After saying goodnight to her security detail, Beth closes the front door and walks down the hallway. In the kitchen, she drops her handbag down on the table. The house feels quiet: she realizes how used to having Elliot around she has become.
‘That shitbag,’ she murmurs.
She opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Pouring herself a glass, Beth takes a long swig and then places it down on the kitchen table.
She returns the bottle to its spot in the fridge door. She’s hungry but she doesn’t feel like making herself hot food to eat alone. That too was something that she and Elliot had started doing together. Beth takes a block of cheese and some butter from the fridge. She puts them down on the worktop, opens a cupboard and takes out a packet of cream crackers. Then she puts a dinner plate on the worktop and she proceeds to make herself a snack.
Even now, as Beth butters the crackers, she can’t believe how the past few months have been a lie. He sure had me fooled.
She sits down at the table and sips the wine. Then she takes a mouthful of cheese and cracker, choking it down. After a few more bites, she pushes the plate aside, finding it too difficult to eat. Beth is nauseated and only the wine makes her feel any better.
She gets up and takes the bottle back out of the fridge and tops up her glass.
Her phone rings then, and she sees her ex-husband’s number come up. She hesitates to answer, imagining that he’s calling just to tell her how foolish she was to let him go. But she and Callum are on good terms now and she’s sure he no longer wants a reconciliation. In fact, her son, Callum junior, had let it slip that his dad had a new ‘friend’. It had grated a little to know Callum was getting over her so soon, but hadn’t she fallen into bed with Elliot not long after the split? To criticize Callum now would be hypocritical.
She answers the phone.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Are the boys okay?’
‘Yeah. Just wanted to see if you can make the school play next week? Phil has a lead part and he’d like you to be there.’
‘I’ll make sure I am,’ she says. ‘What day and time?’
Beth writes the details on the kitchen wall calendar and then Callum puts her on the phone to Phil.
‘Hey Phil,’ she says. ‘What part are you playing then?’
Phil chatters about the play and Beth listens. Talking to her son at least takes her mind off Elliot and their current situation. She almost wishes she had never cloned his phone. That way, she would be ignorant of his lack of real love for her and maybe tonight she’d be enjoying his amazing tongue exploring her instead. But such benefits don’t outweigh what she knows, and Beth can never go back to that time of innocence. He is a liar and a fraud. All she needs now is to learn who he’s working for and what he wants.
When Phil’s conversation dries up, Beth asks to speak to Cal.
‘He’s on a sleepover tonight,’ Phil says. ‘But he’s got his phone with him so you can call him there.’
‘Okay, honey. Love you,’ she says. ‘You guys are coming here at the weekend still, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah. See you Friday,’ he says.
Beth hangs up the phone and tops up the glass she’s been sipping from. Then she goes into the living room and turns on the television.
She flicks through the channels but nothing grabs her. She’s down and doesn’t know how to get herself back up again.
Going back to the kitchen for another refill, Beth’s eyes fall on her handbag, still on the table where she left it. She opens it up and searches for the clone phone. What is Elliot doing this evening?
She pulls the phone from her bag and takes it into the living room. She checks the text messages and doesn’t find any new ones. Then she notices that Elliot is actually on a call.
She opens it up and listens in, something she shouldn’t be able to do unless they were both using the same network tower. He must be close by. The call is once again made to ‘Mother’.
‘Beth’s given me the heave-ho tonight,’ she hears Elliot say.
‘I thought she couldn’t get enough of you,’ says a female voice.
Elliot laughs. ‘You taught me well. She’s been having a great time.’
Beth feels sick at his words. Whoever he’s talking to, can’t be his real mother but the thought of Elliot sleeping with another woman disgusts and hurts her. She takes a sharp breath.
Beth hears a thump upstairs. She looks up to the ceiling frowning.
‘What was that?’ says the woman.
‘Sounds like noise on the line,’ Elliot says.
‘You’d better check your phone,’ the woman says. ‘It might have been hacked.’
Beth feels the blood rush into her face with guilt.
‘Beth was suspicious but probably thought I was chatting up some other woman. She’s clueless really. I told her I was speaking to my mother and she accepted it.’
