Now Following You

Fiona Snyckers

Description

Now Following You is a clever, chilling and compelling read, which deals skilfully with relevant issues � most notably, the power social media gives to stalkers and others who intend harm. Jamie Burchell is a digital native � social media comes as naturally to her as breathing. She Instagrams, tweets and Facebooks her every move. Then a stalker starts using social media to track her movements. As his behaviour escalates, so does her fear. But her blog has never been more popular. The fans can�t get enough of reading about her stalker. She is closer than ever to achieving her dream of becoming a writer. Should she take herself offline, or should she refuse to be intimidated? Soon the stalker starts threatening the people she cares about. But now it�s too late for Jamie to go offline � he�s already following her in real life.

Sujets

• Littérature Africaine
• Littérature Africaine
• Romance
• Romance LGBT
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Modjaji Books
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781928215073
• Langue: English

Extrait

NOW FOLLOWING YOU

Publication © Modjaji Books 2015
Text © Fiona Snyckers 2015
First published in 2015 by Modjaji Books Pty Ltd
[e-mail]
www.modjajibooks.co.za
ISBN 978-1-928215-06-6
Editor: Helen Moffett
Book design and layout: Monique Cleghorn & Liz Gowans
Cover artwork: Danielle Clough
Cover design: Danielle Clough & Liz Gowans
Author photograph: Jeanette Verster
Printed and bound by Mega Digital, Cape Town
Set in Palatino Linotype and Avenir Next Condensed
1
Jamie Burchell flexed her fingers, shifted in her seat, and forced herself to focus on the screen.
Part of her longed to jump up and make another cup of tea, check her Facebook page, let the cats in. To do anything, in short, that didn’t involve squeezing words out of the toothpaste tube of her mind and onto the screen. But it was already 9am and she needed to get this instalment posted.
Her eyes slid to the window. The jacaranda trees were starting to take on a faintly purple haze.
Then she frowned.
There was a toddler running around in the road. He seemed perfectly happy – stopping now and then to squat down and examine a tiny stone or whatever took his fancy. But the point was, he was right there in the middle of the road.
Jamie stood up and peered through the glass, sure she would spot whoever was looking after him. Toddlers didn’t go for walks all by themselves, not even in this quiet suburb.
A car drove past, close enough for the rush of air to knock the little boy onto his well-padded bottom.
“What…?”
Grabbing the remote for her gate, Jamie slipped on her shoes and rushed out of the house.
“Hey, little guy.” She crossed the road and scooped the toddler into her arms. “Hey, buddy. What are you doing out here all on your own?” Her eyes swivelled, looking for an adult who might be in charge of him.
There was no one around. Normally at this time of day, there were gardeners mowing lawns and domestic workers taking their breakfast breaks. Today the street was deserted.
“Where do you live, buddy? Huh? Where’s home?” A slight panic fluttered in her as she realised the child was probably too young to answer any of these questions. Jamie was no expert, but he seemed barely to be at the “mama” and “dada” stage. The chances that he was going to start reciting his name, address, and mother’s cellphone number seemed remote.
She tried pointing in different directions and saying, “Where’s mama? Where’s mama?” but he just grinned and bounced in her arms and pointed at whatever she was pointing at.
“Oh, dear.”
Jamie pulled herself together. Toddlers didn’t appear out of thin air. He must have come from one of the houses along the street. She shifted him onto her hip and walked up and down, looking for an open gate or a door left ajar. There was nothing. Every house was shut up tight.
“What am I going to do with you, little guy?”
He looked up as she spoke. She stared down into his chocolate-drop eyes and her heart stumbled in her chest.
“Dooce,” he said, as though he’d been considering her question. “Dzooce.”
It took her a moment.
“Juice?” she ventured. “You want some juice?”
From the way his legs kicked against her and the gummy smile that broke out across his face, it seemed she’d translated correctly.
“Well, I can’t leave you out here on your own…”
Feeling like a baby-snatcher, Jamie took one last look around and pressed the remote to open her gate.
“Okay, bud. Let’s go inside and get you some juice.”
She took him into her house and sat him down on one of her kitchen chairs. He promptly lurched sideways. She leapt forward and caught him approximately one second before his head connected with the tiled floor.
