Check Mate

by Caron Allan

  Then—he arrived. In a rush of energy, a tall, gorgeous man pushed through the doors and stood across the room, looking round. Then he made a beeline for Madison. I hid behind a stained menu and watched in astonishment as he took her hand, leaned forward to kiss her cheek, and then pressed a massive bunch of roses into her arms. She blushed and stammered a greeting and was all starry-eyed, it made me feel quite teary. She would have married him then and there had he proposed. It was a bit like seeing my widowed granny get asked to dance at a school disco when she’d only gone there as a chaperone.

  They sat, they talked, they laughed, they ordered food. It was clearly going swimmingly. When he nipped off to the gents between the soup and the steak, she gave me a happy little thumbs-up. She was glowing with happiness.

  I didn’t know what to do. Should I discreetly remove myself and go home, or should I wait and see if she wanted to walk home with me? To be honest, I was bored out of my brain. I had studied the menu from top to bottom, checked my phone about fifty times, and played Spider Solitaire until my eyes were sore and my battery was almost dead. I shouldn’t have had dinner before coming out, at least that would have given me something to do. I should have taken a book with me.

  By ten o’clock, they were still merrily laughing and chatting away and poking away at their desserts. And I’d got out an eyeliner pencil and found 43 words from Chicken Tikka ‘Masarla’ (sic) on the menu. Thank God for that extra R. I don’t think the staff will notice the writing down the margin at the side of the main courses. Maybe some future customer will add a couple more. By then I was contemplating asking the waitress for the children’s colouring pack reserved for Sunday lunchtimes.

  I ordered my third hot chocolate at ten-fifteen. I was obviously going to give myself diabetes just to further Madison’s love life! I had to make do with just the plain drink as they’d run out of the whipped cream, the last of it going on Madison and Tyrone’s desserts. And marshmallows were also ‘off’.

  And still they talked on. If they do get married, there’ll be nothing left to talk about. Not that I wasn’t happy for her, but I was just bored, bored, bored and I kept thinking I could be at home with my own beloved right now, at that very moment, whispering sweet nothings and enjoying his manly embrace.

  Finally, at a quarter to eleven, they decided to call it a night. She shot me an embarrassed smile as he carefully helped her into her coat then escorted her outside. They had gone. And I was left sitting there like the last cabbage at the allotment.

  I walked home on my own. It was a dry, mild night, fortunately.

  She rang me just after midnight. I was shocked she had invited him in for coffee, the tart! And…

  “He knows where you live now!” I said. “That was the whole point of meeting him at the pub.”

  She didn’t care. She was floating on air. There was no use in me reminding her that she still knew nothing about him, and that she couldn’t have been sure he would leave when she asked him to. She was all breathy sighs of happiness and I didn’t want to burst her bubble. Ugh. it makes me sick.

  “He’s The One,” she said, all dreamy-sounding.

  “It’s only been three hours.” I said.

  “We’re soulmates,” she added with a sigh, and put the phone down.

  OMG! Whatever.

  Thursday August 13th—11.25pm

  Lovely evening out with Matt—dinner and a nice romantic boat-ride on the river, watching the sunset. Aw! Am in love and feeling soppy as anything.

  Friday August 14th—8.15pm

  Feel like a total billy-no-mates. There’s Madison seeing Tyrone for the third evening in a row, Lill is going to bingo at the church hall with Jacqueline. Sid and Matt have gone to the pub in the next village—they are now in the village darts team and there is a grudge match tonight between the Tripe and Clackett (our pub) and the Kidney and Widgett (theirs).

  I’m left here babysitting. So I shall put the evening to good use, assuming the babies sleep soundly, and Mr Merlot and I will do a spot of research on the internet. Typing ‘#50 ways to kill your BFF’.

  Wow! There are so many more ways than fifty!

  LOL.

  Later: 10.30pm

  Right. I’m all set. I now know exactly where she is living, I know how to get there, and I know where to park—everything. I’m keen to get this done tonight.

