Watching You: A Novel

Freddie collects Romola for the dance and says that it could be a date or they can go as friends and hang out with other friends. She is pleased and decides it should be a date.

Tom, exhausted, arrives and kisses Joey. Despite initial reluctance, she reciprocates, but she is unimpressed. She unbuttons his shirt, and he flinches away. She then notices marks all over his body. He explains that the bite marks, scratches, and bruises are from Nicola, who gets incredibly jealous and turns violent. He claims that he only harms her in self-defense, trying to restrain her, but he is tired of their destructive cycle. Joey realizes that Tom is also looking for some kind of savior, and they have an honest conversation about the ways in which they were using each other, not taking the sexual encounter further. Tom leaves, and Joey stays in the room for a little longer, musing over Tom’s departing words: “I will save myself…I’m sure I will” and swiftly exits the hotel (269).

When Freddie comes back from the dance, he discovers Tom cradling Nicola’s bloodied body on the kitchen floor.

In the present, Frances informs Pelham about what she witnessed at the Fitzwilliams’ home the night of the murder. She was monitoring the house because a woman in Mold had informed her in a chatroom that the Fitzwilliams would be hosting a meeting of their stalking gang that night. Rebecca was in her office all night. Frances could see her shape in the window. Around eight o’clock, she saw Joey exit a taxi and stand outside the Fitzwilliams’ before eventually turning around and going home. Shortly after, Frances observed a person leaving the yellow house and returning to the blue house. She suspects that Joey returned to the yellow house via the common garden behind the houses and snuck in through the back. She shares a blurry photo with the detective.

Freddie initially suspects that Tom may have killed Nicola but believes his father, who denies doing so. Tom shows Freddie two photos of Jenna and Bess that were set on Nicola’s body. Freddie recognizes them as his photos, accessed on his computer. Worried that the pictures will incriminate Freddie, Tom instructs him to shred the photos. Freddie, in turn, worries that Tom will be falsely accused and plants Joey’s red tassel at the crime scene. He had found it one day when it fell off her boot and onto their porch.

Joey tells Detective Pelham that she started to go to Tom’s place, fearing that either he or Nicola might hurt the other. She also mentions their mutually abusive relationship. However, upon reaching the doorstep, she decided it wasn’t her place to intervene and returned home. Joey is unable to explain why Rebecca’s gardening boots were covered in mud as if someone had used them behind the house. Detective Pelham advises her to seek legal counsel.

Joey calls Jack and begs him to help her get a lawyer.

Detective Pelham interviews Tom, who admits to being at the hotel with Joey but denies any sexual activity. Tom reveals that he drove around after leaving the hotel, unable to face Nicola. Detective Pelham asks about Nicola’s bruised neck, but Tom insists their relationship was not abusive. After returning home, Tom called out for Nicola and found her in the kitchen. He attributes the delay in contacting the police to shock (though it was actually due to Freddie’s return home and Tom’s decision to shred the pictures).

Jenna is taken aback by the news of the murder. Frances believes it was Joey and presents Jenna with a photo as evidence. Jenna sees something that makes her tell Frances to go to the police. (It later turns out that she realized the woman in the photo was Rebecca, not Joey.)

Joey tries to understand what happened. She speculates that Tom murdered Nicola. However, she remembers seeing Rebecca’s cutout of Jack into the window of her office.

Detective Pelham and another detective meet with Jack and Rebecca. Despite Rebecca’s claim of working all night, the police identify her as the woman in Frances’s photo when they have her try on her coat. Detective Pelham also realizes that Frances wouldn’t have been able to see Rebecca at her desk through the window, validating Joey’s claim about the cutout. The detectives question Rebecca about her connection to the Fitzwilliams, and Rebecca confesses everything.

Nicola used to be called Nikki Lee and was the ringleader of Viva’s bullying. Rebecca blamed both Nicola and Tom (who she thinks encouraged Viva’s infatuation). After she and her mother saw them together in the Lake District, she stalked the Fitzwilliams, moving close to them when they came to the area. After getting pregnant, she decided not to take her revenge but then hacked into their computer and found the photos of young women, evidence (she believes) of Tom’s ongoing predatorial activity. Her rage also built against Nicola, and the day that Nicola brought them the baby blanket, she snapped and put her plan in motion. She posed as a woman from Mold in one of Frances’s gang stalking chat rooms and convinced her to watch their street. She then talked to Frances in person as herself and mentioned her plans to work. She knew that Frances would assume the shape in the window was Rebecca and provide an alibi. Then she snuck out the back, killed Nicola, and returned. She had hoped that Tom would be blamed.

Jenna writes a thank you note to Tom for his help navigating the system. Her mother is now receiving treatment in a hospital, and Jenna was able to finish out the year at her school, living with Bess. She’s spending the summer with her father and considering living with him year-round.

At Rebecca’s request, Joey has been assisting Jack in taking care of Eloise, the baby, ever since his wife’s imprisonment. Rebecca has requested they not bring Eloise to visit her in prison. Joey and Alfie are getting a divorce, and Joey feels more stable and mature these days. Joey takes Eloise to the cemetery to visit her mother and runs into her father, with whom she reconciles.

Rebecca writes a letter to Eloise for Jack to give her when she is older. She explains her need for revenge. She loved Viva deeply, and her loss destroyed Rebecca, who then experienced lingering depression due to the suicide. Upon witnessing Tom and Nicola together in the Lake District, she began tracking their movements and enlisted Jack to purchase the Melville Heights house, giving her an opportunity to observe them. However, she now regrets her actions and wishes she had chosen a different way to honor Viva, exposing Nicola’s deeds rather than avenging them. She wishes she could have lived with Eloise and watched her grow up.

Freddie is recovering after the trauma. He sees a therapist and has a girlfriend, Romola. He’s intensely curious about Nicola now that he’s discovered that his mother had an incredibly cruel side. One day, he is searching through her belongings when he stumbles upon a large clump of dark hair tied together. It couldn’t belong to either Freddie or Nicola. He shows it to his father, hoping for an alternative explanation. His father pales in horror, confirming Freddie’s theory. While it is never stated explicitly, the novel strongly suggests that the hair belonged to Viva and that her death wasn’t a suicide. Nicola murdered her.