by Terri George
My one regret, if you can call it that, is having to involve Cristina.
A sister in everything but blood, I knew she’d move heaven and earth to find me. She wouldn’t have to because I’d lead her to me, but she’d do it.
She’s able to decipher the oblique; see and understand the clues. The coding, all those What If statements in the programs she writes means her attention to detail is as meticulous as mine needed to be to devise a fool-proof plan.
Going radio silent after I sent the video was guaranteed to get alarm bells ringing; implant the thought in Cristina’s mind that something was terribly wrong. If there’s one thing Cristina has in spades, it’s tenacity. Once she gets an idea in her head she’s like a dog with a juicy bone. She won’t let it go, just keeps gnawing at it ‘til she’s sucked it clean of marrow. She would save me.
So, given I wanted to be found, why did I post those photos on Facebook? Because I needed to be found quickly. I knew Cristina would do what I did and Google: what to do when someone goes missing abroad.
Given they don’t do much past liaising with the authorities, I can’t see the point of informing the Consular Directorate, but the sites I looked at all said you should. Then she’d have to register me as a missing person with our local police who, because I’ve gone missing abroad, contact the UK branch of Interpol. Sounds thrilling, doesn’t it, all those official departments spurred into action to search for me; like the plot of an action movie. Thing is though, Interpol will only make contact with the relevant foreign police if they consider the missing person to be at risk of harm. How would Cristina have proved that?
Maybe when it’s a child that’s gone missing things happen fast, but generally official wheels turn slowly, and I needed Cristina to head stateside as soon as possible. I couldn’t have her waiting until they got their act together to begin her search.
I was on a tight schedule. Jensen has a short attention span. As anyone who’s read those kiss-and-tell stories in the press knows, he’s spent time hidden away at the old familial home with girlfriends in the past, but it’s never been for more than two or three weeks. He tires of things easily, including girls. So, despite the additional enticement of kinky sex, I knew I could only hold his interest for so long.
Sending him into a deep sleep: good. Inadvertently giving him enough to tip him over the edge where he’d never wake up: bad. My ultimate goal was always to end Jensen’s life as he’d ended my parents’, but not from an overdose of Zopiclone. I’d have a hell of a job explaining that to the authorities.
It would have been an easy way to do it though. Then just drive back to Denver, wipe down the interior of his car and abandoned it on a side street in a dodgy part of town before flying home. The problem with that scenario was, even if no one at home knew I’d gone to the States to meet him, we must have been captured on CCTV all over the place in Denver, not to mention I’d probably be caught on camera ditching the car, so it would only have been a matter of time before the American authorities caught up with me. And fleeing the scene would make them less likely to believe my story that he’d taken it himself and earn me a one-way ticket to death row.
So no, I didn’t want Jensen dead from an overdose, just knocked out. Eliminate a day here and there from his memory to give me a few precious extra days, and my body a rest. Near constant shagging takes its toll.
Plus, I had to give Cristina time to find me. Even if the US police were reluctant to help, I knew she’d find someone who would, and she did. She found Sheriff Shari. And thanks to the app installed on a new pay-as-you-go phone, paid for from a fake PayPal account linked to an equally fraudulent bank account, tracking her every move proved invaluable for setting the scene when I knew she was getting close.
And why did I set the scene in the outbuilding? Because I couldn’t have my rescuers just walking in the kitchen, now could I? Not when I’d written in my journal how I was locked in the house.
Oh, all the Is you have to dot and Ts you have to cross when you plan to get away with murder. And despite what it looked like to the others present, that’s what it was. Jensen’s life may not have ended by my hand, but I instigated it. Doesn’t that make me a murderer?
So I was on a schedule. Jensen and I had already been holed up in the house for almost two weeks. I was running out of time. That’s why I phoned Cristina when I did. I needed to chivvy her along. I knew from the tracking app she was close, but not close enough. She was taking too long.
Surprisingly, Jensen appeared to be tiring of our sexcapades slower than I was. He was always up for it – literally. Although maybe it wasn’t that surprising given that for him it hadn’t been as many days, thanks to the Zopiclone.
Those three sex-free days were bliss. As Jensen snored softly upstairs, I spent the days pottering around the house, enjoying lazy afternoons swaying gently in the hammock strung between two trees out in the back yard listening to the corn grow, taking long baths and watching British programmes on Netflix. (It’s impossible to tire of Sherlock even when you’ve seen it as many times as I have and practically know everyone’s dialogue. That just sort of adds to the joy of it. And Luther is grittily compelling enough to re-watch even without the added delight of the delicious Idris Elba to drool over. Oh, please, as if you’ve never watched something just because you fancy the leading man.)
