As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester
Still hiding away.
Like any wise, old, skeptical cat, he’s not believing the good news.
We do not have a COVID 19 case in our house. Of course, we had to wait an agonizing 24 hours before we got the good news by phone.
It shows that our testing labs are getting through the tests, of which I heard in the news there were about 4,000, with only 10 or so new cases countrywide.
Queensland had none overnight, so if our case had been positive, we would have been in the news for al; the wrong reasons.
So, after broadcasting the news, that is, walking up and down the passage saying it was safe to come out, there’s still no sign of him.
But…
I have a cunning plan.
I bought a can of his absolute favorite food.
Come dinner time I’m putting it out.
Of course, food trumps fear every time.
He walks past me on his way to the tasty treats, the tail movements indicating he is not a happy cat.
The things I have to suffer at the hands of you humans, he mutters.
So, I say casually, we have guests for dinner.
He stops, turns his head in that dismissive manner of his.
What else can you do to me?
COVID 19, Grandchildren, I suppose you’re going to let me outside.
Do you want to go outside?
With COVID 19 lurking on every corner?
It’s under control.
Right. I’ve been watching TV. You do realize there’s good news and fake news, and there’s more of the latter than the former.
So, he’s going with the confuse the poor human with blather.
It’s working. I say, Go back into hiding. I was quite enjoying the silence.
After dinner, he says, ending the conversation with the angry tail swish. Yes, we are not amused.
With Zoe gone and not looking like she will be coming back, John has to get back into the mainstream of life.
Or he could do something a little more positive, try and find Zoe and seek out her intentions. To that end, he comes up with an idea, phone an old friend, Rupert, who once had aspirations of being a private investigator, and employ him to find her.
But, as he quickly remembers, Rupert has a sister named Isobel who hates him, and despite her, John hires them, though when Rupert learns he’s looking for a Russian/Chinese assassin, he has momentary second thoughts.
Money always speaks the right language.
But, lurking in the background, Sebastian now had a tail on John, almost knowing that he was never going to take his advice and leave Zoe alone.
And, like John, he knew of Rupert, and his sister, yet another of Sebastian’s once upon a time hot dates that failed, and of her situation, which means he was about to kill two birds with one stone.
Find out what John was up to.
Isobel is about to liven their lives up considerably.
…
Today’s writing, with Isobel about to torment two very different men, 4,474 words, for a total of 18,055.
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.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in.
It took almost an hour to recover. Monroe didn’t come looking for me, so I think they knew it would take some time for me to get my legs back.
And it felt good to stand under the hot shower for twenty-odd minutes, letting the warmth of the water sink into my bones and clear my head.
And think.
How long had Bamfield have an eye on me? It was a question that sprung to mind the moment I saw him in the desert camp. I’d heard if you were transferred to one of his commands, at some point, it was not because it was another posting, it was because he wanted you there.
I’d been specially selected by Bamfield personally, out of the preliminary training camp, to further my military career under his oversight. I’d made it very clear from the outset that I was not interested in a commission, that I preferred the lower ranks. Officers were a different breed, and I’d not been cut from that cloth. Bamfield had admitted as much when I was first interviewed by him, and several other’s on what I soon discovered was his selection panel.
They were charged by him to find the best of the best.
And at that first interview, I’d disagreed with his assessment. I’d been in trouble before, and the military was the only place I could go if I didn’t want to serve a stretch in jail. Perhaps it was that innate ability of mine to seek out and become embroiled in trouble that caught his attention.
Certainly over time he and his instructors had honed those skills to a more refined set that, in civilian life, would set me up for a long stay in prison. It begged the question of what I was going to do with myself after the military had finished with me, a question I hadn’t really thought about until I’d been shunted to my last post in a training school of sorts.
I realised now that it had been Bamfield sidelining me until an operation crying out for my particular talents came along.
That disastrous operation with Treen.
Was it his? Or was it someone else who pulled it together, and he just provided the manpower. It had been the first major active offshore operation I’d been on. There’d been a few skirmishes along the way, but that was the first, and in a zone where I don’t think we were meant to be operating.
That had, I thought, been the sole purview of the CIA, and if I looked back on what had happened, there was no doubt the two agents we were supposed to pull out were CIA operatives, it had got too hot for them to stay, and they had clandestinely called for help.
It begged another question, was Bamfield CIA or working with the CIA, with or without the military hierarchy knowing?
The thing is, if it had been pulled off, as expected, no one would be any the wiser in that country, but once they found out, by whatever means it happened, the proverbial had hit the fan. It goes hand in hand with trusting people on the ground who were purportedly working against their country’s regime, for better or worse.
That country had a ‘friendly’ government, that had been ‘supported’ and then been deposed in the usual coup by the military, and, afterwards, the new hardliners got the benefit of those times when the country was a friendly and had military hardware and knowledge to wage war clandestinely or otherwise with its neighbours, given willingly.
Lessons hadn’t been learned after a particular middle east debacle. Maybe lessons would never be learned. Just look at the number of times had relations turned sour after a coup and agents had to hastily withdraw. It seems that my visit had been at the end of another of those ‘diplomatic’ missions that had gone wrong.
