The Place That Never Existed

by Jim Ody

  Without even a knock on the door, Sam arrived with a mug of tea and placed it down beside her. She was wearing a baggy vest that she had stolen from one of her male friends, and it was so big that even though she had small breasts, the gap under the arms would flash them.

  “I thought you’d want this,” Sam said, sliding under the duvet. This was a habit that she had fallen into, almost childlike, where she would join Ginny some mornings, and they would talk about life and the such-like.

  “Thanks,” Ginny replied. There was something comforting about having Sam around, although she still felt slightly self-conscious with her larger boobs and extra padding. Sam had the body that Ginny had always wanted, but life, and more accurately, fast food and chocolate had not allowed her.

  “You were out late last night? How was he?” Ginny asked. She’d been watching some rom-com with an incredibly obvious plot, heart-warming ending, and worst of all, she had thoroughly enjoyed it. She had turned in for the night to read her book before drifting off full of romance and crime.

  “He was…okay,” she said, flicking her fringe, and putting her hand over her head.

  “Just okay?” Ginny probed, her own love life had petered out a while ago, so she enjoyed listening to Sam’s.

  Sam puffed out her cheeks. “Yeah, odd fellow…er…”

  “Bad sex?” Ginny grinned.

  “No, great sex, just an odd character!”

  Ginny frowned, suddenly having a thought. “He’s that councilor guy, right?”

  “Rupert,” Sam added.

  “Married councilor guy too!”

  “Okay, don’t get judgmental. He’s the one in the wrong, not me!”

  Ginny shrugged. “If you say so. And what was odd about him then?”

  Sam sat up. “It’s hard to put my finger on exactly. He was humming the theme tune to Bonanza at one point.”

  “Some people like to sing. I wouldn’t hold that against him.”

  “We were having sex at the time!”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Yes! Exactly.”

  “Sam, I’m sure you could find yourself a nice guy. One that isn’t married or odd, yeah?”

  Sam nodded and drifted off deep in thought to someplace that Ginny hoped didn’t involve slapping naked skin and cowboy television programmes’ theme tunes. “Odd bloke…” She paused, then added, “Great sex though. Did I mention that?”

  “You did. And Bonanza.”

  “Just making sure you were listening.”

  It was then Ginny’s turn to sit up. “What do you think of this place?”

  “What, this house?” Sam replied.

  “No, Huntswood Cove.”

  “It’s nice. It’s secluded, it’s peaceful. It has some nice lonely guys—and some awful ones…”

  Ginny was serious and building up to something. “Things are happening around here. Have you not noticed?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How many people have disappeared over the past few years?”

  “What, disappeared or died?”

  “Both.”

  Sam wriggled in her vest while thinking, flashing a nipple, covering it up, and then deciding to let it stay where it was. “There have been what? Four or five? But they all ended up dead, so it wasn’t like they just disappeared.”

  Ginny shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems a little strange. In Plymouth there weren’t half as many deaths by accident as there are here. Most of them were caused by drugs, or violence, not being swept off of the Hoe, or falling off of a boat. I dunno, Sam—”

  “Shit,” Sam suddenly said, her eyes wide. “Rupert’s daughter was one of them, wasn’t she?”

  Ginny nodded. “Yeah, Chrissy. She was found dead on the rocks, a picture of her estranged boyfriend bobbing in a rock pool next to her.”

  “Poor Rupert, no wonder his marriage is what it is.”

  Ginny knew some things she should just keep to herself, and her feelings on Rupert’s infidelity was one of them. It was also easy to put down a trauma as being the catalyst to sending someone morally wayward, but the truth of the matter was long before Chrissy’s death, there had been rumours of Rupert’s extracurricular activities. This wasn’t just mindless ladies’ gossip but substantiated sightings and witness accounts—and by witness, we of course mean mistress.

  It was just like Sam to take pity on a man. She always saw them as the weaker sex and as such more prone to relationship failings. Ginny was sure this simply had nothing whatsoever to do with her own father playing away from home and yet remaining her hero throughout. No sarcasm here.

