Stalk Me

by Richard Parker

  She found her glass empty again and looked up at Jody. He was scanning the rack of Blu-rays as if looking for something. This had to be difficult for him, her invading his life when he hadn’t seen her for so long.

  “I promise I’ll be out of here as soon as I can.”

  Jody suddenly looked at her accusingly through his bushy red eyebrows. “And I promise you’re welcome to take as long as you fucking need.” He seemed genuinely affronted.

  Now it was Beth’s turn to look elsewhere. Her gaze rested on the bottle, but she resisted the urge to pour from it again. It was already making her feel desensitised. “Thanks.”

  “I’m eating. You eating?” Jody was on his feet.

  “No... I’m fine.”

  “I’ll make you some breakfast and you can reheat it later.”

  Jody left the room and walked across the landing to the kitchen.

  Beth was left looking through the bay window to the smoked panes of the newly built but vacant office block opposite. She’d spent hours watching the automated window-cleaning cradle going up and down all day. It seemed to epitomise her new existence – fruitless robotic routine maintaining emptiness.

  She listened to the scrape as Jody aggressively tugged the ice-clad drawers of the freezer, and it reminded her of the snoring she’d been lying awake listening to. She was so grateful to be here, though. Momentarily, it was a neutral place. There was nothing here to remind her of the life she’d lost. There were no pictures of her or Luc on the walls as there were at her parents.

  She wondered if there had been and Jody had removed them, or if her life really had no impact on her brother’s for the years she’d been married. Whichever was the case, she knew she’d have to leave her detached sanctuary soon, and watching the clips had been her first step. The more she exposed herself to what was familiar, the more chance she had of remembering what had happened to her. But what did she have left now?

  The bourbon suddenly tasted poisonous in her mouth, and she made her way quickly to the bathroom. She ran the tap but only stared as the water weakly coiled down the plughole. It was how she felt, as if everything that had made her Beth Jordan was slowly trickling away. She had few remnants of the life she’d previously owned. Only the family that Beth had a tenuous connection to were left. Luc was gone and someone else now occupied the familiar Edgeware home they’d previously inhabited. It felt like they’d never happened.

  Now she wanted to go to the new house and rifle through the boxes. Find the DVD of their wedding and the discs of digital photos to prove it had actually been genuine.

  What had her last words been to Luc? She wondered if any more of the evening would ever come back to her. Would it suddenly present itself weeks, months or years from now?

  She was sure they’d spoken civilly to each other after they’d made love and before they’d driven to the restaurant. Prior to that they’d had a diplomatic version of their regular argument. Both of them still opposed but politely trying to accommodate the other’s perspective. But Luc had remained implacable.

  Luc didn’t want children. It wasn’t that it was too soon. They were both in their early thirties. It wasn’t that he wasn’t ready or didn’t want the responsibility. Luc didn’t ever want children. Beth had known why, right from the early days, but she’d always figured he might change his mind.

  He’d always been honest, told her he’d understand if she wanted to find somebody else who would. They’d been in their early twenties then and it had felt like a negotiable ultimatum that would be altered by time and circumstance.

  As years passed and their closeness deepened, however, she realised that had only been her perception of it. Luc had given her the option to leave. Had he really meant it, or had he known she would never walk away from him? The resentment had built and surfaced when she’d least expected it.

  But they hadn’t rowed that evening. She hadn’t wanted to ruin the last night of their trip. They would have had enough to face when they returned for the move, and piling on any more stress was the last thing either of them needed. They’d got out of bed and dressed for dinner. He’d watched her in the mirror, then he was whispering “sorry” through blood.

  Had their conversation been on his mind as she’d driven him for the last time?

  Chapter 10

  Trip opened his eyes to find he was seated in the swivel chair of his den. His head still resonated with the impact of whatever had struck the left side of his skull, and he could feel the swelling there pumping like a second heart. He looked down at his wrists tied to the arms of the chair with multiple loops of clear fishing wire. It sliced into his skin as soon as he tried to raise his elbows.

  His ankles were crossed and felt like they were secured by the same restraints around the trunk of the chair. The flesh there felt cold. The line was already cutting deep. He knew he had to remain motionless if he didn’t want to be scored to the bone. Trip guessed he wasn’t alone before he heard the mouth chewing behind him. He held his breath, but whoever it was didn’t move into his field of vision.

  When the hammer slammed into the right side of his face, he heard his teeth shatter and felt their fragments embed in his tongue. Hot salty blood pumped into his mouth and he couldn’t breathe through his nose. He parted his lips but only a hiss emerged. A bolus of dark red saliva frothed down his chin and hung off it by a strand.

  His ears screamed for him. It felt like his whole skull had fractured and his brain was rapidly lowering a dark veil over everything. Two warm hands rested firmly on his shoulders, and he flinched in anticipation of another blow. But the pressure behind the palms increased until his chair started rolling forward. It slid awkwardly from side to side on its wheels, and the intruder thrust harder so Trip’s stomach struck the edge of his desk.

  A freckled male hand, with a mass of fine yellow hairs on its knuckles and up the length of its arm, reached past him and nudged the mouse so his screen came to life. Then he heard the roots of his hair tearing as the same hand twisted his head up.

