Hot to Kill

by Linda Coles

  Like I need it to get any hotter?

  Madeline could feel the familiar heat starting around her shoulders and chest, and working its way up her neck. She knew she’d soon be quite red in the face – it doesn’t take the brains of the Archbishop to see when a woman of a certain age is suffering.

  A trickle of sweat rolled down her cleavage, and she felt the start of another drop on her temple, which she wiped away with the back of her hand before anyone noticed. Her overheated body screamed for cool ventilation, but there was none to be had. It was at times like this she was glad of the invention of the smartphone, because everyone had their heads down and nobody was paying any attention to her temperature tantrum. She could do nothing but wait for it to pass and dab her wet face and neck with a tissue to keep herself dry. She desperately wished menopause would bloody hurry up and buzz off somewhere else, because there didn’t seem anything to gain from it. At least when you went through puberty and had periods, you knew you were on the right track to womanhood and a baby maybe, but all there was to look forward to with menopause was things drying up or, in her current state, getting wetter. And slowly wizening up like a prune. She was so very definitely over it before it had really even begun.

  “Perhaps I need some chemical intervention after all,” she mumbled under her hot breath, feeling like a dog that had been running hard and was wet from a dip in the sea, though she hoped she didn’t smell like it. Another stop at another station only made the journey worse. Another large group of day trippers squeezed their way on, so everyone had to shuffle up even tighter into the middle of the carriage and stand even closer together. She remembered the book in her bag she was supposed to be finishing, ready for book club tomorrow night, but there was no conceivable way she could stand and read it now unless she held it an inch from her face. Since she didn’t want to be in bother with James, the host, again, she decided to give it a go and retrieve it from her bag, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of having something to say again about people’s dedication to the group, or lack of it, mainly her own. He thought she was a bit of a flunk at the best of times.

  “How can we discuss a book as a group if no one’s read it?” he’d say, like an old hospital ward matron, though they all knew he did have a point.

  She rummaged with her one free hand into the bottom of her bag to locate the book and reading glasses at the same time, which proved too difficult in the cramped space. Her bag swung a little to the left, catching Skinny Suit on the shoulder. He looked up and glared from behind his aviators, the thin line of his mouth doing what his eyes couldn’t portray. Mouthing a ‘Sorry’ at him, she again tried to get her book and glasses. Her bag touched his shoulder again, but this time she ignored him: one thin lip glare from him was enough to shame her. If he’d just let her have the seat that she had been aiming for in the first place, she wouldn’t be standing trying to get her book and glasses so haphazardly and bumping into him. When she’d finally got her glasses out and firmly parked on her damp, slippy nose, she opened her book to begin reading and let a slow sigh escape from her lips as she began.

  Relax, relax, relax.

  After about ten minutes she was engrossed in the latest Lucy Bridges romance, reading about the lovers’ breakdown and everything that had sent the main character spiralling to the dilemma he now found himself in. “Who knew what being married to a sex addict could do to you emotionally?” she wondered, and felt sorry for the guy, but it was only fiction, so she read on. When she raised her head out of her book again, they weren’t far from Victoria Station and they would all soon be off the sweatbox they were confined in.

  It was about then that Madeline felt a gurgle in her gut, just strong enough for her to feel and hopefully for no one to hear. Clenching her butt cheeks to be on the safe side, not wanting to embarrass herself and break wind in such a confined space, she willed the gas to pass quietly. A moment later she felt another gurgle begin to form, the bubble popping internally but not escaping fully, but putting her on notice she needed to get out and let it out in a safe space. The train couldn’t get to Victoria fast enough for Madeline, and with one more gurgle she felt the air leave, thankfully quietly. But her backside was positioned just level with Skinny Suit’s face.

  She had to stand there pretending nothing was amiss as the train finally arrived at the station and came to a standstill. The doors opened with a whoosh, driving the air back up into her face. She knew from the whiff as it rose to her nose it wasn’t pleasant. Last night’s Rogan Josh had caught up with her, and Skinny Suit, though she couldn’t risk a glance at him for confirmation, must have known she was responsible for the fog he was now sitting in. She fought back a smile: tough. He’d soaked her legs with dirty water back in the car park and stolen her seat so this had turned out to be the perfect a way to get back at him, even though it hadn’t been planned that way. She’d won, again. She gave herself a silent high-five as she cleared the carriage and the cooler air blowing along the platform engulfed her hot sticky body. First stop, the toilet.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At nearly 2 pm Madeline had had enough for one day. The heat in the city centre was too intense, her feet were throbbing even in flat sandals, and she was sick of the smell of other people’s body odour mixed with random cooking smells from food chains and street vendors. She’d stayed a bit cooler in the air-conditioning of M&S, and treated herself to a couple of high-cut summer dresses that covered a multitude of sins except her bat wings; she felt sure she had something to put over them buried away in the back of a cupboard at home somewhere. She took the elevator down to the basement food floor to pick something up for dinner, wondering as she went what Gordon might like. She grabbed a basket from the stack at the bottom of the escalator and headed over to the cold fridges in search of ideas.

