I want to die!
Edith Airey flung herself onto the single bed in her mean little bedroom at the back of the house and listened to the harsh note of the patrol car engine dying into the distance.
When she’d left home that morning it had all seemed so clear—what she had to do, how she planned to do it. Going to the house of that cow had seemed the perfect location to end it all. She imagined Angela Inglis hearing the shot and running out to find Edith’s pale elegant corpse on her lawn. Oh, the self-recrimination, the wailing!
Taking the AK from her father’s illegal collection was the perfect crowning act of defiance. He might still treat her like a kid, but that would’ve taught him to take her seriously!
But reality never matched the images in Edith’s head. She’d been so caught up in planning her own demise that she hadn’t given much thought to the act itself. It had been like one of those old black-and-white war films her mother watched in the afternoons—stealing the key, getting it copied and putting the original back, planning her route across the fields so she wouldn’t be seen.
She was the tragic heroine, imagining herself in a long black Cossack coat and a fur hat, meeting her contact in a lonely wood or deserted church to accept a dangerous one-way mission.
Only, things hadn’t quite worked out like she planned. They never did, she thought mournfully. When she’d heard the frightened cries of the lambs, seen the dog running amok, she’d just had time for a burst of relief that she wouldn’t have to go through with it after all.
But even as she’d lined up the open sights—as some part of her brain had taken into account the direction of the dog’s run, the way the breeze was stirring the grass, the slight elevation—another part had recognised Ben and known there’d be hell to pay.
So she’d run. Abandoned her careful plan and turned tail like a coward, hoping she’d be able to get home and put the gun back without anyone realising.
Should’ve known I wouldn’t be that lucky.
The tears spilled hot down her pinched cheeks. They blurred the old film posters and the childish pattern of the wallpaper around the window on the far side of the room. She knew her father’s outburst was just the beginning. She hadn’t expected to be around to answer for anything.
Her parents, naturally, hadn’t noticed anything was amiss. And the more they’d breezily ignored her towering wordless rage, the more uncommunicative Edith had become, punishing them in advance for their indifference. She’d made her plans in sullen silence up in her cramped bedroom.
It wasn’t that they hated her—that, at least, would have been something to rail against. You can’t push against something that doesn’t push back.
They just don’t care. Nobody cares about, stupid, ugly, fat Edith.
She had no idea how her father had discovered her escapade so fast. Just her luck that he’d been out playing at policeman, today of all days. The memory of his words brought on a fresh wave of mortification and she buried her face in the pillow until the worst of it passed.
She fingered the empty silver chain around her neck. He’d guard the key more jealously after this, she knew, but there’d be another way. She clenched her fists until the nails dug painfully into her palms. There had to be another way.
She sat up, scrubbing at her leaking eyes, determination chasing away the lassitude. If she couldn’t use one of her father’s illicit guns, there were plenty of others. Something bigger than her own little .22 Gaucher. Something guaranteed to do the job, instant. All kinds of people had firearms about the place in the country, if you just knew where to look…
Edith wondered where the unknown sniper on the hill had got his gun. Even though he’d disguised the weapon in strips of sacking and grass, she’d known right away she’d never seen anything like it. So, who was he? Some mysterious spy with a secret agenda of his own? For a moment she allowed herself the warm fantasy that her hated ex-employer was the object of the sniper’s deadly skill.
If only…
It still galled her that her father had thrown the information in her face, like she didn’t know what she’d seen. Like she was making it all up.
But she had seen it, just like she’d said. And if he was too stupid to listen, what did she care? It was his lookout, the sweaty old sod. Just another grievance. Another thing they’d be sorry about in the end.
If it was the last thing she did, Edith was determined to make sure of that.