“Come away, Natasha. Hurry! Come on now,” came the high-pitched voice of Natasha’s mother.
“Hello. You have priddy lipstick,” said Natasha.
Maddison sat up. Her head was pounding. She glanced around. Grass beneath her palms. A swing set in the distance. The local park. Muted morning sun. She felt in her pocket for her mobile phone but came up empty.
Natasha’s mother, dressed in a sunhat and white khakis briskly marched to her daughter, gripped the child’s hand and pulled her behind her body.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked Maddison.
Panic rose in Maddison’s chest, crept up her neck, into her cheeks. She shook her head in a jarring motion. “No, I don’t think I am. Why am I here? How did I get here?”
“Is there someone I can call for you? To come and get you? The police?”
Her breaths were harsh and heavy. “No. No police. I don’t think... should I?”
The woman shrugged. “I’m not sure. Are you hurt?”
Maddison scanned her body for injuries. Her clothes were intact. She was wearing pyjama pants and a singlet top. No shoes. She painfully climbed to her feet. The world tilted around her, so she stood very still, held her head exactly right until her balance was restored.
A hand at her temple to stop the throbbing. She swallowed down her surging nausea. Confusion. A tangle of memories that wouldn’t become coherent tightened behind her eyes. The last thing she recalled was drinking wine in her kitchen. Heading to the shower. Then… then… nothing. Strange feelings and emotions but no concrete understanding.
A house. Familiar. But she couldn’t discern whose. She shook her head. “Can you please call my husband for me? I need him to come and get me.” Tears were thick in the back of her throat. Her chest was hot and achy.
The little girl looked up at her with wide eyes and a frown while the woman pulled her mobile out of her handbag. This was the lowest point Maddison had reached in her life. She told the lady Ben’s phone number. After dialling, the woman held her phone to her ear, not willing to hand it over to a stranger in a park.
“Hi, my name is Sylvia. I’m at Henderson Play Park. Your wife is here. Yes, she’s okay, just a little confused. She needs you to pick her up. Okay, good, see you soon.”
“Thank you,” Maddison said, tears falling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry to have—”
The woman waved her apology away. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” And she strode away, holding Natasha’s hand tight.
Maddison made the long, slow walk to the edge of the park, keeping her head very still and her footsteps small. She sat on a short fence as she waited for her husband and silently begged the world to cease spinning.
Soon, the family car arrived and parked in front of Maddison. Ben was behind the wheel. The kids were in the back, which ignited anger so fierce if she were not so sick, she would have unleashed it. The last two people on earth she wanted to see her like that was Ruby and Riley. But Ben hadn’t had any other options. He couldn’t leave his young children at home on their own.
He threw the door open, raced to her side, helping her from the fence. “Are you okay?”.
She burst into tears. “No. I don’t think I am. I don’t know how I got here.”
He cradled her into his arms like she was a child and bundled her into the passenger seat.
“What’s wrong with Mummy?” Ruby asked.
“She’s a little unwell at the moment,” Ben said, leaning over Maddison to buckle her up.
“Will she die?” Riley asked, his voice wavering with emotion.
Maddison wanted to assure her children that she would be okay, but she couldn’t stop sobbing. Long, loud wails.
Ben kissed her head, closed the passenger door and ran around to his side of the car. No one spoke again for the entire trip.
When home, Ben turned the cartoon channel on for the children and then helped his wife to the ensuite for a shower.
As Maddison undressed, she glanced at her reflection. Her lips were covered in bright red lipstick, bleeding into the lines around her mouth, messy like a three-year-old had applied it. Revulsion twisted in the pit of her stomach.
When the water was set, Ben asked. “You’re not hurt?”
She shook her head. Her whole body was trembling.
“Between your legs?”
She gasped, eyes going wide. Her hand flung between her legs and she patted gently at first, then harder as her bravery grew. No soreness. No fluids. She burst into tears and shook her head to answer her husband.
“Good.” He gestured to the running shower. “Hop in. I’ll make you a warm drink and something to eat. Call out if you need me.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m going to get help,” she said when Ben had reached the bathroom door. “I will. I promise.”
He managed a sympathetic smile. “Good.”
Ben strode out of the bathroom, leaving the door open behind him. Partway down the hall, out of sight, he leaned over, hands to his knees and exhaled with a groan. Tears sprang to his eyes. He hadn’t cried for years. Nothing had been big enough. Not since…
He stood up, wiping his eyes, and shook the emotion away as he drew a deep breath in and kept on his way to the kitchen.
Chapter 18
Tina rushed to the front door of the silent Gladstone residence, knocked and called out, “Delivery!”
No answer. Most people were at work during the week. If not, there were tell-tale sounds of the television, music or exuberant children. She placed the package against the alcove at the front door and returned to her waiting van, the engine humming in the midday heat.
As she climbed into the driver’s seat for the hundredth time that day, a text message dinged on her phone. She checked the screen. Her blood test results were in.
A subtle edginess in her limbs as she dialled the number. An automated voice outlined a series of options, then a receptionist answered.
