“Great! He can watch his trouble causing whore of a mother getting shagged!” He laughed at her as he held her down by moving his forearm up across her windpipe like a vice and used his free hand to undo and wriggle out of his shorts and slip his pants down his thighs. Henrietta could not see what he was doing as his deranged face was directly above hers as he smothered her but she heard his knees bang on the side rail of the sleigh bed as he kicked off his shorts and she lay helpless beneath him gasping for air and seeing double as his polo shirt rubbed against her sunburned skin and he slapped against her stomach and contorted his face with his tongue between his teeth and grunted with garlic smelling breath with every thrust. Henrietta could only think of her next breath and tried to fill her lungs with oxygen in what felt like a life or death situation. She tried to tell herself not to panic and to control her breathing as she felt life and warmth drain from her head, then her chest and down her body towards her knees and her skin felt chilled. Her lips went tingly and numb, then her armpits, then her elbows and wrists and she was unable to grip her fingers into a fist and had a feeling of sinking but she did not pass out. The ordeal was over quickly and he rolled off whilst she lay on her back staring at the large but out of focus light-fitting as she inhaled and wheezed and coughed repeatedly.
He stood up and grinned as he picked his shorts up from the floor, whilst she rolled over to grasp the edge of the quilt and cover her naked and defiled and worthless body which smelled of his excretions and she began to cry.
“My darling, so much pent up emotion! I didn’t realise how much you were missing me. Your asthma is bad again though, isn’t it? Have you got enough inhalers with you?” He walked around the bed to retrieve the fragmented pieces of her phone from the floor and reassembled it, then dropped a small envelope and a biro onto the bed and turned to use ‘his’ shower in ‘his’ bathroom.
“Whilst I’m in there, sign that contract will you.”
Henrietta opened the envelope and took out two identical typed letters which would give him legal ownership of the Range Rover. She slowly tore them both in half and put them back in the envelope and sat on the edge of the bed, re-wrapped in the beach towel and waited for him to reappear.
“Have you signed it?” He asked cheerfully as he tucked his polo shirt into his belt.
“No. You can’t just take whatever you want.” She said as he looked in bewilderment at the torn paper inside the envelope.
“You stupid, stupid bitch, I’ll have to re-print them and come back again. You will sign!” He was livid, inhaled deeply, tilted his head back slightly and then forcefully spat on her. She squirmed and blinked.
“Go away you bastard and don’t come back! There’s nothing you can do to me now.”
“Is that a challenge? Believe me I can. I want you out of my house. I am not going to pay the bills for this place if you continue to squat in it. If you’re not frightened of me anymore, why don’t I ask one of Dominic’s men to come and visit you with a cheese wire for your neck, or Hit Man Mark, he will have fun with you! He’s an ugly brute.”
“I’ll go to the Police in England!”
“Fine, see how that works for you, stupid bitch, you don’t even realise what they will do to you. Have you not grasped the facts yet? And I thought you were intelligent”.
“The Police aren’t idiots. They will find out what insidious things you have done and punish you and get my money back.”
“Why do you think they are called pigs? This set up is so well arranged and so intellectually above any flat-foot’s pay grade, they can’t touch me. If you go to them though, a lot of other people will be very angry with you. I don’t think I’d like to be in your shoes. Hetty, don’t waste your life, step up and stand by me. Believe me I am the only way forward. There isn’t a way out for you now, unless you want to jump off that balcony? That is an option.”
“You need a psychiatrist! The police are decent, honest, intelligent, highly trained people. Their role is to help people. As for me killing myself, I cancelled my life insurance policy, so I am no use to you dead.”
“I’m deluded? You are so fucking naïve! Don’t you realise Aiden, Ted and all the others work for me? Aiden and his fat kids lived on cheap microwave meals before he met me. I even provide him with a hooker every week. He isn’t going to betray me I assure you, he wouldn’t dare now that I’ve got him by the short and curlies. As for the life insurance; I had it reinstated, revoked the trust for Oscar and I pay the premiums myself, just in case.” Henrietta winced as he gave a forced and fake scream, plopped her phone onto the bed and stormed out leaving the doors and gates wide open.
