by Mark Ayre
“Your BMW is across the road,” she said, then shushed her daughter. “The guy who lives over there. Paul Heyman. I don’t know much about him.”
“Is he a car thief?” Will said. He aimed for humour but missed by a mile.
Kayla shushed her daughter again. When she spoke, there was such sympathy in her voice he at first thought she must be talking to Xyla. Then he processed the words.
“It’s probably nothing,” she said. “But I saw Paul come home earlier with a woman. It looked like they were on a date.”
“Kayla—” he said, but she cut him off.
“I think it was your wife.”
Three
Even if possession has killed your mother and lover, and only their bodies remain, murdering them inspires all-consuming guilt and grief. Each contends for prime position within your heart, and their titanic battle leaves room for no other emotions to flourish.
While this means no hope, humour or happiness, nor can fear develop or take off.
In a strange place in the dead of night, surrounded by silence and uncertainty, Mercury threw off the duvet and climbed from the alien bed without hesitation.
Uncovered, Mercury exposed her attire. Skimpy red underwear and a tight black top, a white flower printed across the chest. Neither item did she remembering purchasing, though each were her size. Besides these strips of fabric, she was naked.
Decorated by minimalists, the room contained only the bed, one wardrobe and one chest of drawers. Perhaps because whoever had imprisoned her did not want her wearing anything they had not sanctioned; the furniture was empty.
As there was no room for fear, nor was there for embarrassment.
Despite not knowing who she might run into, who might see her in such little and such provocative clothing, she grabbed her book and left the room.
Beyond her temporary sleeping chamber was a narrow corridor with white walls and a turquoise carpet. Off it were three doors other than the one through which she had so recently stepped. All were closed.
Leaving her door open, as though she might otherwise forget this room did not need searching, she stepped down the hall to the next door.
To her left were a set of stairs, leading to the floor below. Weak light crept up half the steps before dying. Given its strength, it must have been entering the downstairs hall from beneath a closed door. Probably into a living room. Leaning over the bannister, Mercury listened.
What might have been muttered conversation followed light up the stairs. From a distance, Mercury could discern neither words nor number of speakers.
Expecting the upper floor to be deserted, she nevertheless continued her excursion, opening the next door not with the slow hesitation of fear, but the quiet execution of caution.
A plain bathroom. Tub, toilet, sink. Above the lattermost was a white panelled medicine cabinet. Beneath it, an empty bin.
Neither curtain nor blind covered the window. Through frosted glass, Mercury could make out no landscape but could see it was night. The dead of night. On the windowsill, a pot held toothpaste and four toothbrushes: one red, one blue, one green, one Disney princess.
The latter she grabbed. It belonged to a little girl or modern boy.
In another bathroom, in her perfect bungalow, Dom had once snuck in while she was cleaning her teeth.
Her medicine cabinet was fronted not with wood, but a mirror, making his sneaking futile.
Unabashed by her spying of him, he had slipped his arms around her waist, kissed her neck, and whispered in her ear.
“We should make a baby.”
“Oh yeah?” she’d responded. “With Paper Mache or something? Maybe Lego?”
“We’d have to get Lego,” he’d said, dreamily. “For the baby.”
“Lego’s a choking hazard. No good for babies.”
“Good call. I knew you’d make a great mum.”
Unconcerned that she was halfway through the job at hand, cleaning her teeth, he tried to drag her from the room. Once he got an idea, it was not easy to deter him.
Often, for an easy life, Mercury would follow the path of least resistance and consent to his requests.
This was easier when his request involved her ruining her diet or surrendering the last glass of wine, rather than ruining her body and surrendering the next two decades of her life.
These fears she shared, keeping the far more fundamental terror, that she might treat her child as her mother had treated her, to herself.
When Mercury would not relent, Dom had pushed, not surrendering until they had reached a point of compromise.
One day.
As they had fallen into bed that night, as she had forced him to get protection, Mercury couldn’t be sure if she’d meant what she said.
One day.
Not an issue now.
The Disney Princess toothbrush became the blade with which she had murdered her boyfriend.
Startled, angry, she stepped back and almost tripped over the side of the bathtub.
The toothbrush fell with a quiet clatter to the floor.
Mercury left the room.
Outside, the same soft light from the floor below was chased up the stairs by mumbling voices, overtaken halfway. Words and speakers were still indiscernible.
Moving from the bathroom in which she had found the Disney Princess toothbrush and an unwanted memory, she reached the next bedroom, opened the door, and stepped inside.
This room belonged to the little girl or modern boy.
In one corner was a tiny single bed upon which lay a Disney Princess duvet and two dead bodies.
Four
Covered in blood and shame, Trey curled in a ball in the corner of his room.
When his door opened, he flinched, whimpered, but promised himself, this time he would not cry.
Then he heard the slosh of the bucket. The squeeze of the sponge. His door had not flung open, and it closed under a soft hand. Rather than slam, it shut with a whisper. Someone had taken the trouble to twist the handle and bring door to frame as though afraid of waking the room’s inhabitant.