“Um, hi, this is Tina Brooks. I just received a message that recent blood results were in.”
“Okay, Tina, let me check your file here.” The receptionist clicked and clacked at a keyboard. “Your results have come back negative. So, the doctor has marked in your file that she won’t need to see you about this matter.”
Tina slouched in her seat. “Okay, thanks so much.”
She hung up, stared at the steering wheel for a long while. She didn’t have heavy metal poisoning, but something was wrong with her. Since her appointment last week, her condition had worsened. It may be that a virus was doing the rounds or perhaps she had a minor underlying infection of some kind. For the rest of today, she would push through the fatigue. But tomorrow, she would call work to let them know she was much too sick. Give herself a couple of days to rest and recoup and if she didn’t improve, another trip to the doctor was in order.
Tina reversed her van out of the driveway and darted along the road to the next property. She was back at square one regarding the notes. For her, the most frightening aspect to it was the anonymity and covertness. She knew well enough that the worst kinds of people operated under the cover of darkness.
She shuddered and shook her head slightly to toss that train of thought away. Simply too terrifying; she would never be able to sleep without one eye open again.
* * *
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tina’s eyes snapped open. She glanced around her dark bedroom, shadows appearing like tall, misty forms keeping vigil from various standpoints in the room. But when she blinked, the forms became a regular shadow or a patch of discoloured wall paint.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She faced the bedroom window, listening hard.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
There was someone outside the window. She gasped, palm covering her mouth, eyes wide. She stretched for the torch that was on her bedside table. A more discreet light, unlike her lamp that would draw too much attention.
Breathing heavily,
she rolled out of bed, both feet pressing to the floor, and tiptoed to the window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She froze. Her heart beat out a hard, fast rhythm against her ribcage. There was someone out there. Every part of her twitched and tensed, urging her to scream and run, but she had to find out. She had to know who was doing this or she would go mad.
Creeping closer to the window, she stood to the side, back against the wall. Drawing on all her courage, she lurched, pushed the curtains back, flicked on the torch and blasted it at the windowpane.
A startled face stared at her. Tina’s hand slapped over her mouth as she screamed. The person blinked, turned, then sprinted across the yard towards the side of the house.
The confrontation took mere seconds, but the adrenalin sparking through Tina’s body had dragged out the incident making it feel like minutes. More than enough time with her sharpened senses to know who was out there.
Isabelle Brooks!
She made chase, sprinting out of her room, skidding around the corner into the hall, then dashed out the front door into the night. She was panting. Her senses firing. The outskirts of her vision blurred. A strange ringing in her ears.
A blur of colour and rustle of leaves near the bushland perimeter.
Tina jumped down the stairs, raced across the front yard towards the sound. “I saw you, Isabelle! I saw you,” she screamed as she navigated the uneven ground. “What are you doing here? Why are you doing this to me?”
When she made it to the boundary, all was quiet, only the choral hum of cicadas, crickets and flapping wings as a few startled birds took flight. Tina shone an arc of torchlight into the scrub, steadily from left to right and back again, but she couldn’t see anything.
In the distance, a car engine rumbled, followed by wheels skidding, then the noise faded as the car edged further away.
“Damn it,” she huffed and lowered the torch to her side.
She marched back into the house, barely able to believe what had happened there tonight. Her stalker was Isabelle. That didn’t make sense whatsoever to her. She locked the front door and returned to her bedroom, snatching her phone off the bedside table. With unsteady hands, she typed a text and sent it to Chris.
TINA: Tell your wife to stay the hell away from me!
* * *
Tina’s incredulity about what happened the night before had morphed into trembling rage by the next morning. She called her employer to inform them that she was too ill to make it into work. Then she sat at the dining table, coffee within arm’s reach, and used her phone to access the footage from the two cameras.
Not one indication that Isabelle was either inside or outside the house. That meant one thing—Isabelle knew where the cameras were located.
It didn’t necessarily imply Chris was complicit. Isabelle could have coaxed that information from him in general conversation. Though, if Tina did discover Chris had any inkling of what Isabelle had been doing, and he had done nothing to stop her, she would be in her car so fast, driving over there to give them both a piece of her mind.
A message notification dinged on her mobile and she flinched.
CHRIS: Was this text message meant for me?
Referring to the hasty text she had sent him during the middle of the night.
She typed a reply.
TINA: Yes, it was. And if you don’t understand why then you need to have an overdue conversation with your stalker wife.
She didn’t receive a reply.
Tina placed her phone on the tabletop, closed her eyes and tried to calm her growing rage. Her leg bounced up and down, muscles twitched. She couldn’t stay there in her home acting all Zen-like as though that was going to somehow help.
Knowing who the stalker was had given Tina a small semblance of control. She had to send a strong message to Isabelle that she wouldn’t be intimidated any longer. So, she got to her feet, dressed, then drove into town, parking a little way from Isabelle’s hairdressing salon.
