PICTURES OF YOU: a gripping psychological suspense thriller (17 page)

Chapter 54

While Judy’s fingers dabbed and flexed over the keys, Mary sat on the settee nursing a cup of tea, a thumping head and a churning stomach. Although it was great to have the plan on its way she felt absolutely dreadful. It seemed such a short time since her world had been calm and, though it was relatively unexciting, she had been in control and there had been many pleasant days. Her job was fulfilling and this little home was a haven, her friends and family were precious and now it had all crumbled, and in a frighteningly short period of time.

Half asleep in the warm room she relived that first day when the fall at the bus stop had brought all of this into her life and she marvelled at the fickleness of fate. Closing her eyes allowed the thoughts and remembrances to drift. He had been so lovely, such a considerate and careful lover; as the memory flipped through her mind she felt a tiny quiver of warmth deep inside. How could it be, this beautiful, gentle young man had thrown her into such turmoil and fear? Greyness filled her lids, tiny flashes of muted colour drifted in the void and she felt her body becoming heavy. She allowed herself to go with the peace and when Bill came and stood before her she wasn’t surprised. He was tall and strong, unmarked by the long illness and his eyes shone with love. He reached for her and with no hesitation she leaned to him.

“Mary, hey Mary, sorry but I need your input. Sorry to wake you.” Judy was shaking her shoulder very gently and with regret she left the warmth of Bill’s love and dragged herself back to reality.

“Oh sorry, I drifted off there. I feel so bad about this I really do, I’m being no help at all. What do you need me to do?”

“I need the photographs of you, the ones of your face. I have put Chloe’s up there and I have it all ready for the things I’m hoping to get from Jacob, and I need your pictures now. Then I want to show you what I’ve done. How are you feeling?”

“Actually a bit better to be honest. I think I’ll make something to eat. Do you want to have some soup with me and some toast?”

“Yeah, that sounds nice.

“Mary, don’t let all this get you down. You look really sad now. If you don’t want to carry on we can stop, though I think that now I feel obliged to do something anyway, or we can just carry on.”

“Oh yes, I want to carry on. I admit I’m feeling a bit low right now but it’s my own fault isn’t it? It’s just the hangover, and a bit of shame. I feel very stupid.”

“Hey come on, don’t beat yourself up, you’ve been through a lot.”

Mary stood and threw her arms around the younger woman. “You know, you really are a lovely person. If nothing else comes out of this but that I have met you, that’s good.”

“Oh, stop it. Come on, come and look at the programme and then I think you mentioned soup?”

Mary dragged a straight chair over to the desk and the two women sat side by side peering at the screen.

“Right, so what I’ve done is a little video. It starts, well it will if I get the images I want, with a picture of him. We want to make absolutely sure there is no doubt who we are talking about.

Then some of his shots, I don’t know maybe about six or seven, and then this text:
This is the work of Jacob Chadwick.
Then some more images. These will flip up automatically and then the text again:
This is the work of Jacob Chadwick
. I’m hoping that by then people will be hooked and when we have them POW. The pictures of you and Chloe, side by side with the text:
And this is the work of Jacob Chadwick
.
Is this a man you want to call friend?

“So, what do you think?”

“Absolutely brilliant. It’s perfect, exactly what I had in mind.”

“The images I want to get will be the ones from his final show and that will effectively knock his chances of a degree on the head unless he can get do another in a couple of weeks and apparently they normally take at least a couple of months. Anyway, I hope that the furore this causes will get him thrown out anyway. It was a great idea Mary, I am impressed that you came up with it, I really am.

“Now, about this soup. I have to get back to the house in an hour and I want to call at the shops so that I have a legitimate excuse for going. I do the shopping for me and Steve. If luck is with us and Jacob is at the college I should be able to get his stuff. They all just leave their laptops in the living room normally so fingers crossed.”

“But what about passwords and stuff like that?”

“Yeah, it could be a problem but all I can do is have a go. This is my world though Mary and it’s best if I don’t tell you too much about what we get up to.” Judy gave a cheeky grin and a wink as they made their way to the kitchen.

Chapter 55

“Right I think I need to be getting on. Thanks so much for lunch.”

“Oh you’re welcome; it was nice to have company. To be honest I’ve been feeling a bit isolated. Actually that brings me to something I was meaning to ask you Judy.”

