Killer Princesses: Gripping and gritty, a twisty and tantalising thriller...

by Jennifer R Hollis

  She made eye contact with him and, for a fleeting moment, she believed he might be about to help her. But then, as he pulled up in front of her house, he reached over her and removed something from the glove box.

  “Here’s a little something to help you escape, girl. You have this first one on me.”

  He thrust a small plastic bag filled with a brownish powder towards her, along with a bigger brown bag containing a syringe.

  Jade grabbed them, left the car swiftly and fumbled in her bag to find her keys. Without looking back, she entered her house and ran upstairs to her room, her heart beating fast. Her emotions and feelings from the day surged: the exhaustion, the rejection, the anger, the frustration, the inner turmoil.

  She knew what the little bag of powder was; she’d seen her mother shoot-up enough times to recognise it. It would be madness to take drugs, she thought, but then she desperately needed some kind of release. Perhaps, she could do it once. Tears welled up in her eyes. Against her will, she started to recall images of the man who’d knocked on her door earlier.

  She struggled to gather her thoughts. Her breathing quickened as she moved towards the sink in the corner of her room. She washed the powder away and threw the rest of the package out of her window as hard as she could.

  She strode towards her desk and picked up her small kitchen knife. She drew the blade closer to her left forearm and pierced her skin. Then, she moved it backwards and forwards to create three deep cuts. For a moment, before the searing pain kicked in and the stream of blood appeared, she felt free.

  10: Jade, Louisa and Stacy

  Monday 15th October 2018 - Ethan

  Ethan lay in bed, struggling to shake off an uneasy feeling in his stomach. Last night, like most nights, he’d kept watch on The Castle until around 2 am.

  Usually, he followed Jade home at a distance, to make sure she got back safe. But last night, she’d got into a car with a man who’d also been inside The Castle, and they’d sped off into the distance.

  Who was he? Where was he taking her? Ethan added more frustrating, unanswered questions to his ever-growing list.

  He thought about texting Jade to check on her, but it didn’t feel right. Over the last two weeks, he hadn’t contacted her much at all. Instead, he’d kept a silent watch over the supermarket girls at The Castle. But, something wasn’t right about that car, or Jade’s fearful look as she got into it. Ethan put his phone down and decided to go straight to Jade’s house.

  He pulled his hoodie over his head to shield himself from the rain dripping down from the low grey cloud. He walked around piles of fly-tipped rubbish, strewn across the streets. As he approached Jade’s house, he saw a bag with a needle poking out of it on the pavement. He picked it up and threw it in a waste bin.

  He knocked on Jade’s front door twice and gazed up at her bedroom window; he thought he saw the curtains twitch. He knocked again, louder, and looked through the letterbox. With relief, he saw Jade’s legs coming down the stairs. She creaked the door open and held it ajar so that he could only see her face and the right side of her body.

  His heart sank; Jade looked terrible. Her face was paler than usual, and there were dark shadows around her eyes, which he’d never seen so puffy before.

  “Ethan, I didn’t know you were coming over?” she said wearily.

  “No, sorry, I was in the area, so I thought I’d say hi.”

  She looked at him, her eyebrows raised.

  “Can I come in?”

  She looked uncomfortable and nervous, and he didn’t understand why. He wasn’t like those other men; he would never hurt her.

  “Or we could go out, and I’ll get us lunch if you want. My treat.”

  “Ok, OK, fine. Wait here, I’ll get dressed then we can go for lunch.”

  The large pub opposite the supermarket was open, so they stepped inside, out of the rain. While outside was cold and wet, the pub was warm, and it smelt of chip fat and stale beer. Ethan watched Jade reluctantly remove her jacket, to reveal a thick woollen jumper. He tried and failed to start conversations with her.

  “I suppose I wanted to catch up because we haven’t spoken much lately,” said Ethan, once they’d finished their meals.

  “I know. I thought you’d got a girlfriend or something, which would have been fine.”

  He shook his head

  “Are you sure you’re OK though, Jade? Is something happening?”

  “No, I’m fine, honestly. Anyway, I should go.”

