It started with a phone call, a phone call that I never expected to get.

I was one of those people who went through life, almost invisible.  It was not what I wanted, it just happened.

I was not the sociable sort, at school I tended to spend my time studying and then being labeled a nerd, I didn’t make friends, except for those who wanted help with their homework.

Few friends in elementary school, fewer in middle school, and none in college, that is no one that you could call a true friend.  They were more acquaintances that were there for the help I could give them, but no one that would invite me to parties, or to just hang out.

That continues on into university. Except there were several new acquainted that were a little more than that, though not quite BFFs.

There was one, in particular, Anna, who was one of the study group, the one who needed the most help, someone who had been wavering on returning after the first year.

My trouble was that I liked her more than she liked me, my opinion of course, based on what I called the indifference factor, but perhaps I had more expectations than she did

She was doing uni because it was expected of her, not because she wanted to be there.  She could take it or leave it, and the last time I spoke to her, she was going to leave.

And when she left to go back home, it was the last time I expected to see or hear from her.

Until that phone call.

“What are you doing this weekend?”

A dumb question, nothing of course, but I wouldn’t tell her that.  I was still in shock that Anna would call me, for anything other than school, if at all.

“Not a lot.”

“Good.  How would you like to housesit with me?”

House sit?  Surely she had a dozen others who would do anything for her.  She was that popular and well-liked.  And would probably be far more amusing than I ever could be.

“If you like.  I had no idea you did house minding.”

“I don’t, but an aunt is going away for the weekend, and she wants someone to look after the cat.  I hope you like cats.  And gardens.  It has a nice garden.”

Cats I could take or leave.  Gardens, it was probably a birdbath, two beds of roses, a large tree with a seat under it, and neighbors peering over the fence.

But it was a weekend somewhere else other than my little room, and Anna would be there.  Maybe I could try to get past my shyness and actually talk to her.

“OK.  I’m in.  Do I need to bring anything?”

“No.  I’ll send you the address and see you there at 5 pm. Friday.”

Why did I get the feeling I was being set up?

That feeling of impending doing followed me down the path from the front gate to the front door.

Far from the house being a small thatch cottage, based on the address she gave me, it turned out to be a three-story manor house with a large outhouse that looked to be once a stable and coach house

It seemed far too large to be a house for one person.

When I rang the doorbell, I expected a butler to answer the door, but it was Anna herself.

“Nice place,” I said.

“Too large and too hard to maintain.  Were trying to convince her that she would be better off in something smaller.  But you should see the back.”

Based on the front garden which could happily grace the front cover of any country living magazine, I couldn’t wait.

She let me pass and closed the door behind us.  It sounded like the vault was closing and there would be no damage until the timer released the locks.

Inside, the whole place reeked of heritage and antiques, and the personality of its owner.  The walls had paintings, table tops had old magazines, the seats worn leather, and worn carpet squares covered floorboards that creaked when you walked on them.

At the end of a long corridor was the kitchen at the end if the house, after passing several sitting and dining rooms.  It was a very large house and raised a very important question.

She had not mentioned any family or relatives with anything like the wealth this house exuded.  In fact, she had often implied that she was just an ordinary person.

This was anything but ordinary.

I caught up with her on the back patio, just off a large sunroom, to view what had to be an acre or more of manicured laws, garden beds, and trees.  All it was missing was a maze.

“Do you actually have a secret life?”

“I was always told not to advertise our wealth.”

“Isn’t showing me this, a form of advertising?  After all, I’m apparently from the wrong side of the tracks.”

“I trust you.”

“But you don’t know me, or anything about me.”

“Why do you think you’re here?”

If I wanted to make an educated guess, my first thought was to set me up for something, for the very reason she was aloof, and people like her, and those she kept company with, were not people like me associated with.

I was surprised not to see the two girls I’d once nicknamed ‘the dynamic duo’, Melissa and Winona, with her.  Maybe they would turn up later.

My second thought, the most improbable reason, was that she wanted to get to know me, but, why choose a place like this?  To make me feel small, grateful, impressed? Ten minutes in a Cafe was all she needed to find out what she needed to know about me.

An alarm bell went off when I asked her where I could get a drink of water, and she said, the kitchen, but didn’t really know where it was. I got an instant bad feeling.

