by Will Carver
The problem was that Mrs Conroy’s dreams had been about her daughter getting drunk and high and raped and killed. And there was nobody being brought into her life, they were only being taken away.
5. Will it require you to trust God?
The final question.
God doesn’t call on what is comfortable. He pushes us beyond our capabilities. He makes things painful and unbearable. That way we are forced to place all of our trust in Him and His great plan.
Mrs Conroy pondered on this final question as she looked down at the pins protruding through her thighs to clamp the bones in a way that they could eventually heal. Then she looked in the chair next to her hospital bed where Mr Conroy should be sitting. And she thought that last part sounded spiteful and capricious. And an easy get-out for Him.
Obey or you’re screwed.
She’d obeyed Him all of her life. She had loved Him and feared Him, and what had he done? Taken away her family. How could that be part of a great plan? And now she had to bend over and take that and find trust in Him? No fucking way. Not again.
She went through those questions in her mind, and there were two conclusions to why a devout woman such as Mrs Conroy had never heard the voice of the Lord: He wasn’t there. And, if he was there, he was a judgemental little dick.
God hates us all. And Mrs Conroy hated God.
The problem was that these same five questions could also be asked of the Devil. He had been appearing to Mr Conroy in his dreams. He could have been speaking to him. Perhaps He could have led the Conroys to their daughter. God’s plan sucked.
If there was a Devil, then there must be a God. Right?
Mrs Conroy didn’t know what to believe.
She’d had it wrong her entire life. Those lazy little thoughts and prayers that were so often floated out into the world made no difference at all. They were weak and regular and too routine. If she had prayed hard enough as she looked at her husband’s mangled body, if she had given everything inside her, if she had sweated and cursed and cried and been completely exhausted with effort, if she had pushed those thoughts in the right direction, who knows, she may have been given another year with her husband.
TWENTY–ONE
It smelled strongly of whisky in the Beresford Library. That smoky, peaty smell that turns so many away from the drink.
Aubrey looked as though somebody had taken a young Katherine Hepburn, crumpled her up and thrown her at a chair.
Gail looked at her watch, it was too early in the day to be that sozzled. Even Mrs May didn’t start slurring her words until after six. She was caught in two minds. There was a chance Aubrey was so drunk that she hadn’t even noticed Gail walk in; she could creep past and head to her room for a long bath, wash the day out of her.
But she was tired of creeping and sneaking. She was bored of the subterfuge and the obfuscation. She was sick of being the bad guy, the killer. She could do something good, help another person.
She could be herself. Something she hadn’t been allowed to be for so long.
‘Aubrey?’ She took a step closer.
Nothing.
‘Aubrey, it’s Gail. Is everything okay?’
Nothing.
Gail crouched down to see whether Aubrey was awake. Then she peered over at Mrs May’s place. Where was she? Normally she’d be all over something like this. Gail didn’t want to involve her. This was her thing. She was going to help Aubrey.
She knelt down beside the heap on the chair and spoke softly, putting a hand on her shoulder, calling her name and shaking her.
‘Fuck. Gail. That’s good. Means I got home.’
‘You are home. But you’re not in your room. Did something happen?’
‘I got drunk.’
‘I had noticed. Is it a happy drunk or a sad drunk?’
‘It’s a pissed-off drunk. So, I guess it’s somewhere in between. I’m hungry as hell now.’
‘Was it the meeting? Did it not go well?’
Aubrey pushed herself up on the arms of the chair. ‘Nothing I haven’t seen a million times before. Some pencil-dicked neanderthal trying to put a woman in her place. I’m usually a little more gracious and articulate, but I lost it this time. Gave off at the guy.’
‘Well, good for you.’
‘Yeah, but I lied and told him my dad never liked him, which was awful now I’ve had time to think about it.’ She kept trailing off. Tired. Drunk. Overthinking. ‘I’ve probably fucked it.’
Gail didn’t know what to say.
‘I just need to go upstairs and fucking sleeping this off, deal with it tomorrow. I have to get some water. And eat something. A sandwich or … something.’
Gail had put hundreds of miles on her car already that week, and there was already another hundred or so between herself and her husband, yet, somehow, she was still trying to get a drunk person upstairs to bed while they asked for a goddamned sandwich.
She tried to help Aubrey to her feet, but she was too proud and independent for that. Gail stood close to her, though, because she looked unsteady.
‘Come on, it’s not that far. Let’s get you up those stairs.’ Gail was trying to sound enthusiastic, in the way that you would talk to a child in order to cajole them into something they didn’t really want to do.
She stayed behind Aubrey all the way up the stairs, holding on to the bannister and keeping herself braced for the fiery Amazon to fall back into her at some point. Gail noticed that her left hand was still a little dirty from the digging, and her thoughts went immediately to Abe’s head, which she was planning on distributing the next afternoon. There were four packages left in the bathroom. It was no longer a pyramid. There was a ball and a few twigs, which Gail assumed were parts of Abe’s scrawny arms, and something else she could no longer remember.
