Chapter 13: THEN - The Safe Room

A few days later, I received a call from Mary Harlow, Peter’s mum. I hadn’t been expecting it and fifteen-year-old me felt blindsided by this adult woman speaking with a shaky voice down the phone.

“I’m sorry he scared you, love,” she said. “He didn’t mean it, you know. I… I know it’s hard to think about him being a decent person after what he did, but it’s been hard since his dad died.” She lets out a shivering breath. “Not that I’m making excuses or anything.”

I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything and she just carried on speaking. I pictured the tiny, birdlike woman who wore floral tea dresses outside of her usual Tesco uniform.

“Peter has a hard time connecting with people,” she continued. “I’ll always appreciate the kindness you girls showed to him. I wonder if maybe he somehow became latched onto that kindness, that he saw it as something more. I’m so sorry, Amber. But don’t worry, he told me that he understands what he did was wrong and isn’t going to bother you again.”

“Okay,” I mumbled. “Thank you.”

“It’s a shame, really,” she said. “I think you would have been really good for him if… well, if the circumstances had been different.”

I wrapped the phone cord around my finger, pulling it tight.

“I think he really does like you. But that doesn’t matter. Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve explained to him that he must leave you alone now. All right, love? Do you want to pass me on to your mum now?”

“Okay.” I gestured for Mum to take the phone.

Outside the kitchen, I lingered, listening. I don’t know why. Maybe I needed the reassurance that Mary would remain consistent and tell Mum the same things she told me.

“I know, I understand,” I heard Mum say. “The thing is, Mary, if you can’t handle him, I think you need to get him help before he hurts someone.”

My pulse quickened. We’d all been thinking it, especially me, but this was the first time Mum spoke the words. Peter could hurt someone. He could hurt me.

“I don’t know,” Mum said. “Therapy? A doctor? Some sort of psychologist.” She clucked her tongue. “I don’t know how much it costs, no. Yes, but… I understand that but…” Her voice deepened. “Mary. She’s my daughter.”

I walked away.

The call left me unsettled. Mary had a manic, frightened energy to her that seemed to have rubbed off on me from the call. And then there was Mum’s view on it all, that Peter was some sort of ticking time bomb who might go off at any moment without medical intervention.

I wanted to believe he would leave me alone. I wanted it more than anything. I didn’t have the words back then as a fifteen-year-old girl to describe the way Peter’s actions made my world tilt. While going about my day, I’d take a step on uneven ground and feel like I was falling. Every single step. Nothing felt safe.

In the days that followed, an atmosphere hung over us at home even though we didn’t really talk about it after Mary’s call. Only Honey seemed more relaxed, perhaps because she could claim the spotlight again after this blip where her introverted, shy sister was suddenly getting all the attention. For her the status quo returned quickly. For Mum and Dad, it seemed as though they saw me differently. I’d been their little girl and now I was a teenager facing more adult problems.

But Peter did leave me alone. He had no choice after we blocked his number. I still looked over my shoulder whenever I went anywhere, and on the first day back at school I was convinced I’d see him watching me walk to the bus.

School seemed louder than usual on the first day. When Hannah came running up behind me to say hi, I flinched.

“Did you have a good summer?” she asked, excitedly. “We went camping in France for a week.”

I hesitated, not sure how to answer. I hadn’t thought about whether to talk about Peter with my friends. Part of me felt ashamed, like it was my fault I didn’t have a good summer. But then Becca turned up and the two of them started talking about their holidays. In the distance I saw Honey wrapped up in Oliver, a group of her friends crowded around them. Honey said something and they laughed. I turned to my friends and tried to smile along like I was part of their conversation.

The first day back came and went, then the second day, and the third. They weren’t easy days, but I got through them. After the fourth day, something changed in me. I hadn’t seen him at all, not even a glimpse. Maybe Mary had got through to him and this whole ordeal was over.

School helped me relax. It felt safer there because he could never come onto the premises. I started concentrating on what the teachers were saying again. Peter felt like he was worlds away. I’d stayed quiet about my summer, but I spoke up more with Becca and Hannah and we even arranged a cinema trip. A full week passed, and I didn’t hear anything from Peter Harlow. Not a text or a phone call or a sighting of his blue BMW. I allowed myself to move on, putting the whole sorry business behind me.

Sometimes I think about who I am now and I picture this moment in my head. I was walking home from school after the first week back. Someone had given me a note in Maths, I think it was Beth, but I never kept the note, and I haven’t spoken to Beth in many years so I can’t be sure, but I do know it made me laugh and I was still riding that wave on the bus home. I felt light again.

If it had all ended here, I think I might have gone back to the girl I was before I saw Peter Harlow at the swimming baths. There’s a chance I’d have grown up with a touch more wariness about men, and perhaps I would have checked over my shoulder from time to time, but I don’t believe I would have ended up the paranoid mess I am now. This was the pivotal moment in my life.

I stepped off the bus and walked up the hill towards home. He came from nowhere, out from around a corner, and was in my face immediately.

“Why did you do that, Amber? Why?”

I backed away, shaking my head. He seemed thinner, his face more angular, and he wore a t-shirt that showed his pale, skinny biceps. Dark eyebrows furrowed above bloodshot eyes, and his lips were twisted into a snarl.

My feet stumbled on the pavement. The blood drained from my face.

His expression changed into one of melancholic imploring, and one hand reached out to me as though he was falling from a cliff and needed me to save him. “We’d be so good together you and me. Don’t you see that?”

I didn’t know what to do, he was just a few inches from touching me. I kept backing away but that meant moving away from home, not towards it, to safety. Shit. Dad should have made Honey come home with me on the bus this week, but she was out with friends most days after school. Sweat coated my skin underneath the polyester school uniform, the collar too tight around my throat.