One of the maids who worked for his father was pretty, with tied back red hair and freckled cheeks. Trey had noticed her upon his return. Vicious had noticed him noticing.
How much extra would it cost to have her come and sponge Trey, to humiliate him? Perhaps Vicious hadn’t used cash but his favourite method of persuasion—violence. Trey refused to look, ashamed and angry.
The bucket was rested by his feet. The sponge dipped and wrung. Why had he come home? Ah yes, he had nowhere else to go. For spending his whole life in the pursuit of impressing his family at the expense of all else, little though they deserved it, he hated himself.
His siblings were dead. Their father blamed Trey for their fates, Worse, he blamed Trey for the failure to return with the cure to his terminal illness.
For only so many days Harvey Michaels could cling to life. For each of them, Vicious would visit Trey, making the now siblingless man feel the full force of his father’s disappointment.
“Are you planning to lie in a ball all night? You’re getting blood on the carpet.”
Shocked, unable to believe to who the voice belonged, Trey looked up and saw his mother, sponge in hand.
As ever, she was beautiful. While Harvey’s illness had rapidly aged the crook, his ill-gotten gains had allowed for the opposite effect on his wife. Beth had always looked like their mum. By the time the daughter had left home for the final time, she and her mother might have been sisters.
It hurt Trey to look into that face he so recognised. He wanted to scream. Tell her he was sorry he’d screwed up.
Except he hadn’t. The ritual had succeeded. It was not Trey’s fault he alone had survived.
His mother said, “Sit up. Take off those clothes.”
Harvey Michaels had met Olivia Denver when he was 25 and she 18. With her beauty, he had fallen in lust. Shallow and lazy, Harvey’s money had appealed to Olivia.
; Before they got to know each other, they were married. Despite learning how far they were from compatible; Carl had followed a year later and Beth a year after that. Trey after another four.
Many hired hands had taken varying approaches to the children’s upbringing. Later, their father had taken an interest in Beth. Less so in Carl. None in Trey.
“You don’t have to,” Trey said to his mother, as he sat straight.
“You’re my son.”
To all three children, their mother had been more like the headmistress at an elite boarding school, brought in to punish naughtiness or commend success.
“Come on,” she said. “Clothes off. I don’t have all day.”
Except once, Trey had never been bad, nor in need of commendation. Sometimes, his mother felt more like a stranger than the staff.
Regardless, he did as she asked. As he had feared his siblings and father, he feared his mother. Driven by this fear, he removed his top and trousers. Pain accompanied every move. He tried not to flinch or cry out. Dispassionate, his mother watched.
He left his boxers, inspiring an eye roll.
“I’ve seen it before.”
Not since the day I was born, Trey wanted to say. A shy child that had turned into a shy man, he said nothing. A smart mouth had never been on his Christmas list, nor had he been born with one.
When it became clear he was not going to fully undress, Olivia rolled her eyes and moved in with the sponge.
The physical discomfort of the situation was matched only by the emotional. What would be worse, the arrival of Vicious, or the pretty redhead? Either would be mortifying.
He would rather have done the work himself, though it no doubt would have been more painful. Gutless as he was, he remained quiet.
While she worked, she spoke.
“You mustn’t be angry at your father,” she said. “You think he is fearless and loveless, but he is neither.”
Scorn must have shown on Trey’s otherwise pained expression. Olivia smiled.
“I was Harvey’s trophy. Nothing more. Your brother fascinated him. I don’t think he thought of you at all.”
Trey knew this. Regardless, he felt a whip of pain against his heart, the like of which Vicious’ beatings could never hope to match.
Well, maybe match. Never surpass.
“None of us could he love,” Trey’s oblivious mother went on. “Beth was another matter. His only daughter. Yes, I believe he loved her.”
Olivia drained the sponge and re-dipped in the blood-stained water. The futility of this was lost on her.
“He fears death.”
Trey nodded. Harvey had never shown a hint of fear. It would be easy to believe he was impervious to such a primary emotion.
Not stupid, whatever else he might be, Trey saw the truth behind the mask. No man went to the lengths Harvey had to stay alive if they did not fear death. If Olivia was right, his fear had been so intense, Harvey had risked the life of his beloved daughter to prevent his demise.
“You returned,” Olivia was saying, “with news that the ritual on which he had pinned his hopes achieved nothing beside the death of his son, and the daughter he loved. How did you expect him to react?”
Trey believed his mother’s justification of the abuse her youngest and now only son had endured said more about her than anything. Besides a hiss of pain, he remained silent.
“I’m proud of you, though.”
Shocked, Trey whipped around. The bruise on his neck protested. Instinct taking over, he sprung up his hand as though to capture the pain and tear it away. Instead, he made the problem worse.
“You might not have come home,” his mother went on. “Knowing what your father was apt to do, no one could have blamed you for disappearing, but you didn’t. You returned and took the beatings. For that, I’m glad.”
Again, Olivia drained the sponge. Somehow, she had tended to near all Trey’s wounds. One last time, she dipped. With her free hand, she gripped his knee.
“Your suffering is almost over.”
“Father tell you that?”
