Duplicity (2 page)

There was no way that he intended to turn around. Henry’s sank a little deeper, when he recognised that sneering face. It had been a few years since Henry had seen his work colleague’s precocious child but he was sure it was her.

She glanced back at her friends, waved then sat beside him. The toxic blend of perfume, hair spray and body lotion wafting off the girl stung his nose.

Henry stayed perfectly still; he didn’t even move his head. Past experience had shown him that ignoring them was the best solution out of these potentially confrontational situations. Kids these days had short attention spans; they soon became bored if they didn’t receive the attention they craved.

“Hello, John. Can I call you John? I know that isn’t your real name, John. But, you do look like a John.” She sniggered.

Henry wondered why they couldn’t install a volume control to the kids, or, even better a bloody on/off switch.

“You don’t mind if I sit with you, John?”

He tensed up when the girl pressed her warm body against his coat. Why didn’t her friends call her away? The first girl looked like a sensible one; maybe she’d shout down and tell this porky gob on legs to stop bothering him.

The two girls stood up and ran down the aisle then jumped onto the seat in front.

“Who’s your new mate then, Joanie?”

“He ain’t my fucking mate.” scoffed the girl beside him. “But I’ve called him, John. John’s a good name.”

Henry wished a hole would appear below his feet and swallow him. They’d now reached the section of this performance where the bitch got nasty. She now had an audience. He’d been in so many similar situations over the years; he could write her a new script.

“He was trying to look at your tits, Emma.”

He’d seen this one around town a few times, She’d also been pointed out to him by his best friend. Henry did admit, the girl was rather pretty, her long mousy brown hair reached down past her shoulders and he was sure that her bright blue eyes had melted the hearts of many teen boys. Henry had to admit though that it was difficult not to stare at her ample cleavage.

The girl whom Henry had first thought was the sensible one sniggered. She turned to her friend.

“They’re your best feature.”

“Fuck off.”

“God’s honest truth,” continued Joanie. “I saw the pervy bastard gazing down at us when we were getting on the bus.” She leaned closer to her friend. “He was licking his lips.”

“The girl in front of Joanie burst out laughing. “You’re a dirty old bastard, ain’t you?” said Emma, whilst looking at the side of Henry’s face.

He continued to stare through the window whilst thinking of at least half a dozen put downs of his own, he kept his mouth shut, determined not to allow a bunch of kids rile him.

“It’s our stop next,” said the sensible one.

Henry uttered a silent prayer of thanks.

“What about him?” asked Emma, “We ought to report him or something.”

The sensible girl giggled, “You dozy bitch, she’s fucking winding you up, you know what Joanie’s like.” She climbed of the seat and grabbed the metal pole at the top of the steps. “Are you two coming or what?”

“Pass me your dinner, Emma.” Joanie demanded.

“What for?”

“Come on, you tight cow, I’ll buy you another one.”

The girl sighed, reached into her black bag and passed Joanie a large pork pie, wrapped in cling film.

Henry surmised that being horrible to fellow bus passengers must burn off a large amount of calories off the shit stirring fat bitch. He dearly wished that she would choke on it.

“Come on, Joanie, the bus is about to stop.”

She got off the seat whilst unwrapping the pie. Henry got ready to breathe a sigh of relief.

“People like you ought to be castrated.” She shouted.

“Yeah whatever,” he muttered.

The bus slowed then stopped.

“Oi, Henry!”

He spun around and was hit full in the face with half a pork pie. The girl ran down the stairs and jumped off the bus as Henry just sat there while cold pork jelly and broken pieces of damp pastry fell off his chin. He shut his eyes and tried to block out the calls and jeers as the teenagers ran alongside the moving bus.

Henry had double-checked his face in the bus station toilets, cleaning off a few stray crumbs he’d missed earlier.

It had been half an hour since he’d stepped off the bus and the humiliation caused by those teenage brats had begun to fade. There was no point dwelling on the incident, he’d taken the correct action, it’s not like he’d have gotten away with punching the overweight, foul-mouthed, vicious blonde bitch.