  I don’t know whether to ask Sid to go with me or whether I should just go it alone.

  Actually I feel really excited—just think, by this time tomorrow this could all be over! No more looking over my shoulder all the time, no more anxiety. The nightmare that has been the last two years of my life will just be over, and I can get back to really living again, and relax and focus on my role as loving wife and mother and pillar of the community.

  Yes. I’ll do it tonight. I’ll go on my own, I don’t need to take anyone with me – I haven’t got far to go, and in any case it’s my fight, I need to get on and do this.

  The question is, how? What’s the best method to employ? I don’t want to do anything that means getting too close to her. So I won’t be putting a pillow over her face, as I did to Mavis’s ex, Simon Meesham, last year, even though that worked really well, apart from the backache it gave me at the time, and the fact that it took ages and I was bored out of my brain waiting for him to be well and truly dead. Plus I was pregnant and really needed the loo.

  And I’m not going to try running her down in a hired car like I did to her husband Huw two years ago, as that was really so traumatic for me and also very public.

  The ethylene glycol worked well last summer on my mother’s ex, Desmond-the-evil-child-molester, and I am so tempted to use it again as it’s such a great method—slowish, but cheap, and easy to administer, a really excellent all-rounder. But of course I’ve tried it on Monica a couple of times, though sadly without success. Somehow she must have suspected what I’d done, I think, on both occasions because she managed to avoid falling into my neat trap. What if this time, instead of just popping it into a couple of things, I put it into absolutely everything?

  After all, it doesn’t really matter if it takes a few days to work, I can wait. At least I’ll know I can relax and simply wait for it to take its toll. And the advantage of being nowhere nearby when ‘it’ happens cannot be overstated.

  I could put it into anything she has in her fridge that’s already open. If she’s got half a can of baked beans, or any fizzy pop, bottled water, soup, casserole, mayonnaise salady things like coleslaw or even any cream, custard, chutneys, ketchups, anything that isn’t completely dry, even if I can only squeeze in a tiny amount, such as in any cream, which would show the change in colour and viscosity easily. Altogether it should be just as effective as a larger amount in one item.

  And there might even be a way to get it into a few things she hasn’t opened yet. I’ll take a syringe with me and make sure I get the poison into as many things as possible. I could even put it into mouthwash, if she’s got any, because even though you spit most of it out, let’s be honest, we all swallow a teeny bit of it, and as our local supermarket slogan says, ‘every little helps’.

  I’ll go out to the garage and check the EG stocks now, just to make sure we’ve got enough.

  Sunday August 16th—11.45am

  Last night was another absolute effing disaster! Am I cursed or something? Why do these things keep happening to me? I’m absolutely furious with myself.

  It all went so smoothly to begin with. In fact, I was so pleased at my great ingenuity, and that alone should have set off the warning bells in my head—talk about pride going before a fall!

  I easily found the house after an uneventful but boring two-hour drive. Found the perfect spot to park, just around the corner at the dark end of a pub car park, amongst a number of other cars—presumably the pub was having a lock-in, that or else most of the patrons had gone home in taxis.

  A short, pleasant walk to Monica’s—I’m not calling her Zinnia for anyone btw, wha
t a bloody ridiculous name! And there it was, a modest three or four bed detached home at the end of a charming cul-de-sac, big hedges on all sides hiding the neighbours. A nice spacious, block-paved drive with a nice floral archway leading to the back garden. From the point of view of the householder, it didn’t seem particularly secure. From my point of view, however, it was just perfect.

  There was no way I was getting inside her front door—double-glazed, double-locked. Or her back door, same set-up.

  But. There was an attached garage. And above the garage was a bathroom with a large window, standing slightly ajar, beckoning to me, on this lovely warm, late summer evening.

  If I could get up there, I reasoned, it would be simplicity itself to pull the window a little wider open and I should be able to slip inside and hey presto!