Raising her eyebrows, his mother, the beautiful Olivia Michaels (nee Denver) dapped at the final cut.
“Once I’m done here, you’ll need to get dressed. Put on something smart. Semi-smart, at the least. Then you’re to come to your father’s room, okay?”
“Why?”
His mother smiled. As she was not a smiler, this was a strange sight. A frightening thought flashed across his mind.
“You’re not going to kill him?”
Dumping the sponge in the bucket, Olivia laughed. Another rarity.
“I have no love for your father,” she admitted. “But he has been good to me, and I’m no killer.”
Rising, she collected the bucket, took it to the door, and put it in the hall outside. Turning back to her son, she managed a second smile.
“Besides, I don’t need to kill him,” she said. “When you came home, with your news, all hope left the building, as though this massive place could not accommodate both you and his need to live.”
Crossing the room, his mother completed the hattrick of things she never did, kissing him on the forehead.
“Something incredible is happening tonight, Trey,” she said.
Once more, she smiled. “At long last your father is giving up. I don’t need to kill him. He’s going to do the job himself.”
Five
“I’m worried about my wife. I don’t suppose you could come over, in case Edie wakes?”
On more than one occasion, Gina had proclaimed their greatest blessing was not financial security, health or happiness. Rather, their fortune in choosing the house next door to Yassin and Zainab Khan.
Two days after Gina and Will had moved in, the Khan’s had arrived with lasagne and offered to help in any way possible. They would have come sooner but didn’t want to interrupt any unpacking.
Burdened with a six-month-old daughter, Will and Gina had barely begun. Noting this, their new neighbours had helped.
Now in their sixties, with children who had moved out and didn’t visit as frequently as they should, Yassin and Zainab had watched Edie grow. They loved her as their own. Often watched her.
Gina had feared she and Will did not do enough to reciprocate the kind favours paid out by the Khan’s.
Here was another to add to the balance.
Yassin Khan had put a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Are you okay, friend?”
After lying, Will spent the short journey across town guilty as well as fearful. What would these old friends say when they learned Gina was cheating?
They wouldn’t find out, because Gina wasn’t cheating. Couldn’t be cheating.
At least the Khan’s could look after Edie while Gina and Will met with lawyers, screamed in court. Destroying everything they had built under the watchful eyes of impassive judges and Will’s gleeful mother. She did so love to say I told you so.
Trying to banish thoughts of divorce lawyers and smug mothers, Will turned into the street on which Kayla lived; on which his wife may or may not have been having an affair.
Most houses were dark. Here and there light still blazed from behind a thick curtain. Through one set of windows, Will saw a flash of late-night telly.
Halfway down the street, two houses faced each other like mirror images, each with the low light of a lamp pushing through an upstairs bedroom’s curtain. Will pulled onto the left pavement, blocking Kayla’s drive. As he got from his car, her curtain fluttered, then withdrew a few inches. The light at her back, Will couldn’t make out her expression but could see the way she jigged up and down. In her arms, Xyla doggedly resisted sleep.
Raising a hand in greeting, Will turned from the watching mother to the house across the street. Though he stared at the windows, the curtains remained closed. No doubt it was a bedroom in which the lamp light blazed.
His wife’s car was in the drive. The number plate was hers, but that wasn’t all. Through the back windscreen,
Will saw The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The book his daughter was reading. She’d told him earlier she’d left it in mum’s car. Under her interrogative gaze, he’d had to tell her mum wouldn’t be home until the early hours. She was working. Edie would have to wait.
In the front, he spied loose change and Yorkie wrappers. His wife loved Yorkies. In the passenger seat was an empty water bottle, probably from their last long journey.
Before the long nights, before his wife started changing, she had suggested a deep clean for her car, inside and out. It was a good idea. If she wasn’t inside screwing another man, maybe they could do it tomorrow.
Paul had probably stolen the car.
If his wife were working late, she wouldn’t have noticed. It sounded as though Paul was an unsavoury character. Perhaps he could have taken it, driven it home. Kayla had said she saw a woman, but that could have been someone else. In the dark, from across the street, his wife was not so distinctive you could tell for sure.
From his pocket, Will withdrew his phone. Once unlocked, he scrolled to Gina’s number. If he phoned, Gina would answer, wondering why he was calling. Once he told her about the car, she would be alarmed. In disbelief, she would rush to the parking lot and find it missing.
Before she could panic, Will would calm her. With the car in his sights, he would get her off the line and phone the police, visiting Kayla until they arrived, maybe help get Xyla to sleep. See if he hadn’t forgotten how babies worked. Once he had reclaimed the car and reunited with his wife, Will would call his mother and tell her she had been wrong.
Bemused, she would ask what he was talking about, or shout at him for waking her.
Undeterred, he would feel little other than relief.
The route ahead planned, he clicked call and pressed the phone to his ear.
It rang once, then went to voicemail.
No doubt, she was hard at work. Even before the late nights, Gina hated being disturbed during the working day. Dedicated was a word frequently sighted at appraisals and reviews by her bosses, colleagues and even company directors.