Don't Let Me In Read online

  I drink half my glass. I don’t need to worry if I don’t find anything more about Tom anyway as I don’t have any intention of publishing anything untrue. If I don’t flush anything out then on my head be it; I’ll just say I don’t have anything in the next podcast. No harm done. Some people will gripe and I may lose some listeners but there will be more listening anyway. I giggle out loud and Lil’Bitch looks at me with disgust and then leaps down onto the floor.

  I finish my wine in a gulp.

  “Go on, sod off then, Lil’Bitch!” I shout after her, which causes me to break into a fresh fit of giggles.

  And then amongst the Twitter notifications popping up comes one I recognise – it’s a new account with a familiar name, @FrenchDuck1044. He has been resurrected with a new twitter handle.

  I read his tweet.

  @frenchduck1044 Just bought you a ticket to the murder rape train choo choo you can join Khalil on there.

  I don’t know whether it’s the wine – let’s face it it’s the wine – but before my brain can intervene I type:

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044

  Rape isn’t funny and neither are you. Why bother? No date on a Saturday night?

  As I hit send I can see him in his bedroom, dirty laundry on the floor, squirming with delight in a plastic chair as his computer delivers a bite. I expect invective so am surprised to get a coherent response:

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @therealskelly

  Bonsoir Sarah mon cherie. Simples. Because you want to free a murderer. He is guilty he should pay. All the guilty should pay.

  It’s like my fingers are working independently of my mind.

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044

  He might be innocent. Reasonable doubt maybe?

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @thereaskelly

  He did it. The jury knew it and you, yeah you know it. This is not a game.

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044

  How can you be so sure?

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @therealskelly

  He did it, it’s plain as a pikestaff to us.

  “Pikestaff” is an unusual word to see these days and I revise his age limit – over forty-five I reckon.

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044

  Us?

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @therealskelly

  There’s a lot of us, out here, watching, listening and waiting.

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044

  If it annoys you stop listening. No need for rape/death threats.

  I can see our exchange of tweets is being re-tweeted in huge numbers and I sense I might actually make progress with this man and, let’s face it, the wine spurs me on.

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @therealskelly

  You don’t listen to anything else we say. You feminazis only like weak men, minorities, gays, you don’t want to hear what we have to say but you will. #freespeechbitch

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044

  Most people on here agree with me.

  This last tweet gets re-tweeted in support, a lot.

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @therealskelly

  U are not the many. U liberal elite. U kill us. U traitors to us. We are the many, you are the few and we are coming.

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044 I am with justice that’s all, what’s the problem with that?

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @therealskelly

  Khalil killed Lauren, Muslims rape white women and your type don’t care. It’s you who are the racists. Every culture matters but ours.

  @therealskelly replying to @frenchduck1044

  This is islamophobia. I should block you.

  I pause as tweets role in one after the other saying “block the racist”.

  @frenchduck1044 replying to @therealskelly

  I am the hydra Sarah, you know that already though don’t you. Go ahead do it to me. I’m coming.

  So, I block him.

  A few seconds pass and beep, a Twitter notification. It’s from @Deliahflow98; she’s been one of the most positive tweeters in support of the show.

  I gasp.

  @Deliahflow98 replying to @therealskelly

  Guess who? Your blood will lube my dick.

  And then @Corbynslovechild, another enthusiastic re-tweeter.

  @Corbynslovechild replying to @therealskelly

  I’m coming for you and your kids fucktart. We are many and watching. Frenchie Duckie go quack everywhere.

  Ping. Another notification; more abuse from a previously friendly account. I stop checking after five more similar messages. I block all the sock puppet accounts. It must have taken him days to set them all up and engage with me and others on a regular basis. Frenchie clearly has a lot of time on his hands and a real grudge. I consider calling the police and just as quickly dismiss the idea. The police would want to ask too many questions and I know that the accounts will be impossible to trace. It’s why Twitter is so beloved of the anonymous sociopath.

  The upside is my tweet exchange is being re-tweeted at a staggering level and already requests are flying in for interviews. I guess that’s what a bit of mystique around my disappearance from public life and my newfound fame as a crime reporter can do. But I’m not doing them. I am in control of my career and who gets access to me now. I will not be public property again.

  I check the time. 7.15pm. Finn and Henry are normally back by now but I don’t want to send a text just because they are 15 minutes late. That would be crazy. But the fact is, Frenchie’s Spartacus moment has freaked me out a little bit.

  I check my emails. There is a lot of congratulatory stuff and I can’t say I don’t enjoy reading that, so I do – well, only the ones from people I want to like me.

  The BBC is really after me and there is an email from my old editor at News London; he wants me to come into the studio “if I feel up to it” (what does he know?).