She gradually lifted herself from the bed and called to Oscar but got no reply and realised he had gone out with his school friend. ‘Probably for the best’ she thought. Once she had closed and locked the front door, she too went into the en-suite and stood beneath the hot rain in the shower and sobbed. When she eventually got out, she dried herself on a fresh towel, dropped the one Terry had used into the laundry basket, stripped the bed and put on fresh clothes. She needed to get out.
She phoned Margot and arranged to meet her for coffee in a local café, then dressed and applied enough make-up to disguise her swollen eyes and went to the shelf where she had left her jewellery before applying sun tan lotion earlier. Terry had taken everything except her watch, which amounted to a significant theft. He had also taken both her passport and Oscar’s. She phoned Clive in England and told him what Terry had done but as Clive said; Henrietta had no witnesses. He noted Terry’s mobile number once again and promised to phone him to demand return of the valuables.
“Mr Newman? I believe you have breached your injunction by visiting the villa? I believe you have also behaved in an unacceptable manner towards my client and have stolen pieces of jewellery and have taken two passports which do not belong to you.”
“Who the fuck are you? She stole my passport. If she gives mine back, I’ll give hers back.”
“No Mr Newman, I believe I have the passport you refer to. It has your photograph yet apparently is not your identity, is that the one you wish to have returned? You see, I think Her Majesties Customs will also want it. I now feel it necessary to request you return my clients items and one hundred and seventy five thousand pounds within forty eight hours, or we will have no option other than to give said passport to the authorities?” Clive spoke with conviction and Terry hesitated.
“I don’t know who you are, but she will have the passports by this evening.” He knew it was against the law to have them in his possession and had in fact hidden them in the house, by throwing them on top of the kitchen cupboards on his way out. Terry sent Henrietta a text to inform her of their hiding place but the jewellery was lost.
July 14th 2008.
An afternoon of coffee cups soon turned into glasses of wine and plates of pasta as Henrietta told Margot about Terry’s visit and expressed her concern that she had run out of contraceptive pills a few weeks earlier. Margot was appalled and advised that she should go to the police or a doctor but Hetty explained that she could not face the humiliation especially in a foreign country with such macho police men wearing military uniforms, who spoke very little English. Margot told Hetty that it was common knowledge that golfers bet on each game they played and the usual stake was a sleeve of Viagra rather than cash. Both girls sighed in resignation and Margot suggested they get drunk and try to forget their woes. Henrietta could not by this stage come up with a better suggestion and ordered more wine.
During the next couple of hours Margot talked about many of the people she was acquainted with on the coast including Coleen who had been her best friend for a decade until the last few days when Terry’s new relationship with said friend had come to light. Although Margot was sure that dumping Terry was prudent, in light of the new information Hetty had divulged, she felt hurt and betrayed by Coleen who had obviously planned to steal her man at the first opportunity.
Eventually Hetty said
goodbye to Margot and drove back to the villa via the longer, quieter back road route to avoid any police cars, as she had consumed so much alcohol. She arrived at the large decorative iron gates and nipped the remote control fob, to no effect and noticed that the gardens were pitch black and the outside sensor lights had not come on. She felt relatively safe inside her locked car and whilst inebriated she stared at the villa and gradually acknowledged that other homes in the vicinity had power and light. She did not know if the electricity to the villa had been sabotaged deliberately, had failed, or the bill had not been paid but realised it was a huge problem as the entire house was controlled by a massive computer system and therefore she faced no lights, no heat, no air conditioning, no hot water, randomly locked doors, no video surveillance and no access to either the driveway or garage.
