The Year I Went Pear-Shaped (18 page)

“Darla,” Warren continued. “Would you mind if Richmond and I had a quick look around the house?”

Again, like I had a choice.

“No, of course not, please feel free, I promise not to make a run for it,” I joked lamely.

Detective Jenkins looked at me as though I was slightly mad while Richmond just stared at the floor.

“Of course you won’t,” said Jenkins. “Right, we’ll be back in a minute then.” And off they went, leaving me alone to give myself a good telling off for joking with members of the constabulary about making a getaway.

I turned towards the kettle and stared at it intently for the three minutes it took to boil. I poured my tea and added milk deciding not to make theirs until they’d finished looking around. A wise decision as the ‘minute or two’ ended up being at least 20 minutes, I was onto my second cup of tea and third Marshmallow Puff by the time Detective Jenkins wandered back into the kitchen.

“No, no, you stay there,” he said as I went to stand up. “I’ll make the tea for me and Richmond,” he said, flicking the switch on the kettle again. “I hope you don’t mind but I’ve left him securing a window in the bathroom. We noticed it wouldn’t lock properly so someone could easily gain access to the house.”

“Oh. Thanks but why did you do that?”

He turned to face me, leaning on the bench with his left hand.

“Well Darla, we have to cover all possibilities. I’m sorry to have to tell you but you are under suspicion of stalking Gordon Worsley and killing his cat. However, at this stage you are only a suspect. If we subsequently discover that it is in fact another person who is responsible then we need to take seriously the threats this person has made against you.”

He paused to pour the just-boiled water into the two cups I’d left on the bench with tea bags in them.

“Clearly this is someone who is very dangerous and it is my belief that they are not bluffing. They intend to hurt you, maybe even kill you. Whether they do it or not is another thing entirely but the intention is real. They really think that that’s what they’re going to do.”

He went to the fridge, took out a carton of milk, poured a centimetre into each of the cups and returned the milk to where it had been in the fridge.

Covering my face with my hands and closing my eyes, I concentrated on breathing and not crying as the panic hit again.

Warren squeezed each of the teabags against the side of the cups with a spoon then tossed them into the bin he’d located under the sink after about two seconds of searching. He added sugar and stirred before shouting, “Richmond! Tea’s ready”.

“Just finishing up now!” Richmond called back from the bathroom.

“Now,” he said, taking a seat next to me. “The first thing I need you to tell me is why you suddenly decided to remove various items related to Gordon Worsley from your bedroom late last night?”

Oh Lord. That bloody shrine. Gordon must’ve told him. Come clean Darla.

“God, that looks bad doesn’t it?”

“Yep, ‘fraid so.”

“Jesus. Ok, listen. Yes, I did have a bit of an obsession with Gordon. I admit that. I religiously watched his show and had videotapes of every episode. It’s also true that I had a kind of shrine to him in my bedroom and, believe me, I know how pathetic and tragic that sounds but it was only ever a bit of fun.”

I looked down at my fingers gripping my teacup.

“I swear on my life that I am no longer hung up on him in the way I used to be. Getting to know him and realising he was just a guy cured me. Honest.”

I looked Warren straight in the eye as I said that, hoping he could see into my soul and would know that I was telling the truth.

“The reason I got rid of all that stuff in such a hurry last night was because my flatmate, Anita, told me he’d been round and had gone into my bedroom. I figured that he must’ve seen everything and I was so mortified that I just couldn’t it all out of my sight fast enough.”

“And what did you do with the, ah, ‘shrine to Gordon’,” asked Warren with, I suspected, a hint of amusement. Just then Richmond walked into the kitchen, his shirt sleeves rolled up.

“I burnt it in the backyard last night,” I replied.

“You know it looks like you were trying to destroy evidence that might link you to the stalking don’t you Darla?” He turned to the young policeman, “your tea’s on the bench Paddy”.

“Yeah, I do, ” I said.

“Is there anyone who can vouch for your version of events last night?”

“My flatmate Anita. She’s visiting her Gran in Ashfield right now. I can give you the address and phone number if you like.”

