by John Marrs
‘Can I offer you or your pet giant a coffee?’ Tim asked, eyeballing Andrei.
‘That’s what I call him.’ Ellie laughed, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Andrei the Giant. You know, like the famous French wrestler? He was in The Princess Bride? It’s one of my all-time favourite films …’
Tim shook his head and made his way into the lounge, muting the sound of breakfast television presenters with the remote control. He put his bowl down on the coffee table and invited Ellie to sit.
‘So what happened the other night?’ he asked. ‘Why did a complete stranger throw red paint at us and yell that you have blood on your hands?’
‘Because that’s what many people think,’ she replied. ‘You’ve probably guessed by now that I haven’t been completely honest with you about who I am or what I do for a living.’
‘Uhuh.’
‘The surname I used on my DNA profile is my mum’s maiden name, Ayling. My actual surname is Stanford and I don’t work as a personal assistant to a CEO. I actually work for myself. And what I do is a little … controversial.’
‘What, are you an arms dealer or something?’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that.’ Ellie paused and took a deep breath. ‘Tim, I am the scientist who discovered the Match Your DNA gene, and a lot of people hate me for it.’
Chapter 41
MANDY
Many family birthdays, anniversaries, girls’ nights out, work leaving parties, meals out and get-togethers passed and Mandy declined them all.
Each time an invitation came, she mustered up an excuse as to why she was unable to attend, often citing that she had plans with Richard some one hundred miles away. She was telling the truth, at least in part, as she was choosing to spend more and more of her time with his family rather than her own.
From the tone of their voicemail messages, she guessed that her mother and sisters were finding it increasingly frustrating. They had once been a tight-knit unit, brought on by the death of their father more than a decade ago, but now Mandy was trying to pull away and the rest couldn’t understand why. Of course, they thought that she had found her Match and expected her to be at her most open, but Mandy just couldn’t tell them. Not yet.
Spending time with them didn’t nourish her in the same way spending time with Pat and Chloe did. She felt more and more alienated from her family; two of her sisters were in the midst of the love and happiness that Mandy could never have, and she doubted they’d be able to understand what she was going through. And her mother, though she too had lost the love of her life, was too old-fashioned to truly understand how strong a Match bond could be, and what it’s like when it’s taken away. Richard’s family filled the void.
‘If you want to have a few drinks, then why don’t you stay over?’ Pat had texted the evening before. So with a packed overnight bag, she spent the evening with them watching DVDs, drinking wine and leafing through an album of Richard’s baby photos.
Not for the first time, she wondered what their baby might have looked like.
When they finally retired to bed, Mandy found herself wide awake in the guest room, unable to sleep. She closed her eyes and, as she did most nights, she pictured a future they’d never have. She imagined walking through her parents’ front door on Christmas Day arm in arm, and how he’d be the centre of her family’s attention. Her fingers clenched the duvet and she squeezed it hard in frustration.
On her way back from the bathroom, Mandy spied Richard’s bedroom door slightly ajar. Hesitantly, she opened it, but the room was empty. She entered, quietly closing the door behind her, and turned on a lamp.
Curiosity got the better of her and she slid open the drawer of his bedside cabinet and peeked inside. There were toiletries such as moisturisers, hair products and deodorants, along with an open pack of ten condoms. She flipped the lid and counted – just four remaining. She immediately wondered who’d been the lucky girl – or girls – with whom he’d used the missing ones. The thought made her heart sink.
She was envious of a woman she couldn’t even put a face to. She looked under his bed and found his threadbare army-green backpack from his travelling days. The torn airline and coach labels were still attached, but there was nothing inside. She removed occasional pieces of clothing from his chest of drawers to press against her skin or to run her fingertips across and inhale; each one made her nerve endings tingle.
Then, in the bottom drawer, tucked way at the back, she found a scuffed mobile phone, several models out of date. Mandy turned it on, assuming the battery would be dead, but there were two bars of power left and it was so old it required no pass code.
She was aware that she was invading Richard’s privacy but she didn’t care, her thirst for more knowledge about him was unquenchable. The more she learned, the more she needed to know.
Most of his old text messages were from personal training clients or friends organising nights out. They revealed very little about him, other than he had a wide circle of friends and grateful clients.
However, his photos were dominated by images of one person in particular: a young woman, in various states of undress. She was nearer to Richard’s age than Mandy’s and was far prettier, she thought. Mandy fought away the pangs of jealousy. She frowned, wondering who the girl was, and continued to flick through his pictures quickly, hoping the photos of this girl would cease.
That was when she stumbled across a naked selfie of Richard.
She held her breath and felt her heart racing, unsure what to do next. She swiped from right to left to see half a dozen more explicit pictures of her Match. She was surprised at how well endowed he was, and unashamedly pinched the phone’s display to get a closer look. She suddenly experienced a sensation she hadn’t felt in quite some time – an overwhelming arousal.
