MInE: A Hate Story

by Andie M. Long

  Inez sighs. ‘Quiet. Mumbling’. There’s a pause. ‘A short temper. Oh, my God.’

  ‘What? Lynne, what?’

  ‘This morning. He said there’s no more Inez. You don’t think…?’

  ‘All I know is that I don’t think you’re safe right now. Pack some belongings and get a taxi up to the house at Handforth. I’ve a spare room. We’ll work out what to do.’

  ‘I-’ She hesitates.

  ‘Forget everything from the past right now. I want a life. I can’t have one while he’s in it. Get here and then we need to phone the police. If he’s innocent they’ll let him go, won’t they? No harm done. If he’s not, you’re here safe.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  Ed

  I get home, and there’s no food on the table.

  No wife.

  No Inez. My glorious Inez who I’ve adored all my life isn’t here. My mind tries to fix on an image of her face, but it morphs into different ones.

  I walk into the bathroom and realise her toothbrush has gone. I take the room apart. Some of her belongings are missing.

  ‘Where the fuck is she?’ I shout.

  I sit on the floor and rock. I can’t get my mind to hold a thought. I look at my hands, imagine them looping a belt around her neck. But that was an old woman, not Inez, wasn’t it?

  I couldn’t concentrate at work today. Jack said they might have to let me go. So before I left, I hung him by his tie in the men’s bathroom. That shut him up.

  I pick up my mobile. Silly me. How could I have forgotten? I put a tracker on my wife’s phone so that I always knew where she was.

  I wait until it shows me her location.

  Well, well. A little house in Handforth. What are the chances of that?

  Looks like we’re going to be having a family reunion.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mel

  We call the police, and a detective constable is sent to us. It’s a long time since another car came down the long winding lane to my house.

  ‘Gosh. I didn’t know anyone still lived down here,’ the DC says, his eyes taking in his surroundings.

  ‘That’s because they don’t,’ I tell him in clipped tones. ‘We’re only here because it’s safe from Edward.’

  The DC records the details we give him. That Edward is unstable. That he had a fixation with his stepmother, who has been found dead. That we have no proof he’s involved, but it’s worth investigating. I tell him that he gave our granddaughter glass shards through the window.

  To my surprise, Lynne is open about being my ex-husband and having gender reassignment. She re-iterates that Ed was obsessed with his stepmother and groomed her to look similar, although she was unaware that this was his intention.

  ‘Okay. Well, I’ll head back to the station with this. We need to pick up Edward and bring him in for questioning.’ The DC gets up.

  ‘As I said, he’ll either be at the gym or at home, as that’s where he goes from work,’ says Lynne.

  ‘Thank you. We’ll be in touch.’

  ‘What happens now?’ Lynne asks. Her name is giving me a headache. I want to call her Jarrod or Inez. Though who am I to talk?

  An hour or so later I move to the kitchen to make a drink. Sitting around is not doing me any good. I feel edgy and jumpy. The atmosphere in the house is tense with Lynne there with Dave. The last time they met Dave beat her up. The sooner they pick up Edward, the better. I’m not religious as a rule, but I pray to God that he’s arrested for murder or at the very least taken for psychological assessment. I move to the sink to fill the kettle, but movement at the periphery of my vision has me startle. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I stare at Ed on the other side of the window with a knife in his hand.

  I scream and run for the lounge.

  ‘Call the police. He’s here.’

  Dave quickly grabs the phone.

  Lynne jumps up. ‘How the hell did he know where we were?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I snap. ‘He never saw the route when I brought him here.’

  Lynne bites her lip. ‘I told him you had property at Handforth. I’m sorry.’

  I look at her in dismay. ‘Sorry’s a bit late when your psychopath husband is outside the kitchen window.’ The last of my words are drowned out by the sound of glass shattering.

  ‘He’s trying to get in,’ I shout.

  Lynne runs through the lounge door and into the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I yell.

  ‘Barricade yourselves upstairs. I’m going out to him,’ she says.