  Sam then looked over at Ginny with a furrowed brow. “So what is your theory behind all of this?” she asked.

  “I have no idea. I want to look into it and see what I can find out…” .

  “It might be nothing, you know? I know that your suspicious police mind has been working overtime, not to mention your crime book choices, but sometimes they’re coincidences.” Sam could switch back and forth quite seamlessly from vague and naïve, to being emotionally aware and forthright.

  “Ex-police mind, but yeah, it could well be nothing.”

  “Well, I would love to stay and play Miss Marple with you,” Sam said, getting up and pulling off her vest. “But after a shower, I’m straight up the stables for the day.”

  “Well, I’ll let you know what I find out,” Ginny said, watching Sam’s naked back walk out of the room with only the tiniest amount of jealousy.

  “Hey, Sam,” she called, and Sam glided back in. “You seeing him again today?”

  Sam smiled. “Yeah, later on. I dunno, this will most likely be the last time but…”

  “Great sex!” they both said at once, and with no shame Sam took off her knickers and winked at Ginny, blew her a kiss and walked off.

  “Bonanza!” Ginny called after her and heard the laugh from the bathroom.

  Ginny pulled herself out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror. How would she get herself a man looking like this? Even a cheating man. She was more the sort that was cheated on rather than cheated with. Since leaving the police, she had put on a stone in weight. She took off her clothes and stared at her naked self, unhappy with what she saw. She grabbed her stomach hoping on some level that it would disappear in her hands, and then she cradled and lifted her breasts. They seemed to keep growing and get heavier every time she did this. Hearing the shower was on, she got down on to the floor and tried a few push ups. She got to four and gave up. She remembered the leftover chocolate cake. There was no point in starting exercise and diets with that left in the fridge.

  Everybody knew that temptation was the road to failure.

  THE PLACE THAT NEVER EXISTED

  Chapter Fourteen

  T here were just too many things for Jez to think about right now. He had been ringing his sister every ten minutes since he’d unmasked his catfish, but each time it went to voicemail. He was convinced she was indulging in the pleasures of the flesh each time, and that was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about. Why else wouldn’t she pick up the phone? He hated to think about his sister like that, but they were on honeymoon, so what else would you do? You’re not going to be watching telly or just talking for the whole time.

  He had sent her a text and emailed her. Surely she would check her email or social media site, right?

  Jez then thought about his own YouTube channel and updating his followers on his day when it hit him—she was his follower! That bitch would now stop him from being able to update his followers! Talk about selfish. He felt like punching something. Hard.

  While he stood there trying to decide how many pairs of pants he needed to pack, he was suddenly transported back to the time when he had married his wife. They’d gone to Thailand on honeymoon and had spent a lot of the time naked. It had been the best days of his life. Even when the sexy hotel maid turned out to be not totally female, it was just a bit of harmless fun with him and his wife. And now his fun was mostly
balled up into fantasy, either with new partners in his head, or else through ladies he chatted with on the internet.

  This was what it was like to grow up. How fucking depressing. If he knew then what he knew now, then what was the point of getting old? He was becoming more pudgy, hairy, and his body was slowly giving up. His wife was no better either.

  Jez didn’t want to ring his wife as this would end up in him being given a list of jobs as long as War & Peace and with the importance of the Ten Commandments. Only a fool would encourage actual interaction with a wife while she was away. No good could possibly come of it. Even if he explained his family’s dilemma, she would palm it off as some trivial leisure pursuit, an excuse for him to fornicate with a young filly. This made him all the more cross. Chance would be a fine thing! So he sent her a text instead, telling her that he was on his way to Devon to see his sister on her honeymoon—it didn’t seem so strange when he had typed it the first time, but thinking about it, there was something a little odd about that.

  He stumbled out of his front door, tripping over his large black holdall and falling onto the gravel. His laptop bag hit him full in the face, and his car keys went flying up so high into the sky that birds flew off his roof for fear of being hit. It was clear he worked in IT and wasn’t a professional male gymnast.