It was almost midnight and Henrietta wondered what to do. It seemed too much of a coincidence that Terry had threatened her earlier that day and now she was now stuck in the car in front of the impenetrable gates. She turned off the engine and headlights and sat in the dark in silence and wondered where else she could stay, as the hour was late and she knew all the hotels would be full but felt she could not phone Margot again. There was no alternative; she would have to stay at the power stricken villa and go inside with only the moon to light the way to bed. She picked up her mobile phone and sent texts to all of her friends and family saying that she loved them and hoped they would forgive her for letting them down by getting entangled with the manipulative man they all disliked. In the text to Oscar, who was staying the night at Josh’s house, she added lots of kisses. Once she had finished, she closed her phone and put it in her handbag, then set about locking the car and climbing over the high ornate gates in her long peasant skirt, trying not to draw attention to herself as a potential burglar in such an affluent and security conscious neighbourhood.
Once on the other side of the gate she began to feel nervous and had a strange foreboding, a feeling that she was being stalked. Her back felt cold, her mouth felt dry, her heart began to race and her temples pounded as she walked faster towards the front door and curled her toes tightly in an attempt to prevent her flip-flops from flapping. As she approached the door her mobile phone gave a sudden piercing shrill and she swore under hr breath as she tried to retrieve it quickly and silence it, for if there was someone watching out for her in the dark, they would now know exactly where she was because in addition to the shrill rings, the phone lit up the driveway like a flashing torch. Hetty almost had a heart attack when the name of Dominic’s cousin shone brightly on the screen. As she answered the call with trembling hands she closed her eyes and prayed for mercy as she expected to be garrotted by mad eyed Frank or one of the fit and pretty boys and hoped that the cheese wire would not snag on her wrist, as she did not want to suffer a prolonged or bundled death. Her chin trembled as she whispered a ‘hello’ into the phone but no one spoke and the line went dead. She froze to the spot and trembled, all her senses were heightened and all the hairs on her arms and neck stood up uncomfortably as she listened intently for any movement in the garden, but there was none. She opened her eyes and looked up into the inky sky hoping that she was wrong and there was a God, whilst still waiting to be murdered at Terry’s request.
Seconds later nothing had happened and she was alive and unharmed but felt very, very cold. She ran to the front door, chin trembling and shivering whilst rummaging for the front door key, she opened the it as fast as she could, jumped inside and slammed it shut, bolted it and leaned against the heavy wooden jamb and began to cry a low wailing sound. She was frightened and desperately wanted someone to rescue her but was alone, as always. It was too late to phone Clive, besides, what could he do? She checked all the internal doors were still locked as she had left them and used her master key to unlock and re-lock her route to bed. Fortunately she had been prudent earlier that day and had bolted all of the external metal window shutters, so decided that she was relatively safe for the time being. Henrietta used the light from her phone to illuminate the stairs and went straight to bed. Finally, wrapped in two quilts, exhausted, she fell asleep.
July 15th 2008.
The following morning Henrietta awoke to a house without any of the amenities of modern electric life and wondered what to do. She rooted around in Terry’s study for a bill which would determine the energy supplier but there was nothing. She noticed that she had received several texts from friends in England who thought perhaps she had been drunk and was missing them. She sent reassurances to them all but Ruth was not so easily fobbed-off and sent a text; ‘Phone me asap. Worried. Come home. Love R’.
Henrietta phoned her:
“Hi Ruth it’s me, I’m fine. How are you?”
“Don’t talk rubbish. I know you. What’s going on out there? Why haven’t you come home?”
“To be honest, I don’t think you would believe me, but it might be helpful if you wrote a letter to my solicitor saying all you know about my relationship with Terry, just in case things get out of hand.”
“For you to talk in weird dramatic riddles like this, things must be out of control already. Just get on a plane with Oscar and come home. Please.” Her tone softened to a gentle plea.
“I am taking Terry to court for attacking me, so I have to remain here for that. Oscar is doing his o’levels and I can’t wreck his life too. I must stay for now, even if only to safeguard him.” There was a long silence and an unspoken understanding.
