.

Joey informs Rebecca that Alfie desires to have a child, but that she does not. Rebecca confesses that she mainly decided to have a baby to make Jack happy and says that she hopes Joey will continue to stay with them to help once the baby is born.

Jenna texts with her mother and tries to research Tom online without finding anything relevant. She asks Bess about her conversation with Tom, but Bess is evasive.

Freddie fixates on Romola, watching her, following her, and taking pictures of her. When home, he uses software to paste her head on the body of a naked woman and prepares to masturbate. However, he suddenly sees Romola as a real person, a new girl in town with a beloved dog. He feels guilty and stops.

Joey witnesses Tom’s return home. As she walks to the bus stop, she sees Frances yelling at an unidentified figure (Freddie) in the window of the Fitzwilliams’ residence. Frances stops Joey and insists that Tom is not the person he appears to be.

When Jenna arrives home, Frances shares her conversation with Joey and expresses her suspicions about the neighbors, particularly Tom, whom she now believes is the local ringleader of the people stalking her. Jenna asks about the Lake District incident. Frances says the unknown woman accosted Tom, hitting him and demanding to know how he could live with himself. She kept saying the word “viva.” It is later revealed that Viva was the nickname of Genevieve, Rebecca’s little sister who died by suicide at 14.

Freddie observes his parents’ interaction during dinner, noting that their relationship has improved since they arrived in Melville and worrying that it will again deteriorate. In his room, he orders a skirt that he saw Romola admiring in a window.

In the present, Joey’s interview continues. She admits being agitated at work the day before and anxious about the possibility of having a sexual encounter with Tom. However, she is unable to explain the presence of her tassel at the crime scene.