  I look at Dave, his brow furrowed. ‘Let’s get upstairs to the toolkit. Grab what you can. Screwdrivers, hammer. Anything we can use to keep him at bay,’ he says.

  We scurry upstairs and dash into the spare room where there are tools from the recent redecoration.

  I hear voices from outside and walk over to the bedroom window. Lynne’s outside now, talking to Edward. He’s waving a knife around. She holds her hands up. I can only hear mumbling but can see she’s trying to get through to him.

  ‘What on earth was she thinking?’ says Dave.

  ‘She doesn’t think. Just acts. That’s always been my ex’s problem. Now we wait to see who gets to us first. The police or Edward.’

  Once again, my ex’s actions could destroy my life.

  Lynne

  I couldn’t sit there and wait for the police. Edward has loved me for all these years. He wouldn’t hurt me. I feel it deep down inside. Whatever has happened, there must be an explanation.

  ‘Edward, darling. Put the knife down, and we can talk.’ I put my own hands up. ‘Look. I don’t have anything. It’s just me. Inez.’

  He waves the knife. ‘But you’re not, are you? You’re tricking me. I don’t know what’s happening. I picked up the signal of my wife’s phone, and it brought me here. You look like her, but you don’t.’ He rubs his knife-free hand through his hair, agitated. Then he hits himself in the forehead. ‘I can’t remember what she looks like. I see long dark hair, but then I see an old woman. Then I see your face, but you’re different.’

  ‘You made me wear a wig. I have a different one on now. But this is me. Look.’ I slowly remove the wig to reveal my own hair underneath.

  ‘My Inez had proper long dark hair. It wasn’t a wig. You’re tricking me. Why? You want me to go back there, don’t you? To that kid’s unit. They held me down. I won’t be held down. Where is my wife?’ He lunges, and the knife slashes the skin on my arm. It hurts like a bitch. He’s startled to see the blood, and while he’s still, I turn and run back into the house holding the door closed. When he comes to, he kicks and thumps the back door.

  ‘Let me in. I want my wife. What have you done with my wife?’

  I find it harder and harder to keep the door closed and then there’s nothing. A reprieve? Is he trying to fool me that he’s gone? Then I see his shadow at the window and hear him picking pieces of broken glass from the frame. Oh shit.

  Then the strangest experience occurs. The house shakes. At first, it’s a small tremble. Then it stops, and for a brief moment, I think I imagined it. Then it starts again. Items fall off the tops of the kitchen cupboards. I hold onto the door, but it’s like the kitchen floor is suddenly made of liquid. It seems to ripple. What the hell?

  Mel and Dave rush downstairs. ‘Lynne. We need to get out. It’s not safe. Something’s happening to the ground.’ I hear the front door open, and I know I should move, but it’s like I’m frozen to the spot. I watch as Ed tries to climb through the window and then suddenly he’s not there anymore. As the ground stops trembling again, my senses are alert. Adrenaline pumps and I run out of the front of the house as fast as I can.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Melissa

  We ran as fast as we could to the houses at the top of the street, Lynne closely behind. A paramedic checks us over and places some paper stitches on a cut on Lynne’s arm. The police come to meet us. They tell me my ga
rden is no longer there, and neither is the back part of my home. The noise has brought out the ambulance chasers and other nosy residents of the local area. I overhear their mumbles.

  ‘No ones lived there for years. They should have knocked them down long ago.’

  ‘My kids play down there. Could have been there when it happened. Wonder if I could sue?’

  We’re advised to get in the police car, and leave them all to it.

  Later a detective fills us in. ‘It would appear that heavy rain caused an old mine shaft to collapse. The safety of the area is being determined. Mrs Bonham, you say that your husband is somewhere in that shaft, but at approximately ninety metres deep, that will take some time to determine. We also have staff working at the crime scene of the deceased Mrs Inez Bonham to see if we can find any evidence to connect Edward Bonham with her death.’

  We’re free to go. I can’t explain how I feel, other than shell-shocked. It’s like dreaming wide-awake. Did any of this just happen?

