I opened my eyes, “I’m alive, you spoon!”
His whole body radiated relief. His warm, charismatic face shone down on me. He closed his eyes and let out a long exhalation of breath. He opened his eyes again and smiled. “Dammit!” He grabbed my hand, and held it firmly.
“How did you find me?” It hurt to talk and my body invited me to leave consciousness. However, I found asking questions more appealing than death.
“I followed you.”
“What?”
“When you left the house, I followed you.”
“You did?” My heart leapt, causing my stab wound to throb, but I was momentarily happy. Gareth hadn’t left me after all, not even during the aftermath of my betrayal. I thought he’d gone back to Barry’s, but he had been hiding in the garden all along. You know your husband is going to forgive you when his storming-out gets no further than the coniferous border.
“I followed Rafe as far as Exeter, then I lost him. I figured he must be bringing you here, but it took me a while to find the place. It’s not on the satnav.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I should have been here sooner! Who did this to you?”
“Dawn.”
“Where is she?” he asked, rising to his knees.
“Dead.”
“Dead?”
“Montgomery shot her.”
“Where is he?” he asked, standing.
“In the house. But it’s okay, he thinks I’m dead.”
Suddenly, we heard a commotion up at the house. One of the upper sash windows opened, with a grating noise and a thud. Then we saw something that neither of us expected. Montgomery dangled Rafe Maddocks, head first, out of the window. Pompomberry House was a tall building and even elongated Rafe was not long enough to reach the ground. His head dangled many metres above the gravel path.
“Christ! Is that Rafe?” asked Gareth.
“Stop!” cried Rafe. “You need me!”
“See, that’s the thing Rafe, I don’t need you. At least not anymore,” shouted Montgomery.
Before we could work out what to do, Montgomery let go of Rafe’s ankles, sending him plummeting three storeys and smacking into the path. I heard a cracking sound as his neck snapped and his skull shattered.
I felt sickened, even a little sad. Rafe had been an obnoxious, disloyal murderer, but there had been a time when I thought him only obnoxious and disloyal. I mourned the few happy minutes we had once shared. Nobody deserved to die like that. Then, I remembered Rafe axing off Danger’s foot because of a mere magazine, and began to feel that perhaps he had deserved his fate.
Montgomery’s carroty face appeared at the window before suddenly disappearing. Had he seen Gareth? Did he know that I was alive? If so, then he was surely about to come out to shoot us both dead.
Gareth must have had the same thought, because he began sprinting towards the house.
“No Gareth! He’s got a gun!”
Gareth picked up the axe, which was still stained with Danger Smith’s blood. “The ambulance is on its way,” he called back at me, as he ran.
My body hurt badly and it was difficult to sit up, but somehow I managed it. I watched with horror as my husband disappeared into Pompomberry House. It drank him up like a vampire feasting. The pain in my stomach spread to my fearful heart. Would I ever see Gareth again?
Where was Montgomery? Surely Montgomery would have come out of the house by now if he meant to shoot us. Then I realised the horrible truth. He didn’t need to come out because Gareth was going in. Montgomery was inside waiting for Gareth, waiting with a loaded gun.
A terrible racket suddenly assailed my ears. At first I thought it was one thousand horrified mermaids screaming, but then I realised that it was actually a flock of seagulls. They swooped down onto the lawn, like hungry vultures. Were they ... Oh heck, they were ... They were devouring Rafe Maddocks.
I heard an engine. It hurt to turn my head, but I had to know who was coming. Was it someone who could save Gareth? Yes, it was! It was a police boat! It sped toward Pompomberry Island from somewhere off to the east. Eventually, the engine was switched off and the boat coasted to the shore.
“Hello! I’m D.I. ...”
“Taylor, I know. Gareth’s in the house.”
Already Forrester was running toward the house. She looked like the perfect action hero from a film — sexy, but not unrealistically so. Those boots were made for chasing. Taylor scurried after her, tripping and scuttling with reliable incompetence.