She found a three-minute video clip and her face flushed red. It was of Richard, pleasuring himself, in that very room on the bed where she sat. Mandy couldn’t hold herself back any longer. She double checked the bedroom door was closed, turned down the volume on Richard’s phone and lay back, in exactly the same position as he had. Slowly and silently she slipped her hand down the front of her pyjamas and began to touch herself, closing her eyes and envisaging how it might have felt to have Richard inside her. It wasn’t long before she felt every muscle in her body clench and she erupted at the exact same moment as the image of her Match.
She replaced the mobile back in his drawer and lay on the bed, smiling and waiting for her light-headedness to ease. But instead of returning to her own room, she drifted off into a deep sleep, and only awoke hours later when she heard the sound of the door hinges creaking and Pat’s face appeared.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Mandy immediately apologised. ‘I couldn’t sleep so I came in here.’
‘It’s fine, darling,’ Pat replied and gave her a warm smile. ‘You can stay with Richard as often as you like.’
‘You’d like children of your own, wouldn’t you?’
Pat’s question caught Mandy off guard. They’d been sitting in a park close to Pat’s house, staring at the rolling countryside surrounding them. Mandy had been telling her about her failed marriage and how it had left her at the brink of despair, but she had focused her gaze on a young mum with two small children and the conversation tapered off. The excited kids were taking it in turns to throw bread to the ducks in the pond, giggling each time the birds quacked.
‘Yes, I’d have loved my own family,’ Mandy replied, with a resigned smile.
‘You mentioned that you have nieces and a nephew? Do you see them often?’
‘I see them a lot. Well, not so much lately … My sisters tell me I can spend as much time with them as I want, but it’s not the same when they’re not your own.’
‘It can be, if you allow yourself.’
‘Not for me. I actually fell pregnant with Sean, my ex-husband, twice, but miscarried both times, the first a few months after we got married, and then a couple of weeks after he left
me for his DNA Match. I thought that was it for me, that I didn’t stand a chance of being a mum with someone I really loved, until I discovered I had Richard. Then my imagination went into overdrive.’ Mandy gave a quiet laugh. ‘We were going to buy a little old cottage in a village together – somewhere that needed doing up from scratch that we could work on together – and the first room we’d do up was the nursery. And we’d time it just right so that I’d fall pregnant as we were finishing the place and I’d be the mum I always saw myself being. Now that opportunity has been taken away from me.’
Pat paused before she spoke. ‘Not necessarily,’ she said. ‘Come with me, I want to show you something.’
As Mandy followed Pat along a steep path and up a hill, she wondered what she meant. After ten minutes or so, they stopped and squinted across the horizon.
‘You can see the whole of the town from up here,’ she began. ‘Do you see that steeple right in the distance? That’s the village where Richard Senior and I married – in St Mary’s Church. And down there? That’s where my Richard went to primary school. Then if you look over to the right, next to the large chimneys, that’s the Fox and Hounds pub where Chloe got her first weekend job when she was studying for her A levels. So much of my family’s life is wrapped up in this one little viewpoint.’
‘It must be important to you.’
‘It is to all of us. Richard in particular loved it up here; he’d come up on his mountain bike and stay for ages. This is where we scattered his ashes – so they were free to blow across the town that made him. Not all of them though; the rest we scattered at our cottage in the Lake District.’
‘That’s lovely.’
Pat turned to her and looked her in the eye. ‘But just because Richard’s no longer with us, it doesn’t have to mean it’s the end of my boy though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve told you before, Richard always wanted children of his own. Like you, he was a natural with kids, probably because he was a big kid at heart.’
Mandy nodded. He sounded so perfect for her.
Pat continued looking out over the vista before them. ‘Well, when he found out he had testicular cancer, we didn’t know how bad it was going to be. So he went to a sperm bank, just in case further down the line he couldn’t have a family the natural way. He had to give three or four samples – I remember he joked about it being more enjoyable than a visit to a regular bank. Mandy, the samples are still in storage.’
She turned her head to look at Pat, who continued to stare into the distance.
‘I think you understand the opportunity I’m offering you,’ she continued. ‘If you would like to have my grandchild – Richard’s baby – then I’m giving you that chance.’
Chapter 42
CHRISTOPHER
Christopher watched Amy’s shoulders rise and fall as she slept in his bed.
He disliked having his personal space intruded with spooning and cuddling, so the moment she drifted off to sleep, he moved his arm from over her waist, slid his body to his side of the mattress and lay on his back with his head turned. Observing her as she slept was one of the headiest experiences he’d ever had with another person.
In the faded light, he could just about make out the bright tattoo of a butterfly that rested below her neck, something he detested almost as much as her taste in cheap rings and bracelets. But those things aside, there was little about Amy he’d change. By this stage of a relationship, he’d have normally found a multitude of reasons to have called time and cast her adrift. However, he had another plan for Amy.