  We stand outside the police station. Myself and Dave are going back to our home. Our real home.

  Lynne turns to me. ‘What do we do now?’

  I begin to laugh. So hard that rivers of tears run down my face.

  ‘What do we do now?’ I stand with my hand on my hip. ‘Are you for fucking real? What you do now is fuck right off. Go and live the life you want, Lynne, because you’re totally free.’

  ‘I’ll never be free. A person like me is never free.’

  ‘Oh, stop playing the victim, it’s getting old,’ I snap. ‘You’re transgender. Get in groups, deal with it. There’s plenty of people with problems to face. I’m the mother of a dead baby. We all have masks to put on, faces to portray to the outside world. You’ve made yourself Lynne. Is she a pathetic victim who blames everyone else for things that result from her own actions? Because that’s how it seems. Exactly the same as Jarrod, and Inez before her. Anyway, I couldn’t give a fuck what you are. I didn’t want you dead, but I know I don’t want to see you ever again. So don’t stay in that rented house. Move away from me, or I’ll make sure you don’t get any quality of life here.’

  She looks shocked. ‘I thought when you asked me to come to your house-,’

  ‘What? That we were becoming friends? You’re as fucking mental as Edward. The only reason I asked you to come to my house is so your death wouldn’t be on my conscience if he decided you were next.’

  ‘So you do care, or you’d have left me to it.’

  I sigh. ‘Somewhere in there, is my best friend Jarrod, who I loved dearly. Maybe I tried to save him. That caring soul who’d do anything for me. Keep that part alive, Lynne.’

  I take Dave’s arm and walk away.

  Leaving her alone for the first time in years.

  We stay in our house. It was our family home, and now there’s no reason for us to go anywhere else. Edward’s body was recovered from the shaft. The earth did him a favour. The police found Jack dead at Bailey’s, the same day as the mine accident. It had looked like a suicide. However, Jack had been found in an identical position to Jacobs, raising my suspicions, which I passed on to the detectives. It would appear Jacobs never took his own life after all. Police forensics confirmed that Ed had been responsible for the deaths of both his colleagues.

  We’ve holidayed in Suffolk and Dave and Bobby finally met. They got on well. Bobby showed off his manwhore self, and Dave saw that we were more like brother and sister. That is, how you would imagine a proper brother and sister to be – nothing like my real sibling.

  We received a postcard from Lynne. She said she’d moved to a supportive community. That she wouldn’t send any more messages but she hoped I’d want to know she was okay and caring for others in a new job as a care worker, and that it was more fulfilling than working at a makeup counter. I threw the card in the recycling bin.

  I’m baking biscuits with Millie when there’s a knock at the front door. I turn off the hob, and swinging Millie up and into my arms, go to answer it – my paranoia has me looking through the window first.

  ‘Hey there.’ A young couple stand on my doorstep. The woman has a bottle of wine in her hand. ‘We just moved in down the street, and we’re bringing all the neighbours a bottle. Only,’ she smiles, ‘neighbours don’t tend to socialise anymore, and we think that’s a shame. We want to bring a sense of community back.’

  I look at them. It could have been myself and Jarrod all those years ago.

  ‘I’m sorry, that’s kind of you, but I’m really busy.’

  ‘It’s only a bottle of wine,’ says the woman. She looks at my apron. ‘Hey, do you bake? Only I’ve always wanted to learn to cook.’

  ‘I can’t stand wine,’ I say, and I shut the door in their faces.

  ‘Grandma, are we going to finish our biscuits off now?’ says Millie, her eyes burning with hope.

  ‘We are, darling, and then would you like to make something else because for you I have all the time in the world.’

  ‘When my little sister comes will we still bake?’

  Joanne is expecting her second child, another daughter, any day now.

  ‘Yes. We’ll still bake. You are my best assistant.’

  ‘Will you let Sarah bake?’

  Sarah. That’s what Joanne is calling her daughter after taking me to one side to speak with me. A tribute to the daughter who didn’t get to live.