  Only, how was I to get onto the garage roof? There was no convenient trellis or stout creeper attached. A quick look round the back of the garage revealed a door. I tried it. Surprise, surprise, it was locked.

  If I’d had Sid with me, no doubt he could have got inside the garage in just a few seconds. But I hadn’t, so he couldn’t. At this point I should have listened to my first instinct which was to call it a day, go home and come back another time with Sid and his skeleton keys and naturally crooked instincts. I should have, but I didn’t.

  I stood there for a minute or so, looking around me and debating with myself what was the best thing to do. There was a window next to the door into the garage. It looked to be single-glazed, as far as I could tell. I could smash that, though there was no guarantee that I would find anything useful inside. I tried peering through the glass with my hands cupped around my face to block the glare but I couldn’t make out anything in the gloom. And if I did smash the window, would the noise of it bring neighbours and dogs howling for my blood?

  Like a child needing the toilet, I hopped from foot to foot in an agony of indecision. What should I do? Even at that moment a hesitant little voice said ‘go home and come back tomorrow with Sid.’ The hesitant little voice was shouted down by my pride and impatience. It had to be tonight. It had to be now!

  I wandered round into the back garden. I peered about me in the darkness, trying to identify the different shadows and shapes. Maybe she had a lawn chair or a patio chair or something I could stand on?

  It was better than that. She had a nice sturdy little table and a couple of chairs. As silently as I could, with a lot of puffing and groaning from the effort, I hauled first the table then the two chairs over to the garage. I set one of the chairs on top of the table and climbed up onto the table. Somewhat nervously, I then climbed on top of the chair. I couldn’t quite reach.

  I clambered down and got the second chair. I stood this on top of the first chair. It was just about tall enough, but felt very unsteady, and as I stepped up, I had to grip the edge of the garage roof tightly to keep from toppling over. It was no good. If I tried to get onto the garage roof from this position, my pyramid would be sure to collapse beneath me, taking me with it and potentially making a racket sufficient to wake everyone within a mile radius of Monica’s garage.

  Reluctantly I scrambled down again, and went in search of more chairs. I found the remaining pair and brought them back to the table. I sank down on one of them for a few minutes, trying to cool down and groping about in my mind for my composure. It had to be in there somewhere.

  Pulling myself together as the sudden sense of time racing by impinged on my conscience, I got up and hoisted chair number three onto the patio table. I set the first two chairs side by side, then lifted the third on top to stand half on one, half on the other. An experimental jiggle of the chairs indicated my design was now far steadier. I piled the cushions of all four chairs on top of chair three and climbed aboard. I dumped my back-pack on the garage roof—we murderers slash burglars always have so much stuff to carry around with us.

  After several minutes of supreme effort, and to my great relief, and with nothing worse than exhausted muscles and a bashed knee, I found myself atop the garage. I had done it! But my sense of achievement was quickly overpowered by the nausea that roiled in my stomach when I looked down into the inky depths seemingly miles below me.

  At least it was dark and I was reasonably hopeful no one could see me, especially given the fact that it was just after one o’clock in the morning, and the other houses around the cul-de-sac were all in darkness.

  I turned my attention to the bathroom window. And that was when I saw it. A motion-sensor light on the corner of the house. I froze. But only for a few seconds. On surveying the light more calmly, I realised it was pointing down the drive. And in any case, it hadn’t come on as I went past, so either it was turned off or the bulb had gone. The pounding of my heart began to slow again as relief flooded through me. This breaking-and-entering lark was turning me into a nervous wreck. Of course there was always the possibility of the light being slightly out of position, so I inched my way forward, just in case it suddenly lit up the sky, or just in case there was another light I hadn’t noticed in my preoccupied state.

  Once I reached the bathroom window-ledge, after what felt like a hundred years, I found I couldn’t quite see inside the bathroom, I was about a foot lower than I needed to be. I reached up and gripped the corner of the window, slowly and oh so carefully easing the window a little wider, but I still just couldn’t quite see inside. I had to go back and get something to stand on. For a second I just closed my eyes in frustration and stood there. But well, I’d come this far, hadn’t I?