I was told by Gareth what happened next, and I have no reason to doubt its accuracy.
He made haste into the house, ducking down to the floor like a pro ninja, expecting Montgomery to fire a shot as soon as he opened the door.
However, his presumption proved invalid. Montgomery was not lying in wait inside the front door after all. So, Gareth began searching the house in a stealthy manner. Having located the living room and secured the area, he dropped the cumbersome axe and picked up a more light-weight defence weapon — an iron fire rod. Then, deducing that Montgomery was upstairs, he decided to crouch in the hallway, and wait for Montgomery to appear.
Suddenly, like a phantom, Montgomery materialised from a hidey-hole beneath the stairs. He promptly held the gun to Gareth’s head. Though Gareth deposited a little poo in his boxer shorts, he otherwise responded with a cool and fearless façade.
“Well, well, well,” Montgomery chuckled. “My story was called ‘I Shot Five Men’ and, thanks to you and your little wifey, I’m nearly there.”
Gareth wanted to say something cool and clever, but one phrase, and one phase alone, entered his mind. “Eat my shorts!” he replied.
Gunfire. Gunfire splintering through the air!
And Gareth was dead.
Chapter 23
At least, he thought he was dead.
Moments later, he realised that he was still very much alive. On the carpet beside him lay the chunky corpse of Montgomery Lowe, oozing a pool of blood. Just in the nick of time, Forrester had shot the villain in the head.
“Are you all right?” asked Forrester.
“I think so. How is Dee? Is she all right?”
“The paramedics will be here soon.”
“I need to be with her!” Gareth cried.
The need to be with me was so strong that he rushed out of Pompomberry House, down the winding steps and onto the sand, without even stopping to attend to the poo.
Chapter 24
The weather outside was bright and held the promise of a fair summer. Swallows swooped through the blue Cornish skies. I was itching to get out of hospital and home to London. I’d been bed-ridden for twenty days and it was excruciating. Although there were no more murders to solve, I had never been well-suited to being idle.
Besides, if I read another magazine, I might have been tempted to give up being a woman altogether. According to these: my face needed replacing; my hair needed ironing; my body wasn’t ‘summer ready’; my shoes needed remodeling; and my feet needed sandpapering. According to the same magazines, if I were a man, a quick squirt of Linx would fix everything.
Speaking of appalling literature, I was amazed to learn that The Book of Most Quality Writers had now sold over a million copies.
This had angered traditional publishers, bookshops and Enid Kibbler beyond belief. Enid was quoted in the paper saying that book quality was no longer valued and the book industry was a shambles that she no longer wanted any part of. Two days later she announced her intention to write a novel.
When Amazon announced the book’s one millionth sale, Emily Whistlefoot almost wet herself with delight. However, when she learned that five of the writers she idolised were dead, she went into mourning. She attended all five memorial services and viewed the stabbing, axe murder, shooting and other assorted violence as an unfortunate byproduct of the artistic temperaments that ultimately made the writers great. She vowed to set up a museum in the authors’ memory.
As a result of
the publicity, Netta Lewis got her own chat show on Channel 5 and promptly resigned from all Heart Africa-related activities. Netta was not the only one to benefit from the publicity. Garden gnomes also made a comeback.
Sultana Productions rushed the final cut of Montgomery’s film. It was slated by every single national newspaper and, even worse, got negative customer reviews.
Ricky Foster was so shaken up by the consequences of that acting job, that he quit acting and became a handyman.
D.I. Forrester was awarded a promotion and bravery medal. Nothing happened to D.I. Taylor.
After Rafe Maddocks’ post-mortem, Cornwall Council entered into discussion with wildlife trusts about the growing seagull problem in the south west.
Due to the unexpected demise of my co-writers, I became the sole surviving author of The Book of Most Quality Writers. According to a contract drawn up by Montgomery, it turned out that the royalties were mine and mine alone.