  Her voice wavered, and she looked as though she had the weight of the world on her small shoulders. Ethan felt a pain in his chest and a stinging sensation in his eyes.

  Jade pushed her plate aside and reached over to her bag. At the same time, Ethan leant over and put his hand on her left arm, to stop her from leaving. She cried out and winced in pain and jerked her arm away from him.

  “Jade, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t grab you, did I? Has something happened to your arm?”

  For a flash of a second, as Jade threw on her coat, he thought he saw blood seeping through the cream wool. He took a deep breath.

  “It’s nothing Ethan, I fell and bruised it a few days ago. I’m not feeling too good, I had better go.”

  He watched her hurry out of the pub. He remained at the booth for some time, with his head in his hands, trying not to cry. Had the man in the car hurt Jade?

  He wrenched his notebook out of his holdall and slammed it on the table. He pored over the pages of notes he’d made while watching The Castle building. He’d noted down the registration number of the car Jade had gotten into last night. It would be worth tracking down the vehicle, finding out the owner’s name. Was he the person running ‘Princesses’?

  Ethan’s eyes settled on two names: Louisa and Stacy. He was sure Louisa worked at the supermarket on Monday dayshifts, and he knew Stacy worked in the evening.

  It was 3.45 pm; if he started his shift early, he’d be able to speak to Louisa when she finished her shift at 5 pm. He grabbed his holdall and jogged over the road, towards the supermarket.

  He entered with his hood up and his head down. But despite his efforts to hide, someone called his name from the Customer Service desk. He looked up and saw Edith, Renee and another two women in a huddle. They were all looking at him with big, yet somehow intimidating, smiles.

  “Ethan, you shouldn’t get my hopes up like this,” pouted Renee, with a twirl of her golden-brown hair. She stared at him with one eyebrow raised, and her hand on her hip. She was as tall as him, and he couldn’t help noticing the glow of her skin and the fullness of her bright red lips. She’d framed her amber eyes with dark eyeshadow, and her shirt was slightly too tight across the chest.

  He flushed and mumbled ‘uh, whaddayamean?’ in response. The women around Renee giggled.

  “Well, I saw you, and I thought it must be 5 pm, home time for me. But you’re an hour early. You do know Jade isn’t here today, right?”

  The other women dissolved into laughter. He didn’t know what to say, so he was thankful when someone else broke the silence.

  “Lucky he’s here if you ask me,” chirped Gillian from behind Renee’s group.

  “I could use some help with running the department. So please go and clock in Ethan,” she continued, with a pointed glance at Renee.

  Ethan turned away, but still heard Gillian’s voice. “And seeing as you’ve so miraculously recovered from your illness, Renee, you can supervise the tills while I take a break.”

  He clocked in and approached the Supervisor desk, wondering if Jade would be at The Castle tonight. Gillian muttered to herself and flicked through the schedules for the rest of this week.

  “No, no, this won’t do,” she moaned. “Ethan, I’ll need you to pick up some overtime this week. Thursday night and Friday dayshift?”

  “Sure,” he agreed, absent-mindedly. He looked around the department in an attempt to spot Louisa.

  On the schedule, Louisa’s name was next to �
��kiosk’. All seemed quiet on the checkouts, so he strolled towards it. He heard Renee before he saw her. When he turned the corner of the kiosk, there she was, talking to Louisa and another young girl. Renee was telling them a story; her arms waving around wildly, and her voice oscillating. The two girls smiled and hung off every word.

  “And that, girls, is why you should always check if the man you’re seeing has a brother!” The girls erupted with laughter as Renee turned to look at Ethan.

  “Everything OK, Ethan? On the checkouts?” she asked, as her eyes bored into him again.

  “Um, yes.”

  “Good.” she replied, as she turned her back on him to resume her conversation with the girls.

  He walked away, abashed, and had to wait until the very end of Louisa’s shift to get her alone.

  He saw her leave the kiosk just before 5 pm and took his chance to follow her to the staff area. Before she made it to the stairs, he touched her shoulder.

  “Hi, Louisa.”

