The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,1

herself from here. She had to wipe out this chapter of her life. The therapist had said that, although it was hardly a great insight, was it? So she vacuumed the place until the bag was full; she had scrubbed the walls until every muscle in her arms and shoulders screamed out for her to stop. She had disinfected the cupboards and the bath and the toilet. She had thrown open the windows and left them like that for days, so all traces of her and David would fly away, out the window, going, going, gone.

‘Are you almost ready?’

David came into the room, looked around at the empty spaces, at the final crates. He had been outside talking to the removal men, telling them to be careful, asking them to be quiet. ‘My girlfriend’s very sensitive to loud voices,’ he said, greeted only by a look of incomprehension.

Now he spoke to her in a hushed tone, pointing to the crates. ‘Are these the last two?’

She nodded.

‘And everything’s packed? Good. Come on, let’s go.’

‘Give me a moment,’ she said.

He sighed, as he so often sighed these days, then bent down and lifted one of the crates, which was just light enough for him to carry on his own. She waited for him to return, looking around for the last time. That was where they used to watch TV. That was where David cooked her birthday meal. There was the spot where they christened the flat, making love on the bare floorboards the day they moved in. There was the spot where…

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, shaking away the memory. She sat down on the edge of the crate, feeling the room lurch around her.

She went outside, walked to the car without looking around her, staring at the concrete in front of her feet. She knew the removal men were looking at her, laughing at her inside the cab of their van, the weird chick who can’t bear the sound of people’s voices and walks with her head bent like an old woman. They thought she was mad. Well, maybe I am fucking mad, she thought. So would they be if they’d been through what she had. She wanted to tell them. Wanted to scream it at them.

She got into the car and tried to calm down. David went back into the flat and brought out the last crate. He put it down and turned round to close the door. She saw him weigh the keys in his hand for a second, and she wondered what he was thinking.

He opened the car door and for one awful moment she thought he was going to tell her that he had changed his mind, that he wanted to stay, that she would have to go back inside. But he started the engine and pulled into the road, the removal van following them.

He didn’t look back. She looked in the rear-view mirror and watched the flat retreat into the distance, into the past, into memory.

‘It’s over,’ David said.

It’s over.

One

‘It’s going to be the hottest flatwarming party of all time,’ Jamie enthused. ‘I think we should make it a fancy dress party.’

‘Excellent idea,’ said Kirsty. ‘With a theme?’

‘No. No theme. Freestyle fancy dress – come as whoever or whatever you like.’

He fell with her onto the bed in the soon-to-be-vacated bedroom in the house she shared with three other nurses and buried his face in her soft hair. He kissed her neck and breathed in her scent – a cocktail of skin and apricot shampoo and the perfume she applied every morning. Walking into her bedroom, where her fragrance hung constantly in the air, always made him feel happy and loved and sexy. And soon they would be living together. They would be sharing a bedroom and he would live with her fragrance – as part of the background of his life – every day. Breath and hair and skin and sweat and all the atoms and particles shed by their bodies day after day – these things would merge to create an atmosphere that was not solely of Jamie or Kirsty, but of them.

‘What will you dress up as?’ she asked as he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it behind him so it landed among the stacks of cardboard boxes and packing crates that covered the floor: books and clothes and handed-down kitchen utensils crammed together in a haphazard jumble that Kirsty described as her ‘system’. Old CDs and framed prints