I Am Watching You

The call the DI received was about the stand-off in Spain. Police officers accompany Henry back to the Ballard house. At the house, Tim and Paul are over, glued to the TV along with Jenny and Barbara. Cathy, the family liaison officer, is over as well. Cathy dislikes the live coverage and the airing of interviews with locals, fearing it is making people assume that the blond woman with Karl is Anna. Barbara begins to weep, sure that Karl has Anna and might kill her. Henry admits that he should feel relief at the prospect of his daughter being alive, but he feels a sense of dismay as he is being forced to relive the nightmare of her being imperiled once again.

Annoyed by Tim and Paul’s presence in the house, Henry asks Tim to leave. He accuses the boys of ditching Anna and Sarah, which made them vulnerable to Karl and Antony. Jenny asks Tim to stay back, but Tim says he agrees with Henry and that he should have been with Anna and Sarah.

Sarah watches the news. She tells Lily that Anna’s disappearance was her fault but does not elaborate further. Privately, she reflects that she had wanted Karl and Antony’s attention so badly on the train that she had sex with Antony in the toilet. She had been happy Tim and Paul had bailed on the young women, as their presence would have kept the exciting young men away.

Matthew and Sally are busy with baby Amelie when the TV shows the hostage crisis in Spain. Sally recalls that after Matthew left the force, he wanted to do a psychology course in crisis negotiation. Since Matthew has always been interested in the field, Sally wants to know how he would approach Karl in the current situation. Matthew says the current wisdom is to avoid intervention and instead focus on calmly talking to the hostage-taker. The focus of the conversation should be on the hostage-taker, and never the hostage. Sally wants to discuss the case more, but Matthew feels uncomfortable. Now that he is a father, he has different priorities.

Ella cannot figure out if Luke is lying to her about having lost his magnifying glass. Her mind drifts to the Ten Tors challenge. Ella was skeptical about letting Luke participate in the two-day hike, with children walking in groups of six with no adult supervision across 35 miles of dangerous terrain. However, Luke was keen to take part. The only relief was that the army runs the trek, with checkpoints at each of the 10 tors, or peaks, of the hike.

Tony comes home from work, and Ella tells him about the noises she has been hearing at the shop, as well as her hiring Matthew to contact Barbara Ballard. Tony hugs Ella and tells her maybe she should take a break from her business for a while. Luke apologizes to Ella for being too preoccupied with his own troubles; he plans to help her out by hiring someone to manage the shop.

Henry watches in horror as the TV shows a grainy image of Karl at a window, holding a gun to a blond woman’s head. He is flooded with the same panic he felt when Anna nearly died of pneumonia as a child. He had underestimated the threat to her then, and now seems to be reliving the nightmare. The TV anchor says that a European news agency has confirmed the man is Karl, though it is yet unclear if the woman is Anna Ballard. Barbara is convinced the woman is Anna and cries that she should be in Spain. Tim volunteers to go to Spain with Jenny. Meanwhile, Cathy gets a phone call.

The watcher hates that everyone is looking at her now. Watching her is his job alone. When others turn their attention to her, a noise grows in his head, making it impossible for him to focus. The noise is getting louder. The watcher wants to make the others stop looking.

Ever since Amelie’s birth, Matthew has increasingly been thinking of the reason he left the police force. A shopkeeper had reported a case of shoplifting, and Matthew had headed over to the store. The thief, a child, sped off when he spotted Matthew. Matthew had not planned to arrest the boy but just to give him a warning. Panicking, the boy jumped a fence and ran across the railway tracks. The line was live (electrified) and he burned to death. Matthew was badly burned while removing the boy’s body from the tracks. Though everyone told Matthew the death was not his fault, Matthew left police work for good.

Though Matthew is no longer in the police, he still wants to help people the best he can. As Matthew watches the TV, he has a bad feeling about Anna. He does not believe the woman in the picture is her at all. He calls up Melanie and tells him that the woman in the picture on the TV has a rectangular body shape, whereas Anna had a pear-shaped body. This suggests to him the woman is not Anna. Melanie is skeptical if the police will believe the body-shape business, but Matthew convinces her to give Cathy a call.

Lily quizzes Sarah again about why she blames herself for Anna’s disappearance. Exhausted of speaking half-truths, Sarah unburdens herself to Lily. Sarah and Anna had gone to the club for a double date with Antony and Karl. However, soon the men were off flirting with other girls. Sarah felt awful that Antony ditched her despite their encounter on the train. Anna had wanted to leave after midnight, but Sarah wanted to stay back, hoping Antony would notice her again. The girls rowed and Anna told her she did not feel safe at the club. This is when she suggested contacting Sarah’s dad to take them home. Sarah refused, and Anna walked away. Later, when Sarah could not find Anna, she took a taxi back to their hotel, assuming Anna had done the same. It was when Sarah did not find Anna at the hotel that she panicked and called the police. She did not report her dad’s text or anything about Antony and Karl because she was scared.

Henry asks Tim to leave as things at the Ballard house are getting overwhelming. Barbara, sobbing as she watches the TV, might need to be sedated. After Tim leaves, Cathy calls Henry aside. She has just heard from Melanie and wants Henry to study a close-up of the picture of Karl with the gun to the blond woman’s head. The picture is too grainy to capture the woman’s features, but Cathy wants Henry to pay special attention to the shape of the woman’s body. Although Henry feels traumatized, he cooperates with Cathy. Henry notices the shoulder-to-hip ratio of the woman in the picture and calls Jenny to see it too; the Ballards realize the woman is not Anna.

Matthew visits Ella to update her about the case. Ella tells Matthew that recently she has had the feeling that someone is watching her at her shop, making her feel jumpy. Matthew promises to look into the matter. Meanwhile, he hears from Cathy via Melanie and informs Ella that the woman in the picture may not be Anna at all.