Tina climbed out of her car and rushed along the street, past the small offices and businesses. When she arrived at the salon, she pushed open the glass door. The tink of bells had all the hairdressers and their clients looking in her direction.
Hairdryers were whirring. Black capes were strung around customers. A couple of women were at the sink, water streaming over their hair. Another had a head full of thin foils. Upbeat music hummed from the speakers.
As Isabelle pasted bleach onto a strand of a woman’s blonde hair, she lifted her gaze to look at Tina.
“I know it was you,” Tina said, glaring unflinchingly.
Isabelle’s brow furrowed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tina turned her head, closed the door behind her, and walked back to her car.
* * *
The next morning, Tina woke early. She checked the house for strange notes, but she was certain she wouldn’t find any more. Anger bristled across her flesh as she dressed and made herself a coffee.
The energy she had spent on Isabelle over the short time she’d known of her existence was miniscule. It hadn’t been a huge shock when she’d learned that Chris had moved on to a new relationship. At that stage, they had been separated for about twelve months.
But knowing now that Isabelle—her ex-husband’s new wife—was her stalker, amplified Tina’s energy upon that woman a thousandfold. Every time she thought about the situation, and what she had been put through those past few weeks, a vibrating rage rumbled in her chest.
But one thing Tina couldn’t understand was why.
She had been nothing but genial when it came to Isabelle. Not that they’d talked to each other much, but in a town that size it was impossible to avoid bumping into her and Chris on occasion. When she had, she had simply smiled and chatted casually about the weather with them. Never had she given Isabelle a reason to dislike her nor stoop to the depths of stalking.
Isabelle had to be unhinged. Could explain why she had never had a relationship until Chris came along. You could only hide your mental instability from your intimate partners for so long.
Tina knew Chris’s mind well. He would look past any insanity for as long as he could. Maybe he would never take off his rose-coloured glasses and see what he was truly dealing with.
Either way, Tina wasn’t going to sit idly by and let Isabelle get away with it. She would show her exactly what it felt like to be afraid because of someone else’s vindictive actions.
Tina locked the front door behind her and climbed into her car. She drove into town, towards Isabelle and Chris’s home, parking a few streets away on the arm of the road that was bordered by a nest of trees. She waited there as a sparse flow of cars drove past, occupied by people on their way to work or mums and dads doing the school run.
She waited for Isabelle’s car to show. When it drove past, Tina pulled the steering wheel full lock, screeched onto the road, flipped a U-turn and trailed her. At the upcoming traffic lights, she manoeuvred beside Isabelle and stared at her through the passenger window. When Isabelle finally looked over, her eyes widened, and she hastily glanced away.
The traffic lights flashed green. Tina slowly rolled forward, letting Isabelle take the lead, then steered right to tuck in behind her car again. All the way to work, Tina followed, only driving away once Isabelle had made her way into the salon.
That afternoon, Tina came back, parked directly outside the doors to the salon and waited for Isabelle to finish. She trailed close to her car—only a quick push of Isabelle’s brakes away from colliding with the bumper—and shadowed her all the way home.
Each time Isabelle glimpsed Tina through the rear-view mirror, Tina didn’t dare show the gratification she was feeling for seeking her revenge. Instead, she narrowed her gaze and all but snarled at her through the windscreen. That way, Isabelle would think twice about ever coming to her home again.
Chapter 19
Isabelle strode out the door and headed around the front of her house to th
e garage. As the roller doors were opening, a glint of metal in the distance caught her eye. Her shoulder muscles tensed, and she spun to look. Tina was parked on the side of the road a few streets away. The third morning in a row.
It was just her luck to have this sort of thing happen while she was trying to prove a point to Chris by kicking him out. A skulking foreboding moved through her as a thought struck: Had Chris been staying with Tina these past few days?
She shook her head.
Isabelle wasn’t experienced when it came to men and how they thought. She had lived vicariously through her friends and clients, listening intently to their relationship stories. Men could be arseholes. They could be cheaters. But many of her friends were in happy relationships and had been for years. That was how she chose to view what she had with Chris—a happy marriage. But theirs had been a whirlwind romance. One minute they were having coffee, the next they were going on dirty weekends away, and then they were married. She wasn’t certain that was enough time to truly know someone.
She darted back inside her home, the foreboding increasing, for it was becoming obvious that she had rushed too fast, too blindly, to fill her loneliness and settled with the first man who showed potential.
“Stop thinking like this,” she growled as she rummaged through her handbag for her mobile. She called Chris and waited with the phone against her ear.
“Hi,” he said.
She squeezed her eyes closed. “Hi. Where are you?”
“I’m at a hotel.”
“You’ve been there these past few days?”
“Yeah. I was too embarrassed to explain the situation to a mate.”
A slight twist of guilt in her stomach. “You haven’t been with Tina?”
“Of course not. Look, Issy, I installed cameras for her. That’s it. I hadn’t seen her before that for months and months.”
She sighed. “Well, Tina is parked a few streets from here. She’s been following me to and from work every day. I don’t know what she wants.”
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