In Spite: A terrifying psychological thriller with a shocking twist you won't see coming

by Collette Heather

  It’s early to go to bed. This could mean she is either preparing for sex, or she’s having ‘a turn’ and preparing for a mammoth sleep in the spare room she has quietly taken over as her own. Yes, I know all about Tess and her little turns. I think I know more about her than she knows herself.

  I can’t hear anything more from the other side of the door. The footsteps have faded away rather than stopped dead, which would suggest that she has entered a room, rather than remaining standing there in the hallway, listening for more of those noises that I’m making…

  Taking a big risk – because it’s safe to say that I’m prone to taking those – I stick my head around the side wall of the staircase…

  And see that the hallway is empty and shrouded in darkness. It truly is a good job that the bulbs in the hallway have blown, otherwise she most probably would’ve seen me earlier. There is a halo of light emanating around the pulled-to bedroom door, which is the door to hers and Shane’s bedroom, not her bedroom, as in, the spare room.

  My heart thudding painfully hard against my sternum, I bravely – or recklessly perhaps, depending on how you look at it – edge toward the bedroom door. I am light on my feet and I trust that the thunderstorm will drown out any accidental creaks and groans.

  Once I near the door, I can clearly hear the hiss of the shower. Stealthy as an encroaching shadow, I slip into the bedroom. It excites me, standing here in the middle of the brightly-lit room like this, brazen and out in the open. Like I belong here.

  The door to the en-suite bathroom stands ajar and I inch towards it. I don’t feel scared anymore, I feel properly alive. More alive that I have done for ages. I feel like I have just woken up from a long, long sleep, refreshed, renewed, and raring to go.

  Agonizingly slowly, I push open the door a little more. Just an inch or so, but enough for me to peer into the steamy bathroom.

  I can see Tess, but she can’t see me. I control our relationship, not her. She only sees me when I allow her to.

  The shower cubicle is in the far corner of the bathroom, its two walls comprised of lightly-frosted Perspex. I can clearly see the contours of her flesh without being able to make out too much detail. She has a good body, not unlike mine. She really should make more of herself, like I do. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, that’s what I say.

  I watch Tess rinse her hair, her elbows raised level with her head, the outline of her jutting breasts clearly visible. A little shiver of excitement courses through me. I hope they have sex. Please God, let them have sex. There’s a good chance that they might, because if Tess wasn’t feeling up to it, she would’ve sloped off to the spare room by now for another lonely, fourteen-hour stint, pleading a migraine, or stomach cramps.

  Not wanting to be caught, I back away from the door, back into the relative safety of the bedroom. My gaze falls upon the wardrobe doors, opposite the King-sized bed. It is one of those built-in jobs that take up the entirety of one wall. This style of wardrobe has always struck me as naff, as so painfully middle class. Kind of like a poor man’s version of a walk-in wardrobe, ala Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and The City.

  No matter. There’s plenty of room in there for me to sit comfortably. I should know – I’ve done it before and it’s plenty deep enough. I open a side section of the mirrored monstrosity, since I know this bit has a hanging section for clothes, rather than shelves.

  Opening the door, I duck under the row of Shane’s neatly hanging suits, gently shutting the door behind myself. I’ll be safe in this segment of the wardrobe, because there’s no way that Shane is going to be reaching for one of his suits anytime tonight.

  I take this opportunity to get comfortable, fidgeting this way and that until my body finds a reasonable position to sit in.

  I may be here for quite some time.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TESS

  Going back downstairs again after my shower was a mistake. I’m not even sure why I bothered. Just sheer, inherent good manners, most probably, and the fact I was ever hopeful my stomach pains would ease up. They have, indeed, eased up, but there is still a dull twinge every so often low down in my abdomen. This is accompanied by a bone-weariness, and I really don’t want to be here sitting on the sofa again with Shane after my shower. The mood is broken and all I want to do is sleep.

  Shane, who apparently has consumed the better part of half a bottle of wine in my absence, is oblivious to my shift in mood.