Beth almost blurts out her anger at his words. She bites her lip to stop herself making any noise. Then she mutes the phone, kicking herself that she hadn’t done that in the first place.
‘Have there been any more murders?’ asks the woman.
‘No,’ Elliot says.
‘There won’t be any more for now,’ the woman says.
‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ asks Elliot.
The woman doesn’t answer right away and Elliot waits. Beth can hear his breathing as he does.
‘Yes. But I’ll take care of the problem in house,’ the woman says eventually.
‘Yes, Mother,’ says Elliot.
Elliot hangs up the call. Beth puts the phone down and then picks up her glass of wine again.
The conversation she’s just heard confirms Elliot is a double agent of some sort, it doesn’t tell her who for.
She goes upstairs, taking the phone with her. She looks in the bathroom, feeling nervous after hearing the noise that seemed to come from there. She sees a bar of soap in the centre of the bath and realizes it’s slipped down. This explains the heavy thump she’s heard. Feeling relieved she goes out onto the landing and closes the bathroom door behind her. In Phil’s bedroom, she switches on his desktop computer. Then she types up all of the conversation she’s overheard for future reference. She saves the document on her own Dropbox account and then shuts down.
In the bedroom she puts the clone phone on charge. She strips off, throwing her clothes into the washing basket and heads to the bathroom. She switches the shower on and gets in before it warms up. Beth scrubs herself clean, wishing she could remove the last few months of Elliot from her skin. Her skin is red when she finally gets out of the shower. She wraps a towel around herself and goes into the bedroom.
Elliot is lying on the bed.
‘What the fuck…? You scared me!’ she says.
‘I thought I’d surprise you,’ he says. ‘And it’s purely selfish, as I didn’t want to miss out on a night together when I know you have the boys this weekend.’
‘Elliot. I’m tired. I thought you understood that. Have you been hiding in the house? Because security is supposed to let me know if they let anyone through,’ she says.
‘You got me,’ he says. ‘I thought you rumbled me when I knocked something over in the bathroom. So, I went and hid in the spare room until you came up. I really did want to surprise you.’
Beth glances past him at the clone phone charging on her side of the bed.
‘Okay. That’s sweet of you,’ she says. ‘I need a glass of wine. Let’s go downstairs and get one together?’
‘I’ve a better idea. Why don’t I go down and get a bottle and two glasses and bring it up?’ he suggests.
Beth smiles at him. ‘That’s a great idea.’ She drops the towel. ‘I’ll wait for you in bed.’
Elliot smirks and gets up off the bed. He leaves the room and goes downstairs.
Beth runs to her side of the bed, unplugs the phone and puts it in the top drawer of the bedside cabinet again. She gets in the bed and pulls the covers up over herself.
Elliot returns. He places the glasses on top of the dresser and pours them both a large glass of red wine.
Beth is trembling as she takes the glass from his fingers.
‘I noticed you have a new phone,’ he says.
‘No…’
‘It was on the side, charging when I came in before,’ he says.
‘Oh. That was just my work phone. I turned it off so that we won’t be disturbed,’ she says.
Elliot gets in the bed and slides over to her. ‘I was just speaking to my mother again,’ he says.
‘Were you?’
Elliot nods. ‘She has a very suspicious mind and not surprising really. She was right, what she said, of course.’
Beth tries to keep her face blank. ‘Right about what?’ she says.
‘That someone had cloned my phone. You see, I didn’t accidentally knock something over. I did it to see if there would be an echo of it on the copy you have.’
‘What are you…?’ Beth says.
‘Shush,’ he says. ‘Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves.’
‘Elliot?’ Beth says.
‘Where is the phone now?’
‘I don’t…’
‘I know you’re lying. You’re really bad at it. No poker face at all. I guess that’s why they gave you an office job instead of, after all that training, letting you out in the field.’
Beth stares at him. Her heart is beating so hard she can hear the blood pounding through her ears.
‘I do like you. A lot. Despite what you may have heard or seen. Mother is a control freak. She never lets us have our own lives, even when we are out working for her,’ Elliot continues.