Slowly, Christopher’s arm reached the edge of the bed and his hand stretched to the floor below. His fingertips silently felt around until they connected with the wooden handles of his cheese wire where he’d purposely left it for this very reason. He gently pulled it over the soft bristles of the carpet, up the side of the mattress and onto the duvet. With both hands on the handles, he held the wire above him and stretched it as taut as possible. He turned his body to its side so he was again spooning Amy and slowly lowered the wire parallel to her neck. He could feel his heart beating stronger and stronger with every centimetre he drew it closer to her skin. Finally, when it reached a position he was familiar with, he let it rest.
Christopher had gained an incalculable amount of pleasure since his killings began, but he’d always chosen strangers. The closest he’d come to those on his list were generic messages via UFlirt. ‘Banter’, as they insisted on calling it, would pass to and fro until he’d cajoled them into giving him their telephone numbers. None had the forethought to understand that, by willingly offering up their digits, they were handing him a key that unlocked the door to their entire identities.
Amy interrupted his recollections with an audible, post-coital sigh, and Christopher wondered what she was dreaming about. He never dreamed, or at least if he did, he never remembered them. He was sure he wasn’t missing out though because dreams were unattainable; what was the point in doing anything if there was no chance of success?
The sex between Christopher and Amy was unlike anything he’d experienced before. He’d had no substantial urge to pleasure the seventy or so women he’d slept with since losing his virginity at the age of twelve; it was – and had always been – only about his own gratification. But Amy was an exception and he revelled in the fact that he was the one who could make her groan and who could take her to the edge, only to pull back until he was ready for her to succumb. He relished being in control of her orgasms, but then he also readily gave into her taking charge and not allowing him to climax until she gave him permission. He had never relinquished dominance like this in any aspect of his life, yet it felt perfectly normal to do so with Amy.
This left him conflicted – normal was not something Christopher aspired to be; he believed his brain was wired in such a way that was much more powerful than ‘normal’. It was a gift that enabled him to do anything he wanted to, without fear and – to date – without consequence.
He moved closer towards her so that there was barely anything between his nose and the back of Amy’s head. He inhaled deeply and took in the lemon-seagrass-scented shampoo she’d used the night before. That was his favourite – he liked it when she smelled of citrus.
With one swift manoeuvre, the wire would be wrapped around her neck and she’d be clawing at it like all the others had.
‘Why are you so fidgety?’ Amy mumbled, to his surprise.
‘Sorry, I thought you were asleep.’
‘I was, but I sensed you weren’t. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. I just can’t sleep and got to thinking about those women you’ve been investigating.’
‘The victims.’
‘Yes.’ He swallowed, still finding the word distasteful.
‘And what were you thinking about them?’
He wanted to say that he could recall every different scent and brand of shampoo each girl had used as he jolted their heads backwards once the wire was wrapped around their necks. And how since he’d begun all this, he understood a person’s beauty was transient because within just a few days of biological decay they all looked identical: bloated, discoloured and eaten inside and out by their own bacteria.
‘I was wondering what went through their heads when they knew they were about to die,’ he replied. ‘What would you think about?’
Amy paused before she answered. ‘Probably all the things I wished I’d accomplished while I’d had the chance. What about you?’
‘The same,’ Christopher lied.
He lifted the wire back above her head and lowered it down to where he’d left it under the bed. Knowing he could strangle her at any given moment gave him more pleasure than would the actual act itself.
But while Christopher was aware he was making good progress in the project he’d began all those months ago, there was a fly in the ointment. He’d met a woman he liked and, for the first time in his life, he was falling in love.
And t
hat had not been part of the plan.
Chapter 43
JADE
Just over a week into Jade’s Australia adventure and Kevin’s health was deteriorating quickly.
He was losing his appetite and spending more and more time sleeping in his bedroom. Despite the thirty-five-degree temperature outside, Kevin often complained he was cold and layered himself in baggy clothing. He swallowed so many tablets each day that sometimes, when she listened closely, she swore she could hear him rattle.
Jade was resentful that their time together was slipping through her fingers and she wasn’t prepared for it to come to an end. So while he was awake, she did all she could to engage him in conversation and spend time being with him. They spent much of their days talking about their lives before she left England and before he was diagnosed with cancer. Hours passed as they lay sprawled across the sofa in his bedroom watching classic 1980s Brat Pack films on Netflix, and they grew so comfortable with each other that there were times when Jade forgot her moments with Kevin came with a time limit. When she was reminded of it, she couldn’t help but imagine how her life would change when he wasn’t around anymore, and she felt herself becoming sullen.
In the beginning of their relationship, when Jade lived in blissful ignorance of Kevin’s condition, talking to him had become an integral part of her everyday routine, and she planned her mornings and evenings around it. She’d set her alarm so she could wake up earlier than necessary and talk to him as they ate together – her, breakfast and him, supper. And she’d always record anything on TV that was broadcast after 10pm to watch later, so they had more time of an evening.
Jade was used to her heart fluttering when he texted her or when her phone lit up with his call. And she knew that when the unavoidable came, she would miss that. But what she had yet to figure out was if it was Kevin she’d miss or the knowledge there was someone in the world who was made for her.