The last things I heard though was the panicked shouts of the firemen who had picked Wilhelmina’s body up off the floor and were running it down to the paramedics who were waiting downstairs, followed by Ruby’s voice screaming my name.
Bugger it, Will was going to kill me.
Chapter Eleven
William
The second we landed, I ignored the pilot’s demand that we keep our mobile phones switched off until the plane had stopped taxiing and turned mine off airplane mode. As soon as it got its signal, it beeped frantically. Assuming it was a work emergency, I almost threw it across the plane.
Then I looked at the screen and saw Ruby and Rafe’s names coming up repeatedly.
Call me now!
Call as soon as you get this!
Mate, there’s been an accident. Wilhelmina’s at the hospital.
Fuck me! That’s when I totally lost my shit and got a warm welcome from the Police as soon as we arrived at our terminal. This actually worked in my favour once I told them about the messages and they radioed in to see if I was telling the truth.
Sadly, I was.
Wilhelmina
My head felt like it was going to explode, and the beeping of the alarm clock was making it worse.
“Turn it off,” I croaked, reaching my arm out to hit it and hitting someone instead.
“Well, that was out of order,” a male voice snapped. It wasn’t familiar, and I was struggling to open my eyes. “Wait, oh you’re awake!” he yelled. It was followed by loud stomps further away from me and then the voice bellowed, “She’s awake! Oi, you dopey sods – she’s awake!”
I opened my eyes just as a group of people ran into the room and all started talking to me at once.
It took me a couple of minutes looking at all of their faces, and then the names came flooding back.
The most important one was the one belonging to the man who had his face in my lap and was holding me tightly against him.
Reaching down, I stroked his hair and scratched the stubble on his face. He burrowed his face further into my lap and tightened his grip slightly.
“Really, William!” his mother sighed. “There’s a time and a place. At least let the poor girl have a cup of coffee first!”
It might have seemed unlikely and impossible given the circumstances, but the whole room burst out laughing – including the man who up until that moment had thought he was going to lose me.
William
Ten days later…
It had taken eight days for Mina to be released from the hospital, but she’d been home for two days now and apart from sporadic headaches, you’d never guess what she’d been through.
The knock to her head had affected her movements, but with the team of physiotherapists at the hospital, she’d regained all of her functions and was declared fit to be released so long as she had help at home.
I was scared that she was going to relapse or something, so I insisted on going everywhere with her. There was also the fact that I just needed to be around her after what had happened, but I used the former as my excuse and justification.
“You can’t live up my arse hole,” my delicate princess snapped as she slammed the door in my face. “I need to pee!”
“I don’t mind,” I called through the door trying to turn the handle, but she’d locked the door behind her. By the time she opened it again, I was close to hyperventilating at the worry of not being able to get to her if something happened.
“Will?” she grabbed hold of my hands which felt ice cold even though I had the heating on full blast.
Moving to hug her close to me, I ran my hands over her making sure that she was okay, realising I was shaking as I did it.
“Please don’t do that again,” I croaked, holding her beautiful face in my hands. “Not just yet, okay? I need to know I can get to you if something happens.”
Rolling up onto her tiptoes, she gave me a soft kiss on the lips and whispered against them, “Okay, honey.”
A couple of days later, Doctor Wanker was found in Peckham and arrested on a multiple of charges. The day that happened, all the fear that was twisting my guts up into knots went away. When I took a moment to reflect back on that dark time of my life, I couldn’t help smiling. If that was the extent of our arguments, then I was a lucky man. Mum would have clocked Dad around the head with whatever she could get her hands on whilst threatening to castrate him with a stiletto.
In time, I’d realise how wrong I was, and I’d become suspicious that Mum had given Mina lessons on how to argue like a Renton when she marched in the direction of her shoes while I ran out the bedroom door apologising. It had been my fault, absolutely, but still!
For now, I lived oblivious to that fact, incorrectly assuming that I’d never be threatened by a shoe. The priority was finding out why Rory had done what he did.
Wilhelmina
“Doctor Cunningham was very forthcoming during questioning,” the policeman who’d come to brief us on the questioning of Rory said. Opening his notebook, he scanned over the notes on it before clearing his throat. “Do you by any chance know a Portia Campbell?” he asked, looking me in the eye.
“That’s my sister,” I nodded hearing Will growl beside me.
“She’s a bitch,” Will added like this information was vital to the investigation.
“Yes, we gathered that,” the other policeman who’d attended said dryly. “She paid Doctor Cunningham fifty thousand pounds to go into your flat and kidnap you.”
The hand that grabbed mine squeezed it tightly as I sat frozen, trying to understand what he’d just said.
“What the fuck?” Will yelled, but I couldn’t move.
“Doctor Cunningham said he was aware he wouldn’t be able to carry it out. He’s addicted to painkillers that he was stealing from the hospital. When he was sacked from his job there, his access to the drugs was reduced, so he was buying them off of punters on the streets. This also meant that he didn’t know what he was taking,” the policeman’s tone changed at this point which snapped me out of the haze that I’d been in since he’d dropped the Portia bomb on us.