The old man placed a large mug of steaming coffee in front of Henry. He breathed in the strong aroma coming from the liquid. It smelled delicious.

“Just how you like it, I even remembered to put your sugar in this time.”

Henry gazed in uneasiness at the grinning man, “How do you know that I have sugar?”

The man’s grin faded a little, he shrugged, “It’s how you asked for your coffee when you came in here yesterday, Henry.”

He hurried over to serve a grey haired man wearing a crumpled brown suit leaving Henry feeling like someone had just walked over his grave. He’d never been in here before in his life; that was one fact that he was damn sure about. How the hell did he know his name? Come to think of it, how did that horrible teen know it too?

Suddenly, Henry didn’t want the coffee. He needed to get away from here as quickly as possible.

Chapter Three

Eileen Mitchell shot up in bed and wiped a hand across her face. She could still see the dream of her late husband running, like an old movie projector at the back of her mind. After a few seconds, the dream images faded away like smoke, leaving Eileen with an acute sense of loneliness.

“I will not cry,” she said quietly, feeling a single cold tear run down her cheek. “It was just a dream, nothing to get emotional about.”

She sniffed. It been five years since Arthur had suffered that fatal heart attack. On most days, she managed to get through her schedule without giving it too much thought. The occasional memory of something he did or a certain smell would set her off sniffing but overall, Eileen managed to get on with her life. At night was another matter, whenever she was stressed or things got a little too much for her, then Arthur would visit her in the night. They’d spent most of their life together, when ever something upset or annoyed either of them the other one was always close by to dish out the hugs or sympathy. Why should it be any different just because he’s passed away? At least, that’s how Eileen interpreted it. No doubt, some overpaid head doctor would put it down to the fear of being alone, of having being wrenched out of her comfort zone and needing the old and familiar to cling onto.

Eileen preferred her own explanation, although she couldn’t understand why he’d pay a visit today. She’d been perfectly fine all week. Still, now that she was awake, there was no point staying in bed. Eileen pushed back the covers and swung her legs out, slipping her feet into her slippers before standing up. She noted that it was only just past eight, she didn’t usually wake until nine. Today was Monday, her traditional day of rest. Trust her Arthur to get her up early.

She suppressed a groan, padded out of the bedroom, and headed for the bathroom. After her usual morning ablutions, Eileen made her way into the kitchen. She was at a loss at how to occupy this hour. There were two unfinished romance novels on the coffee table, a magazine supplement about dress making to study and three jigsaw puzzles to start. Yet none of those activities appealed to her, at least, not yet.

“You need some food inside you, my dear and a nice cup of tea..

Eileen dug out a couple of slices of bread, popped them in the toaster then flicked the kettle switch. She supposed she could finish off scrubbing down the oven’s interior.

She had been meaning to get that job ticked off for weeks now. Normally, cleaning wasn’t part of her usual day of rest activities but she could make an exception, just this once. That should kill the hour easily. She nodded to herself, pleased that her day was back on schedule.

She gazed out of the kitchen window, over at the town centre just over a mile away. Eileen had never been too impressed with this view but it was a better view than the other windows gave her. At least this window gave her the illusion of not living in sheltered accommodation and she did have her own front door. The woman sighed and poured boiling water into her cup. 

Her granddaughter, Joanie, would be knocking upon her bright yellow door at half past ten to do her weekly shopping.

“Did you ever imagine that you’d become excited over having your own door?” Eileen forced back the tears, wishing, yet again, that her husband hadn’t gone and died. He wouldn’t have allowed her daughter and that horrible man to have put her in here and to steal their lovely house.

At least her Joanie had turned out all right, such a nice and polite child; Joanie had obviously inherited her manners from Eileen because she sure as hell hadn’t received them from her mum.

Eileen’s only daughter had been such a little hellion when she was Joanie’s age, always getting into trouble. The little cow hadn’t changed a bit. Eileen had never been able to work out what went wrong with that one, she had the brains and yet never used them. The idle woman left school with nothing and started working in the factory and hasn’t done anything else.