  “I’d like you to access your iPhone archive.”

  Trip could barely hear him. Aside from the blood roaring in his eardrum, the request was delivered sotto vocce.

  “Then we’ll take a look online. OK? Mh?” The voice reminded Trip of his doctor’s bedside manner.

  The grip on his hair follicles tightened and Trip bubbled “OK’ through the thick liquid in his mouth. The hand released him and he leaned forward, blood and teeth dripping over the white keyboard. His red chewing gum dropped out and it held fragments of his shattered molars. The screen defined itself again through the moisture in his eyes. He heard liquid trickling and sizzling through his ear as he painstakingly tapped in his password.

  “Let’s delete everything there, and then I want you to go to your online channel and remove something specific.”

  He stabbed clumsily at the keys, a procedure that normally took him seconds now requiring every ounce of his concentration. More strands of blood dribbled onto the backs of his hands as he confirmed the final deletion of the files. There was little of his conscious thought left to wonder why he was being asked to do it. He just didn’t want the pain to get any worse. He logged on and repeated the process.

  His attacker whispered, close to his good left ear. “I’m sorry about this, Trip. Let me put your mind at ease; this is no random house invasion. This really did need to happen. Find some strength now, son.”

  Trip’s thoughts of escape, his pain and cognisance ceased. The claw of the hammer pierced his scalp and tore through the top of his brain. Trip’s twitching fingers gripping the mouse were the last parts of him to function.

  Chapter 11

  Beth hesitated at the top of the sloped driveway. The house was set back from the residential road, unnoticeable unless you looked down the incline and then only visible if the trees were as bare as they were now. She’d only been inside it twice, on the occasions the agent had showed them around. The rest of the time it had exis
ted as an image on the laptop, a seemingly unattainable goal that had fallen into their hands when the previous buyer had decided to retract his offer.

  The poplar trees still had some foliage when they’d viewed it. It had been a calm, unseasonably sunny day, and they’d both known they were going to make an offer on the place before they’d reached the front door. It had felt right, the undeniable setting for the next phase of their lives. How could they have shared such a potent feeling when they weren’t destined to unlock the front door together?

  Her father had paid a removals company to shift everything there from Edgeware while she’d been hospitalised. He’d said it would work out to be very expensive storage if she didn’t make a decision on the property soon.

  She wondered what Luc would have wanted her to do. Keep the house they’d fantasised about? He’d thought they would be safer here. The incident with the hoodie had left him shaken, and he’d believed a new start was the answer. Beth had known there was nowhere they could move that would offer the sort of security he yearned for, though.

  But he’d always been more practical than romantic and would appreciate that one income wasn’t going to pay the bills here, understand she had no choice but to let it go. Beth wished she had some religious faith as she tried to decide what he’d prefer her to do. But it was just about her future now. She had to sell.

  Beth looked down at the keys in the palm of her hand. They’d been sitting in the agent’s drawer for a couple of months. Last year, they’d been the symbol of everything that was important to them. Now they were two irrelevant pieces of metal.

  She walked down the track to the new building that now belonged only to her and recalled the conversations she’d had with Luc about the solar lights they would fit to guide vehicles to their front door in the dark. She’d been surprised when Luc had showed her the modern home he’d found online. He was usually such a traditionalist. They’d studied the spec from the agent until it was dog-eared and covered in wine and coffee stains, pored over the dimensions and made interior décor plans before they’d even had their offer accepted. Part of her had sensed it was too good to be true when they had.

  She rounded the shrubbery, and the taupe stucco and white trim facade waited in silence. Beth halted a few feet from the front door and caught her sombre reflection in the blackness of the downstairs window. It felt wrong, her entering this place without Luc, and she almost turned on her heel and walked back out. But she had to locate the documents she needed, and they were stored in boxes somewhere inside.

  A police car, siren blaring, shot past on the road above and barged into her thoughts. Beth stepped up to the door and slid the key into the lock.

  The door opened almost soundlessly, the seal sucking slightly as she pushed in. The long hallway where she’d last stood with Luc smelt strongly of furniture polish. She remembered how he’d quietly chuckled at her spraying the radiators with it whenever someone came to their house for a viewing.

  Beth left the door ajar as if she might need to make a quick getaway. The hall was longer than she remembered. All the doors to the pristine and empty rooms were sealed. She didn’t want to go in any of them, just locate the place where the boxes were stacked. She tried the rear lounge.

  Opening the door to the expansive space, Beth was relieved to find the crates against the back wall. Luc’s neat and square handwriting was on all of them.

  “IMPORTANT!”

  That was the one with all their documents in it. The noise of her ripping the tape from the flaps sounded deafening as it bounced off the blank walls. She found the box file she needed inside, the one with all their insurance documents neatly collated. That was Luc’s organisation, not Beth’s. She’d had a turn handling the paperwork for a year, and they’d been badly penalised for late payments. Luc had taken charge of the admin after that.

