For part one click here and part two here
James watched the car pull in and the man get out. He was tall and elegant, a dark suit cut just so. He took his briefcase from the back seat, touched the door and watched it close by itself. Then, he fished a key out of his trouser pocket and let himself into the house, to be greeted by his beautiful wife. No wonder he looked smug.
James’s calculations had been right. Chloe was married to Edward English, star of the show trials two years back. English by name English by nature the patriotic press had announced. Evil Eddie the Samizdat call him. The bastard had smiled as he handed down the death sentence for four innocent journalists accused of the Westminster bombing attacks. The sick bastard had turned to the camera and said.
“Let that be a lesson to any of you planning any further resistance.”
James thought of Pete and Kirsty, Chris and Emily, the looks on the faces as they were led away from that court. Could he have saved their bacon? He shook his head, it wasn’t worth going over old ground. Since then English had been on TV every second day; clarifying the legal position of new governmental decrees, or discussing why the death penalty was a legitimate tool of government or just taking part in brainless game shows. He was a worm.
James looked around. He was surprised by the lack of security. Eddie English was in every top five ‘wanted’ list James had ever seen, but no one had ever got close. Like all government officials, their home addresses were a top secret but James would have expected security cameras and fences at the very least. Man, he’d broken in as easy as Larry yesterday.
He thought of Chloe. How on earth could she love him? He felt a pain in his frontal lobe as he thought about the two of them together. How could she?
“I wish I was a lesbian,” he mumbled to himself. That was what she said when they’d first made love. She’d argued it would make it easier to be a feminist if she didn’t love men so much. And that was Chloe in a nutshell.
They’d met in uni. The blonde girl with glasses and DM boots. James had hated her for two years. She managed to hijack every question any lecturer asked with his femo-communist slant on life. James was left of centre, but she had made him want to vote UKIP. Also, she was dating that idiot Steve. The most boring man on earth but she like it that way, it meant she could walk all over him. Then there was that fateful night when James had gone to the Duke expecting his friends to be there but the only person around was Chloe crying and drinking gin. Steve had left her, she’d sobbed, just announced he was seeing some girl in the geography department. Geography!
James didn’t know what to do. He didn’t really want to sit with a sobbing woman all night but he could hardly walk away. So, he stayed, and now for the first time since then, he wished he had walked away. Part four click here and part five here
No comments:
Post a Comment