“Linda,” came Ed’s voice, drifting to her up the stairs. “It’s late, and me and Jaz are kind of in the middle of something.”
“It won’t take long.”
“Linda, please, I mean it, there’s nothing left to say. You really need to go home.”
You go, Ed.
“I need to come in.”
“Just go away Linda, you mean less than nothing to me and I can’t be bothered to humour you anymore.”
“I’m coming in. This is important.”
“Linda. Oh, for pity’s sake.”
From her position on the stairs, Jaz couldn’t see what was going on, but the direction of the voices had changed. Linda was inside the house, and it sounded like she was heading for the kitchen.
“Linda! For the love of God, come back here right now.”
“No Ed, I told you, this is important. This is fucking life changing…”
Her voice drifted away into the ether, swallowed up by the kitchen.
Fucking life changing? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Jaz wanted to fly down those stairs, the fact she was near naked be damned. Instead she sprinted to the bedroom, dropping the towel on the landing.
“I cannot believe this shit,” she muttered to herself, pulling on a white, knee length sundress and not bothering with underwear.
Dressed in a matter of seconds, she padded barefoot down the stairs, not caring about the fact she was still wringing wet.
She burst into the kitchen, half expecting to see Linda pinning her husband against the fridge and ripping off his trousers…
Instead she was confronted by an entirely calm and collected Linda sitting at the kitchen table like she was actually welcome. Ed stood over her, the lines of his body tight and a vein visibly throbbing in his clenched jaw.
“Hello Jaz,” she said, a dreamy smile on her lips. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news and all, but I’m in love with Ed and we’re going to be together.”
In that moment, Jaz realised the woman had flipped. Not only had she lost the plot, she looked pissed too. Her eyes appeared glazed, like she was having trouble focusing.
Ed glanced over at her in wide eyed helplessness.
“Linda?” Jaz said gently. “You need help, and I’m sorry, but Ed isn’t the one to give it. Please just go…”
“No!” she shouted, making them both jump. “He’ll be here in a minute, then you’ll see.”
“Who will be here in a minute?” Ed asked slowly and clearly, every inch the nervous individual addressing someone mentally disturbed.
“I don’t know his name, he didn’t say. But there was just something about him, you know?”
Ed and Jaz exchanged a fleeting look. No, they really didn’t.
“Linda,” Jaz, said, trying one more time. “Who will be here in a minute?”
“I just told you, you dumb bitch, I don’t know who he is. But he said he was going to see to it that me and Ed would be together.”
Jaz’s mouth was suddenly dry and her heart thumped painfully against her ribcage. This was just too damn weird.
“Do you have your mobile, Jaz?” Ed asked her without taking his eyes off of Linda, like she was going to jump up and bite him or something if he looked away.
“No.” Hell, she didn’t even have knickers on, and she sure as shit hadn’t even thought about her mobile phone when she had chucked on the dress. “You?”
“Nope.”
Shit. Now what?
As the house was a holiday let, it didn’t have a landline.
“I’m sorry for your problems Linda, really I am,” Ed said in that same, slow, clear voice, “but I want you to leave, right now. If you don’t, Jaz is going to go upstairs and call the police. Do you understand?”
Linda lifted her face to gaze up at him, as if seeing him properly for the first time.
“I hope he arrives soon, so that doesn’t happen. It’s just that I believed him. I really want to see how this plays out.”
“Screw this,” Jaz said, acknowledging her growing fear for the first time. “I’m going upstairs to make that call…”
The doorbell chimed, making all three of them jump.
“See? I told you,” Linda said, smiling softly up at Ed.
“What do we do?” Jaz asked her husband, the panic rising.
Ed looked over at her, his expression tender, but determined.
“Don’t panic. Never panic, no matter what. Go upstairs and call the police. I’ll deal with whoever it is at the door, and if you hear anything that doesn’t sound right, lock yourself in the bathroom until the police get here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, anything that doesn’t sound right? Ed, I’m scared, who the fuck is at the door?”
“I told you. It’s him.”
“Shut up,” they said in unison.
Jaz winced at the sound of the front door opening.
“Shit, I must have left the damn thing on the latch,” Ed said, lunging for a kitchen drawer. He opened it and pulled out a sharp potato knife. “Jaz, I want you to leave, right now. Go out the back door and get help. Find a neighbour with a phone now.”
“I can’t,” she whispered, desperately eyeing the door that led out of the kitchen into the modest sized back garden.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“Because the door’s locked and the key is upstairs on my key ring. We never use the door, do we? The front garden is bigger and has views of the ocean.”
She knew she was gabbling but she was scared and couldn’t seem to stop.
Ed palmed his forehead. “Shit, you’re right. Fine, then take this knife.”
All the while Linda passively watched their exchange, like it was the most every day kind of conversation in the world.
Ed pressed the knife into her palm, closed her fingers around it, and gave her hand a brief, reassuring squeeze. Immediately he picked out another, larger knife, and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans behind his back, his untucked t-shirt hiding the handle.
Ed and Jaz fell silent and still. Whoever was outside in the hallway was whistling. The hairs on the back of Jaz’s neck stood on end. It was some old army song, and it was getting louder and louder, along with the person’s footsteps.
His footsteps. Whoever he is. A man that wants to do us harm and I don’t know why. I’m a good person, stuff like this doesn’t happen to people like me and Ed, I don’t understand, who would want to hurt us…
The footsteps and the whistling stopped outside the closed kitchen door, along with her feverish thoughts. Because it was a holiday let, the doors were fire regulation spring loaded, which meant the doors throughout the house were permanently closed.
Jaz and Ed jumped when whoever it was behind the door rapped three times. Ed pulled Jaz unceremoniously to the back of the kitchen and twisted her hand that held the knife behind her back.
“Hide the knife,” he whispered so softly in her ear that she doubted even Linda heard.
Ed picked up a frying pan off the stove on the way to the kitchen door and stood behind it, his makeshift weapon held aloft.
The breath caught in Jaz’s throat.
What if it’s not a lunatic on the other side of that door? What if Ed knocks out someone innocent?
Or kills them.
But it is a lunatic the other side of that door. A normal person would shout hello. A normal person wouldn’t walk up the hallway whistling…
You sure about that Jaz?