My life could be quite different now, should I want it to be. Over the years, I had imagined all the things I could do with a little extra money: hire an editor, buy a more reliable printer, invest in a small print run of The Red River ... But one million pounds — that was something I’d never even dreamt I might one day acquire.
I waited in the hospital foyer, speculating about the future. If truth be told, there was only one thing that I wanted, and that thing could not be bought, not with any amount of money.
A tall, lanky man with a shrinking beer belly commanded the automatic doors. I watched in admiration. He was my hero. Thank goodness I’d realised he was the love of my life before he saved it, otherwise I might have had some seriously complicated feelings to work through.
Now that he’d saved me from death, the fact that he’d bought a Scooby-Doo costume with my money seemed inconsequential. I noticed that he now walked with just a touch of confidence, instead of the despondent slouch he used to have. Now there was a man I could love for the rest of my life.
“Thanks for collecting me,” I smiled.
“Are you kidding?” he said with a big grin. He gave me a massive hug, lifting me off the ground. Then he remembered my stitches and gently returned me to earth.
I felt happy and loved once again. I beamed back at him.
Then he added, “I couldn’t have you missing our solicitor’s meeting this afternoon.”
My heart fell out through my vagina. To survive all that, for this?
“Solicitor’s meeting?” I stammered.
“I knew you’d forget.”
“I didn’t forget. I just didn’t realise it was today. Will we even be back in time?”
“We could always postpone. That’s if you’re not up to it today.”
“No, no, let’s do this.”
What was I doing? Why was I allowing this to happen? Was my pride really that important to me? The last time I had been too slow to tell Gareth how I felt, I had ended up pushing him away. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I stop this while I still could?
I looked at my husband. Was it really impossible that he’d forgiven me? Whilst he was visiting me every day in hospital, I had dared to believe that we had moved past my brief four-legged frolic with Ricky-Biff. However, if Gareth expected me to go to a legal meeting the moment I was discharged from hospital, then presumably we hadn’t moved on at all.
Even so, I should say something. I should tell him how I felt even if it meant I might be rejected. A little humiliation was a small stake to gamble in a game where the top prize was years of happiness.
I looked at Gareth, dumbstruck, wishing that I could find the words that I needed to tell him. I’d been talking to him for ten years. Why was I speechless now?
“Or,” he said, with a big, friendly grin, “we could go home instead.” My heart fluttered like a big, blood-pumping butterfly. Then he quickly added, “I mean, just for some quick sexy time, or something.”
“I suppose we could,” I agreed, with fake indifference. Then I quickly added, “Just for one last sexy time, I mean.”
“One last sexy time,” he echoed. Then, he winked and grabbed my hand, pulling me urgently towards his car.
I tottered out of the hospital and across the car park, hand in hand with my husband. I wondered what the future had in store for us. Life might be very different now that I was a bestselling author and millionaire. I wondered if it would change me.
The End
Also by Rosen Trevithick ...
Straight Out of University
A sexy, hilarious, modern and daring novel.
Sophie’s university life is lively, characterised by passionate, sapphic love affairs, liberal activism and boundary-pushing theatre.
Nine years later, she returns to her hometown in Cornwall, where girls are friends with girls, boys are friends with boys, and queer is an experience felt when you drink too much cider.
Sophie falls for John, a sensible, conservative male man with a fondness for cardigans, but can they overcome their cultural differences?
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So called because of its alternation between laugh out loud comedy and more sinister, psychological tales, Seesaw showcases some of Rosen’s most loved shorts, alongside some previously unpublished bite-sized tales.
Includes number one best-selling humorous fiction Lipstick and Knickers as well as critically acclaimed drama The Other Daughter.
The collection contains a heartfelt preface about Rosen’s own life, and two stories that explore living with a mental health problem.
This highly praised collection is renowned for taking readers through the gamut of emotions, bringing tears of both sorrow and laughter.
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