Chapter 25: THEN - The Safe Room

PC Thomas surprised us all by coming to the house about a week after I dropped off the latest batch of evidence. I’d been trying to keep it all from Mum and Dad, but he clearly wanted the whole family clued in.

Mum made us all tea, and we sat awkwardly in the living room, with PC Thomas’s hat on the coffee table.

“Amber has been doing really well keeping a log of Peter’s harassment. After the warning he was given last month, we expected a change in behaviour. Unfortunately, Amber started receiving the messages again,” the officer said.

“Is that true, love?” Mum turned to me, her eyes wide.

I nodded quickly.

Before Mum could ask me why I hadn’t said anything, PC Thomas continued. “I was able to contact the mobile phone networks to find out who the phone numbers belong to. Uh, because there are multiple numbers listed in the messages Amber gave me.” He pulls in a deep breath. “Unfortunately, these phones are pay as you go, which means no contact details were available.”

I sighed. I’d been expecting it.

“The text messages are still useful. We can still build a case. What I’m going to do next is check the call data records and see if we can find associations with Peter. We can look at the location these text messages and calls came from. If they are coming from this area, then that all goes into the case. It’s all evidence. We can look at timings. We can see if Peter is free when the calls and messages are made. We haven’t given up yet, Amber. I promise you that.”

I was disappointed but I’d been expecting it. Peter used several different numbers, and I’d already assumed they were burner phones.

Mum was upset after he left, especially considering I hadn’t told her he was still in touch. And I think it was one of the first times a wedge really started to open up between us.

“Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?” she said, while angrily mopping up a spill in the kitchen.

“I just didn’t want to worry you,” I’d said.

But it was more than that. I was sick of talking about it. Sick of looking at the worry on my parents’ faces. None of that was going to change any time soon.

So, I joined a self-defence class every Wednesday, paid for with half of my lunch money. Things were still tight, money-wise, with Dad trying to pay the solicitors through a payment programme, and I didn’t want to ask for anything. Mum had been picking up more shifts, but then her manager cut her hours. I told Mum and Dad that the classes were free for under-sixteens from the estate and they believed me.

I felt like I’d been given another shot at life after Honey found the pills. I started engaging with my friends at school again. I listened to the teachers during every lesson. I would leave my mobile phone at home so that Peter could still message me without it being a distraction.

I found other victims online in a forum that felt like a safe space to talk about my experiences. I learned that the behaviour of stalkers can escalate if they can’t send you texts or try to call. That’s when they begin finding other ways to insert themselves in your life. It’s best not to block them, to just let the abuse continue and try to ignore it, otherwise they’ll start turning up to your house, place of work, or school.

Ray broke into my house and tied me up. I thought I was going to die.

My ex-husband sits in his car outside my place of work all day every day.

I read stories that scared me down to my bones, but I didn’t let myself believe that it could happen to me. At that point, I felt like I knew him and his modus operandi. Peter was a coward and I didn’t believe for one second that he had the balls to actually kill me.

The rest of the school year went by in a flash. Peter Harlow became background noise, but he never went away. I shrugged at messages calling me names or begging me for attention. I stepped around him if he stood at my bus stop. I didn’t spend much time with friends outside school anymore, mostly because I felt like changing the routine would upend this fragile compromise we’d reached.

I gave up keeping a diary. I hadn’t heard from PC Thomas in a few weeks, and I wondered if he’d given up on the case. I’d given up on him. I stopped taking photographs of Peter, but I did keep the messages just in case.

Mum and Dad would ask me now and then if I’d seen him, and most of the time I lied. Whenever I mentioned a message or the fact that I’d seen Peter’s car parked somewhere close by, I saw the pain in my dad’s eyes.

And then Mum told me she’d seen him with a girl, holding hands.

“If he has a girlfriend, that means he’ll leave you alone. He has to move on now, don’t you think?” She’d hugged me that day, delighted for the world to go back to normal.

Honestly, I thought the same. I felt sorry for the girl and if I’d known who she was, I would have warned her. Surely this meant he was done with me. Finally.

I started to hope.

The messages reduced in frequency at first. From dozens a day to four or five. One or two phone calls at the most. I stopped seeing him at the bus stop and I hadn’t seen his car for over a week. The school term ended and my birthday came around—a bittersweet day with chocolate cake and a family trip to the cinema—before Honey got a job at a hairdresser’s and announced she was leaving school.

Mum’s hours picked up again, and with Honey also contributing to the bills, things were finally coming up roses for the Ellis family. Quietly, without telling me, Mum started talking to Mary Harlow at work again. They even met for a coffee one day. I was hurt at first. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just make a new friend, but after the troubles with my own friendship group, I related more to the idea of not giving up on a friend just because something terrible had happened.

But maybe it foreshadowed the betrayal that cut me deeply years later.

Right then, as I turned sixteen, life was almost good. It was moving forwards and I had managed to keep hold of that feeling, that power that came from somewhere deep inside me. Even Honey started treating me differently. She shared her clothes without complaining. She let me borrow her make-up. We went back to the swimming baths together and all of a sudden, I realised a year had passed. A full year of being stalked by a man. Peter would be twenty now. I didn’t know when his birthday was, but I wondered if he’d had a party. Maybe he went for dinner with his girlfriend.

At the end of summer, I heard that Peter had broken up with his girlfriend and the news brought with it a wave of nausea. Not just for what might happen to me, but I was scared for her, too.

Rumours went flying around the estate. Some said that she’d caught him messaging me. Some said he left her. One day, coming home from the swimming baths with Honey, I saw him across the street and grabbed my sister by the wrist.

“This way.” I pulled her to the left and away from him.

At first, she was confused, but then she saw Peter behind us.

“Fuck.”

We zig-zagged through the estate but he wouldn’t stop pursuing us. When we sped up, he did too. But he never once sprinted to catch up with us. It was like a game. In the end we ran all the way home, out of breath and terrified.

Honey slammed the door closed behind us and locked it, panting. “Someone needs to put him down like a dog.” She wiped sweat from her forehead. “Fucking weirdo. Has he been following you again?”

“No, that’s the first time in ages.” It was true this time. He’d been distracted by his relationship.

“So he gets dumped and comes crawling back? He’s like the woodlice that crawl around the kitchen. Fucking things never go away no matter how many times you stamp on them.”

I didn’t say anything, I was too tired. I kicked off my shoes and carried my bag upstairs, eager to lie down for a while. Seeing Peter again was terrifying. Deep down I knew it was all going to start up again. I just knew it in my bones because I knew Peter. I’d had a brief reprieve while his attention was elsewhere, and now we were back to the regular reign of terror.

I just needed to hold onto that power. After all, I knew his predictable and dull methods.

At least I thought I did, because everything I thought I knew about Peter changed after that day. When I walked into my bedroom, I found the window wide open with the curtains blowing in the wind, and the stench of something mouldy but also sweet. Then I saw the blood-soaked bedsheets and I couldn’t move.