The nightmare was almost over. She could get back to growing her avocado into a pear or bell pepper.
At the door, Aubrey didn’t thank Gail for her supervision, instead she asked, ‘So what do you think of the old lady? You know, Mrs May?’
Gail had to be careful how she answered.
‘I think she’s rather sweet. Very helpful…’
Unless you need to clear up the blood from the body you’ve sawn up.
‘Sure. But … weird, right?’
‘Eccentric, maybe. Idiosyncratic. But not weird, per se.’
‘You’re too nice, Gail. She’s weird. I feel like she’s up to something. Don’t you think she might be up to something?’
Gail needed to not talk about this. The old lady may well have been up to her own ‘somethings’, but Gail wasn’t aware, all she could focus on were the somethings Mrs May was making her do.
Aubrey was leaning against her doorframe with her eyes closed. Gail couldn’t help but stare. There was something captivating, even alluring about her. She was unconventionally sexy. Gail was used to an overweight drunkard breathing in her ear from behind as he lowered himself into her. There was nothing sexy about that. She found herself wanting to touch Aubrey’s pale face.
‘And you’ – Aubrey opened her eyes suddenly – ‘you are a little bit sneaky, too. Lurking around. Don’t think I haven’t seen.’ She was smiling, but the words still hit Gail as accusatory. ‘I’ve got my eye on both of you.’
She stumbled into her apartment, smashing the door against the wall behind, but stood straight up and carried on walking, mumbling as she went, ‘And where in the hell is that Abe guy, anyway? I mean…’
The door shut behind her.
Gail was still outside.
She waited for a moment, and then a moment longer. Aubrey didn’t re-emerge. That was it. Help over. Gail had done her good deed for the day, helping her drunken neighbour back to her flat. It didn’t quite cancel out the murder and the burying of body parts, but it was a start.
Aubrey’s suspicions were a worry. Perhaps they could be taken with a pinch of salt, as she was so desperately inebriated. But, often, that is when the truth can come out. She’d li
ved with that. Her husband wasn’t aggressive because of the booze, the beers made him feel like himself, the real man he was. He was a true drunk.
Maybe everybody was.
And did Aubrey really have her eye on what Gail was doing? Why was she asking about Abe? Should Gail tell Mrs May? It didn’t seem right to rat Aubrey out for a drunken comment, and it would only upset the old lady.
Gail decided to keep the information to herself. Mrs May didn’t need to know what had been said. She didn’t even have to know that Aubrey had drunk a bucket of Scotch and passed out in the library.
Nothing went on in The Beresford that Mrs May did not know about.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
When you think of entrepreneurs, you think of the bootstrappers. Those who have pulled themselves from the lower classes by means of their intellect, drive and limited resources. Maybe they are working a full-time job then spending the evenings in their garage, inventing the next must-have product or service.
In truth, the most commonly shared attribute of these self-starters is access to money. Family wealth or an inheritance. Yes, they are the big-ideas people, the blue-sky thinkers and the risk-takers. But it is that access to money that allows them the freedom to take those risks.
They are privileged.
They start ahead.
If you managed to get yourself through university without taking out a loan, or you had your loan paid off by someone else, or you moved back home with your parents and rented out the apartment that was gifted to you in order to make the repayments yourself, you are automatically in a better position to be entrepreneurial than most others.
Everyone else is playing a sport where they start the game fifty points behind.
And it’s okay to have this privilege. A person cannot help the family they are born into, or the generosity of their parents, or that they are handed the beginnings of a property portfolio or a position within a business. What’s important is that you acknowledge your start, where it came from, and empathise with those who do not share your blue blood.
Privilege is not your fault. But entitlement is.
Aubrey, it looks as though you have everything you need. But what is it that you want?
Respect. I want to be treated as an equal. And not because of my father’s reputation or standing in the industry. I want it to be because of the person I am, the businesswoman I am and the results that I get.
I want a seat at the top table to be obtained on my own merit. One day, I would like to be at the head of that table. I want to be in the room where it all happens. I want responsibility and culpability. I want the pressure and I want the rewards.
I want the success that my father earned in his work and his private life. I want that same ability to separate both of those worlds. I want everything he built but ten times more.
Is that too much to ask?
Try asking.
TWENTY–TWO
Paranoia levels had been at an all-time high when Gail left with Abe’s head in a supermarket carrier bag. The morning had been fine. Not a stir from Aubrey, who was doubtlessly sleeping off a hangover from Hell. But there were certainly stirrings and creaks around lunchtime when Gail returned for the skull.
Now, she was done.
Abe was gone.
She couldn’t even remember if that face was buried in the south-east or the north-west, she’d been a hundred miles in every direction that week. If the authorities wanted to find all of Abe, they would have to comb through 31,000 square miles of land.
She felt safe again. The same way she had felt that first night at The Beresford. And it was with great pleasure that she knocked on Mrs May’s front door, holding the keys to Abe’s apartment up in front of her magnificent grin.
She didn’t let Mrs May speak.