  He looked up and saw the old lady from a few doors down laughing at him. Her name was Miss Chambers, and she was a stern battle-axe of a woman with a wicked sense of humour.

  “I’m okay!” he shouted at her as he got up and started to walk over. This was more to save a little face, which of course turned out to be an epic fail.

  “And where do you think you are sneaking off to while your wife is absent, Jeremy?” she said in an accusing tone. She wore an oversized shirt over a sweater which meant she was busy cleaning everything that didn’t need to be cleaned. The loud sound of Kenny Rogers could be heard coming from her house. She was a lover of country & western and rather enjoyed sharing it with the rest of the street. Bloody noise pollution and another reason for euthanasia, he thought.

  “What? Me? Nothing?” Jez stammered. This woman never failed to scare the shit out of him. She was like an older version of his wife, albeit he had seen Miss Chambers naked less times. He felt guilty for something that he hadn’t done—although he had been corresponding with her, and as it turned out, a good thing, too, he quickly justified to himself. He shivered at the thought of the one time he had seen Miss Chambers naked. That was a story for another time. Suffice to say it was not premeditated and purely accidental.

  “You look like you are about to run off with some local harlot. That the case here, Jeremy?” She had one hand on her hip, and the other had a prominent finger pointing at him to emphasise the point.

  Just then, the neighbour in-between both of their houses, Eddie, had the misfortune of coming out of his door. He took a quick glance at the two of them and looked like he wanted to turn back inside to the safety of his home. Jez hadn’t seen him since he’d been serving behind the bar at his sister’s wedding reception.

  “Ah, ha! Here is the other one. Tell me, Batman, are you off with boy wonder over here to feast on harlots?”

  Eddie then broke out one of his large grins. “Well, I was just off to work, but feasting on harlots is indeed a notion that I cannot refuse! Where are they, Jez?”

  Jez shrugged. “I don’t know any Charlottes,” he replied, completely serious.

  “Not Charlottes! Harlots. You know, ladies of the night!” Miss Chambers was flabbergasted this guy could work magic on a computer one second and be the village idiot the next.

  “She means hookers, mate,” Eddie added.

  “And of course you would know all about that, would you, Edward?” she said.

  “Nothing wrong with helping others to earn a living, ma’am. It’s about helping the local community and the local economy. Would you rather that they be sucking off of the government, or sucking off—”

  “There is no need for such vulgarity, on the doorstep, no less, of a respectable property.” Eddie lived in the house of his grandfather, a friend of Miss Chambers up until his untimely death from cancer a few years back.

  Then Jez piped up. “Ahh, I get it, harlot, not Charlotte!”

  “And we welcome Jez to reality.” Eddie winked at Miss Chambers.

  “He has the mind of a lethargic slug sometimes,” she agreed. “Okay, so where are you off to then with such haste?”

  “Honeymoon. Stop her before it’s too late. Evil woman.” Sometimes Jez spoke like this in incomplete sentences, his mind spewing out the things stuck in there, slowing down the cogs.

  “Slow down, mate,” Eddie said. “Start again.”

  “I have to warn my sister on her honeymoon that she is after her. She knows where she’s staying.”

  “How did she find out?” Eddie asked.

  “He told her,” Miss Chambers quickly added, rolling her eyes.

  “Well…”

  “Did you tell her?” Eddie frowned.

  “Not really. I said Devon.”

  “Just Devon?”

  Jez sighed deeply. “Near Plymouth in Devon.”

  “Now let me take a stab in the dark here,” Miss Chambers said. “An educated guess, if you will. This devil-woman somehow convinced you that she was someone else in order for you to spill the proverbial beans? That sound about right? She fooled you with a pretty picture, and racy talk, correct? A snake in the Garden of Eden.”

  Jez nodded so hard and enthusiastically that his head was in danger of rolling right off his shoulders and onto the lawn below. It sounded like she fully understood his predicament, knowing it was not his fault but a honey trap.

  “Oh dear, mate,” Eddie said. “You heading off down there, then?”

  Jez nodded again, and Miss Chambers tutted loudly.