“Oh, my goodness! No, don’t cry. Don’t cry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t his near-miss with the kitchen floor that was making him wail, she realised, but the distress in her voice. So she held him close and did a little jiggly dance around the room, talking soothingly to him all the while.
“Okay, no more chairs for you, big guy.” She put him down on the floor once he’d stopped crying. Sweating a little, she turned to the fridge to get out some juice. She’d poured almost a full glass when the image of those blindingly white little teeth came into her mind. Along with the thought that it might not be the best idea to bathe them in the concentrated sugar of fruit juice.
So she poured two-thirds of the juice out and filled the rest up with water. Feeling grown up and responsible, she handed him the glass.
“There,” she said. “What do you say to that, sweetie?”
He snatched the glass from her hands, and promptly upended it all over his face and shirt. As the icy-cold liquid hit his skin he started to wail again, flinging the glass onto the floor, where it smashed into pieces.
“Fuck. Oh, fuck! The glass. You’ll cut yourself.”
She lifted him up in her arms and awkwardly set about cleaning up, wielding a mop one-handed. She hadn’t realised parents needed to be ambidextrous. Only once every single shard had been cleared away did she wipe him and set him down again.
“You need a dry T-shirt, sweetie, but that’ll have to do for now. Now let’s try the juice thing again.”
This time she filled a glass and held it to his lips so he could sip from it safely. He almost drained the glass. “You were really thirsty, weren’t you, darling? Now let’s put you down on this lovely soft carpet where you can’t hurt yourself.”
“Psss!” he said. “Psss, psss!”
“What’s a psss?”
He toddled over to the window to look out into the garden.
“Oh, you’re talking about the pussycat, aren’t you? Yes, that’s Watson. He’s my pussycat and he just loves to tease the neighbour’s dog.”
They watched together as Watson picked his way along the branch of a tree that hung over Jamie’s wall and stretched into her neighbour’s property. The golden retriever next door went hysterical with fury at the sight of his enemy sitting just out of reach. Radiating smugness, Watson stropped his claws on the branch, then settled down to eyeball the furious dog.
Jamie giggled. “He always does that. It drives the poor doggie crazy.”
“Doddie,” said her new friend. “Pore doddie.”
“Yes, poor doggie.” She hugged him in delight. “And aren’t you just the cleverest little boy in the whole wide world?”
He stretched out his arms longingly to the cat. “Psss!”
“You want to go and cuddle the kitty? Of course you do. I bet he’ll love you. And maybe my other kitty will come along and say hello, too. His name is Holmes and he’s also super cuddly.”
She took his hand and led him towards the patio door. They had hardly gone two steps when the bell at her front gate rang.
“Now, who can that be?”
It rang again. And again, and again. Then the person leaned their thumb on the button so that the bell rang in one long, demented peal.
“Why do people have to be so impatient? Okay, okay, I’m coming. Jeez!”
Jamie peeped out the kitchen window. There was a man standing at her gate. He was hopping from foot to foot and grimacing. As she watched, he took his thumb off her doorbell and shook her gate with both hands. Then he turned back to the bell again. His brown hair was standing up in tufts all over his head.
He looked … unbalanced, Jamie decided.
“I think you’d better stay in here, angel.” She put the boy back down on the carpet and handed him a plastic spatula to play with. “I’ll go and see what the crazy man wants.”
She went out into her driveway, and the noise switched off like magic.
“Oh, thank God!” the man said when he saw her. “I’m looking for my son. Have you seen him? He’s eighteen months old and he’s wearing blue jeans and a red shirt. And … and trainers. Have you seen him?”
“Your son?” Jamie asked, puzzled.
“Yes! My son. He might have been on the sidewalk, or even…” He broke off to scrub his hands over his face. “Or even in the road. Have you seen him? His name is Ben.”
She was opening her mouth to answer him when he suddenly lost it.
“BEN!” he yelled, so loudly that Jamie jumped. “Ben! Oh my God!”
Jamie whirled around to see that her little friend had toddled out of the door behind her, and was now standing and grinning at the man.
“You found him! Oh thank God!”
Jamie would have been the first to admit that she wasn’t doing a superb job of looking after the little boy, but even she knew better than to hand him over to the first random stranger who came to claim him.
“I’m sorry, but I have to be careful. How do I know he’s your son?”
“Yes, yes,” the man said. “I’m white and he’s black. I know that. Big deal. But I can assure you he’s still my son. I adopted him at birth. He’s mine and I’d like him back. Look,” he added when she hesitated. “Ask him who