The townhouse I lived in had four bedrooms, and the landlord, Ross, rented out three of them while occupying the other. On the ground floor lived a quiet guy who was very nice. Ross certainly liked him. But out of the blue, he started disparaging him.
“He cooks too much and uses up too much electricity,” Ross claimed, even though this blatantly wasn’t true given that the tenant was at work during the day and only ever cooked when he got home in the evening. Still, Ross used that excuse to throw him out and move in a new guy.
From Day One, this new housemate made me feel very uncomfortable because he would constantly observe me. He said he worked from home, which obviously gives you the opportunity to just roll out of bed at 8.50am and still manage to be in front of your computer at nine o’clock. Yet whenever I was about to leave home at half past five in the morning and head to the TfL train depot in Acton, where I worked, he would already be up and join me in the kitchen as I was making myself a coffee before my departure. Likewise, when I got back in the afternoon, he would always be in the kitchen when I was making myself dinner.
Along with my morning coffee, I used to drink a little flaxseed oil before work to improve my cardiovascular and digestive health. The new guy would invariably be there in the kitchen watching me as I took the small bottle out of the fridge and then placed it back after having a sip. Yet then he suddenly stopped getting up so early, so I’d be alone in the kitchen again – and now my flaxseed oil tasted different. Plus, instead of making me feel better, I now got headaches and pain in my stomach after drinking it.
One morning when I took the bottle from the fridge, I realised that the lid wasn’t closed properly, even though I always made sure that it was. So, it became clear that this guy was putting something into my flaxseed oil while I was at work.
Not long afterwards, I was going to go on holiday with my daughter for a week.
I hadn’t mentioned this to Ross. But he then came to me and said he was going to shoot “a small movie” on exactly those dates when I would be away.
“Would you mind if I use your room to do that?” he asked.
I was totally taken aback. For one, in all the time I’d lived with Ross, he’d never once mentioned that he made movies. But even so, what kind of landlord asks his tenant to borrow his rooms to film something of an unspecified nature? Plus, how did he find out that I was going to be away during that time?
It was all so unexpected that I didn’t know how to respond. So, I simply said: “OK.”
When I came back after my holiday, my room was in a very messy state. Someone had clearly gone through my wardrobe and my chest of drawers looking for something. What did they think I was hiding? Millions of pounds? Drugs? A dead body?
Then I started noticing an unusual smell that would enter my room from time to time. Whenever it was present, I would feel unwell and tired. Previously, my blood pressure had always been fine. But now, it went up and was often far too high.
One very rainy day, Ross came to me and asked: “Is there water coming into your room? Someone came to repair the roof but didn’t complete the job.”
Repairing the roof of a house is a time-consuming job requiring scaffolding – yet I had never seen any, nor any roofers. But obviously, Ross was concerned that there might be a leak in my room. And as I tried to piece things together, I realised that in my week-long absence, he and the new tenant must have drilled holes above my room to be able to fill it with toxic gases.
One night not long afterwards, I suddenly woke up and didn’t know where I was. My mouth was very dry, and I needed the toilet, but I couldn’t walk. Eventually, I managed to get up, but my legs were shaking, and I couldn’t stand while using the loo, so I had to sit down.
I checked my blood pressure, which was 240/130 – a life-threatening situation that could lead to a stroke or a heart attack. So, although I couldn’t talk properly at this point, I called an ambulance.
“It will take us a couple of hours to get to you,” they told me.
I couldn’t wait that long as I thought that I was going to die in the meantime. So, I decided to go to the hospital on my own.
It took me almost an hour to get ready and get there. Thankfully, I didn’t end up having a stroke, and by the time the doctors saw me, most of the poisonous stuff must have left my body, because my blood pressure had gone down to 180/95 – still much too high, but not immediately life-threatening.
I don’t know how I managed to survive this ordeal. I think my healthy lifestyle probably helped me. The doctors gave me some strong medication, but I knew that there was only one cure for me: I had to move out of that property. So, I did.
I rented a flat not too far away, on the second floor of a four-storey building. Upstairs from me there was a middle-aged couple, and the man acted like he was in charge of the building. He told me where to park and where to put my rubbish and so on. Yet after a couple of weeks, he suddenly disappeared – and then someone started drilling above my room.
In October, about a month after I’d moved in, they put up scaffolding right outside my flat to carry out renovations. Within four weeks, the work was finished – yet the scaffolding remained in place for another six months, until the following May.
What a waste of money considering how expensive scaffolding is. But it quickly became apparent that whoever was paying for it didn’t consider the expense a waste of money – because they were using this elevated position to spy on me.
Whenever I opened the window at night, I could hear a shooting sound, like an air rifle, and after that, I would suddenly feel disoriented and very wobbly. Were they shooting some sort of nerve gas into my room?
But why were these people targeting me? I haven’t done anything. And if somebody – the government or whoever is behind all this – thinks that I have, then why don’t they come out with it and confront me instead of launching a campaign to destroy my life?
Someone was wasting time and money to follow and damage me. Sadly, they were succeeding, because by now I felt totally tormented and broken. Yet worse was still to come.