‘You’re scaring me Elliot,’ she says. ‘Please…’
‘I just need the phone, Beth, and then I’ll be leaving. I’d hoped I could stay on here. You know, I’m good at my job. And we really did have something nice going on together. I mean, I made you happy, didn’t I?’
Beth doesn’t answer.
‘But now you suspect me, I’m no use to Mother and I can’t continue with our little… courtship,’ he continues. ‘It was fun while it lasted though. Maybe we can fuck just one more time before I go?’
Something snaps inside Beth’s head as Elliot admits his guilt and makes this revolting suggestion. She’d been prepared to fake it that night, just to stop him being suspicious, but the thought of letting him use her one last time after his admission, makes her see red.
‘What have you been doing here?’ she asks and her voice is cold.
‘You know I’m not going to tell you that,’ Elliot says.
‘You’re one of them. You work for the Network,’ she says.
‘No. I’m a different breed from Neva and Michael,’ Elliot says. ‘Now… Give. Me. The. Phone.’
Beth opens the drawer at the side of the bed and reaches in, but it isn’t the phone that she picks up. Ever since her kidnapping she’s slept with her service revolver in close proximity. She pulls it free, and throwing herself out of the bed and out of reach, she rolls expertly and comes to her knees. She points the gun at Elliot.
Elliot leaps off the bed and backs up.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ she says. ‘You kidnapped me?’
Elliot’s silence confirms her suspicions.
‘It had to be you. You knew all about me by then. You came in here and chloroformed me, and then dumped me in that hospital. You had access to all of the right forms to do it.’
‘Clever girl,’ he says. He steps towards her. ‘You weren’t in any danger though, Beth. I made sure. You have to listen. I really do care about you.’
‘Come any closer and I’ll shoot you,’ Beth says.
‘I just want the phone. And then I’ll leave,’ Elliot says again.
‘You’re not having the phone,’ Beth says. ‘Now fuck off out of my house before I shoot you.’
‘You’re not going to shoot me Beth. You’re not a killer. I could have taken it… while you were in the shower,’ he points out.
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Beth… I love you,’ he says. ‘I wanted you to know it wasn’t all a lie.’
‘Really? “Never in a million years” comes to mind.’
Elliot dives at her then. Beth doesn’t blink as she fires two shots directly into his chest. He drops to the floor and doesn’t move.
When the security detail burst into the house and run upstairs, they find Elliot dead on Beth’s bedroom floor.
Beth, still naked, continues to point the gun at the corpse until the security men take it from her trembling fingers.
‘He was a spy,’ she says. ‘He was a fucking spy.’
One of the security guards picks up her robe from the back of the bedroom door and wraps it around her.
Shaking, Beth pulls on the robe. She glances back at Elliot’s prone body and then bursts into tears.
‘Don’t worry,’ says the security guard. ‘We’ll take care of everything.’
He leads her from the bedroom, as the other guard makes the necessary phone call. Downstairs, Beth sits at her kitchen table, staring into space.
I’ve fixed that lying bastard, she thinks. He can’t spy on us anymore.
A strange calm comes over her. Ever since she was kidnapped, she’s lived in fear of being taken again. With Elliot dead, and his admission of guilt, Beth no longer has to be afraid. Even with the questions she will inevitably be required to answer, Beth isn’t worried. She can tell them of Elliot’s confession. After years of being a loyal employee, Ray should have no reason to doubt her. Besides, she was already getting her story straight about her suspicion of Elliot. No one had been closer to him than her, she was bound to catch him out eventually. She has no doubt that she will be believed.
As Beth plans her report, the enormity of what’s happened sinks in. Beth’s calm disappears. The tears come again along with a raging sadness that Elliot is dead, despite all of his lies and deception. She’d really cared about him and now she understood just how Michael must have felt about Neva’s betrayal.
She sees her life spanning out before her: working at Archive; coming home to an empty house; never trusting anyone again.
What kind of future is that?
When the tears dry up, she goes to the fridge, withdraws the half-drunk Sauvignon Blanc bottle and pours herself another glass.