Watching You: A Novel

Tom Fitzwilliam’s character is a mystery. The book places him at the center of the action but never provides insight into his thoughts and feelings. Instead, it shows how the other main characters project their fears and their fantasies onto him. Jenna sees him as “predatory” and a threat to her best friend Bess, the girl who provides her only stable relationship after her parents’ separation and her mother’s mental health. His son, Freddie, oscillates between images of him as a loving father and a “great man” and as a potentially violent husband and “one of the worst men [he knows]” (238). After Joey marries her “unattainable crush,” she uses Tom to fill “the hole in Joey’s interior fantasy life” (16). Frances, Jenna’s mother, inserts him into her delusion, believing him to be the sinister leader of the gang stalking her.

The novel implies that Tom’s effect on the Bristol neighborhood mirrors prior narratives in previous locations. Tom is a “superhead,” someone sent by the education department to serve at underperforming schools. He and his family stay in each town for two years. Both parents and students tend to admire and like him. He combines an authoritative manner with great personal charm. Freddie notices the effect Tom has on girls and women who frequently develop crushes on him. The end of the novel reveals that Nicola, Tom’s wife and Freddie’s mother, was one such girl. While he was a teacher at her school, the teenage Nicola decided that she would marry him. In her jealousy, she bullied and killed a perceived rival.

While the darkest theories about Tom are discredited, the mystery of his nature survives the book. He exhibits tendencies towards evasion and manipulation and has a deeply, violently dysfunctional relationship with his much younger wife. While Nicola is ultimately portrayed as the villain in their family, questions remain about Tom’s responsibility for events. Rebecca blames him for leading her sister Viva on and playing a role in her (presumed) death by suicide. The book never takes a definitive stance.

Nicola Fitzwilliam is the wife of Tom Fitzwilliam and the mother of Freddie Fitzwilliam. While she is initially portrayed as a mild-mannered woman dominated by her more dynamic husband, the novel gradually exposes her as a small-minded and vicious individual. The final scene of the book reveals that the death of Rebecca’s sister Viva, presumed to be suicide, was a murder committed by Nicola as a teenager.

The truth of Nicola’s personality and her relationship with Tom only emerge in the last third of the book, upending the characters’ previous ideas about her. She verbally and physically lashes out at her son Freddie, and Joey discovers the evidence of her violent attacks on Tom’s body. Tom identifies her as the perpetrator of the fights their son hears from his bedroom and the object of Viva’s mother’s hatred on a long-ago vacation. In the epilogue, Freddie investigates his mother because “he’d basically felt as though he’d never known her at all” through the physical objects she left behind (323). While he learns about her (including her role in Viva’s death) through these artifacts, the book also reminds us that, as a corpse, Nicola is now ultimately inaccessible.

Rebecca Hart is the wife of Jack Mullen, the sister-in-law of Joey Mullen, and the murderer of Nicola Fitzwilliam. Her surface reserve conceals the never-healed pain from her sister’s death and her deep hatred of both Fitzwilliams. After years of stalking them online, she seized the opportunity of their move to Bristol to enter their social orbit and take her revenge, killing Nicola and hoping Tom would be blamed.

Most information about and interaction with Rebecca comes from Joey’s perspective. While she and Alfie have been invited to live with Jack and his wife, Joey doesn’t feel particularly close to Rebecca. She wonders how her brother ended up with her. However, after spending a night out together, Joey’s perception of her sister-in-law starts to change. Rebecca begs Joey to think better of herself, sharing that Viva’s low self-esteem led to suicide at a young age.

The only direct insight into Rebecca’s thoughts and motivations comes in the form of a letter she writes to her infant daughter after her arrest and entrusts to Jack. While she assumes that Jack will have told their daughter about Viva and Rebecca’s reasons for killing Nicola, she insists, “I really want you to hear it from me, because the answers to all your questions are contained in the way I felt about her, and that’s not something anyone but me can really express” (317). The statement reasserts Rebecca’s general opacity even as it prefaces new insights.

Freddie Fitzwilliam is the teenage son of Tom and Nicola Fitzwilliam and resents the way his family’s frequent relocations alienate him as the perpetual “new kid.” He struggles to form new relationships and to understand the dynamics within the Fitzwilliam family. Through his relationship with his father and his self-understanding, the novel explores the theme of Complex Identities and the Power of Labels.

While many of the characters watch one another, giving the book its title, Freddie watches them all. In his quest to understand the people around him—particularly the newly fascinating teenage girls—he spends a significant amount of time taking photographs of his neighbors from his bedroom window. He rejects the labels of “voyeur” and “pervert,” insisting that his interest has nothing to do with power. He spies on girls to understand them: “It was just another project” (38). As he begins to realize that the action is, nevertheless, invasive, he stops.

Freddie’s greatest social discovery is about himself. He learns that he was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder when very young but that his parents didn’t want him to feel held back by the label. Talking to his father, he responds, “I am clever [...] But I am also quite shy and find making friends very difficult, and I think I make some really bad mistakes with people, and I misunderstand them, and it might be useful for me now, maybe, to have some extra support. I’d like my label please” (260). He recognizes his need for community resources and a framework for this aspect of his identity. Once he has it, his relationships with his father and his peers improve.

Jenna Tripp is a student at Tom’s school who lives with her mother, Frances, who has a mental health condition. Following her parents’ separation, she has limited contact with her father and brother who don’t know how much Frances has deteriorated in recent years. She relies heavily on her friendship with Bess Ridley to feel secure and understood and blames Tom for alienating her friend and prying into Jenna’s home situation. She begins to believe that Tom has assaulted Bess, taking advantage of her friend’s infatuation, and talks to his son about her suspicions.

Jenna lives in a world defined by paranoias. She takes care of her mother without letting anyone but Bess know the extent of Frances’s debility. Their greatest fight occurs when Bess accuses Jenna of behaving like Frances and having delusions about their head of school. When Frances proves correct about having seen Tom many years ago, she falls into her own dark imagination. However, we also see Tom acting like a compassionate and responsible administrator through Jenna’s point of view. She takes his increased attention as a threat, but he proves himself genuinely interested in her welfare. Even during his distress after his wife’s murder, he works with the system so Jenna can finish out the school year with Bess, and it was this possibility the two secretly discussed.

Jack Mullen is Joey’s older brother and Rebecca’s husband, with whom Joey and Alfie live. He primarily serves as a foil and source of insight for Joey. Throughout her life, Joey has always felt inferior to Jack. Despite her love, admiration, and respect for her brother, Joey worries that she will never measure up to his superior moral character and professional achievements as a heart surgeon. After the murder, he and Joey take care of newborn Eloise together.

Shocked by her crime, Jack realizes that he never understood his wife Rebecca, but he seems to be an otherwise astute judge of people. He offers the most penetrating statement on Tom’s character, perceiving the way Tom’s charisma could be dangerous to vulnerable individuals looking for someone to save them from themselves.

Alfie Butter is Joey Mullen’s husband. They first met while working at a resort in Ibiza. Alfie was the object of Joey’s fantasies before they began a relationship. Eager to prove her maturity and capability, Joey agreed to marry Alfie, and they moved back to Bristol.

Neither partner in the relationship views the other one accurately. Alfie is deeply infatuated with Joey and dreams of starting a family together. Joey no longer fantasizes about Alfie, but she idealizes him as a perfectly sweet and supportive partner. However, she later discovers that, feeling Joey’s withdrawal, he has been making out with strangers at the bar. In the aftermath of Nicola’s murder and the full exposure of Joey’s obsession with Tom, Alfie moves out, and the couple ends their marriage.