Oh, and I finished reading the novel I’d taken with me. It was okay, but it didn’t make it home and onto my bookcase. Not one I want to re-read. It wasn’t by one of the Burgess and Fowler authors. Penny was pissed off when she went with one of the bigger publishing houses, and really pissed off when the book became a bestseller. I can only imagine the depths of her pissed-offness now, what with the rumours that it’s going to be made into a film. I suppose I can see why it sold so well, but personally I found the heroine unsympathetic. Bit of a bitch really.
So anyway, back to my dilemma of time slipping away and Cristina being nowhere near finding me. The reason I wanted her to get a move on was because, if I’m being absolutely honest, (which would be a first) I was bored with the whole sexy charade and wanted it to be over. I wanted to go home. That much was true.
I shouldn’t have been surprised Alessandro came too because I wouldn’t have gone looking for Cristina alone. As it turned out, his presence was key. I couldn’t have planned it better. Oh wait. I did.
And now I’m back home. Drowning in sympathy. I can see it in people’s eyes: the pity. But just behind the compassion I see prurience. They want to know all the juicy details. They’re just too scared to ask. Of course I’m happy things worked out as I planned, ecstatic even, and it’s not that’s it’s hard to fake it, but the effort of keeping up the pretence of being traumatised is wearing. It’s easy enough to fob off friends, they expect me to be distant, silent, but Doctor Lucas is another matter. She’s trained to see past the superficial. So I tell her what she wants to hear, add a small smile every now and then. I’m making good progress and eventually I’ll come to terms with what happened to me in time to enjoy that holiday I mentioned to Cristina.
A carrion crow caws and lifts off from a branch of a cedar tree. An inky blur against blue, wings beating rhythmically, it flies skywards until it catches an updraught and soars in spirals overhead.
If I am ever found out, how will I be viewed? Well that depends. There is no finite Truth, remember? All that stuff in my journal about quantum physics wasn’t just rambling. The Hawthorne Effect is real. Everyone sees things from their own frame of reference. So, am I..?
a) Malevolent murderess in the first degree, guilty of the premeditated death of another human being.
b) Chronically grieving daughter of slain parents seeking justice for their death.
c) Obsessed to the point of psychosis.
d) All of the above.
I’ll make it easier for you and answer.
A) I may have orchestrated his demise, but I was not personally responsible for his death. A fine distinction maybe, but techni
cally I am not a murderess. Although I made sure the barbecue fork was close to hand, I was saved from having to use it. Thank God for trigger happy American law enforcement; all too eager to resolve a situation with a fatal shot rather than one that incapacitates.
B) Is what I’ve done any worse than what he did? And what of his grandfather and the American authorities? At the very least doesn’t their indifference to the consequences of Jensen’s recklessness make them complicit? Isn’t there an argument to be made that their actions, their covering up of his crime, was also immoral?
C) Where exactly does passionate persistence and tenacity end and obsession begin?
You see, nothing can be explained away by one over simplified definition. There’s always more than one side to every action and repercussion thereof.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but don’t they cancel each other out?
Whether or not Jensen had been drinking I’ll never know for sure, but the odds are heavily stacked that way. Yet, even if he had been drunk, he still could have, should have, done something other than run away. If he’d just got out of the car and checked on my parents. If he’d called for an ambulance. If he’d faced up to what he’d done. (Back then he probably would have only spent three years in prison because no one was ever given the then maximum sentence of fourteen.) If he’d shown some remorse… I could have forgiven him.
But he didn’t. And I couldn’t.
Everything happens for a reason… It’s all part of God’s plan.
These are nothing more than spoon-fed platitudes people are all too eager to gobble up to explain away anything and everything: losing your job, being dumped, even the death of a loved one. Banal bromides based on the conceit that suffering is all part of a celestial intention, repeated by rote to make them feel better when bad things happen.
But they’re wrong.
There is no divine reason to anything, even our very existence. We’re not all subject to a pre-destined fate. Things happen by chance. It’s all random. And as for God’s plan. How is his plan for my parents to be mown down as they walk home after spending the evening with friends, a good thing? They aren’t enjoying an eternity on some heavenly plane of existence. Their sacrifice wasn’t freely given. Their death has no cosmic significance, only a personal one: to me. Any comfort I derive is from having exacted justice for them my way.
The crow swoops down from its lofty circling, wings flailing as it hovers for a moment before landing on a headstone opposite. I can’t decide if its beady-eyed stare is one of admonishment or admiration as it cocks its head to one side, and caws.
Chapter Thirty One
CRISTINA
I’m happy Abbey’s home again, but what she said last night about planning a holiday, to give her “something to do”… To what? Relieve the tedium of being home all day? It doesn’t fit.
I mean, the last thing you’d expect someone recently rescued after having been held against her will and subjected to all the horrible things Abbey’s hinted at, to be is bored. Traumatised, definitely. Withdrawn, probably. But not bored.
