Chapter 81 Laura
Laura
Damon’s flat is even more depressing on her second visit than it was on her first. She remains by the front door, surveying the open-plan lounge, diner and kitchen.
There are unwashed clothes blurring the lines between furniture and laundry, and uneaten food left inside open cartons cluttering the kitchen worktops.
The air is suffused with a musty odour, somewhere between a gym changing room and a place where ambition crawls away to quietly die.
She makes her way inside, pushing aside detritus with her boots.
She already knows Damon isn’t here, as she watched him drive out of the car park twenty minutes ago.
That’s how long it took for her to find the supervisor’s office and convince the young man working there that her boyfriend had taken both sets of house keys with him when he left and that his phone was now switched off.
The touching effect of the rolled-up jumper tucked under her coat and the protective hand placed lovingly upon her pregnancy bump probably didn’t require the distressed tears she summoned to convince him to allow her in, but she takes pride in her work.
It’s by no means the first home Laura has gained entry to under false pretences, and she doubts it will be the last. However, these are typically homes of elderly people who have been admitted to where she works.
It doesn’t matter if she plunders the belongings of the terminally ill.
She’s a firm believer in the old saying ‘You can’t take it with you. ’
Laura checks her watch. She doesn’t know how long Damon will be away, so she gets to work.
She would rather not be here, putting herself at risk, but he’s given her little choice but to up the ante.
It’s a week since she sent him that text message, clearly spelling out what she expects from him.
What he owes her. And how has he responded?
Well, he hasn’t. Not a single word. Either he is burying his head in the sand and pretending this isn’t happening, or he doesn’t appreciate the lengths she will go to – and has done in the past – to get what is rightfully hers.
Each time she thinks about it, it’s like a balled fist slowly expanding in her stomach.
It stretches her insides so tight that sometimes the pain of not having what she wants makes her almost scream.
She is so close to getting it that she can taste death in the back of her throat. And it is beautiful.
She glances around his home. She would like to believe that she will be doing him a favour by taking him away from all this, but she can’t fool herself.
His death will be infinitely more for her benefit than his.
What he has to offer her is markedly different from all the others she has helped. Damon is someone completely unique.
Her plan for today was to merely add or alter something in his flat.
Nothing threatening, on the order of what she once served up to a man who crossed her, which involved a pig foetus and his dead pregnant wife’s wardrobe.
And even now, when she thinks about it, she smiles at her innovativeness.
Such extremes won’t be necessary with Damon, however.
She will only need to do enough to immediately make him realise his safe space has been compromised.
Turn a sofa ever so slightly; move the cutlery in a drawer around; rearrange his bookshelf so the spines are colour-coded; rebuild his Friends Lego into something a little different.
But now that she is here, she realises this place is in far too sorry a state of disarray to carry out this scheme. So she wanders from room to room until she spots on a shelf an Audite – a second-rate Alexa-style virtual assistant – and a smile spreads across her face. That will do perfectly.