by Nora Valters
Cleo pulls out a high stool from under one of the silver units and plonks it behind me. She nods to Rob, and they force me to sit.
“Tape her ankles to the stool,” Cleo instructs while holding my shoulders down so I can’t move.
I kick at him, but he’s learnt that lesson and comes at me from the side. He follows her orders, and my ankles are taped to the bottom of the stool so I can’t stand up. As he’s finishing up, Cleo is distracted by the knives and wanders dreamily over to them, running her fingertips along each, a look of awe on her face. While they’re not looking, I twist and yank at the duct tape around my wrists.
I feel a give in the tightness, some slack in the tape. I gasp – I can’t help it. My eyes scan between them. Neither seems to have noticed.
Cleo selects a knife and grabs it off the magnetic wall rack, admiring the light glinting off the polished blade. She turns back to me and beckons to Rob. He goes obediently to her side.
She holds up the knife and points it at me. “I’ve waited six weeks for this moment, and by god, I’m going to savour it.”
She takes a step towards me and then edges behind. She grabs my hair to expose my throat. I struggle, attempting to hit her with my arms, which are behind my back, and jerk my body. I try to scream, but the tape over my mouth holds it behind my lips, and it comes out as a high-pitched whine.
Cleo wrenches my hair, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the knife flash past.
“Cleo,” Rob shouts and breaks her concentration.
Her clasp on my hair loosens. “What?” she says impatiently.
He dips his head and looks up at her through his eyelashes like a naughty child that knows they’ve done something wrong.
“Do you… do you really love me?”
“Of course, my darling. With all my heart.”
I mmmm through the tape and shake my head.
“And you’re not just using me?”
Cleo tugs my hair to quieten me. “Don’t listen to this bitch. She’s toxic. She lies. I’ve told you this.”
Rob chews his lip.
She continues, “We’re destined for each other. Can’t you feel it? Everything between us is so real.”
I continue to make as much noise as I can. I try to yell, Wake up, Rob! Wake up! But it comes out as incoherent mumbles.
He glances at me. He’s heard me! He understands. But then his face melts into bliss. “I think it’s real. That passion between us can’t be made up, can it?”
“No.” She blows him a kiss, and he blushes. “Now, shut up so I can finish the job.”
But Rob fidgets and wrings his hands, clearly still agitated. “Umm…” Rob gulps as Cleo tsks but ploughs on. “It’s just…” He gestures vaguely at Cleo holding the knife to my neck. “I don’t think I can go through with it. I don’t want to murder anyone.”
“You won’t do the actual murder, honey. I’ll slit her throat, and you can catch the blood in that bucket there. Then you can tell me how to carve up her body if you don’t want to do it. Then we’ll feed her to the piggies. We’ve gone through all this.”
Tears and snot stream down my face, and I mmmm through the tape, attempting to yell ‘Rob, help me!’
Cleo jerks my head again, but I continue, louder.
Rob glances at me and back to Cleo. “I think we’ve scared her enough.”
Although I can’t see Cleo, I sense her entire body stiffening behind me. I nod desperately at Rob and plead with my eyes: let me go, let me go, let me go.
Rob raises his chin and stands up straighter. He takes a step towards Cleo. “If you love me, you’ll let her go.”
31
Cleo moves closer to Rob, and I see her face. All the warmth drains from it, and she turns as cold as ice, her stare carving shards off Rob’s resolve.
It’s obvious he’s interrupting her meticulously designed plan, and it’s obvious she’s about to lose her temper. Rob wavers in the face of her simmering fury, but glances at me and doesn’t back down. She erupts.
“Of course I don’t fucking love you, IT freak!” Cleo spits in Rob’s face.
He recoils as if stung. He clutches his chest, and the expression on his face indicates his heart is breaking. I can almost pinpoint the exact moment it shatters.
He looks at his feet as tears well and fall from his eyes, his shoulders slump, and his arms hang limply by his sides.