It’s all died down now, but Abbey’s ordeal was hashed out in the media, posted and tweeted about, ad nauseum. Jensen’s background, his playboy proclivities, his grandfather’s rapid decline into dementia, the inferences about reverend Sharrow in her journal – oh yeah, that got leaked too. Well, bits of it did. There’s nothing people love more than a fall from grace story. They gobbled it up with a long-handled spoon. The kind you eat a knickerbocker glory with, so you could get to the very last bit in the bottom of the glass.
Mum and dad don’t want to know all the sordid details. Much kinder to Abbey that way, they said. If they knew, it would show on their faces every time they look at her. And back then Alessandro was only thirteen. So, I’m not surprised none of them have made the connection. But did Abbey think I wouldn’t? And what it implies…
I suppose I should be mightily pissed off at being made complicit. Being put through the agonies of the imagined horrors she was going through. But I understand why.
Who’s to say you wouldn’t have done the same had it been you. I can’t absolutely say I wouldn’t. None of us can truly know all we would be capable of until we are driven to it.
Who among us can cast the first stone? We are all guilty of some transgression or other. Maybe not this big, but can any of us judge another’s actions without first walking in their shoes, getting under their skin, feel what they feel? Only then could we hope to understand their motivations.
Love. Hate. (So closely linked, those two. Flip sides of passion. Devotion slowly slipping into loathing when affections aren’t returned with equal fervour or are rejected.) Protection of a secret. Jealousy. Greed. Resentment. Revenge. All acknowledged motivations for retribution. But perhaps the fiercest and least considered motivation, or at least its driving force, is grief.
Profound sorrow gnaws away at you until you are capable of doing almost anything just to silence the wretched wailing beast burrowed deep in your soul. And Abbey has been so sad about it for so long. Even when she appears to be happy, on holiday, laughing at something funny on TV, or playing with Milù, there’s a sort of melancholy about her. It hangs off her like a shroud.
Maybe now Abbey has some sort of resolution she will find peace with her past; lock it within her heart and hold it close. Not forget, it’s not something one could forget, but to find some kind of acceptance. And from that, move on. I hope so. Or what was the point of it all?
Even if Abbey has realised I suspect there’s more to what happened than the official story, (and I’m pretty sure she has) she’ll never come right out and admit it. Because if it’s not spoken of, it’s not true.
Maybe one day, when we’re really old and the passing of time renders atonement redundant, the truth of what went on in that old weather-boarded house surrounded by fields of corn will be spoken of. Until then… Well, I will never tell.
So, Abbey will get holiday brochures and we’ll plan a week away. Budapest maybe. We haven’t been there. Or Valencia.
And everything will be as it was. As if it all never happened.
The End.
Thank you for reading A Person Could Disappear Here. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I’d really appreciate you taking a moment to leave a review on Amazon. Thanks!
About the Author
From a small child I’ve loved to lose myself in stories. I’m a firm believer that if heaven exists, it contains every novel ever written and has big squishy sofas to curl up on and read for all eternity.
Before I started writing novels, my comedy play, The Magazine was performed at The Bush Theatre in London, and my poetry has been published in several anthologies. However, I knew what I really wanted to write were novels. With several unfinished manuscripts languishing in the depths of my computer’s hard drive, it was my discovery of erotic romance that led me to ponder what my ideal romantic hero looked like. And thus, Nick Frost was born, and the epic love he shares with Mia spanning three books of Frost Trilogy. Then, after being nagged by my readers, of course I had to write Aiden and Jen’s love story in the FT spin-off, Torn.
After that I delved into the world of full-on erotica, but, as much as I enjoyed writing it, I knew I wanted to write other genres because, along with my hope that if an afterlife exists I can spend mine in a divine library, I’m also a firm believer in not being pigeon-holed. Which is why I’ve made my first foray into literary fiction with A Person Could Disappear Here, because, for me, writing is all about the characters and their story rather than genre.
As English as they come, I believe there’s nothing that can’t be solved, resolved, overcome or celebrated better than with a nice cup of tea. (preferably with a lovely slice of Victoria sponge cake with real buttercream icing) From Rachmaninov (whose piano concertos I often listen to while writing) to Aerosmith, my taste in music is best described as eclectic. And I make a mean chocolate cake.
Other Titles by Terri George
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EROTIC ROMANCE
Frost Trilogy:
Beguiled: Frost Trilogy 1
In Too Deep: Frost Trilogy 2
Letting Go: Frost Trilogy 3
Frost Trilogy Spin Off
TORN
GOD’S GIFT 1
EROTICA
Feast on Me
Pie for Breakfast
Tit 4 Tat
Dirty Trucker
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Twitter: @TerriGauthor
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Website: www.TerriGeorge.co.uk