  There’s also a Facebook message from Hannah. She’s been monitoring my Twitter feed and has seen Frenchie’s attacks. Seeing her message arrive blows away the digital poisons cloud surrounding me. Hannah is, aside from Cathy, the friend I feel closest too. Part of that of course is how similar we are: she is two years older than me, lives in North London (Islington), is accordingly house rich but cash poor, shops at the same places I do, likes the same music, reads the same paper online (Guardian natch), has a child the same age as mine (a girl, Natasha) and most importantly, she is also outside inhibited, a phrase we came up with together when drunkenly exchanging messages about being housebound. In her case, her husband left her after having an affair so it’s so much worse for her, but having someone I can confide in, who understands, has made life these last six months bearable. We “met” on Mumsnet in a thread dealing with agoraphobia, a word we have both vowed never to repeat.

  Are you ok with the trolls my little fucktart? xxx

  I text her back and tell her I’ve had tougher steaks than these guys.

  These men and their threats, do you think it is because they were starved of the teat as babes? :-)

  I type quickly but delete a “LOL” as I know it both ages and shames me:

  It’s the lack of sex, it’s been scientifically proven to cause being a total wanker.

  The reply is classic Hannah, and makes me genuinely laugh out loud:

  Christ, if that’s the criteria I am the queen of wankers, actually I quite like that, it’s going to be my new twitter handle. Listen I have to run, gotta burn some pasta for Tash. You sure you ok hun?

  I assure her I am.

  It’s nice to be wanted and cared for. I check the time again. 8.20. When does a little late become a worrying late? Ten more minutes and I’ll send a text. I don’t want Henry to think I’m falling apart.

  And then with a ping an email drops into my mailbox and as it drops so does my heart.

  It’s from Toby Grey, Lauren’s little brother. I say little; he was little when she was mu
rdered twelve years ago. Now he’s eighteen.

  I open it.

  Hey Sarah,

  You contacted my family before you started broadcasting your podcast, do you remember? I do. I gave an interview to you over the phone and you promised me something in return, you promised me and my family that if anything ever turned up that pointed to someone else killing my sister you would tell us first. I was comfortable with you exploring the case, as you know I’m training to be a lawyer, and I was happy for you to investigate as we only ever wanted Lauren’s killer brought to justice but I’ve just had my mother on the phone for the last 30 minutes sobbing. You know Tom was a friend to us all after Lauren died and he’s still in our lives and now we find out that he had the time to be involved, and if we wait another week, a cliffhanger to you, torture for my family, we get to find out why he may have wanted to kill my sister. We won’t be waiting with baited breath or excitement for your revelation, we will be waiting in dread, terror, confusion and misery. You should have told us you were going down this route and now you should tell me straight away what you know about Tom and why you think he had any motivation to murder my sister.

  This isn’t a game or a documentary for us, it’s our lives and you are ripping open old wounds. Contact me if you know something. We deserve to know.

  Toby Grey.

  I shut my eyes.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  How could I have been so stupid and insensitive? I start to shiver and then tears are running down my face.

  I flop back into the couch and then suddenly the doorbell is ringing and I’m in a foetal position and the bell rings and rings and rings but I’m not opening that door, not ever again.

  6

  The Waterline

  I shut the door.

  Henry and Finn are gone again for the day and won’t be back till six. It’s just me and Lil’Bitch and my hundred thousand podcast subscribers. There’s been a somewhat leap in listeners since the last podcast, helped by all the publicity and the fact that PixieDixie, a millennial Instagram and Twitter goddess with a following of over two million, re-tweeted the abuse I was receiving under #everydaydigitalrape.

  I spent all of Sunday in bed. Henry insisted on it after the trauma of Saturday evening. He and Finn had stopped off at a Leon’s on the way home – that was why they were late – and Henry’s phone had been dead so he couldn’t text me. He told me that Finn kept saying, “Mummy is going to be worried.” He feels proud that our son was so empathetic but I feel nothing but shame that our six-year-old is so aware of how pathetic I am.

  When I didn’t answer the front door, Henry had known immediately something was wrong. He had put Finn back in the car as he didn’t want him coming with him; he was scared of what he may find and I feel such guilt that my son was left in the car, such shame that Henry has to think like this about me. He had run down the alley at the back of the house, climbing over the garden wall before letting himself in with the keys to the patio doors. He found me curled up on the sofa sobbing. There was a pool of red wine on the carpet and I tried to pass things off as me just having had too much to drink. Henry was happy to play along – it saved us both an awkward conversation – but a day in bed recovering from “my hangover” was the medicine Henry insisted I take. He took Finn to see his mother in St Albans and I lay unsleeping and corpse-like under our goose down duvet, warm, secure and safe.

  When, later that evening, he had returned, he tentatively asked me if everything was okay as though he was stepping out on a rope bridge strung across a bottomless abyss and I gave him, and me, a pass and said it was because I was on my period and I swear I could see relief flood into his eyes as he realised we weren’t going to have to talk about the real reasons for his wife being a total basket case.

  Instead I emailed Hannah and told her what had happened with Toby and how this had caused me to collapse and how this sort of thing happened all the time since the incident.

  Hannah took some time to respond; she often doesn’t reply straight away. She has her own life of course, but when she did reply, it was with her usual knack of making me feel better immediately.