  “Ethan, did I forget something?” she asked, with a worried look on her face.

  He instantly realised his mistake. He’d put no thought into how to broach the subject or to get the result he wanted. He looked at Louisa’s young face, freckled nose and curly dark hair, and tried to compose himself.

  “I just thought I’d ask, are you caught up in something you don’t want to be? I wondered if you needed help or anything. I could even speak to the police with you?”

  It was clumsy, and he knew he’d messed up when her eyes began to widen in fear.

  “You don’t know anything about me! Stay away from me!” Louisa whispered, her voice shaking. She turned away from Ethan and hurried up the stairs.

  He stomped back down towards the checkouts. Gillian had handed over the Manager’s keys to Marie, and Stacy was already seated on a checkout towards the end of the row.

  Usually, Ethan and Marie got on well enough during their Monday night shifts. But this evening, Marie seemed to keep more of an eye on him than usual. Annoyingly, she kept disrupting him whenever he tried to venture over to Stacy.

  After a couple of hours, he wandered over while Marie was on a break. Stacy couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old. She’d fixed her dark blonde hair into a bun with hairspray and drawn on dark eyebrows over small pale blue eyes.

  “Hi Stacy, are you doing anything after work tonight?”

  “Um, no, why?” she flushed and looked down at her lap.

  “I wondered if you fancied a drink, you know, with me?”

  “Yeah,” she replied coyly. She sat up a little straighter in her chair and smiled.

  He walked back to the Supervisor's desk and saw Marie standing there looking daggers at him.

  “What have I done?”

  “You’re here to work, and you’re a Supervisor. You shouldn’t hound the girls.” she replied, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed behind her heavy glasses.

  At the end of the shift, Marie locked up and shuffled towards the car park without saying goodbye. Ethan jogged towards the pub, where he’d asked Stacy to wait for him.

  He bought a beer for himself and a vodka and coke for her. He suspected she was underage but decided to overlook it. After all, alcohol might encourage her to open up to him and go along with his plan. He asked her about her family, her sixth form courses, and what she thought of people at work. She seemed quite shy and nervous and it occurred to him that she thought this was a date. He stifled the guilt. Jade needed him to do this; it was the only way to keep her safe.

  “So, are you sure everything is alright with you, Stace? I’ve noticed sometimes at work you seem upset or distracted?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong, I’m fine,” she replied as she folded her arms and sat back in her chair.

  “Come on, Stace. If you’re in trouble, I could help you.”

  She looked at him and then back down at her drink with a sigh. He let the pause hang in the air.

  “Even if I told you, you wouldn’t be able to help,” she whispered, as her cheeks flushed.

  “Try me,” he encouraged, as he leaned over the table towards her. “I like you, and I want to help you. I could even come to the police with you if you want?”

  She pulled away from him, and her eyes widened in fear, exactly like Louisa’s had.

  “No Ethan, you’ve got this all wrong, I don’t want to go to the police, please don’t say anything to anyone.” She downed the rest of her drink as the bell for last orders rang.

  “Thanks for the drinks though, I enjoyed our chat earlier, perhaps we can do this again sometime?”

  Ethan sighed as Stacy hurried through the pub doors without looking back, just as Jade had done earlier.

  11: Trouble and Strife

  Friday 19th October 2018 - Debbie

  “Joe!” shouted Debbie, for the third time in less than ten minutes. She stood by the front door, her coat and shoes on, hands on her hips and a sharp edge to her voice.

  “Joe, we are so late,” she hissed, as her husband appeared at the top of the stairs. She scowled as he grabbed his keys and ran towards the car.

  She threw the last few bags into the boot of the car and slammed it shut. Inside, her fifteen year-old son Marco raised his eyebrows and turned his music up.

  “What are you waiting for, Joe? Go!”

  To her relief, Joe smiled, started the engine and pulled away from the kerb at speed.

  “I suppose I had better text Karen, tell her we’re running late,” Debbie tutted, breaking the silence.

  “They might be running a bit behind too,” Joe replied, hopefully. “I’m sure they won’t mind.”