“Yeah?”

“I had to turn off my mobile phone, he was texting. Anyway I want to check now of course and see if there is anything on there that I need to know about. I know my mum would have used the land line but…” Mary shook her head, “Well the thing is, would you mind, if I turn it on you just have a whizz through it and delete all the messages from him…?

“I know I’m being a wimp but to be honest I feel so worn out with it all, after last night you know…”

“Oh yeah, sure, no probs. Give it to me.”

Mary passed over the slim grey plastic box and pressed the power button. It paraded through the boot sequence, beeping and chiming and the little screen brightened as if happy to be back.

Judy pursed her lips, “Well, there’re over sixty messages and from the look of it a load of them are from him. What do you want me to do, just delete them?”

“Yes please.”

“Right, here we go.” With her fingers dancing on the keys Judy sat at the table wiping out the attempts at contact and muttering under her breath. “Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, another, another.” And so it went on for a couple of minutes. “Oh, oh here’s one from somebody called Jane. What do you want me to do, shall I just leave it or…?”

Mary held out her hand, what was this now? More upset and disturbance. She had pushed the memory of the restaurant lunch to the back of her mind and now in light of all that had happened it was even more painful. It wasn’t that Jane had been correct in her assessment of the situation, indeed the things that had happened hadn’t even been on her radar. She had been scathing about Jacob taking advantage, of not caring about her but simply wanting a meal ticket and in the event that had been very far from the truth. In his own warped and twisted way he cared too much. However, in her mind that day had very much been the start of the whole thing collapsing.

Mary, I miss you. I’m sorry, can we talk? – Jane

It wasn’t what she had been expecting and she nodded, “Just leave it there would you Judy? I need to think about that one.” Although Jane’s attitude was still appalling in Mary’s eyes, perhaps now when she needed friends she should go some way to healing the rift.

“Oh here’s another one from Jane, shall I leave it?”

“Can you read it to me?”

Mary, please just give me a call. I just want to apologise, I was out of order.

“So, is that your mate? Have you had a row?”

“Yes, we did. It was about Jacob. She thought it was disgusting, him and me. She said I was old enough to be his mother and that he was probably only after somewhere to live or even money.” Mary raised a hand to the fading bruises on her cheek. “She was wrong in that wasn’t she? Tell me something Judy, what did you think? You sussed out that there was something going on with us, did you think it was disgusting?”

“Shit no, that sort of thing, age and so on, it doesn’t matter anymore does it? I mean half the time you can’t tell how old anyone is anyway, but that’s not the point is it? You find love, wherever it is don’t you? I know that there are lots and lots of cases where two people in a relationship may have a different agenda but I don’t know that it really matters. If everybody is happy and nobody gets hurt I think any friendship, any caring is good. No, I was worried though, I knew about Chloe and I didn’t know how close you and him were and I didn’t know if it was any of my concern. In the end I should have done more and I’ll always feel bad about that. You know we are always so careful aren’t we? Hesitating to interfere and if I’d told you the truth up front…” She shrugged thin shoulders and lowered her gaze back to the little phone where she continued to censor and delete messages.

“Don’t feel bad Judy, I really do understand and you know, at the end of the day I don’t know what my reaction would have been if you had told me. I was besotted, flattered and excited and I wanted to believe in it. I should have known better. People like me, ordinary people, we don’t do things like that, have affairs with boys and have sex in the afternoon...

“Oh God, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that – Have I embarrassed you?” As she looked across the table as Judy’s body begin to shake, imperceptibly at first and then as the giggling grew she put down the phone and raised hands to her face.

“Mary. You are funny. No, I’m not embarrassed but really, why shouldn’t you? What did you ever do to make you undeserving? I know your hubby died but you didn’t and you weren’t doing any harm. Here, that’s him deleted. I’m going to go now and I’ll come back later.” She put down the mobile phone and then as she pushed to her feet she spoke again. “If you don’t mind me poking my nose in Mary, call your friend. Have a talk, make peace. You’ll probably find that she meant well and only reacted the way that she did because she cares about you.”

“But it was very bigoted – what she said.”

Another shrug of the thin shoulders was the only response.