  “What haven’t we had in a while, then?” she muttered, slowly scanning the vast fridge spaces filled with just about every conceivable type of food the world had to offer. Gordon wasn’t too good with Asian-style food. He enjoyed his Italian and his Indian, but as for Thai or Vietnamese he wasn’t struck, so she moved along to find something more to his taste. Nothing seemed to inspire, so she switched fridge rows and tried another aisle. Then she saw it – the upside-down prawn and Marie Rose sauce salad with grated cheese, grated carrot and small pasta shells in it.

  “When did we last have that? Perfect.” She grabbed a large one, then added a pack of fresh strawberries and a small pot of cream to her basket. “Good find, Madeline.”

  She took the few items to the checkout and once again chose a human to do the processing. This particular human made polite conversation about not having had the salad herself for ages, though she’d tried Jamie Oliver’s version in one of his cookbooks and it hadn’t turned out bad. Madeline wondered why, when she worked in the damn food hall, this woman would be bothered boiling pasta shells and grating carrot instead of just buying a ready-made one herself with her staff discount? It made no sense, but she kept her mouth shut; there was no need to be mean.

  As she rode back up to street level on the elevator with her purchases, the intense heat of a stifling hot London afternoon hit her as she opened the door and entered the throng of people once again. The walk back down to Oxford Street tube station with throbbing feet was marginally better than one moment longer on the tube so she decided to jump on the Victoria line there. She was on her way back home, where a gin and tonic waited with her name on it, to be quaffed while sitting on the patio before Gordon got back. She hoped the journey would be less eventful than the journey in earlier that morning.

  When she got down onto the platform, she was glad to see there was a vacant seat just along a bit. She sat down with a thud and retrieved her phone from her bag, pulling up the Daisy Chain page. There didn’t seem to be much of interest as she surfed through – and then a short post caught her eye: there’d been another attack by the groper, and it wasn’t on a prostitute.

  Holy hell.

  S
he rested her head back on the cool tiled wall for a moment, eyes shut. This guy really needed catching – and soon. If he was now bothering ordinary women, that meant he was getting less choosey. All women needed to be aware.

  It wasn’t long before she heard the familiar rumble of the approaching train, so she gathered her things and stood up. The lights of the train reflected back from the shiny white public-toilet-like tiles that decorated the inside of most tube stations in the city. She stepped forward, ready to grab any available seat the minute the doors opened. The familiar “mind the gap” sounded mechanically, warning all passengers to be aware of the sometimes quite large gap between the platform and the actual train.

  “Ruth should talk to London Transport about getting a nicer tone for their automated recording. Perhaps someone a little less severe and a bit more British,” she mused. The doors pinged open and to her delight there were several seats free, so she chose one at the end near the door that connected the two carriages together. This would allow the draft from the open window to blow across her as the train sped through the tunnel. No matter that it wasn’t the cleanest; it was certainly the coolest on offer.

  Grateful for the seat and a relatively un-crowded tube train so far, she relaxed her shoulders while waiting for the doors to close and the train to pull out. Suddenly she sat upright again: through the window she saw a familiar figure, briskly walking from one end of the platform where the public toilets were and heading for the street exit upstairs. He was quite clearly on a mission, and not one back to the South London area like she was. He may have just needed the loo, but something made her look at him more closely: what was Grey Man doing down there, and why was he in such a hurry?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Thursday

  It was a balmy summer evening, and book club time. And she’d not fully read the damn book. Again. And that would mean a tsk tsk from James. And that would mean she was going to be pissed at him because he’d be pissed at her, though actually, if he stopped behaving like an old matron and being so pissy and condescending, he would see that it was all just petty. book club was supposed to be enjoyable, but sometimes, just sometimes, it was a giant pain in the arse, though she always enjoyed the company of the others. They were quite an eclectic little group of seven, including Madeline, and they’d been meeting up regularly for about four years, though a few members had come and gone. Madeline had been the last to join, two years ago.

  James, the book club’s self-proclaimed leader, was actually called James Peterson and thought of himself as the real-life James Patterson. He quite closely resembled him in a lot of ways: his age, his build and his glasses, and the fact that he liked to write, though their James had never published a thing. He just sounded like he had. An engineer by trade, he ran a successful local business, though he should have long since retired. They met at his rather swanky place every fortnight to discuss the current two books on the go and share a bottle of wine, usually with some cheese and crackers. He was still a little stuck in the ’70s with the cheese and wine thing, and Madeline always half-expected a cheese and pineapple hedgehog with cocktail cherries for decoration to appear one day. The other members ranged from a student called Josh to a couple of teachers named Pam and Derek, a really quite wonderful artist called Annabel, and Lorna, a housewife. Then there was Madeline. So it was quite a varied group, and they all got along nicely, except when a book hadn’t been read. Like tonight.

  “If you haven’t read it, then how can you have an opinion on it? How can we discuss it properly? You can’t just agree with what the others think. They are not your views.” James was on his soapbox, and poor Pam was getting quizzed this time. Madeline chipped in to help her out, knowing from experience what it was like to be the chosen one.