  How typical of him, I huff silently to myself. Because sometimes, he has all the emotional intelligence of a brick.

  The very fact I am sitting here in my pink flannel pyjamas and I haven’t touched any wine since I’ve come back down doesn’t seem to deter him from making this a sex night.

  “How’s your tummy now?” he asks me, after a rather boring, slightly drunken monologue on the merits of Elton John as a songwriter.

  “Not too bad,” I answer honestly.

  “That’s great,” he says, reaching over the cushion that separates us to cup my barefoot, where I sit curled into the arm of the sofa.

  On the face of it, the gesture is soothing, but I can all-too-easily sense the inherent sexual intent behind it. Clearly, Shane thinks we’re going for attempt number two tonight. Inwardly, I sigh. I don’t want to keep on rejecting him and I can’t even remember the last time we had sex when it wasn’t carefully planned with my ovulation in mind.

  Maybe it’ll be okay, I tell myself. I’ll be all right when I get going…

  *

  But sex is far from okay. It is awkward and uncomfortable and nothing seems to fit anywhere, including the obvious.

  Besides the fact Shane keeps tugging my hair out of my scalp with his elbows pinning it to the mattress, or kneeing me, or clunking his teeth against mine when we kiss, my vagina will not respond to his touch.

  On top of this disastrous attempt at lovemaking, I have that horrible, skin crawly sensation of being watched. I know I’m being beyond stupid and paranoid, but there it is, just the same. The skin on the back of my neck is prickling, and I am deeply on edge; I can’t get into this at all.

  Only after some more perfunctory foreplay, where Shane jabs his fingers at my vagina with his customary lack of gentleness, and he has rolled on top of me and tried to shoehorn in his rapidly deflating penis into my near-dry vagina, does he call it quits. He rolls off me onto his back, next to me on the bed.

  “You’re not into this at all, are you?” he says.

  No shit, Sherlock, sneers the voice that sounds so much like Alice in my mind.

  “I’m sorry,” I reply, tucking my side of the duvet around my naked body and staring up at the dark ceiling. “I guess I’m just tired. And my head is throbbing.”

  I am speaking the truth – because I have called it quits with drinking for the night, the hangover is kicking in prematurely.

  And that sense of uneasiness clings to me – I just can’t seem to shake it. I wish that the thunderstorm would stop already, as my nerves are shredded. I twist my head away from Shane, towards the bedroom door. It stands open a crack, revealing the pitch-black hallway beyond. It is even darker out there than it is in here, because at least in here we left the bathroom light on with the door open so we could roughly see what we were doing. I stare at the bedroom door in the gloom until my vision blurs and my eyes ache.

  Someone’s in the house…

  Shane sighs heavily next to me, rustling around and wrestling with his side of the duvet like a dog going round and round in tiny circles in a basket until it gets comfortable.

  “Night, then,” he says with his back to me.

  I twist my head to look at the back of his neck, tentatively reaching out to cup his shoulder. He shrugs me off.

  “Shane…” I begin, then stop.

  “Let’s just go to sleep,” is his response, his voice muffled by the pillows.

  I say no more and clutch the duvet under my chin, where I resume staring sightlessly up at the dark ceiling. I don’t know how long I stay
there like that, not moving a muscle, listening. Thankfully the storm is easing, although it is still raining hard.

  Next to me, Shane is snoring heavily, as if he has taken it upon himself to personally replace the noise of the rumbling thunder. I need to get up. I need a wee, and to wash away the taste of him; the taste of failed sex.

  Just as I think this, fierce cramps grip my stomach from out of nowhere, catching me by surprise. I thought my gut ache had gone, that it was just the result of a combination of overindulgence and a generally nervous disposition, but now it is back with a vengeance. One especially ominous clench deep down in my abdomen has me springing into a sitting position like Count Dracula rising from his coffin in some black and white movie from the nineteen forties.

  The painful spasms ease, but its message was clear – I need a toilet. I am certainly not about to go and erupt in our en-suite bathroom, so as gingerly as possible, I swing my legs over my side of the bed, taking much care not to disturb my snoring husband.

