The terrifying stalker has solid a shadow over my life for 40 years

An isolated house on a wooded lane behind an abandoned airfield. A knock on the door late at night – and yet an empty doorstep. Later, a man’s face in a balaclava pressed up against the window.

It sounds like something out of a horror movie, but for my mother, my brother and I, these were no schlocky movie tropes. This was real life. And the consequences have stayed with me for almost 40 years.

It was the mid-1980s and my mum and dad had split up. I was a baby and my brother was four, and we lived in one of six properties spread along a single, winding road, not far from a motorway.

By day our home was picturesque, with pink roses growing up the wall and a long garden leading into the woods. When winter came, Mum would take us walking through the woods collecting kindling for the fire. Sometimes my brother would ride his bike on the vast open expanse of the forgotten landing strip.

There was nothing to fear here, it seemed. But by night the lane was very different. There were no streetlights, and other than the low hum of traffic from the motorway, it was very quiet.

It was a dead end, no passing cars, no pavement. Further into the woods, a couple of hundred yards away, was a rest-stop cafe for lorry drivers, but it was closed at night.

And then the door knocking started. The first time it happened, late at night, my brother and I asleep, Mum assumed it was a neighbour, perhaps needing help. But when she opened the door, there was no one there.

A few nights later, another knock on the door. Mum took a deep breath and opened it. Again, no one.

She stepped out into the small front garden, flashing the torch she always left by the door. Nothing. She didn’t hear a car start. She didn’t see anyone.

Next came the phone calls. When she picked up there was silence at the other end, bar the sound of breathing.

She’d say nothing and hang up, until one time the fear became anger: ‘Just f*** off!!!’, my brother can remember her screaming into the handset before slamming it down. She called the police, but they didn’t seem interested.

Since then I’ve spent long hours trying to imagine the terror she must have felt next, or rather trying not to imagine it, but failing. For one night, Mum saw a face in a balaclava pressed up against the living-room window, framed by the blackness of the night outside.

She called the police immediately, but by the time they arrived the man was gone.

They asked her if she recognised the eyes staring at her, but she didn’t – it was too dark.

Soon after, my uncle, a quiet and gentle man, bravely spent a night in the garden armed with a baseball bat. The prowler laid low for a while – but sure enough, he came back.

For three years, Mum’s stalker plagued us off and on. He never appeared in a balaclava again, but he would make his presence known for a few months with the silent phone calls and door knocking before briefly disappearing and then reappearing again.

Presumably the intervals were another method of intimidation, designed to keep Mum in a state of perpetual fear, wondering when he was coming back.

Of course she was frightened, but she didn’t show it – or at least never in public.

She didn’t move out. No one came to stay. Instead she remained in the house with her two small children. She contacted the police on a number of occasions, but no one was ever arrested or charged.

When my parents’ divorce was eventually settled, nearly four years later, she had to sell up. We moved to a village, and the stalker never appeared or rang again.

To this day, Mum, now 72, has no idea who it was.

I was only little at the time, but the experience seemed to burn itself into my subconscious. Even though I have no first-hand memory of what happened at our home in the woods, it became family folklore, imprinted on my imagination and dictating how I have behaved my whole life.

As an older child I’d go to sleep with my mouth wide open, ready to scream in case there was a man at the window. And events seemed to reinforce the idea that strange men were lurking nearby, ready to pounce.

During the summer holidays, the daycare programme I attended in London while Mum was working, wouldn’t allow us to wear our name tags when we visited the park in case, they said, ‘someone tried to take us away’.

As a teenager I lived near Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, where 13-year-old Milly Dowler was abducted and murdered in 2002. Meanwhile, our school periodically released warnings about a blue van circling the buildings and not to accept a lift.

But well into adulthood, Mum’s stalker cast a long shadow.

As a young woman, I knew I was more fearful of coming home late at night on my own than my friends seemed to be. I was more mistrusting of men at parties or friends’ new boyfriends, and I was always searching the news for stories that confirmed my worst fears. On dates, I’d meet them in busy places, telling a friend in case I went missing.

Men were a threat, and often an invisible one. Was I being irrational, or just more attuned to something happening out of sight?

Working as a journalist in women’s magazines, I had access to the latest statistics, and I only had to look at them to know I wasn’t being totally paranoid.

One in five women in the UK will be victims of stalking at some point in their adult life, but only one per cent of cases recorded by the police result in conviction. The vast majority of victims of stalking are women (80.4 per cent), and most perpetrators are men (70.5 per cent).

What happened to my mum is happening to thousands of women every day – including high-profile ones such as Holly Willoughby, Taylor Swift, Emily Maitlis and Lily Allen, who was in her home with her two children when her stalker broke in.

Of course, that’s not to say it doesn’t happen to men, and recently, in an interview, Detective Chief Superintendent Emma Banks, Head of Protecting Vulnerable People at Kent Police, said they are grateful to the Netflix show Baby Reindeer for highlighting the issue of male victims of stalking.

In 2022, I gave birth to my son, and in the time since I’ve thought about the stalking in new ways.

How did Mum cope with the exhaustion of a toddler and a baby, alongside such fear?

I realise now, in a way I hadn’t previously, that she must have been worried for our safety more than hers. I’m more impressed than ever that she didn’t leave. But I’m also more angry than ever that he was never caught.

Why didn’t the police do more to help a single mother with two small children?

Where is he now?

Is he still alive?

Did we know him?

These are questions I’ll never have the answers to, and because of that it’s easy to believe he’s still out there somewhere, watching, maybe even in plain sight.

My partner goes away for work a lot. I still feel a knot in my stomach when I lock up the house.

I catch myself expecting to see the outline of a figure in the garden. It’s no great surprise I have chosen to live in a city centre, surrounded by houses, streetlights and taxis driving past at all hours.

Some people might think I’m making a fuss about nothing – I wasn’t the primary victim, after all. But from a very early age I knew you could be followed or watched without your consent. That something sinister might be waiting for you. Just like a horror movie.