  ‘I will, but I’m sure she’ll never be as good at it as you are. Now, come on, before the biscuits burn.’

  I put her down, and she runs into the kitchen, coming to an abrupt stop in front of the oven. ‘I love you, Grandma,’ she tells me.

  ‘Love you more, Millie.’

  ‘I don’t want to share you, Grandma,’ Millie says. ‘You’re mine.’

  THE END

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  MORE DARKNESS FROM ANDIE

  SAVIOUR - OUT NOW

  Also in Kindle Unlimited. Buy/borrow: http://getbook.at/Saviour

  Blurb:

  A NUMBER ONE AMAZON BESTSELLER IN EROTIC THRILLERS AND SUSPENSE.

  Saviour – (n.) A person who rescues another from danger or harm.

  Taken into care, then ignored by ambivalent foster parents, Eden Stark seeks happiness through pleasure. Tired of one night stands she knowingly takes a job as a personal assistant for a couple, where the personal extends to their bedroom. When Eden goes missing, along with her employers, is she on holiday or has she been abducted?

  Xavier Harrington, a one-night stand, is the last person to have seen her alive. As he assists the detectives in locating Eden, his friend Jane wonders if he has genuine feelings for Eden or is trying to save her because he couldn’t save his mother.

  Will Eden be found and if so, can two broken people save each other?

  18+ contains dark themes and explicit content.

  Part One: Heaven

  Chapter One

  Eden

  ‘I’ve heard of a potential employment opportunity for you but it’s a bit, well, unusual,’ says my soon to be ex-roommate Kara.

  I carry on packing away my books, using bubble wrap to protect the covers. We’ve recently finished University and have a little over a week to vacate our student digs in Manchester City Centre. I take little notice of Kara’s ideas. They usually comprise of me standing dressed as a banana in the local shopping centre while selling juice.

  ‘Are you listening Eden Stark?’ Kara pelts me with a rolled up sock.

  I wrinkle my nose as I toss it back at her.‘Ew. Is that what you’ve been wearing? Your feet stink.’

  ‘Fuck off. We can’t all be domesticated like you. I didn’t have any clean ones.’

  I stick my tongue out at her. She makes me laugh. She’s all of five foot two, with short, brown, pixie cropped hair, but Christ she can be like a nipping, yappy dog when she puts her mind t
o it.

  I wipe perspiration from my forehead and sigh as I look at the mess in front of me. These books need to be packed today and there’s only an hour before I start my stint at Johnnys, a rib shack in the city centre. It pays peanuts. The fact remains I’m badly in need of better employment. I should have been saving for a year of backpacking, but thanks to student living and my addiction to nightclubs, my savings plans didn’t come to fruition. I place a hand on the tightness I feel in my chest. What the fuck am I going to do with my life? Is this my lot? Life at the rib shack?

  I turn back to Kara and sigh. ‘Go on, what’s the latest hair-brained scheme?’

  Kara bounces onto the sofa behind me, like an over-excited leprechaun, ‘Well Bridget was saying-’

  An image of a scrawny redhead comes to mind and a couple of drunken evenings spent with her that I regret.

  ‘Bridget? We’re taking note of Bridget now?’

  I’ve known Bridget for years. She used to live near my family and had a thing with my brother when we were younger. I’ve never quite managed to get rid of her. She’d dropped out of Uni when she was offered a job as a nanny, but she still hung round with our crowd.

  ‘Leave her alone, meanie and listen up. The family she works for had a couple of friends round the other night and they asked if she knew anyone who wanted a live-in post. Cooking, cleaning, that sort of thing. They don’t have kids, so not a nanny, kind of a PA.’

  ‘That’s not going to pay much is it?’ I sigh, ‘Although I guess it would give me a roof over my head for a while.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not all.’ Kara looks about to burst from the words she’s yet to emit, ‘Bridget’s heard about these two through her get-togethers with the other nannies and live-in domestics and they are quite-the-couple.’