Dejected, he sniffs and mutters, “You were my first girlfriend. I did everything you asked of me. Everything… I thought I pleased you. I thought we were going to get married. Start a family. You said we’d be together forever.”
Cleo’s knife lowers as her attention turns to Rob. I desperately continue to loosen my hand bindings. The sticky side of the duct tape has rolled up, and I pull my hands apart with all my strength, stretching it a little further.
“You gullible fool,” Cleo says viciously.
“So you were using me?” Rob asks, still unbelieving.
“Duh. I needed you to get close to her.” She uses the tip of the knife to point at me.
As she indicates me, I stop wrestling with my bindings. I don’t want her to see that they’ve loosened.
Rob stares at me, and I ‘mmmm’ again through the duct tape and lock eyes with him, appealing to him to help me.
But he looks at Cleo and sobs, wiping away tears with his sleeve.
“Go and get that bucket,” Cleo orders.
Rob doesn’t move. Slowly, defiantly, he shakes his head. “No.”
“You’re so bloody stupid. You have to help me finish this whether you want to or not. You’re implicated in this whole thing. What do you think, we let her go, I go to jail, and your life goes back to normal? No fucking way. You’re my accomplice, Rob. If I go down, you go down.”
All Rob’s emotions play out on his face: shock, confusion. He flicks his gaze from me to Cleo, me to Cleo, conflicted. And then his face settles into… realisation. He gawps at Cleo.
I shake my body, scream a muffled noise at the top of my lungs, and attempt to bang the stool legs against the floor. Anything to get Rob’s attention back on me.
But I’ve lost him.
He steps back and picks up the bucket.
“Good boy,” Cleo says as if praising a dog. “Now bring it here and get ready.”
I yell his name from behind the tape, but it’s no use. He moves nearer to me and holds the bucket close to my torso. A terrified growl rumbles from deep in my throat. This cannot be my end. I struggle frantically, but Cleo keeps a firm hold on my hair, holding my head in place.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” she says and swipes the knife.
I clench my eyes shut as the edge of the blade makes contact with my neck. I shriek in pain as blood trickles to seep into the collar of my jumper.
But the knife doesn’t slice. There’s a pause. I dare to open my eyes.
In front of my face, the blade hovers just millimetres from my neck. Rob clutches Cleo’s forearm, stopping her from drawing the knife across my throat. Her arm shakes as she uses all her strength against him. His arm also shakes.
He shouts, “I can’t let you do this!” and whacks the bucket across Cleo’s head, then shoves her away from me.
Behind me I hear a thump and assume that Cleo has fallen to the floor. Rob remains standing by my side, staring at Cleo, breathing as if he’s about to have an asthma attack.
I crane my neck to try to see what’s happening but can only see Cleo’s foot.
A noise emanates from Cleo. As it grows, I realise that she’s whimpering.
It turns into a full-blown wail, and Rob extends his hand to help Cleo up. She stands, and I can just about see her.
Fat tears stream down her cheeks, and she hangs her head. “Oh god, what have I done?” Over and over she repeats, “What have I done?”
“It’s okay, Cleo. We’ll sort this all out,” Rob says sympathetically.
“I’ve been so stupid,” Cleo mumbles. “I can’t believe I let i
t get this far. I can’t believe I persuaded you to help me. Oh god.”
“Murder is wrong,” Rob says.
“I know. Of course I know. I don’t understand what got into me. Oh god.” Cleo’s shoulders heave, and her entire body shakes with her wails.
Is this for real? Please tell me it’s for real. But my gut klaxons in my mind: those tears aren’t genuine. Oh, god, no. No! I attempt to warn Rob, but he’s transfixed by Cleo’s fake remorse.
He shifts awkwardly, not knowing what to do next. Then he opens his arms to Cleo. She sniffles and falls into them, and he hugs her tightly, patting her back in comfort.
I see a flash, and Cleo stabs the knife into Rob’s side. His breath hitches just as her crying ceases.
Rob’s eyes go wide as he releases his arms and looks at the knife in his side, the handle still clasped by Cleo.
