Alice

Fuck.

Typical fucking Tom. Some stupid romantic gesture and he’d come this close to ruining her plans.

What if he’d found out a day earlier, when she wasn’t ready? It would have been a disaster.

But he hadn’t. He’d found out today, when she was ready. She’d been planning to wait another day or two, but no matter. Everything was in place now.

He tried to get up and fell back in his chair. Idiot had drunk the beer. It had a sedative in it – a powerful one she kept in her washbag, and which she had sprinted upstairs to get.

And now he had drunk it, it was time. Time to get rid of him. Time to get rid of this damn baby.

She couldn’t even think about the baby without her stomach clenching in anger and regret. How had she let it happen? She’d been on the pill and she’d fucked up somehow. She still wasn’t sure how. Maybe it was a faulty batch. That could happen. By the time she found out it was too late. Tom was deliriously happy. She couldn’t have got rid of it.

So she’d gone through with it. She’d thought it would maybe be OK.

It was the worst mistake of her life.

But she was going to fix things.

She glanced up at Tom. His eyes were closed and he was slumped in the chair, his chin on his chest. He reminded her of Ned after she had caved his skull in with the hammer.

His phone buzzed. It was face down on the grass. She picked it up. There was a message from Roland.

Give me a call, when you get a moment.

Fucking Roland. He wasn’t that dissimilar to Tom. They were both weak, although in different ways. That was why she knew she could do this; it would take someone a lot stronger than Roland or Tom to stop her. That had been the case all her life: she was simply better and stronger than the people she encountered.

In part because they couldn’t even imagine what she would do. Someone upset her, or got in her way? They might think she would be annoyed and try to take some petty, harmless revenge.

The idea that she would crush their skull would barely – if at all – even enter their minds.

Which was the source of her advantage.

She typed a reply.

Maybe tomorrow. I’m tied up tonight.

She switched the phone off and put it down on the table. This was another stroke of luck; when tomorrow came this message would take on a new, more sinister meaning.

A meaning that would only add credence to the story she would tell the world.

Roland

He read the last message again.

Maybe tomorrow. I’m tied up tonight.