“What do you mean?” I asked. It came out not sounding at all like my voice.
“We tested some of the pills that the good doctor had on his person,” he explained, his lips twitching. “Seems he’d been paying ten quid for aspirin and…” he glanced over at the other policeman whose shoulders were shaking, “folic acid.”
“Well, isn’t that just rich,” Will’s mum’s voice came from behind us. She’d promised to stay in the kitchen, but Anne was a law unto herself. None of us had expected her to even last this long. “He’s popping aspirin and trying to get pregnant and then attacks poor Mina? I’ve taken both of those and I didn’t even feel a damn thing!”
“That was the problem,” the policeman said. “He was coming down from some heavy-duty drugs.”
“Is this enough to get him off?” Will asked. I hadn’t thought of that possibility, but now that I was I felt like someone had sucked all the air out of the room.
“No,” the policeman replied firmly, and just like that, I could breathe again. “We’re going to throw the book at him and make sure he serves his time, a good amount of time. We’ve also arrested Portia Campbell and are investigating a Mr Henry Campbell and a Mrs Maud Campbell,” he read off the names on the paper in front of him before looking back up at me.
“You’re investigating my parents?”
“We need to know where Portia got the money from. A quick look at her accounts showed that she was living off of an allowance provided by your parents. She most definitely did not have fifty thousand pounds spare to pay Doctor Cunningham.”
I’d spent my life feeling beaten down by my family. Not once had they looked out for me or made me feel like I actually mattered to them, but I couldn’t help but hope that in this one instance that they hadn’t been involved. Portia was a different entity altogether, she didn’t care about anyone but hersel
f. But my parents?
“We’ll keep you updated,” the policeman said standing up and making me realise that I’d been so focused on my thoughts that I’d missed the rest of what they’d said.
“Make sure he isn’t given any lube,” Will requested as he shook their hands.
“And that you make sure they’re aware that he welcomes conjugal visits at all hours,” his dad said also shaking their hands.
“Just tell them he’s up for a good rogering,” Anne snapped as she pushed forward to shake their hands too. “There’s no need to be diplomatic about it and beat around the bush. In fact…” the rest of what she was going to say came out muffled as Will’s dad Giles covered her mouth with his hand.
The policemen cleared their throats and left. I’m sure they had a lot to say about it once they got to their car, but I was too busy laughing at Anne. Yet again, she’d taken a bad situation and turned it into a funny one for me.
“I’m sending that arsehole a box of soap,” she muttered having finally freed herself from Giles’s hand. “The bar type, not the shower gel ones.”
Turning on her heel, she stomped back toward the kitchen yelling out that coffee was on its way.
William
That night…
I was nervous. It was freezing outside, but I was sweating and kept pulling my jumper away from my neck as we walked through Covent Garden.
“Are you sick?” Mina asked, looking up at me and frowning. “Will, you’re drenched. I told you we didn’t have to come and meet the others. I knew we should have stayed home.”
“I’m fine, princess,” I tried to smile, but I’m pretty sure I looked a bit constipated instead. “I’m just hot.”
“It’s three degrees out!”
The closer we got to the spot, the more I felt the sweat streaming out of my pores. What if I forgot the plan? What if it went wrong?
Just as we reached it, I thought ‘oh, fuck it!’ and dropped down to one knee beside her.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, dropping down beside me. “Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“Can you stand up a second?” I asked, glancing around us nervously.
“No, not until you get up. Here, let me help,” she tried to put my arm around her neck, but I kept pulling it away. “Will, really, it’ll be easier if you just lean on me.”
“Mina, please can you stand up,” I asked again, trying to pull her up with my arm around her waist while I stayed kneeling down.
“That’s it, I’m calling an ambulance,” she muttered as she reached into her pocket for her phone. “I told you…bloody minded man that you are.”
Just as she unlocked the screen of her mobile, I snatched it out of her hand and put it in my pocket.
“Princess, will you please just stand up!”
“No!” she shouted, trying again to get me to stand with her. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’re sick so I’m either calling an ambulance or I’m…”
“I’m trying to propose!” I yelled, making her freeze. “And to do that, I need you to stand…up!”
And that was how I got her to agree to be my wife. During the celebration, I also got her to sign a napkin that I’d written out an agreement that she’d be my wife forever and not leave me because of my family or because of our awkward moments.
While she signed it, I got Rafe to video it as further evidence.
She was mine!
Later that night when I got her home, I made sure she knew I was mine. She came three times on my mouth, and then another two on my cock.
Epilogue
Nine months later…
William
We’d been married for five months. Five long, blissful months. Because of Dad’s KBE, we’d been entitled to get married at the chapel at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Mina hadn’t wanted a lot of fuss and had said she’d be happy with a small affair in a registry office, but I’d said no, Mum had said no, and India had said no. That day, we’d had Dad call up the office to book St Paul’s and discovered that there had been a cancellation. We’d obviously snapped it up and had planned the wedding in four months.
