The Afternoon that Changed Everything and Nothing: Part 1 of 2
Part 1 of 2
Liz stared at the body on the living room floor and wondered what her next plan of action should have been. She looked around the room, which was filled with an incongruous calm. The sun streamed through the window at the front of the house, which looked out onto the drive. Liz heard some children’s voices in the distance and the glanced at the clock in the kitchen behind her. Five minutes past three; school’s out for the day. She rushed over to the window and quickly drew the curtains. She then turned around and looked at the body again. She looked at the way it was awkwardly bent into an unnatural shape. What now? As though all rational thought had disappeared, in that moment, Liz genuinely believed she could get away with this. She was only focused on what her next step should have been to get her through this. She started pacing up and down the living room, deep in thought.
When the phone rang it made her jump. Her heart started racing, and she wondered why she felt afraid, as if the person on the line would have known what lay in the living room, waiting to be discarded. Five rings in, she picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” she answered as calmly as she could. Instantly she berated herself. Too calm; she would never normally answer the phone that way.
“Hi darling!” She then wondered how mothers always ring at the worst times, like they know when something isn’t right.
“Oh, hi Mum,” Liz replied.
“What’s the matter? You don’t sound like yourself,” her mother replied.
“No I’m ok, Mum. Just tired from my run this morning.” There, that should do it.
“Oh ok,” she replied and swiftly moved on to more important things. “So your Aunt Lucy is upset with Uncle Barry again,” she began with that curious tone of voice that people have when they are about to gossip about others.
“Oh yeah, what’s he done now?” Liz amused her mother while making her way into the kitchen and away from the living room. She normally couldn’t stand people who gossip but in this case, it was more for the sake of clinging onto normality for a few moments longer. For the sake of forgetting that she had a dead body just feet away from her, inside her own home.
“Well apparently the rumour is actually true. He’s been going down the casinos again. He’s been gambling away hundreds of pounds of their savings.” Liz shut her eyes really tightly and wished that her problem would go away. A real problem, not the silly little issues that these people called problems. She wished she could have had these mundane issues again; problems like her husband gambling, or having an affair, or being in debt.
“That’s where he’s been spending all his time. Remember we were saying that maybe he was having an affair? Well, it’s not an affair I tell you. He was gambling!”
As her mum babbled on, Liz wondered what it would be like to have a life where the thing that takes up the majority of your time was gossiping about family members, neighbours and old friends from back in the day. In the end, Liz had to cut her mum off from her ramble. She had a problem to deal with. A real problem.
“Right Mum, I have to go. I’m meeting some friends in a bit, so I need to go and get showered.”
“Alright darling, I’ll give you a ring later to carry on our chat. Bye!” Gosh her mother was cheerful today.
After hanging up the phone, Liz went back into the living room. This was what her week off had brought. She knew that she hadn’t wanted to take the time off but her husband, Luke, had made the point that she shouldn’t let the company get away with not giving her all her annual leave before the deadline to take the time off was up. She thought about Luke and what a good husband he was. He was everything a girl could want in a man. Not only was he gorgeous and a good provider, but he was also funny, he listened well and he offered good advice. Liz knew that she needed his help with this. She picked up the phone and dialled his mobile number.
“Hello?” he answered after three rings.
“Uh, hi Luke,” she said nervously.
“Hiya Liz. What’s up?” he said cheerfully.
“Err, Luke. I don’t really know how to begin,” she trailed off. Boy, she really hadn’t thought through what to say to him.
“Are you ok Liz? What’s going on?” He was starting to get concerned. He had obviously thought she was ringing about dinner, which wouldn’t have been unusual.
“I have a bit of a sticky situation at home,” Liz started and then quickly aborted the plan. What had she been thinking? “I dropped a cake on the carpet in the living room and as I’m home, I’ve called in the carpet cleaners to take care of it. I just thought I would nip it in the bud because, you know, it gets harder to clean the longer it is left.” Wow; cake. Really, a whole cake?
Luke started laughing and couldn’t stop. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “Well OK, don’t worry about that! It’s only a carpet. It’s not like someone’s died!”
Liz cringed before saying, “The thing is, the house is going to be a bit of a mess, so maybe you can delay coming home a bit? I mean, I don’t think they’ll be done here by 6. Maybe you should go to the pub with some of the guys after work or something?”
“I was sort of looking forward to coming home to you, but I guess we won’t be able to just chill out in the living room, right? I’ll see if the guys want to pop to the pub for an hour or so,” he replied after mulling it over for a moment.
“Sounds good. Hopefully they’ll be done by the time you get home. I’ll see you tonight then?” Liz said, relieved that he was going to delay coming home.
“See you later hun,” he said before they hung up.
Liz hung and up and decided that she really needed to get moving with a plan now. She had wasted enough time faffing about, and now really needed to get something done about this body. She quickly wondered whether she should call the police and then decided that she would actually be getting herself chucked into prison for a very long time. She might as well try and avoid that.
She went into the living room and walked straight over to the body. She then took hold of his forearms and tried to untangle him into a more manageable form. Gosh, he was heavy. She’d always heard from the movies that dead bodies were extremely heavy, but this one was even heavier than she had imagined. She could barely drag him across the room, but over about ten minutes, she managed to get as far as the patio doors. Dropping him by the doors, she then knelt down to catch her breath. How was she ever going to lift him? What was her plan anyway? Take him out into their garden? And then what? Bury him there until someone found him? Liz got up after a moment and started pacing around the living room again.
Around fifteen minutes of pacing and thinking later, she heard a car outside. They lived in a cul-de-sac and most people were at work, so there had been no cars driving in or out all afternoon. This car though, sounded remarkably like Luke’s new sports car. It also sounded suspiciously close to the front window, almost as if it were actually on the drive itself. But it couldn’t be, could it? Luke could barely get the time off work when he was entitled to it, let alone just on a whim one random afternoon. Liz jumped up, ran to the front window and peeked through the curtains. No! It was Luke! He was home, extremely early!
Liz went to the front door and went outside, closing it behind her.
“Luke! Hey! What are you doing here so early hunny?” she said, walking across the drive towards his car.
“Hello, beautiful,” he greeted her, getting out of the car. “Thought I would come home early and take you out while the carpet people do their thing.”
Liz was speechless. She didn’t even know what to think.
“I figure you didn’t think I should have been there while they were cleaning, so why should you?” he smiled, his sexy, charming smile.
He then kissed Liz and started walking towards the front door of the house. She could not have asked for a better husband, and under normal circumstances, his gesture would have made her so happy. But what lay inside that house, was not a normal circumstance and although he was the perfect husband, she almost certainly didn’t deserve him. A feeling of dread took hold of her as she realized that she might lose him in the next couple of minutes.