  “I don’t suppose you fancy coming?” Jez said to Eddie.

  Eddie shook his head. “Aside from the customers I have over the next few days, I have Daisy to think about. Sorry, mate.” Eddie was a popular tattoo artist and therefore had appointments booked over six months in advance, and Daisy was his daughter—he was well past the drop-everything-for-an-adventure stage of his life.

  “No problem, mate.”

  Miss Chambers then piped up. “And don’t be looking at me, young man, I am too long in the tooth for such gallivanting around the countryside on these little adventures.”

  “Righty-ho then. I’d better head off.” He walked to his classic Mini and folded himself and his luggage inside.

  “Bye!” he called, beeping the horn which was an embarrassing little parp sound.

  “He really needs a bigger car,” Eddie thought out loud.

  “There are many things that boy needs,” Miss Chambers added. “I do not have the energy to categorise them all, but common sense is up there near the top.”

  “And a haircut.”

  “I’d wager it is better to give his features a little more coverage of hair, rather than to show them off. How his wife puts up with him is beyond me.”

  “Very true, Miss Chambers, very true.”

  They both suddenly felt uncomfortable. Agreement did not come naturally for them both.

  Miss Chambers brought back the equilibrium with a quip. “You had better get back to your daughter. Child neglect comes all too easily to you.”

  “Indeed. Let me comment that your witch mask is very lifelike and perfect for Halloween.”

  And off they went, both feeling slightly better about things.

  THE PLACE THAT NEVER EXISTED

  Chapter Fifteen

  D ebbie once again turned on her mobile phone and found there to be no signal. It hit her hard that she had suddenly become extremely dependable on technology. Aside from a television, there was no way of being in contact with the world, and she realised that her whole being now revolved around updates from people from all around the world—people that for the most part she did not know from Adam. Some were
friends and family, but others were people she had met online via blogs and social media groups. They had vague and slight areas of mutual interest, but she had formed a strange bond with them, evolving from enjoying their posts to a feeling of fulfilment when they expressed positively in comments and shared wonders from their life. And now she longed for the updates, feeling like they were not expressing themselves to a faceless crowd, but sharing their lives on a one-to-one basis over coffee and cake.

  Paul happily checked his phone periodically, but his need was for actual contact with people—a sense of undivided attention that he did not want to be part of a large updated audience but wanted to be stood in the pub with them, while they skirted around their feelings by peppering the conversation with innuendos, and half-joking sexist comments. If the conversation dried up, got too serious, or too mushy, then they always had sport to turn to. The ups and downs of Swindon Town Football Club could rein back the mushiest of blokes. It was an antidote to moonlit walks, massages, and flickering Yankee candles. An hour could easily be lost reliving the rollercoaster memories and sharing the odd song about Oxford United. But the bottom line was Paul was happy to be away from his phone or laptop. He worked in sales, and so the phone and laptop became a money-making tool synonymous with stress. He was about sweet-talking the customer and calculating the easiest way to hit your targets, while the sands fell quickly through a hole that each month appeared to get bigger and bigger. The more you earn the more you spend. Isn’t that always the case?

  “Still nothing?” Paul said after he heard the huff and puff from his new wife.

  “Nope, nothing.”

  “Shall I get our friend on the CB?” he joked.

  “No, it’s not that important.”

  They were both dressed for a long walk, decked out in clothes from Mountain Warehouse, but they were not ”walkers” in the traditional sense of the word—or perhaps they were. They certainly walked daily in a fashion that could not be called anything other than walking, but they were not one of those couples that planned great expeditionary walks, intending to sink a Union Jack into places not reached before by man. Clutching a map and GPS for guidance, and snacking on Kendall Mint Cake and a selection of nuts and berries, these people see it as a challenge of endurance, tackling unforgiving terrains while winds batter them and the rain blasts them into another time and place—a time and place when this act is not seen as bonkers and foolhardy to those that like to take life a little bit more easy. Some even set up a camp in the middle of God-knows-where as they erect pits of fire to fend off wolves, bears, and Gruffalos.