“No ambition.” She muttered. “No talent, just lazy and nasty.”

She buttered her toast, picked up the cup and padded into the living room. There was no point in starting anything until she’d had her breakfast. When she took her first bite, Eileen recalled a fragment of her dream. Arthur was putting up a wooden shelf in the living room, back in their old house. Instead of screwing in the metal brackets, the silly oaf had a huge hammer in one hand and a bunch of nails between his teeth.

Her husband had never been much use at DIY; Eileen had fond and not so fond memories of the wooden disasters he had tried to assemble. She wondered if that bookshelf, in the spare bedroom was still there. He’d put that one up ten years ago and by a major miracle, the thing stayed up. She’d never put anything on it of course, now that would be tempting fate.

Eileen took another bite of her toast and imagined her daughter carefully placing one of her ultra expensive ornaments on there, only to have the whole contraption fall off the wall and smash. “That’ll teach you,” she muttered. 

In her dream, Arthur took a nail from between his teeth, placed it in one of the screw holes and hit it three times: bang, bang, bang.

Eileen jumped, that sound wasn’t in her head, the noise originated from outside her living room window. She almost dropped the tea in her lap when the sound repeated. Eileen placed the cup and the remains of her toast on the table beside her and stood stock-still, facing the window. It took her a few moments to identify the sound, she sighed. Somebody was right outside her front door, hitting the side of her wheelie bin with a stick or something. This had happened before, a couple of months ago. A bunch of local kids went through a stage of running through the sheltered housing breaking and hitting anything they could find in their carefully tended gardens. When the occupants shook their fists, the kids would just scream abuse at them before running off and finding another victim.

This was different; she tensed up as the rapping sounded again, three times, just like before. Eileen walked a little closer to the window until the bin came into view, she kept telling herself that it was just the wind; that she was being daft and jumping at shadows. But deep down, Eileen knew that she was lying to herself.

There was someone there, Eileen saw a long shadow cast on her lawn and despite the length of the distorted shape; she still believed that its owner would be a child. Her trepidation dissolved and anger replaced it. No doubt, one of those little terrorists had decided to go it alone, skipped off from school solely to aggravate their betters.

Well, Eileen wasn’t going to put up with this sort of nonsense any longer, that little hellion would get a piece of her mind. As she marched over to the side door, it did occur to her that Eileen really ought to telephone the warden and get him to deal with the brat. She shook her head, as if that kid would take any notice of that daft pudding. The man was about as much use as a chocolate teapot. All the residents had heard what the kids called him, taunting the man with all those horrid and nasty names.

Then again, what were the chances of that kid taking notice of an old bird like her? More than likely, the kid would just shout and swear at Eileen and that would put her in an even worse mood for the rest of the day.

She retrieved the door key from the dressing table and unlocked the door. No, she decided that she would handle this one herself. Eileen could guarantee that the kid would still be there when she opened that door, no doubt still holding his stick and with an arrogant smirk plastered all over his face, safe in the knowledge that there was nothing she could do.

Eileen grinned as she pushed down the handle, it had been many decades since a child had felt her sharp, stinging hands on their bottom but she figured that it would be like riding a bike, how to punish a child was a skill that you just never forgot.

Eileen Mitchell flung open the door, her set features ran like wet mud at the sight of the monstrous creature that stood before her. The huge orange lantern eyes set deep in its grey face blinked twice. She felt a shriek building up inside her, what the hell was it? Eileen stood there, her feet frozen to the floor as it opened its mouth, revealing twin rows of tiny pointed teeth. It then dropped the branch.

Without any warning, it hurled its little, naked, grey body towards the open door. Eileen jerked back, almost tripping over her own feet. She managed to slam the door shut and with her trembling fingers, she turned the key.

The creature slammed against the door, the old woman screamed and fell back, grazing her side on the corner of the table. The sudden pain acted like a glass of ice-cold water thrown in her face. She shrugged off the numb shock that had begun to cover her like a coying blanket and hobbled into the kitchen.