“Ok, text me the solicitors number and I’ll do my bit. Should I come out there?”
“I appreciate the offer but I don’t want you involved in this war. It’s nasty! Thanks for everything though. See you soon, hopefully, promise.” Henrietta stood leaning against the marble vanity unit in the bathroom and scowled at her reflection in the large mirror for a while, searching inside her own eyes for the determination and courage she realised she would need in the coming weeks and months.
Next she phoned her conveyancing solicitor in England, on his mobile phone and explained that she was still in Spain trying to resolve problems and to give Oscar a decent holiday after his o’levels but planned return to Derbyshire in the autumn. She asked him to send £10,000 to her Spanish bank account but hold other monies in the client account, for the time being.
Finally she sent Terry a text asking who to contact about the lack of electricity. He immediately phoned.
“I’ll get the power back on when you move out! Give me the damned car and give me my house back. Stop fucking about and go back to UK.” They were both in fighting spirits.
“I thought you would be ringing to apologise for behaving like an animal, you evil bastard!” She said as he laughed down the line at her at her naivety.
“I was doing you a favour, you’re the lonely one and you wanted me. You begged me. Besides, it would just look like sour grapes on your part!” He put the phone down on her.
She felt deflated and crushed and decided to call Margot to see if she could help with the untenable electric problem or intercede with the sadistic monster on her behalf.
“Hi, Margot, it’s Henrietta. I need a friend and don’t know where to turn or who to speak to. I know you are still probably Terry’s girlfriend but I’ve no power and can’t make the gates or garage work… I haven’t even got hot water!”
“I assure you I am not with Terry! In fact I am thoroughly pissed off with him and think he is a self-serving user. What has happened, have you been cut off?”
“I’ve no idea but I am at my wits end and need a coffee and some help. Do you think you could phone him and find out if he’s done this?”
Margot was adamant that she would not phone him.
“After the lies he has told me, the bastard! He went behind my back and smoothed his way into my best friend’s knickers. Coleen and I had been close for years until he came along. Do you know that I am Godmother to her Daughter, for Christ’s sake?” She took a deep breath and exhaled her menthol cigarette. “My good
God, he used me to meet everyone in this place including his fancy lawyer. Our family lawyer! I handed him so many contacts, nice decent, wealthy people with nice lives, who I now worry about and blame myself for what he might do to them. My reputation is all I had…..” She sounded more upset than Hetty.
“Have I called at a bad time Margot?”
“No, sorry, all times seem bad at the moment. I am so worried about everyone, even Colleen, the fat, desperate, stupid cow! What was she thinking? Did she really believe she could steal a man from me? Well she has. Or should I say; her ex-husband’s money has! How long is that going to last, if she’s with him?” Henrietta listened quietly as Margot inhaled her cigarette noisily.
“So, back to the electrics, any ideas?”
“I’ll be round in fifteen, ok.” She too put down the receiver on Henrietta.
Sure enough, Margot’s car appeared on the quiet street outside the gates. Henrietta watched through the slits in the metal shutters from an upstairs window as Margot pressed the unresponsive intercom, then observed her as she used her mobile phone.
“Henrietta, I’m outside. How on earth do I get in?”
“You will have to do what I did and climb over them.” Henrietta grinned as she watched Margot put her phone in her bag, slide her sunglasses onto the top of her head, stamp on her cigarette, sling her Louis Vuitton handbag over her shoulder and begin to scale the ornate gates in her skin tight white jeans and suede espadrilles. Henrietta ran downstairs and waited for her by the front door, smiling warmly.
“Thanks for coming Margot. I really appreciate it.”
“What the hell?” She pointed towards the gate. “Really? I thought you were kidding darling.” She grunted a laughing sound as she leaned forward to air kiss Henrietta on either side of her face and motioned to move inside the villa.
The Unsuspecting Housewife Page 15