  You fucked up. Do it better next time, call them and explain the position. You didn’t kill his sister, you are finding out who did. Call him, make it right, you can do that right?

  I can do that.

  That night I sleep well.

  When I emerge, the light of the day has been almost bludgeoned to death by the early arrival of a thuggish dark sky and I realise that I have slept deep into a wintery Monday morning.

  I had waited under the covers for Henry and Finn to leave. I even pretended to be asleep when Henry came into the room to say goodbye, and that pretending must have turned into the real thing. I check my phone; it’s 11.30am. I am the lazy slut I always suspected I was and this thought carries a sting of comfort. Is there anything more satisfying than the warm, sick embrace of guilt?

  Guilt and shame can give you a hangover as sure as booze can, but in the same way, they start to wear off as a new day begins. I type a quick response to Toby Grey.

  Dear Toby

  I am sorry about the shock you and your family must have received hearing the show on Saturday. I should have warned you.

  You know that my show is about the unsoundness of Khalil Bukhari’s conviction and not a police investigation. As such I am not making any allegations against Tom nor suggesting that he killed your sister but rather I am attempting to show that the police and the CPS focused on Khalil at the expense of all other possible explanations because they needed a quick arrest after the Charles Brownhill debacle. One thing I can tell you now is that I do not know the identity of your sister’s murderer and if I did, or if I had evidence of this, I would tell you right away. However, that does not mean that in the forthcoming podcasts you will not hear things that may be difficult as I will be focusing on other possibilities to the one that the police pursued. I am sorry if this causes you or your family distress but it is my journalistic duty.

  I will always remain a friend of you and your family and have nothing but the greatest of respect for how you have handled the situation you have been thrust into. I do this partly to honour your sister’s memory and to ensure that she receives the justice she was not granted in life.

  Yours sincerely

  Sarah Kelly

  I click send and sure, I feel a little bit dirty, but this is my job, I tell myself, and I even manage to half believe that if I don’t think too deeply about it.

  Although this old Georgian terrace looks and feels modern inside, the bones of it are old and rickety and despite the heating having clicked on at 7am– as it does every morning – it’s still cold after several hours of battling against a chill that seems to have tightened around the house like a fist. I grab one of Henry’s old jumpers from his wardrobe and put it on before even attempting to descend into the colder parts of the house below the bedroom.

  On the hall landing I hesitate because there is a noise coming from the other bedroom, the box room, next to our bedroom. It sounds like someone, or something, shuffling. I step closer and very carefully, and quietly, place my ear next to the door. There’s nothing and then there it is again: a scraping sound and the scrunching of papers as though someone is taking their time to step in a certain way to avoid making a sound.

  There is someone behind the door; as I think this, goose bumps sprout all along my arms. Maybe they didn’t leave after all, and perhaps Henry is clearing the room of boxes like he is always promising.

  “Henry?”

  My voice catches and crackles; it is the sound of fear and the voice of a victim and I hate it. I won’t be that person. Hannah and me swore to each other that even though we are trapped inside we wouldn’t be timid within our own, admittedly restricted, environments.

  As I think this, part of my mind makes an unconscious decision and I’m almost surprised to see the door opening in response to a fierce push from me.

  There is
a screaming sound, a sudden, violent movement and something large and black flies straight at me.

  I cover my face with my hands and it hits them square on, hard and heavy and then, making a noise of terror and fear, hits the ceiling. The pigeon, for that’s what it is, is a city bird, oil-slick coloured and full of sores. It lands on one of the boxes piled in the corner of the room. They mostly contain my books. Henry likes the minimalist look and books don’t really fit into that scheme, so this room is filled with boxes containing all my “nick-nacks”, as he calls my lifetime collection of books and pre-family material. The pigeon immediately shits all down the side of the box.

  Its crimson eyes regard me with fear and I wonder whether it can see the fear in mine. At least I now know where Lil’Bitch is getting the birds from; the window is open. Henry must have left it like that to let some air in the room. He’s always complaining about the dust in this room setting off his allergies. Christ knows how long it’s been left like this.

  “Go on then, shoo,” I say to the pigeon.

  It hops from one leg to another and defecates once more.

  Feeling foolish, I point at the window.

  “You need to leave. You know, outside? Female pigeons – or male – await outside! Whatever, it’s a diverse city. Go on.”

  The pigeon shows no sign of moving.

  I take a step forward and it backs away until it’s near the wall. I could, I suppose, try and grab it and throw it out of the window but all I can see happening is something involving feathers, shit and the likelihood of a dead pigeon.

  “The way out is there.” I point to the patch of grey sky framed by the Velux window.

  I swear the pigeon looks up at the window and then it hops from one foot to another again.

  “I’ll take that as an acknowledgment.”

  But it doesn’t move.

  I’m talking to a pigeon and it is trolling me. I decide against trying to grab hold of it.

  “It’s your lucky day, pigeon, I need coffee.”