That was followed by a bang that I thought came from the rear of the house.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“You hear all sorts of noises in places like these.”

If she wasn’t worried, neither was I.

Then the door chime rang.

“You expecting more visitors?”  My internal fear factor was rising exponentially.

“No, but I’d better find out who it is, just in case.”

I shrugged and headed towards where she indicated the kitchen was, the rear of the house, what I would call an educated guess

After I found the kitchen, not technically at the rear, I returned to find my worst fears had come true.  Not only the dynamic duo but also their boyfriends, Chad and Lester, two of the worst bullies from school days.

“Well, look who it is.”  Chad was particularly menacing.

A glance to the side, it was hard to tell if Anna was looking pleased or neutral, but she wasn’t surprised. I glanced in Anna’s direction and all I got was a tilt of her head.

“Shouldn’t you be down the country club trying to prove you’re a new version of your drunken bully of a father?”

His smile turned into a very angry look.  “Don’t go there, Scanlon.”

“Why are you here then?”

I expected to hear Anna had invited them.  Instead, “we’re here to make sure Anna doesn’t make a mistake.”

“I don’t need your help or advice Chad.  In fact, you should leave.”

None of the four looked like they had any intention of leaving.  “Not until we’ve impressed upon both of you, the error of your ways.  We thought you were smarter than this or did Scanlon force himself on you?”

She shook her head, not necessarily in anger, but more in despair.  “I don’t know where you get your ideas from Chad, but you are very much mistaken.  So, I will only say this once more, Chad,” she added quietly, “otherwise you will find yourself in a world of pain.  Leave now while you still can.”

Chad, being Chad, was the master of ceremonies, puffed up as he had been in the schoolyard when he was about the unleash his gang on some poor misguided fool, usually me, or one of three others.  But it was Melissa who spoke instead, “You go teach Scanlon a lesson outside by the pool while we have a talk to Anna.”

Lester took the cue, came over, and grabbed me by the shoulder.  I thought about trying to shrug him off, but Chad was across the room before I could initiate anything.  Best to leave calmly and sort it out outside.

I gave Anna a last look, but she was wearing her poker face.  Had she set this up?  It seemed as though she hadn’t, but then, it didn’t look like she was worried about the dynamic duo.

I shrugged.

Intentional or not, Chad and Lester were about to learn a very valuable lesson, and revenge, at least on them, was going to be sweet.

…

©  Charles Heath 2022

I’d been planning the grand tour of Europe for years, and during that time, I’d worked my butt off working 7 days a week, just so that I could take a year off to do it.

And, now the time had come. 

I’d resigned from my job, cleaned out the office, handed it over to my successor, and all that was left was a few drinks at the local hotel with those whom I’d worked with over the years.

All expressed the same sentiment, they wished they were coming with me.  I said the usual platitudes, that if they came over we’d have to meet up, and if I was staying for an extended period, they could stay with me.

I doubted anyone would take up the offer because we had neither expressed interest in travelling or keeping in touch because although we all had each other’s phone numbers, we rarely called each other.

One call I wasn’t expecting, on the way home after the last of the goodbyes, was from Barry.

Perhaps he was the one I would miss the most, after all, we had worked closely together for the last year or so, I’d been the best man at his wedding, and I was like the brother he never had.

Even his wife, Evie, French by birth, and still getting used to living in another country, considered me as a brother in law.  She may also have thought more of me because I spoke French.  Barry didn’t and didn’t try, even though he had promised he would.

“Barry!”  I was surprised he would call.

“I hear you are going to Paris first, David.”

Evie.  How did she get Barry’s phone?  It was not possible he could get home that quickly.

“Evie.  I had expected to see you at the bar.”

“A wife’s work is never done, as you know.”

She had confided in me one that Barry was a bit of a pain sometimes in his expectations, and it had worried me that his off-hand, sometimes condescending manner, might cause trouble.

“What can I do to help?”

“Can you do me a favour?  Drop by on your way home, and I’ll explain.”

It sounded ominous. 

“OK.” It wasn’t far out of the way, and wouldn’t be the first I’d dropped in.

I pondered the manner in which she had called on Barry’s phone and still hadn’t worked it out by the time I arrived at their front door.

Evie answered the door.

“Barry not home?”

“Not yet.  You know him, always the last to leave.”  Was that exasperation in her tone, or something else.  “Come in.”