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester
Once again, it’s Sunday night, and he’s looking for a philosophical discussion. COVID 19 is off the topic list.
He’s suitably disappointed that the Trump Show is over, as far as we are aware, though he’s not surprised.
But he is worried that two cats have tested positive.
I try to tell him that it is in New York, about 18,000 miles away, where there are over 200,000 cases. We have just over 1,000 and they are all isolated so we cannot be harmed.
I guess it’s hard to convince a cat when his mind is made up.
We’ve also taken the grandchildren off the list of topics too,
They arrive a few hours ago, and studiously ignored him when they arrived. I tried to point out that he was in hiding when they arrived, but again, the stubbornness of opinion is amazing, or normal.
I should be used to this sort of contrariness.
So, what is on the discussion list?
Outlander, Season 5 Episode 10. Well, I say, we haven’t seen it yet, so don’t tell me what the plots is.
He looks at me as if I’m mad. I only get to see it when you do, he says. How should I know what the plot is? In fact, what is the plot?
Time travel, I say.
Pity we can’t do some of that, he says.
Why I asked, and really, I should know better.
Because I could go back to the day you came to the pet shop and hide. I have given you 18 years to improve, and you’re still the same as you were then.
How many people do you know have their front door smashed in at the crack of dawn, followed by a swat team, armed to the teeth, swarming through the house ready to put down any resistance?
Just the suddenness of the cacophony of noise, the shouting, and the sheer threat of death, left me firstly shattered, and secondly, in fear of being accidentally killed, especially when there were six guns trained on me.
When the all-clear came, when no one else was discovered in the house, one of the suited men came back and motioned the six to take a step back and raise their weapons.
“Get up.”
If I was expected a ‘please’, or an apology, both would be a long time coming.
“Where is she?”
I barely had time to catch my breath and try to stop shaking. Six guns were still pointing in my direction, and those holding them no less wanted to shoot me for any reason whatsoever.
“Who?” There were two girls in this house.
“Don’t be obtuse, Mr. Jacobs. Obstruction will get you nothing but a stretch in prison with some very unsavoury characters. Where is she?”
The notion that they could be looking for Liz was as preposterous as the day was long. I had known her for five years, since we both left the same company, unhappy with the pay and conditions, and moved to a new company, deciding to stay together, first as a team, and then I was hoping would be something more intimate.
It had to be someone else, like the odd woman who had ingratiated herself with the group I was with, and ostensibly left the bar with me, but only as far as the car park. Perhaps, if we were being observed, it might have been construed as something else.
“Can you give me a name, at least?”
“Elizabeth Morgan.”
Liz? She designed computer games, and I helped with the programming. Other than that, she went to church every Sunday and visited her folks in the next county every second Saturday. I’d met them on numerous occasions, and they were just ordinary people.
“Why on earth would you be looking for her?”
“That’s classified, Mr. Jacobs. All you need to do is tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. The last time we spoke, she was heading off to the market to get groceries.”
“Which was?”
“About an hour ago.”
A woman put her head in the door, and said, “she’s nowhere on the property, sir.”
I recognized her immediately as the woman in the bar, and suddenly realized she had been subtly interrogating me about Liz, trying to find out where she was, and why she wasn’t there with me.
She glared at me, then disappeared.
“Who are you?” I asked. “FBI, CIA, NSA?”
“Why would you assume that I’m from any of those agencies?”
“Your friend who put her head in the door. I might not have realized who she was last night, but I do now. You think Liz has committed some sort of cybercrime, don’t you?”
“So, you do know what she’s been up to?”
“No. But you just told me. And I suspect a man by the name of Champion has been feeding you scurrilous lies, but you don’t need to say anything more. You’re right, I do know what this is about, but I know whatever he said to you to get here isn’t true, but, then, he has more money or more low friends in even lower places than we have, so do your worst.”
Liz wasn’t a criminal, nor was she guilty of anything except claiming the rights to her property. Champion, though, always maintained that anything she created while working for him was his. True enough, we all signed the contract. But what she created was after she resigned and we were working on a new project together. Now, to get around that, he was claiming her work would be a violation of national security. It would, if it was in his hands, and that was never going to happen.
“It would be good for everyone if she just surrendered and pleaded her case if what you say is true.”
An interesting change in tactics.
I looked him up and down. Just the sort of man who would sell out to the highest bidder. Champion was good only at one thing, knowing how much a person would sell out his principles for, even his mother if it came down to it. Everyone had a price. Unfortunately for us, it would seem, he didn’t know ours.
He shrugged. “Perhaps so time in a dark hole might loosen your tongue.”
Dark hold indeed.
To be honest, I thought he was joking, but he was not.
I was put in a small room with no furniture or anything to sit or lie on. There was just a cold, damp and hard concrete floor, designed to make you so uncomfortable, you’d sell your soul just to get away from it.
There would be some hard choices to be made here. Would I sell out Liz, would I do everything I could to stop Champion who was intent, now that he had what he wanted, in getting rid of anyone who might have a claim.