  Debbie raised her eyebrows. She was sure that both Karen and her rather grumpy husband, Pete, would mind.

  “I don’t mind being late,” said their thirteen year-old daughter, Abbie, from the back seat of the car.

  “Why’s that, love?” asked Joe.

  “I don’t like Daniel anymore, he’s weird.”

  Debbie glanced at Joe, who grimaced. Neither of them could argue with their daughter. Karen’s son, Daniel, was moody even by teenage standards and had very few friends. Melwood High School had suspended him quite a few times.

  “Are any of you looking forward to this?” asked Debbie. Her family fell silent and avoided eye contact with her.

  Marco broke first under her gaze.

  “We used to enjoy it, Mum. But now we only go along with it because we know you and Auntie Karen like to drink wine on the beach.”

  Abbie raised her hand to her mouth, and Marco looked a little nervous. Debbie opened her mouth in shock and looked towards Joe, who bit his lip. At the same time, they all burst into laughter, and the tension in the car evaporated. They were still joking and laughing as they pulled into the seafront car park half an hour later.

  “There they are,” said Joe, and he pointed over to the car park entrance.

  Karen and her husband, Pete, stood a metre apart, facing away from each other with their arms crossed. Only their daughter, Rebecca, greeted Debbie’s family with a wave and a smile.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry,” apologised Debbie as she approached them.

  “Someone,” she gestured towards Joe, “took an absolute age getting ready this morning. I honestly don’t know how it took him so long.”

  “Men need to take care of themselves; that’s what women always say, right, Pete?”

  Pete, who was a foot shorter than Joe, bald, and about ten kilos heavier, shrugged his shoulders. Karen pursed her thin lips and turned away from her husband with a look of disgust.

  “Right,” Debbie broke the awkward silence. “Let’s make the most of the sun. Straight to the beach?”

  The eight of them headed towards the beach, Debbie and Karen at the front.

  “Is everything OK with you and Pete?” Debbie whispered. She linked arms with Karen as they strolled towards their favourite spot.

  “No, it’s not,” replied Karen with a frown. “We had a huge row
in the car. He said he’s stressed, that I haven’t been there for him and that he wants us to spend more time together.”

  “OK, so that’s fixable isn’t it? We could call it a day this afternoon so you could have the evening together?”

  “Well, the problem is I don’t want to spend time with him, the fat lump,” whispered Karen with a look of disdain. “He makes no effort. Look at the state of him, compared to Joe.”

  “Well, it does take him a long time to look that good,” replied Debbie kindly. Privately, though, she agreed with Karen’s assessment. Joe was ageing annoyingly well, whereas Pete increasingly resembled a potato.

  “No amount of time would help Pete,” replied Karen, bitterly.

  Debbie’s eyes widened. Karen often complained about Pete, but usually she laughed as she did so.

  “Let’s get rid of them and talk on the beach,” mumbled Karen, “he’s probably trying to listen in knowing him.”

  She turned her head towards Pete, who was huffing and puffing alongside Joe, weighed down by Karen’s many bags and a parasol.

  “Are you looking forward to the staff party on Sunday night then?” asked Debbie. “Who do you think is going to cause a scene this year? My money is on Renee.”

  “Oh God, that’s this weekend? I completely forgot,” replied Karen, slapping her forehead. “But I’ll be there, don’t worry. Any excuse to get out of the house,” she added, with another glare in Pete’s direction.

  “Excellent lunch, Deb,” said Joe as they set up on the beach. He peered into the cool box and pulled out two bottles of Sauvignon Blanc.

  “Well, I thought you guys might take the kids to the pier and pick up some food on the way back. Nothing better than fish and chips on the beach, right?”

  “True enough,” said Joe with a knowing smile. “Pete, let’s go. These two are desperate to open the wine and talk about us.”

  Pete frowned, and he remained mutinously in his chair, until Karen caught his eye. She hissed ‘off you go’ at him, through gritted teeth.

  Karen poured a large glass of wine for herself and Debbie and launched into a rant about Pete. He’d taken her for granted, let himself go, and been a bad father to Daniel and Rebecca.