As she closed and locked the door behind Judy she picked up the phone and looked at the messages from Jane. She mused for a moment on the uncomplicated and tolerant wisdom of the young. Yes, she would call her, they could talk, but not yet. When it was all over and she felt safe again, it would be nice to have her old friend back and maybe there was a chance that they could retrieve something of the old closeness.

As she turned to place the little plastic gadget on the hall table it chimed and in the message window she saw his name, Jacob. She sighed and held down the power button.

Chapter 56

After another pot of coffee and a nap Mary was feeling pretty much back to normal. She had studied the computer programme Judy was working on and in truth, yes, she did feel quite tickled that she had come up with the plan. She needed him to go away and was honest enough to admit she wanted to feel some degree of revenge. If it all worked out, his degree delayed at the least and completely unachievable at best and him gone from the area, it would suffice.

A little thrill of excitement brought a smile to her pale face. It did begin to look as though there would be an end to this awful period and then she could gather herself and move forward. She crossed her fingers and, closing her eyes, sent out a wish that Judy would be able to gain access to the images on his computer today if possible, but at any rate soon.

She tidied the house a little and began to get some food together for an evening meal, hopefully for them to share, her and her “comrade in arms”. She was so very lucky to have Judy on her side. A caring and intelligent young woman, maybe this could be the start of a longer lasting friendship. That would be nice. With no children in the family there weren’t many young people to mix with and the thought of a different perspective on things was appealing.

Chopping and slicing at the kitchen counter she felt as near to happy as she had for a while. The radio played softly in the background and the sounds of road and garden combined to make her feel “at home” in a way that had seemed for a while to be out of reach.

In real terms she supposed that the physical assault, though appalling, was much less than some women put up with over and over, but it had done so much more than simply hurt her body and face. Her soul felt bruised and her security and sense of place had been ripped asunder in that one moment of mindless violence. Lost as she was in the musing, the doorbell when it sounded speared into her consciousness. A lightning flash that set her heart pounding. She dropped the knife and spun to stare down the hallway towards the front door.

A glance at the clock told her what she already knew, it was still too early to expect Judy back. After four o’ clock the girl had told her and it was barely three.

She needed to look out of the bay window. If she stepped out of the kitchen to make her way to the living room her shadow would pass across the translucent glass in the front door. She would need to drop to the floor and crawl on all fours down the hall carpet. Like an insect she would need to pass along the narrow space, scuttling like a creature. She pushed away from the kitchen counter and sidled sideways across the space. The bell chimed again, a double sound, whoever was there was becoming insistent. The letter box rattled. She turned and paced quickly to the back door to check that it was locked, the window, to ensure that it was fully located and the catch was fastened.

The bell sounded again. She was beginning to wish she had left it disconnected but it had been so easy to replace the tiny plastic plug.

Her mobile phone still lay in the hall. No matter what, she was going to have to leave the kitchen. She lowered herself to the floor. Like a cowed dog she was to crawl around her house, what had he done to her?

She scrambled to the hall table and reached to retrieve the phone. She turned it on and the happy little jingle told her over and over that there were text messages just sitting waiting for her, six of them, all of them from him.

A thunderous knocking sounded on the wood of the front door.
Oh please, go away, just go away, leave me alone.

Sticking as close as she could to the wall she made her way to the living room and then she pushed to her feet and stepped to the window. As she did the sound of the front gate clanging shut told her that he was gone.

She pulled aside the curtain and saw, crossing the road towards her little red car, Jane. As she reached the vehicle she looked back at the house, raised her eyes to the bedroom windows and then with a shake of her head she leaned to open the door and slide inside.

A sense of relief swept through Mary’s body to be followed instantly by a sense of deep sadness that she had been reduced to a terrified crawling wreck in her own home and that in turn engendered a deep sense of shame. How could she allow this to happen? She had thought herself sensible and well-grounded where in truth she was as vulnerable as any battered spouse or abused girlfriend. How quickly the fear of physical harm had reduced her to this.

She went back to the kitchen and poured a glass of cold water, her hands shook and as she sank to the kitchen chair and gazed around at the peaceful little room she felt a sense of something she hadn’t known existed inside her – for the first time in her life she experienced a deep sense of hate, pure and unalloyed, it swept through her system and she gasped at the strength of it.