“Yes please. Paddy, can you give Darla some paper to write those details down on?”

“Right here,” said Richmond who had sat down at the table with his tea. He passed me his notebook.

They watched as I wrote Grandma Bourne’s contact details down. It then occurred to me that another reason they were getting me to do this was because they needed a writing sample to compare with the letters Gordon had received from the stalker.

“Ok Darla,” said Warren, when I’d handed the notebook back to Officer Richmond. “We obviously need to talk to a few more people and we have a lot of things to check out so that’s all we need from you right now but I’m going to give you my card, it’s got my mobile number on it and I keep my phone with me 24/7 ok, I never turn it off. If you need me, for whatever reason, at any time, call me without any hesitation. Do you understand?”

I certainly did. He was talking about the stalker bitch that might be trying to get me.

“I’m going to have Officer Richmond here drop around a couple of times a day just to check for signs of intruders, as well as to make sure you’re ok.”

They both smiled at me in unison and I thought I was going to be sick. The more they tried to make me feel safe, the more vulnerable I felt. Scotty! All is forgiven! Beam me up damn you!

“Ok, there’s one other thing. You must not make any attempt to contact Gordon Worsley.”

I responded with a derisive snort.

“He thinks I’m capable of stalking and killing. I don’t have much to say to him right now.”

Warren put his hand over mine. The unexpected intimacy startled me.

“Darla, try to imagine the shock Gordon had. I think he loved that cat almost as much as he would a child. He has been under a huge amount of stress because of this; it’s probably a long way from being over and he hasn’t really had anywhere to channel his pain and fury. He lashed out at you because you were convenient. Sure, it’s not fair, well, that’s if you turn out to be innocent...”

I shot him a look. He ignored it and continued.

“...but raw emotion is rarely concerned with what’s fair.”

Chapter 40: Shopping & Fucking up

The woman walked up and down the aisles of the huge hardware store pushing a trolley. In the bottom of the trolley she’d already placed various ropes, rolls of electrical tape, scissors, gardening twine and two large bottles of methylated spirits. There were still a few more items on the shopping list. She needed a hammer, several screwdrivers and a glasscutter.

Humming to herself she pushed the trolley towards the tool section.

Chapter 41: Off to the Doc’s

It was an hour since the two policemen had let themselves out but I still hadn’t moved from the kitchen table when my mobile phone rang. From the number on the screen I could tell it was someone from the office.

“Hello?”

“Darla. It’s Arabella. Have the police finished with you?”

Great. What the hell did she want? Her voice was it’s usual clipped efficiency devoid of warmth but the fact that she’d called me herself spoke volumes. Arabella liked to distance herself as much as possible from her magazine minions so for her to be calling me meant she really wanted this story in the bag. This was as close as Arabella ever got to serious sucking up.

“Yes, they left not long ago.”

“Ok, good. Then I’m sending a cab round to your home, which will take you to your appointment with Dr Ferguson the cosmetic surgeon. It’ll be there in half an hour. You need to be there by 2pm. The driver will be given the address. Then take a cab home afterwards and claim it on expenses, ok.” Christ. The bloody makeover story. The last thing I needed right now was to have to worry about having extensive cosmetic surgery in the morning.

“Oh, and I’m going to send a few legal documents round in the cab too. I want you to sign them and give them back to the driver who’ll return them to me once he’s dropped you off.”

“Legal documents?”

“Yes, just a formality really. The documents will absolve the company and the magazine of any responsibility should something go wrong with your procedures. It just means you can’t sue us if things don’t work out as expected. You’d still be able to sue the surgeon though...” She paused realising this was probably not the best thing to be saying to someone who’s hours away from having her entire face and body remodelled with a knife by a total stranger.

“But don’t worry!” she soothed unconvincingly. “Absolutely nothing is going to go wrong. Dr Ferguson is the best in the business, he’s the one who did my eye lift.”

This was ridiculous.

“Arabella, I’m having a bit of a bad time right now, I don’t really want to go...” But it was no good, I was talking to a dial tone. She’d hung up.