  She extracted the folder inside it and checked everything was in order. She had as long as she needed, but it still felt as if her visit was against the clock. Temporarily, the property was hers, but she couldn’t shake the sensation she was trespassing.

  When the small blue envelope fell out, she momentarily wondered what it was. She picked it up off the brand-new vellum brown carpet and recalled the contents. It was their digital legacy – online details to be passed on in the event of their deaths. Beth had thought it ludicrous, but Luc had told her that people getting locked out of their deceased family member’s accounts and photo archives was a common problem. He’d asked her to make a note of her personal passwords and he’d added his before sealing them in the envelope.

  Luc had meticulous contingency plans for everything. Since his father had died, Luc didn’t trust the world to make adequate provision for him. It wasn’t an unexpected death. His father had been hospitalised for seven long months before an eleven year-old Luc had arrived with his mother to find a new patient occupying his bed. They’d known he could no longer swallow and had been waiting out the inevitable, but watching his father reach that point had made Luc’s mind up.

  There had been a fifty percent genetic chance that his father would develop Huntington’s disease. He’d begun to exhibit symptoms at thirty-eight. Luc had watched him degenerate for nearly two years, nineteen painful months of watching his spasms and convulsions. They’d buried him under a hazelnut tree in the family plot in Quincampoix. Fifty percent chance or not, Luc hadn’t wanted to be responsible for passing on the same fate to his children. He wouldn’t even consider new mitochondrial replacement IVF treatment, didn’t believe children should have anything but their parents’ genes.

  He’d told Beth he’d understand if she didn’t want to take on the spectre herself. Beth had stayed, thinking she could change his mind, but he’d remained intractable. Like his father, he’d refused to take a test to see if he’d inherited the faulty gene. He didn’t want the sentence.

  Beth had told him to consider how his life would change if he found out he hadn’t. Luc had said she should consider how it would if he had. They’d fought frequently about it. It had been hard for her to argue without seeming selfish, but the truth was, part of her didn’t really want to know if she would one day have to lose him. Now she had, and Beth wondered again how much time they’d wasted quarrelling over it

  As he approached the age at which his father had died, he knew the risks became greater. But its advent only amplified his already boundless energies. And when he wasn’t pouring them into the company, he was working them off on the track. Beth believed he was always trying to outrun the spectre. Luc said he forgot himself when he ran.

  It was why being with him had always been so energizing. He didn’t live every day as if it was his last, but he intensely respected every minute that enabled him. Trimming the fat was his philosophy. He always maintained that, even if he became a victim of his genes, cutting the corners meant he could live a life as full as anyone’s.

  He’d done that way before he was thirty. Like his father, his aptitude was for engineering but, unlike his father, he also had a head for business and had effortlessly spliced the two. But Avellana had been the product of his talent and other people’s investment, and his rewards were still entrammelled with multiple shareholders.

  It was a highly competitive and ruthless sector, but Luc had worked tirelessly to put Avellana at the cutting edge of 3-D modelling and steel detailing, and had brought in business from some of the biggest industrial-fabricating giants, internationally as well as in the UK.

  The stockholders knew the organisation couldn’t function without him. Luc had hated dealing with the politics. He left that to Jerome Macintyre, his partner who had provided a critical percentage of the capital that had enabled Avellana to succeed. He’d had a fractious relationship with him from the early days, and Beth felt that Jerome had dug his claws deep into Luc and had been clinging on for dear life ever since.

  They socialised with Jerome and his wife, Lin, who also worked as the company development executive. It was a nebulous title a
nd Beth had never really understood what her role was. They were a couple that seemed to live a lavish lifestyle disproportionate to the tangible contribution they actually made to Avellana.

  Luc and Jerome had been firm friends as well as partners but, as the business had grown, the gulf between Luc’s hands-on management and Jerome’s constant need to expand had divided them.

  It would all have to be dealt with. She was sure Jerome would attempt to make the process of handing over Luc’s stake as painless for her as possible, and part of her wanted it to be just that. But she owed it to Luc to ensure that Jerome and the executive board didn’t effortlessly appropriate the fruits of his ingenuity, and that meant another battle ahead.

  Jerome had already phoned her mother’s house to make enquiries about her well-being, but she knew exactly what his agenda was. The pressure to meet would have been mounting even before Luc’s funeral.

  Jerome and Lin had been in Rouen while she’d been oblivious. They’d seen Luc’s coffin committed to the flames, and Beth imagined they both would have considered their livelihood being cremated inside the coffin. But she envied them. Whatever their thoughts had been, they at least had the opportunity to bid Luc farewell.

  The one person who loved him the most had been absent. Her mourning had been deferred. Until when, though? Would she always feel this way, Luc’s loss permanently on the periphery of her emotions?

  She turned the envelope over in her fingers and then slid it back inside the folder. She looked out of the floor-to-ceiling doors at the overgrown lawn and the old teak bench from Edgeware that his father had carved, still wrapped up in its cellophane packaging on the decking. She had to leave. Every corner presented her with a space they’d planned to fill.

  Beth hurriedly flicked through the other papers in the box file but didn’t read anything. She shut it, took the whole thing with her to the front door and only breathed when she got outside.