Her parents had been cleared of any involvement with the whole Doctor Wanker affair, but they hadn’t been invited. During the discovery that Portia had stolen the fifty thousand pounds to pay Rory to kidnap Mina, Dad and I had gone around to their house to discuss it with them. I’d made my intentions clear, not giving a damn if I had their approval or not, and her father had the audacity to ask me how much I was going to give him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. We do not live in medieval England, so this took us by surprise until the realisation that he was actually in effect trying to sell his daughter sank in. Telling him to shove it up his arse, we’d left and had requested our security team look into his financial affairs. Apparently, the import and export industry really didn’t like Henry Campbell and his business was in the shitter. Hoping to claw his way out of the cesspit that he was in, he’d decided he could at least benefit financially from the daughter he’d treated like crap all of her life. Wanker!
So, our wedding day didn’t involve her parents, and her sister was sitting in a room in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons. Mina didn’t give one toss about this and powered ahead with the plans. She’d eventually met my grandparents and realised where my family got their insanity from. Afterward, we’d gone on our honeymoon to Hawaii for three weeks, and on the way back we’d stopped off in Texas to see a friend of mine who had an oil company there. He’d taken us to his family’s ranch in a place called Piersville and we’d both realised that compared to his family, mine was a breeze and totally normal.
It was also here that I suspected our baby was conceived…
Wilhelmina
The psychological effects of my upbringing weren’t going to go away overnight, and it was because of the fact that my family had put me down for twenty-three years that I was working today. I wanted to be independent and hated leaning on anyone for help. I was now fifteen months pregnant, hadn’t seen my feet in at least fourteen of those months, and was carrying around a ten-ton baby. At least that’s what it felt like. In reality, I was a week away from my due date, retaining water like a sponge, and felt like my vagina was going to break in two at any moment.
Walking over to the coffee bar, I saw Charles puttering around behind it. We’d become close friends since I started working here and Will had actually been okay with that. He was happy that there was another set of eyes watching me, especially as my pregnancy advanced, although he still gave Charles weekly warnings where he threatened to tear his arms off and shove them up his arse if he even thought about coming near me. Charles had even come up with a pregnancy-friendly chai for me as I couldn’t stomach decaf coffee. It was called “Min-i Chai” from the “Min-i Blend”. I don’t know how he marketed it, but it took off like a rocket and was one of the favourite drinks of all expectant mothers throughout the UK. Initially, the women had come to the Renton offices to get it, but once it got out of hand, he’d had to give in and made it available online.
I was just heading toward him for one of my chai’s when I heard a dripping noise. Looking around me, I couldn’t see where it was coming from, but any water on the marble flooring of the building was a health hazard and lawsuit waiting to happen, so I had my phone in my hand ready to call maintenance once I could figure it out. Looking up at the glass roof, all I saw were blue skies above me, not even a cloud, which was unusual for September in London.
“You alright?” Charles asked as he walked over with some towels. He was scanning the building and kept looking down at the floor in front of me. “Don’t be embarrassed, the baby must have moved and pressed on your bladder,” he whispered as he dropped the towels on the floor and shifted them closer to me with his foot.
Looking down, I saw a puddle forming under me and started to panic.
“Please tell me I haven’t wet myself,” I begged him in the quietest voice I’d ever used in my lif
e.
“I think you might have,” he winced.
Before I could scream and try and waddle run away, India walked up behind us.
“Hey, I was passing by and thought I’d surprise you…”
Whatever she was going to say was cut off by the sensation of an anaconda trying to squeeze my lungs out of my ears. Grabbing onto her, I dug my nails in and started panting.
“Get Will,” I gasped, still panting.
“Did you really piss your pants?” she asked, sounding horrified. “Is that normal?”
“Not got a Scooby Doo,” Charles replied. “I brought over some towels when I saw the puddle, but I think we’re going to need one of those yellow hazard triangles to warn people that the floors wet.”
“Oh, good idea,” India chattered back while I tried to get the guts to stand up straight again. I was certain I was now in labour and scared that another contraction was going to hit. “Do you know where they are?”
“I’ve got two behind the desk,” Charles said. “Hey, it’s beautiful weather, isn’t it? Do you want a coffee while I’m back there?”
“Yeah, if you don’t m…”
“Oh my god, will the two of you mean bastards shut up!” I shrieked, just as another pain gripped me. Now it was my arse falling out of my arsehole that I was worried about. “Get Will. I’m in labour!”
Most people would find their phones and dial the number. If they didn’t have their phone to hand, they’d ask one of the two people standing in front of them for their phones. Not India, oh no, not my soon to be dead best friend.
Running into the centre of the building, India faced where Will’s office was and shrieked with her head tilted backward, “Oi!” at the top of her lungs. “Oi, Will Renton!” she yelled. “Your big-headed baby’s on the way.”
My husband and his friend’s heads all appeared over the edge of the balcony looking down at me in horror just as the next pain hit. Reaching out for something to hold on to, my hand hit something, and I grabbed hold. At the peak of the contraction, I opened my eyes and saw a neon yellow hazard sign with CAUTION WET SURFACE written on it. The only thing that saved Charles at that moment was the appearance of my mother-in-law.
Quids In: Covent Garden Series Page 8