  I scrabble around in the gloom, searching for my pyjamas, where they got discarded during the heat of the moment. Not that there was much heat in the moment – it was all an act on my part. Even though the room is shrouded in shadows, Shane is fast asleep and I know we are alone in the house, my skin still prickles all over as if I am being watched.

  This feeling has only intensified. It had first come on when I was getting into my pyjamas after my shower, but only slightly. Enough to dismiss out of hand. The feeling had grown and grown during our disastrous attempt at sex, and now I just feel sick with it. Or maybe that has more to do with my churning stomach than anything else.

  Locating the discarded pyjamas, I clamber into them and hurry out the bedroom door, inordinately – and quite irrationally – pleased to leave the room behind me.

  *

  My first port of call is the kitchen. Stomach pains aside, I am feeling decidedly out of sorts, the horrible feeling that my mind is somehow untethered, and I need a good dose of reality to ground me. That, and I want to make some noise. Creeping around in the dark is only making me feel even more dreamlike and strange.

  In the kitchen, I switch on all the lights, including the hidden spotlights on the underside of the cupboards above the countertops. The hum of electricity coming from the lights and all the electrical appliances goes a long way in soothing me.

  Maybe a cup of peppermint tea will help ease my cramps. It’s not going to stop any impending diarrhoea, but maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe things won’t progress to that stage. Besides, I really want to hear that kettle boiling – such a normal and lovely sound.

  I go through the motions of making tea, concentrating on the normality of it, centring myself. I am almost feeling myself again when my bare foot presses down on the foot pedal of the bin and the silver lid pops up.

  I don’t know why the smallest corner of a plastic packet I can spy in the bin – the rest of it hidden by clumpy coffee dregs, too many wine bottles and vegetable peelings from Shane’s soup effort – has my heart beating so fast.

  I drop the teabag to the side of the damp, clumpy pile, and gently pinch the box edge between thumb and forefinger, waggling it around a bit to dislodge the assortment of crud stuck to it.

  I gasp in horror and drop the soggy packet, the kitchen tilting, then spinning at an alarming speed around me. I stagger backwards away from the bin, stomach in knots, heart pounding.

  Why is there a packet of rat poison in the bin? I stare at it in disbelief, noting how it is almost empty. There are a few bright blue lumps of poison left in the bottom of the plastic packaging, the same size and texture as porridge oats.

  My stomach performs its most dramatic clench yet, and now the base of my tongue is floating in a pool of mouth water.

  “Oh God,” I groan, my hand flying up to my mouth as I leg it out the kitchen to the bathroom down the hallway.

  I only just make it in time. Bright orange vomit erupts out of me with force, leaving me hugging the rim of the toilet for dear life. Wave after wave of nausea washes through me until there is nothing left inside me to expel.

  But still I continue sicking up stomach acid and bile. I spasm and tremble in their wake, bathed in the coldest sweat. To my horror, I see tiny specks of bright-red blood in with the mucus-like bile, and my skin crawls, my brain feeling like it is being shrink-wrapped inside my skull.

  A small moan of terror escapes my lips as I gaze down into the depths of the toilet bowl.

  He’s poisoned you, comes Alice’s hateful, smug voice in my pained skull. There was rat poison in the soup, and you know it. That’s why it tasted so bitter…

  “No,” I groan, unravelling great lengths of toilet roll and wiping my sticky mouth and chin before blowing my snot-clogged nose. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  Are you sure about that? sneers that same voice.

  “No,” I groan again, lurching unsteadily to my feet.

  This simple action leaves me feeling so lightheaded, my world spinning so dramatically, I very nearly collapse to the ground. For a second, I think that there’s been a power cut, for the bathroom has gotten so dark.

  But it’s just me, because slowly, everything grows brighter again as the dizziness marginally subsides.

  I think I’m back in the land of the living again, but only just.

  *

  I don’t bother getting back into our marital bed. Apart from anything else, I can feel a migraine coming on. I have left a hastily scribbled note on Shane’s bedside table, saying, I have a migraine. I am in the other room. Probably best to let me sleep.