  Lying flat on the roof and ignoring the bile rising in my throat, I reached down and gripped the back of one of the chairs. It took all my strength and stamina to slowly raise it onto the roof beside me where it landed with a bump and a scrape which sounded about as quiet as a cymbal clash in the night. I lay prone and still, waiting and listening, but nothing untoward happened. My muscles were screaming with all the effort I had put them through, but I carried the chair over to the bathroom window and, afraid to give myself too long to think, in a moment I was up and sitting on the window ledge. I shoved away a niggling doubt about how I would get down on the other side, and whether I’d find myself with my feet in the toilet.

  I swung myself round on the ledge and peered in at the window. Warm, rose-scented damp air met my skin. With delicate sweeps of my hands, I felt around, and after moving one or two things out of the way, a toothpaste tube from the feel of it and a hairbrush and a mug bearing a toothbrush, I began to slide forwards into the bathroom. I felt another bottle a bit too close for comfort and moved that away, the smell of minty freshness reminding me to deal with the mouthwash later. Still edging forward virtually in slow motion with one foot outstretched, I encountered the porcelain of the basin, and allowed myself to slither into it, steadied for a moment, then gripping the edge of the sink, I stepped carefully down onto the floor, and had to resist the urge to do that thing the Pope does and bend to kiss the ground in blessed relief at my safe arrival.

  I paused for a moment to allow my eyes to adjust to this deeper darkness, and once I found the bath, sank down on the side of it to allow my jelly legs a few moments of recovery before leaving this sanctuary to complete my mission. I saw now that the door was open, and beyond the bathroom, the hall was dense deepest black. No sound came to my ears.

  In the doorway I paused again, to get my bearings and to allow my thumping heart to calm. I eased the bathroom door almost shut, and with a quick flash of my torch, checked around the room. I determined that I could easily doctor the mouthwash, both the open one and the new bottle I found in the cabinet. I tipped away about a quarter of the contents of the open one down the sink and added the same amount of the ethylene glycol-rich anti-freeze I had brought with me in fizzy pop bottle.

  Then I filled the syringe, and pushed the needle into the plastic near the lid of the new bottle to make a hole. I squeezed out a good inch and a half of mouthwash and then topped the level up again from the syringe. I replaced the new bot
tle and ran a dribble of water into the sink to wash away any traces.

  I felt pretty pleased with myself. I’d made almost no noise and caused no disturbance. My confidence rocketed. This plan was going to work! Intelligence and sheer audacity had won the day! I collected my stuff and shoved it into the back-pack. Time to find that kitchen.

  It’s not easy finding your way around someone else’s house in the middle of the night. It takes forever to go anywhere as you have your hands stretched out in front of you, and you have to feel each step of the way. The last thing I wanted was to bump into a shelf of ornaments or fall down the stairs.

  By the time I had finally reached the kitchen, I was mentally and physically exhausted. My whole body ached. My limp was worse than usual after all that I’d subjected my knee and hip to. And my head was pounding.

  But I courageously set my discomfort aside and got to work. I had brought with me a tiny plastic funnel—I’m nothing if not organised—and obviously before I even got into the house, I had put on a pair of my trusty heavy-duty latex gloves, with a spare pair in my pocket in case of disasters.

  I put the can of anti-freeze on the drainer, with the funnel next to it. I crossed to the fridge and noticed that I was finding my way pretty well considering it was dark, obviously, though not as dark in the kitchen as on the landing and stairs. As I opened the fridge, I was dazzled by the light that came on and momentarily panicked, shutting it again to allow my retinas to recover for a few vital seconds.

  There were a number of useful items in the fridge that I knew I would be able to ‘enhance’. For example, the plastic container of leftover peach slices in syrup. I added a little splosh to that. Not too much due to the slight bluey-greeny colour of the anti-freeze that would be a dead giveaway in large quantity.