“It’s a bit like Baby Reindeer. . .” Cambridge author Kate Rhodes shares the real-life story behind her newest thriller, The Stalker
“Before I was stalked, I thought you had to be a public figure, a celebrity or very beautiful to be a victim of stalking. But you don’t have to be any of those things: an ordinary person just going about their business can get targeted by someone with a fixation.
“I met my stalker on the day I started my first university job: I was on an induction as a new lecturer and he was on an induction as a new student. Everyone was queuing for coffee and he just came over and started chatting. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw that he’d signed up for every one of my classes – I thought that was really weird.
“And then he was just always there: outside my office, in the corridor, beside my car. At some point he must have followed me home. I lived above a shop and had to get to my flat via a fire escape. One day there he was, standing outside my flat at the top of the fire escape. There was no other way into – or out of – my flat.
“At that point, I tried to get the police involved and they were worse than useless. This is the best part of 30 years ago, but I’m not convinced things have improved that much. While researching, I asked the police what they’d do about early-stage stalking now and they were a bit flummoxed. The message was that there needs to be some actual harm done before they can do anything. Okay, but upwards of a dozen women get killed by their stalker in the UK [annually]; that’s a dozen too many.
“The police went to see him once. He said we were a couple and now she’s rejecting me. . . told a complete tissue of lies. The only thing it did was make him even more angry. His increasing anger scared me; I could feel that something really bad was going to happen.
“It’s going to sound really cowardly, what I chose to do in the end. I got to hear about a job coming up in Ipswich and, knowing that my stalker had caring responsibility for his elderly mum, I took a gamble that his need [to look after her] would prove stronger than his need to stalk me – a gamble that paid off.
“It’s a funny thing, stalking. It’s a bit like Baby Reindeer: you hate your stalker, but you also feel sorry for them; you feel some pity. I could see that he was tremendously lonely. This fixation was because of all the other wants in his life, really.
“It’s going to sound crazy because it’s an utterly different thing that happened to Holly Willoughby, but I saw her on TV talking about the incredibly painful and relentless campaign of stalking that she endured and I thought ‘I’ve got unfinished business’. You take something painful in your life and you just put it aside. But I think it can fester away; it was quite cathartic to write the book.
“Part of what I wanted to do was a bit of consciousness-raising about stalking. Without giving any spoilers, although a minority of people get stalked by a stranger, very, very much more frequently, stalking victims are being stalked by somebody they know, whether it’s an ex-partner, an aggrieved colleague, a relative.
“I wanted it to be the case that Elly, my main character, is an expert in stalking: I wanted to explore the idea that you could have all the knowledge in the world and yet still be the victim of that very syndrome. I loved writing about her. I felt like I knew her very well: she’s an academic, I’m an academic; she has a son she adores, I have three stepsons I adore. Her complex childhood is not that dissimilar to mine, a couple of the events happened to me – like being sent to live with an aunt and uncle in the countryside when things got difficult at home. If you empathise with somebody, your readers will as well, I think, because there’s an authenticity there.
“I’m not a Cambridge native but it’s a city I really love; the architecture is so beautiful, it excites me every time I go into town even now. The only reason I’ve not set a book here before is because so many others do. . . But it’s a city that’s got room for lots of stories, isn’t it?”
Meet the author:
Kate Rhodes’ Ben Kitto books – a series of murder mysteries set on the Scilly Isles – have won critical acclaim, a fan following and a TV option. Now the Cambridge author is back with The Stalker, a standalone cat-and-mouse novel set in her adopted home city. Kate will talk about the book at St Botolph’s Church, Cambridge on November 21. The event – which also features Christina Koning, author of Murder at Bletchley Park – starts at 6.30pm. Places are free but must be booked by emailing [email protected]
About the book:
Elly is an expert in stalking – an academic at Cambridge University and a popular media pundit. She knows the subject intimately: what motivates a stalker, how they behave, how to rehabilitate them.
But now it’s personal. Someone is following her, making silent phone calls and sending her ominous notes. The message is always the same – me or you. . . The Stalker is out now in original paperback, published by Simon & Schuster and priced £9.99
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