Letting out a long sigh, I decided to go to the doctor’s appointment. It would be easier than ringing Arabella back, she probably wouldn’t take my call anyway, she’d have her assistant tell me that, ‘Ms Hamilton-Smythe had just that minute gone into a meeting’. Anyway, at least the surgery might take my mind off the whole stalker saga.

So I dragged myself away from the kitchen table to have a quick shower and change of clothes in the hope it would perk me up a bit. Twenty minutes later I emerged back in the kitchen, much fresher and in clean clothes but definitely no progress on the ‘perk’ front so I reverted to bad old habits and hit the biscuit tin with a vengeance while whipping up some unadulterated comfort food. By the time I heard the cab honking in the street, I’d inhaled six chocolate digestives and two doorstop sandwiches made from thick, white bread smothered in peanut butter, jam and cake sprinkles. Plus managed to watch a fair bit of Oprah Winfrey. It had been one of those ‘brilliant kids’ episodes where Oprah scours America for its most inspiring children, eight-year-olds who’ve worked out a plan to save the rainforest, ten year olds with their own companies manufacturing cutting edge software and some child genius who was at university at the age of six and is on the brink of discovering a cure for cancer. In their spare time all these kids do things like play violin in orchestras. It was enough to make your average 34 year old woman who couldn’t even change her own fuse when it blew, a little bit of an underachiever?

‘What have I done with my life?’ I thought as I went out to the cab, shoving the half finished packet of digestives into my bag to eat on the drive over. As I walked out the front door and over to the waiting cab, I noticed a guy waiting for a bus over the road. He was looking back at me, probably because we were the only two people in the street. He wasn’t very old but he was one of the fattest men I’d seen in a long time and it almost made me think twice about having another chocolate digestive. Almost.

“Hey,” said the driver as I shut the car door and put my seat belt on. He was from somewhere in Asia and could’ve been anywhere between 30 and 50 years old. I couldn’t really see his face but judging by the photo ID of him staring at me solemnly from the dashboard, he’d been driving cabs a very long time because in the photo he had seventies sideburns and the tips on the collar of his very loud shirt reached to his nipples.

“Hi.” I said, hoping he wasn’t one of those drivers who wanted to talk at me non-stop for the entire trip about whatever shite they’d just heard being spouted by some redneck, knee-jerk radio talkback host, or one of the hateful callers who couldn’t see why all those ‘bloody bludgers couldn’t be lined up and shot,’ or why all the ‘bloody foreigners taking jobs of good Aussie blokes couldn’t bloody well be sent back to where they came from’. Invariably these callers began their vitriolic rants with phrases like, ‘I’m no racist but...’

Thankfully, after passing me the legal documents from Arabella, my driver was clearly about as interested in me as he was the splats of chewed gum on the pavement. I almost felt guilty for distracting him momentarily from the obviously hilarious conversation he was having with someone shedloads more interesting and amusing that me on his mobile phone.

I took the documents out of the yellow A4 envelope and started reading. About 20 seconds later I gave up, beaten into submission by sentences like, ‘in accordance with para. 7C (i) of subsection 12, which exempts Party A...’

“Fucking legalise bollocking jargon,” I muttered under my breath. But then, in the spirit of ‘Oh, what the hell,’ I took one of the seven pens that lived permanently at the bottom of my bag with a hair band, three lipsticks, and a condom thrown in there about three years ago in a (vainly) hopeful moment before a night at the pub, and started signing on the various dotted lines. Although, instead of D. Manners, I signed ‘Ima Mugg’. I would’ve bet my last Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup that Arabella wouldn’t look closely enough to notice and I’d be damned if I was going to give up the right to sue the company should anything go horribly wrong and I ended up looking like some chick who’d modelled for Picasso during his abstract period.

“Thanks,” I said, passing the envelope back to the driver who put it on the passenger seat next to him without missing a beat in his own conversation. For the rest of the trip, I tried not to think about things like scars, agonising pain, stalkers and flesh-sucking machines. I let my mind go blank and concentrated on the beautiful sights of Sydney that were whizzing past my window on this sky-blue summer day.