“I need to go home, Peter,” I said, my voice trembling. “Can you leave me alone, please?”

“Not when I know we’re right for each other. Come on, I’ll walk you home, I’ll keep you safe.” He smiled, and I thought for a moment that he really believed it. He thought he was protecting me.

I slipped my backpack from my shoulders and searched for my phone, crouching low to the ground. All the while he wouldn’t stop talking.

“Can I help you, Amber? I… I want to help. Did you like the CD? Have you still got it? I listen to it at night to help me sleep and I think about you. That’s how much I love you.”

Finally, my fingers wrapped around the flip phone. Turning away from him, I dialled 999 and waited.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Stop that. Stop.”

He reached for the phone, but I moved away before he could grab it, gasping as his large frame approached me.

“Emergency services, how can I help?”

“There’s… I’m…” I stuttered.

He was just inches from me, right in my face, his eyes boring into mine with a dark intensity that made my stomach churn. Cold stone poked into my back as I rested against a boundary wall.

“Amber, please stop,” he said. “This is making me very angry.”

I closed my eyes and tears fell. My voice came out thin and quiet. “I’m afraid of a man.”

The operator asked me why I was afraid and I blurted something out, I can’t remember what, and all the time Peter kept talking, still inches away from me, pinning me against the wall.

“Have you been talking to boys at your school? What have you been doing with them? Eh? Bet you meet with them at lunch, don’t you? All the sluts at my school used to do that. In the toilets or the tennis courts. Disgusting. Tell me you’re not like that, Amber. Tell me, please?”

He leaned over me, brown eyes staring down, filling with tears. His long face seemed to stretch as he raised his eyebrows like a puppy in a children’s cartoon.

“I’m not,” I whispered.

It was a mistake. Acknowledging him was a huge mistake that only spurred him on.

“I knew it. I knew it, Amber. You’re saving yourself for me just like I thought you would. Don’t be… why are you scared? I’d never hurt you. I’d never do anything to hurt you. Why do you seem so scared?” He started stroking my hair and I cringed away from him, a high-pitched squeak coming from my lips.

“The… the police are coming⁠—”

“Why did you do that?” He sounded completely dumbfounded.

I took a step to the right, trying to move around him. He mimicked my action, blocking my path.

“Why would you call the police when all I want to do is walk you home? Why?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, and started sobbing.

“You’re so ungrateful,” he muttered, before turning away.

I saw some girls from school watching on the opposite pavement, whispering to each other. They probably thought I had an older boyfriend, and we were having a lover’s tiff. All I know is that when they saw me notice them, they hurried away giggling. A couple of curtains twitched amidst the terraced houses around us, but no one came out to check on me.

I took a step around him to get away but he reacted and blocked my path again. I tried to go left instead of right, but he did it again. The corners of his mouth twitched up in a smile. He was enjoying this.

I kept whispering ‘please’ over and over again and it made his eyes glint harder. Back then I saw myself as powerless, as someone to be looked after by her parents and older sister. This was the first time I needed to stand up for myself, but I was far too young to see it. I sat down on the street, put my head in my hands and sobbed. He placed a hand on my shoulder then and tried to comfort me. That was how the police found us.

First the sirens, then a car door opening and a tall man appearing. He glanced down at me, then across at Peter.

“We received a call about harassment?”

Peter scoffed. “Harassment? Does it look like I’m harassing her?”

“We’ll be the judge of that, Mr…?”

“Harlow,” Peter said.

The man crouched down. “Are you Amber Ellis? Did you call us?”

I nodded. My teeth were chattering and I hadn’t been able to stop crying.

“Why did you call?”

“He… won’t… leave me… alone.”

The police officer stood up and turned to Peter who had plastered on a charming smile. Peter lifted his hands in the air to feign innocence.

“She’s a friend. I offered to walk her home, but I think she’s upset about some boy at school and flipped out.” He grinned. “Teenage girls and their hormones.”

“How do you know Miss Ellis?” the officer asked.

“Our mums are good friends. We used to play together as kids.”

The officer turned to me. “Is that true?”

I nodded.

“All right, Mr Harlow, if you could now give your statement to my colleague over there. PC Long will take it down.”

I watched Peter hesitate before he walked over to the second officer. I’d thought that he would be afraid once the police turned up, but it was the opposite, like he was completely at ease with them. In contrast, I slumped on the ground like a complete mess, my hair and clothes dusty from the pavement, my eyes red from tears. I felt like I couldn’t get my words out.

The officer crouched down to my height and removed his hat. He wasn’t much older than Peter with closely cropped curly hair and full lips.

“My name is PC Ebun Thomas and it’s nice to meet you, Amber. Can you talk me through what is going on here?”

I just wanted it to be over, but I managed to tell him about how Peter had followed me on purpose and wouldn’t let me walk home alone. I described how he kept blocking my path.

“Are the two of you friends?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle.

“Not anymore,” I said. “Not since he kept sending me text messages.”

“He sends you text messages?”

I nodded.

“But you don’t want him to?”

I nodded again.

PC Thomas stood and walked across to the other men. I saw Peter smile and even laugh a little. A few minutes later, the officer returned.

“All right, Miss Ellis, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to drop you off at home in our police car to make sure you get back safe. Then we’re going to have a chat with your mum and dad. Is that all right?”

I nodded.

He helped me up and put me in the car while even more curtains twitched all around us. Heat flooded my cheeks, and when I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, I saw that my cheeks were crimson and my forehead shiny with sweat.

Both police officers got in, leaving Peter alone on the street, staring at me inside the car. They weren’t arresting him. They weren’t putting cuffs on him or anything. They were letting him go.

I turned back to watch him through the window, and he waved at me like he was saying goodbye to a friend.