Cleo glares at him and then grins as she twists the handle in his body. “I guess I’ll have to stage it so Lauren kills you first, then her fiancé and then commits suicide. A right murder spree.”
Rob swings a fast punch at Cleo. Surprise registers on her face as she only just ducks out of the way. She pulls out the knife and attempts to stab him again, but he grabs her wrist and lunges forward into her. They topple behind me.
I hear the fight – the grunts, the yelps, and heavy breathing. I wrench apart my wrists with a huge effort, and the tape stretches enough for me to twist out one wrist.
My hands come free. I lean forward off the stool to grab the meat cleaver from the rack. I hold my left leg as far away from the stool leg as possible and saw through the tape with the meat cleaver. My ankle pops away. I do the same with the right leg.
I move to stand, but my hair is viciously tugged back. The jerk makes me drop the meat cleaver.
“Where do you think you’re going, bitch?” Cleo hisses in my ear.
The meat cleaver skids across the floor to a stop by Rob’s ankle. He’s face first on the floor, not moving. Blood pools out on the concrete around him. His head is turned away from me.
She’s killed him. And I’m next.
I fight back with everything I have, twisting my body round to face Cleo, punching and kicking at her. She drops my hair and slices at me with the knife. I attempt to dodge the slashes, but she’s fast and stabs me in the front of my shoulder.
My legs give way as pain shoots through me, and blood sprays out. I slump to the floor like a rag doll.
Cleo straddles me and attempts to grab the knife, which is still wedged in my body.
Rob’s voice startles us both. He’s shouting out his address, screaming for help, for police, that there’s been a stabbing.
Cleo whirls on him.
Clutched to his ear in a blood-slick hand is his mobile phone.
She stamps on his hand and the phone. There’s a sickening crunch, of his bones or the phone screen – I can’t tell.
“You called 999? You fucking moron,” Cleo screams.
She sees the meat cleaver by his foot and grabs it. She positions herself over his body and raises the cleaver to slice his head in two. With my last shred of energy, I stand and grab the big wooden chopping block off the top of a silver unit. And, ignoring the pain that explodes in my shoulder, I dive towards Cleo.
I smash the board into the side of her head as she slices down with the cleaver.
It knocks her off balance, and the knife flies from her hand, clattering on the floor inches from Rob’s ear.
She trips on the tipped-over stool and smacks her forehead on the side of a metal unit. She drops to the concrete with a yelp. I stare at her for a long time, but she’s silent and unmoving.
I collapse to the ground, dizzy from the blood loss. The pain in my shoulder is unbearable. I edge closer to Rob. I put my hand on his back and feel it rising and falling. He’s barely conscious.
Akshay. I have to find him. I have to be with him. I crawl towards the door on my one good arm, clutching the other to me, careful not to knock the handle of the blade that sticks out of my shoulder. But as I inch closer, all my strength trickles away. I make one final attempt to move, but it’s no good; my head drops to the floor.
The last thing my fuzzy brain registers is the sound of sirens.
32
Six months later.
Akshay kisses my cheek as he heads off to work in his cycling gear. He bikes into work now we’ve moved to Bristol. He’s fully recovered from the vicious whack across the head from Cleo that left him unconscious. The police had arrived and found three barely conscious adults in an outbuilding and then, on a wider search of the property, discovered him. He’d woken up in hospital with no recollection of being tied up and locked in a pigpen.
I wave him off from the front door and then return to the sofa. I’m working from home today and am still in my pyjamas and have no immediate plans to change out of them.
I love my new job as the head of communications at a small cyberstalking charity. My boss is brilliant; there’s a healthy work-life balance and a relaxed, friendly work environment – none of the stress or greed of MBW, the frowns if you – heaven forbid – actually left on time, or the culture of working yourself to the bone to line the agency’s pockets.
No, I’ve left that well behind, as well as Manchester. I had my priorities all wrong. Work isn’t everything. Akshay and I are trying for a baby now, even though the wedding is only two months away. I don’t want to put it off any longer. The wedding will be spectacular – a wonderful mash-up of Christian and Hindu religions and traditions.