There was the faint aroma of cooking in the air.  Evie was a chef back in Paris, and after she arrived, worked off and on in various restaurants, but her temperament meant she often didn’t last long in one establishment.

But one thing I’d discovered, she was a very good cook.  Could I hope for an invitation to try out what she was cooking?

“What’s the problem?”

“No problem.  Just need a favour.”  She picked up a letter, or perhaps it was a card. And gave it to me.  “While you’re in Paris, could you hand-deliver it for me?  It would mean a lot.”

“Special?”

“Very.”

“You couldn’t post it?”

She shook her head.  “I need to know it got there.”

“That special?”

“For me, yes.  You cannot imagine.  Now, would you like to try my latest creation?  Chicken is no longer boring, trust me.”

I never gave the letter another thought until I arrived in Paris and was unpacking my bag for an elongated stay.

The plan had been that Paris was my first stop because there were several people I wanted to visit, but one had been in Hong Kong, texting me just before I got on the plan, and because my travel arrangements were flexible, I stopped at Hong Kong and then went on a two-week tour of China at his suggestion.

It had been worth the effort.

That stopover had flow-on benefits because the apartment in Paris I had wanted to stay in was not available had I stuck to the original plan, but now it was.

I put the letter on the table and went back to that night when Evie gave it to me.

If I thought about it, and I had, several times since then, I had to say I had seen a different Evie, and I hoped that my impression of her now, was based on an aberration.

And had I not been the friend I was, I might have easily slipped into doing something I would regret.  I remember walking away thinking Barry had to put on more effort or he was going to lose her.

I went out into the balcony and took in the still-warm night, and the display of lights.  Somewhere I had read Paris was the city of lights, and there was a tour, one I would take sooner rather than later.

After several glasses of wine, I took out the map and worked out how I would get to the address on the envelope.  Seven underground stations and a half km walk, not far from the Sacre Coeur Church in Montmartre.

A little sightseeing on the side, and lunch at a crepe Cafe nearby.

I had planned to see the Eiffel tower, but it could wait.  It’s not as if I could see it from afar from just about everywhere in Paris.

If it could be said something could burn a hole in your pocket, I would have said it was that letter.

From the moment I picked it up and put it in my pocket, I had a strange sense of foreboding.  There was absolutely no reason I should, I’d known Evie a long time, and she wasn’t a bad person, nor had she ever indicated there was a dark side.

But, people were complex characters, and often we only see what we want to see, or what they want us to see.

And, of course, I was one of those people prone to overthinking everything.

As I turned the corner into the street of the address on the envelope, I stopped and looked around, very carefully at everyone.

Parisians going about their daily business, not terrorists, not criminals, not people solely out to get me.  And yet that feeling of paranoia was getting worse.

After twenty minutes of debating whether or not to turn tail and run, I carried on.  I was on the street of the envelopes address, and reaching the building, pressed the button to the apartment number.

A buzzing sound told me the door had been opened, and I went in.  Three flights of stairs, the apartment was at the end of the corridor.

I pushed the doorbell and waited a minute before the door opened.  A man, not the sort of person I expected Evie would associate with.  And certainly not French.

“I have a letter…”

He reached out, snatched it out of my hand, and then slammed the door shut in my face.

“A thank you would have been nice.”  I shrugged.

Very, very strange.

A few seconds later the door opened again, the man peering out at me.  “Thank you for delivering this.  Much appreciated.”  Then he closed the door more quietly this time.

I shrugged.  Had he heard me muttering through the door?

I went back down again, passing a woman in work clothes, not someone you’d normally pay any attention to.

I did, looking up at her on the stairs as she looked back down at me.

It hastened my departure from that building.

Outside the front door, I could see a police car pull up beside the kerb.

Damn.

Were they here for me?

I hesitated, just as one of the officers got out of the car and was looking directly at me.  It was like he instantly recognised me.

I froze.

Then I felt my arm being yanked and a female voice behind me.  “We have to go.  Now.”

The urgency and insistence in her tone spurred me into action and I followed her up the passage to a rear door which she opened and thrust me out into the courtyard.

“Go.  Don’t look back.  You will be safe if you go back to your hotel.”

The door slammed shut behind me.

What the hell just happened?

…

©  Charles Heath 2022