  And now, as I lie here in the spare room – my room – I do, indeed, have the beginnings of one of my killer headaches. This is perhaps partially brought on by my abrupt cessation of wine consumption; I am dehydrated, no thanks to that sudden onset of sickness, and the hangover is kicking in before I have had a chance to sleep it off.

  My brain won’t stop going round, I am dizzy with my own thoughts. But at least I am finally in my space. I feel so much safer in this room than I do in with Shane. I no longer feel like I’m being watched. Also, I no longer feel sick, so that is something to be grateful for, even if it does feel like the pain has crawled up from my guts and into my skull. And, neither was the vomiting accompanied by diarrhoea, so that’s two things to be grateful for.

  I close my eyes in the near-black room, forcing my thoughts to still. But it’s so hard – I can’t stop thinking about the empty packet of rat poison I found in the bin… The rat poison that Shane mixed in with my soup, which is why I feel so ill.

  I know that I’m being stupid. Beyond stupid, in fact. Not in a million years would Shane do anything so horrendous and downright murderous. And anyway, surely I would be dead by now, if I had consumed the best part of a packet of rat poison?

  Not if he purposely only gave you a little bit – just enough to make you ill over a period of time…

  Groaning, I bury my head into the pillow to silence that horrid little Alice voice. I am mad for even thinking such a thing. Why would he want to poison me? It makes no sense.

  There will be rats in the shed, or the attic, or something, and he forgot to tell me. Either that, or he just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it because he knows how much I love animals. Even rats…

  I tell myself this, but I don’t quite believe it. I make a concerted effort to silence my too-loud thoughts, telling myself to shut up and go to sleep. Because I haven’t been poisoned – that is just ludicrous.

  I don’t know how long I lay there like that, but eventually I can feel myself drifting away on a pain-filled tide into an uneasy sleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ALICE

  Finally, they’re all asleep. Or, should I say, Tess is finally asleep, because Shane has been snoring for ages.

  I stand in the dark hallway, peering through the tiny gap of Tess’s bedroom door, watching her unmoving figure on the double bed. She likes to sleep with the bathroom light on, the door slightly
ajar, so therefore I can see her eyes are closed. She is lying on her back, her dark hair fanning out over the pillow, one arm flung over her head.

  When she had gone downstairs, I had followed. I had heard her vomiting in the downstairs bathroom. I don’t know why she should be so sick. But then, maybe I do – it is undoubtedly psychosomatic, just as her migraines are, too.

  And, I must say, their attempt at sex was truly pathetic. I’ve been more stimulated watching animals rutting on a BBC wildlife documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough.

  I watch Tess for a moment more before silently retreating into the hallway.

  Next, I check in on Shane. He is in the exact same position I last saw him in – on his back, duvet half on, half off, legs bent forming a bridge, arms starfishing at right angles to his body, his mouth hanging open and his snores as loud as the thunder from earlier.

  With great care, I slowly push open the door and enter the room. Silently, I go to Shane, standing over him where he sleeps on the bed. My hand snakes behind my hips, my fingers curling around the pen knife in the back pocket of my jeans.

  I hold it in front of my face and flick the blade into life. The snick of the spring-loaded knife sounds inordinately loud in this dead hour of night and I hold my breath for an angst-ridden second, but Shane doesn’t stir.

  I cock my head to one side, gazing down at him in the gloom. Just as it is in Tess’s room, the en-suite bathroom light is on, perfectly illuminating the sleeping Shane. It is also perfectly illuminating me, should Shane suddenly open his eyes.

  Tenderly, I reach down to sweep away a lock of dark hair that has fallen onto his forehead. I know I shouldn’t touch him, that I’m taking a great risk in doing so.

  Because if he wakes up, I will have to kill him.

  I don’t have a problem with ending his life, since I have every intention of doing just that anyway, but doing so now would be less than ideal. For a start, it would land Tess well and truly in it, as well as me. I need to plan the deed much better and I need to talk Tess round to my way of thinking.