I was sad to leave our Chorlton house, but with the address having been shared widely online, I no longer felt safe there. Plus, the whole sordid tale was heavily reported in the media, and I became a minor celebrity. Especially since I used my skills to PR myself and put the record straight in numerous national newspaper, radio, and even local television interviews. The most hated woman in the world became the most interesting woman in the world for a little while.
Rob and Cleo are both behind bars, awaiting trial. Cleo is likely to get twenty years for three attempted murders – mine, Rob’s and Akshay’s – as well as numerous other charges, including arson. Rob will likely get a few years for his part in all of it. I supported his statement that he did all he could to save me, and he willingly agreed to testify against Cleo.
Naturally, it all came out about Cleo’s history, with the media digging into her background. Clementine Flickinger, that posh name that I didn’t think quite matched her, turned out to be false.
Chantelle Kershaw had a difficult background, growing up with an alcoholic mother, no father, and a string of her mother’s abusive, often drunk or drug addict boyfriends in one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Manchester.
That nick out of her ear and ugly scarring came about when one of her mother’s boyfriends beat Cleo, or Chantelle, senseless at fourteen and slashed her ear with a knife because she was starving and had asked for something to eat. Her mother hadn’t believed that he’d done it and had refused to take Chantelle to hospital to get it stitched. Instead, they’d held her down and cauterised it with the same knife that had been used to slice it, heating the blade over a gas hob first.
Chantelle had developed anorexia after that and left home at sixteen, moving in with a much older man who worked as a mechanic. She left him at eighteen and went to university to do a PR degree, changing her name to Clementine Flickinger when she graduated.
The most shocking revelation was that the man who had slashed her ear died a little under a year later of an overdose in Chantelle and her mother’s lounge. But there’d also been a small fire, thought to have been started by his lit cigarette, which had torched most of his body and the sofa he sat on. It was hinted that Chantelle might’ve had something to do with it, but never proven.
Either way, her traumatic childhood had scarred her, and she had worked tirelessly to move up the social class ladder from poverty to wealth by studying hard, pursuing rich men, and getting well-paid jobs i
n PR.
But when all her hard work started to crumble, she snapped, blamed me, and became obsessed with taking revenge.
Her ex-fiancé was quoted as saying: ‘At first she was fun, charming, the life and soul of the party. But after I’d spent more time with her, I realised there was no depth. She was completely emotionally unavailable. I thought this was because she was having an affair. I’ve since learnt it was because she was manipulative, deceitful, and cold. She didn’t know how to offer emotional support to others because she’d never had any emotional support growing up.’
According to the detective who managed the case, and who stays in close contact with me, Cleo/Chantelle has since been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and is receiving treatment.
The detective told me that Rob hadn’t had an easy time of it, either. He was orphaned at nineteen when his parents died in a horrific accident at the farm involving a tractor. Rob had found their bodies. As an only child, he inherited the farm. His relatives pressured him not to sell, as it had been in their family for generations. So he hired others to run it at the same time as pursuing his IT studies and subsequent career. A lot of burden to have been put on a young man’s shoulders.
I turn on my work laptop. It’s a bit old and creaky, the newest machine they had at the charity, but I don’t mind. As it loads, I tap out a quick WhatsApp message on my new phone to Kemi to say I’m looking forward to seeing her later for some Friday drinks and a gossip.
Tomorrow, Dad, Diane, Toby, and his new boyfriend are coming down from Manchester to stay with us overnight. Akshay has booked the six of us into the best Thai restaurant in town – according to Kemi’s wife – and we’re all excited to catch up.
While the laptop slowly whirs to life, I touch the almost healed wound on my shoulder. It’ll leave a big scar, a reminder of that brutal night. I google for the umpteenth time the name of the honeymoon hotel that we’ve booked for two weeks and scroll through image after image of pristine white sandy beaches and glistening crystal-clear sea. After all the drama, I can’t wait for a holiday.