She had said this was what would happen, and I didn’t believe her. No surprise then she was gone and didn’t tell me.
But if they were to ask me, and I was in that frame of mind to tell them everything I knew, there wasn’t much I could tell them. I think that’s what she had once told me was plausible deniability.
She had been trying to keep me safe, but didn’t realize that my captors didn’t really care whether I knew anything or nothing, they wouldn’t believe me and were going to extract the information they wanted by any and all means available.
Something I definitely wasn’t looking forward to.
It was impossible to stay awake. I was trying to, just in case they came and took me away while I was unconscious.
Despite the hard, uncomfortable floor, I fell into a fitful sleep, and it was appropriate that I would dream of Elizabeth.
I remembered the first time I met her, being introduced as an assistant programmer, the look of contempt she gave me, and the messenger. I’d never seen anyone that focussed on their work.
It took a month before she would let me look at the code, and then only small sections at a time. It was complex, and way beyond anything I had been involved with, which surprised me how it was I got the job.
She said, one morning, and I agreed, that a more experienced programmer was required.
Until I told her five lines of code needed a slight change otherwise there would be a rather interesting result. I was not only a programmer, I had once worked with a scientist whose field was space and time, not exactly time travel, but he theorized that we could move from one place to another through what were essentially wormholes.
I thought he was working on a script for a television show.
My job was to create a data warehouse, and while doing so, did some reading on the side.
I had also seen the coding behind a prototype machine that was supposed to create the wormhole, but it was too complex for me to understand.
But the code Elizabeth had was almost identical but mixed up. When I told her, she said I was an idiot who wouldn’t know what day it was, and demanded I leave.
Two days later she came to my apartment, apologized, asked me to return, and on the way asked a thousand questions.
At that time, I learned the scientist I worked for was her mentor, and that he was dead, ostensibly from a heart attack. She didn’t believe it, and that’s where I got my introduction to the arch-villain Champion.
From there it evolved into something more special, but the constraints of work and her idea of romance seemed to make it more like a rollercoaster ride and I didn’t press.
So, I was, for the time being, content with my dreams, one of which was playing in my head now.
She had appeared, coming through a sort of haze or distortion, and was standing above me, smiling.
It couldn’t be true, and yet it seemed so lifelike.
She knelt down and took my hand in hers, and whispered. “Wake up, sleepyhead, it’s time to go.”
I could smell the aroma of her perfume enveloping me.
When I went to open my eyes I found they were already open. I gently squeezed her hand, and it was real.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes. Now. We really have to go.”
“Where?”
“Stand up, and I’ll show you.”
I let her pull me to my feet and she gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, “I love you,”
Now I knew it was a dream. She had never intimated such feelings before.
I’d play along. “It’s impossible to escape this cell.”
“Is it?” She took a step towards the distortion, “Come.”
I followed. Then, the next moment, I was in the dining room of her apartment”
“What just happened?”
Before she could answer, I lost consciousness. Last thought, it was too good to be true.
It’s a recap of how John and Zoe survived the first year of their relationship. Zoe could take only so much downtime, so it was back to work – for different people, she just had to find them.
And, so far, those who are seeking her are still out there.
Fast forward three months: John is trying to figure out what he wants to do next because the easy life is getting to him too.
There’s the possibility of getting a job with Sebastian, after all, he didn’t do that badly the first time around.
There’s languishing with his grandmother, but two visits in a year were one too many.
And yes, he has a seminal moment!
Start a private investigation agency, with himself the first client – he is beginning to believe Zoe will not be coming back so he was going to find her and find out once and for all if they were over.
How hard could it be?
…
appropriateToday’s writing, with John searching the property market for approapriate offices, 1,666 words, for a total of 13,587.
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester.
He realizes we are now part of a different world driven by the events surrounding the COVID 19 virus.
The grandchildren are here while their parents are working, and they are going to school remotely, that is one is in the kitchen and one is in the dining room, remotely linked to their school, teachers, and classmates.
Chester finds this interesting because they are not trying to find him, so, he’s come out to see what they’re doing.
First, he jumps up on the dining table and sits next to the 13-year-old. She is hard at work. I hear him ask if there is anything he can help with given his vast knowledge of everything.
There’s a universal greeting from 30 others, and he tries to find where all the other people are. No, it’s not hide and seek, they’re all online she tries to tell him.
No, doesn’t get it. They must be in the room somewhere. And he’s suddenly miffed that he can’t find them, and then that his assistance is not required.
All too much to cope with, he comes out to join the 10-year-old sitting at the kitchen table. She had headphones on and doesn’t hear him.
This time he sits on the floor and looks up thinking, if they can’t see him, he’s not there. She ignores him. I don’t think mathematics is his strong point.
So, he wanders into the office, planning to annoy me.
I find some headphones and put them on. He gets the message, no interruptions today, everyone is hard at work.
A sigh, then he goes to his corner and lies down on his bed, yawns and closes his eyes.
I know he’s not asleep. He’s waiting for something to happen, ready to spring into action.
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.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 