  “I agree with Pam, James. The story was actually quite steamy and it was a little uncomfortable to read it in places, so I skipped over some of the pages too. If I’d been reading that sitting on the train I would have blushed hot for sure. It’s bad enough having hot flushes sneaking up on you without adding any more in. I think we got the gist of what was going on without having to actually read every word.”

  Pam, clearly embarrassed at being singled out, looked at Madeline now like she was her saviour.

  “I’ve pretty much finished it,” said Josh, the youngest of the group at 22, and a real bookworm, “and I thought it was a good read. And because it’s written from both his and her points of view, it was good to get both their takes on the hot bits.” He smiled coyly before adding, “Made good learning for me actually.” Now it was his turn to blush a little.

  Lorna caught his eye and grinned at him. “Then that’s a great way to use the book, Josh – a good storyline and an education.” They both tittered like silly teens. Lorna herself was probably only about 29 years old, with a lovely young family she cared for at home while her affluent hubby went into the city every day. She got as bored as all hell on her own without adult conversation to stimulate her mind and looked forward to book club for just that.

  “Let’s get back on track, please,” intoned James in his deep baritone voice. “We’ve still got the other book to look at yet.” He looked at his wristwatch, which was something quite old and classic-looking, with a worn, leather crocodile-like strap. Madeline wondered if it was perhaps his father’s or grandfather’s even. Not many men even wore a watch these days; everything was all on smartphones. The small clock on the mantelpiece said 8 pm.

  Thinking she’d take some of the seriousness out of the room, she offered to refill wine glasses. “Top-up, anyone?” She stood hovering, the remains of the bottle of white poised to pour into the glasses of whoever wanted it. Pam nodded, so she stepped over to her and refilled her glass, smiling in appreciation. She looked around the group and, as no one else wanted any, poured the rest into her own glass.

  “Can we please get on?” James sounded anguished.

  Oh, shut the hell up, James. Stop being such a bloody matron.

  Madeline could have withered under his glare, but chose to ignore him and sat back down. He could be such an old man sometimes.

  “Let’s move on to the Hawkins book, shall we?” Derek hadn’t said a word all evening, but he clearly thought it was about time to contribute and cleverly changed the subject to the other book they’d agreed to review, the massive bestseller Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins. There was a collective exhale as they moved on from hot, steamy sex scenes to thriller. Madeline had quite liked the steamy scenes herself, just not when out in a public place – and Gordon seemed to have enjoyed them too.

  “Oh, what a great book,” Lorna chirped. “So much going on, so intriguing! It reminded me of some of Hitchcock’s work. I could almost hear the birds screeching in the background as I read it. Couldn’t put it down.”

  James glared at her for her outburst of unsolicited opinions, and she abruptly quieted down and shrank back into her chair.

  “Let’s look at the story as a whole first,” he said officiously, “then we will talk about the various aspects and key characters and their involvement, and how the author could have done a better job.”

  How the author could do a better job? Does he know how many millions of copies it’s sold? Eleven million, last count. Really, pea-brain.

  Madeline again inwardly sighed. She’d read quite a bit of the book but hadn’t quite finished reading it all, so she was now going to find out the ending before she really wanted to. Thankfully, Derek had read it all and was happy to oblige James with his opinion about the various aspects he wanted to talk about.

  Deciding to keep quiet and let him revel in having done his homework, she picked up her glass of wine and took a long mouthful, probably a bit too long, and reached for another cracker, placing a cube of cheese on top. It really was a bit too tall for her mouth and she struggled to get it all in without the cracker breaking. Crumbs fell down her front, balancing on her T-shirted chest like little golden pieces of Crunchie Bar. James was looking at her, bu
t again she wasn’t going to wither. So she smiled brightly in his direction, which was unfortunate because she hadn’t quite finished chewing all of the cheese and cracker. He wrinkled his nose and looked away again.

  She swallowed her food, then sat back and listened to Derek and his account of Rachael the Drunk, and left the rest of them to discuss the book in its entirety, nodding here and there to show them she was present and taking notice. The group used to be so much fun. Why was it so damn serious now? Book clubs weren’t supposed to be this serious, were they? By 9 pm and the end of the get-together, not only had Madeline drunk too much wine, spilled crackers down herself and been told off for not reading the raunchy bits of the first book, she also knew who the Girl on the Train murderer was.

  Not much bloody point in finishing that one, then, is there?

  Everyone was on the move now, gathering their belongings and taking their glasses into the kitchen. Madeline joined them, still thinking gloomily that the session had been just too stressful, rather than pleasant like it was supposed to be. And it was all down to one person. If this little group was going to carry on and become fun again, something had to change. Someone had to change, actually, and it wasn’t going to be her.

  Everyone filtered outside to vehicles parked out front on the leafy upmarket street. The night was still close, humid and sticky even at that hour, which meant another warm one in bed tonight and probably little sleep. Lorna shouted good night.

  “Are you not driving, Lorna?” Madeline said, pausing with her keys in her hand.