‘All done,’ she said, dropping the keys in the old lady’s skeletal hand.
‘Everything?’
‘Every last bit.’
‘That’s great. You can get back to focussing on the baby.’ She pointed at Gail’s bump.
‘That’s exactly what I plan to do. Put all this behind me.’
‘You go and rest, dear. I’ll go in and clean Abe’s place up. We will have somebody new moving in tomorrow.’
‘Wow. That was fast. You didn’t even know I’d be finished by today.’
Mrs May brushed past the comment.
‘You want that painting in Abe’s hall?’
‘Er, yeah. Sure.’
‘I’ll drop it over tonight.’
She shut the door.
And that was that.
TWENTY–THREE
Aubrey’s brother had called to talk to her about the conversation he’d had with Mr Kirkly that day. It was odd. Kirkly had called to confirm how much longer he was tied into his policy. He’d never done it before. It had always just rolled into another policy, and if his premium had increased, then he would not argue, he’d just stump up the cash.
‘He and Dad have been friends forever, it just seems weird that he’d call now that Dad is … gone. It’s like he’s going to take his business elsewhere.’
‘So?’
‘So? What do you mean, “So?”’
‘I mean, he’s one client. If he was only with us because he was friends with our father then that’s ridiculous.’ Aubrey couldn’t tell if Kirkly had mentioned their meeting. She was playing the waiting game.
‘I understand that, sis, but the company was built on relationships. Relationships that Dad made. What if more clients decide to go the same way. That’s when it will start to matter.’
‘It’s not going to matter for five more years. He’s tied in for that long, isn’t he? I remember writing that contract.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Then we have a lot of time to start building new relationships that can cover the ones that might leave in half a decade.’
‘You are a hard-nosed bitch, sister. I probably shouldn’t let you near old Kirkly, eh? You’d tell him he didn’t matter or something.’ And he laughed. And Aubrey was still unsure whether her brother was subtly telling her that Kirkly had mentioned what she had said over brunch.
‘I’ve never really liked the guy, to be honest.’
They both laughed. Whether complicit in what was being unsaid or completely oblivious, it was a nice moment between the two siblings. There was some relief for Aubrey, perhaps Kirkly wasn’t going to tell the entire industry what a bitch John Downes’ daughter was and get her blacklisted. Maybe he was going to keep his stupid mouth shut. Maybe he realised that he couldn’t push her around just because she was a woman. Maybe he had learned something.
Maybe not.
She would learn more in the coming days and weeks about whether the conversation had been relayed and misconstrued. If it had, she would receive more calls from her brother, each with a less friendly vibe. But talking with her brother had left Aubrey feeling buoyant. There was no use in sitting back and waiting for a tidal wave, she had to get out there and chase one down. The day before had been a write-off. She’d slept in and done no work. She had wanted to speak with Gail to thank her for being so helpful, but her head seemed to be affected more by gravity than the rest of her body.
Whisky hangovers were the worst.
But that day was on the upswing. She switched on her computer, made a coffee and plugged her headset in to make some calls. If nobody picked up, then word had spread, but Aubrey wasn’t thinking that way. She had moved to The Beresford to make a new start, to carve her own way and create the impact she desired.
It was a new day.
She had a plan.
This was the fresh start she wanted.
That’s why people came to The Beresford.
Whether they knew it or not.
TWENTY–FOUR
Saffy Long had been selling her homemade jewellery online to friends for six months. Her social-media presence had exploded recently through no reason that she could find, but she was happy to accept the ex
posure and the raft of orders that followed.
She had found an office in the city at a reasonable rate, which had the space for her to deal with the increasing demand, and The Beresford was an absolute steal of a price, and so perfectly placed that she could live nearby and work longer hours without having to commute.
It was the step she had been hoping for.
She hadn’t been featured in any magazines. No bloggers had reviewed her favourably and caused a stir in the retail sector. No celebrity had shared one of her posts. One day she was in her bedroom gluing earrings, the next, she needed a studio space and had ordered her logo to be printed and placed on the door so that it appeared to be etched into the glass.
It was a whirlwind.
It can happen in the world now. You could be sharing some of your fan fiction on your blog and get offered a six-figure publishing deal. You could be singing songs on your YouTube channel and get noticed by a media-savvy A&R guy, who signs you up to a record label and takes you out on tour supporting a huge group. You can even make your millions by filming your life every day. Letting strangers invade your personal business. Living your life through a lens, being someone you’re not or being who you really are.
You don’t even need talent.
It can kick off.
Saffy had the talent. She had the product and the logo and the branding and the look. And she had the attitude and work ethic to make it a success.
What these overnight successes often do not have are the right people around them. The ones to tell them when they are becoming a diva. The ones to keep them grounded. And, most importantly, the ones who will keep them protected.
Saffy had it all.
But she wasn’t protected.
TWENTY–FIVE
Mrs May handed the painting to Gail and said, ‘I’m going to need you to kill Aubrey.’
Gail said nothing.
Mrs May said, ‘Here’s a knife.’