Here To Stay

by Mark Edwards

‘I don’t believe this. I cannot believe this. That’s why our relationship started? Why you told me you wanted to get married after two months?’

All she had needed was to move in with me, so she would have somewhere for her parents to stay. And then what? The answer seemed too awful to be true. She had known exactly how they would behave and how difficult they would be to get rid of. She had foreseen how insane they would drive me, how I would come to despise them. She couldn’t have known they would try to get me charged with child abuse but she must have known they would do something to push me to the brink. To get me to the point where she could suggest that we kill them. That had been her plan all along. That was why she had married me. It was even why she had invited her parents to stay with us. This wasn’t a real marriage. I wasn’t really her husband and she didn’t really love me. Gemma had only got together with me for one reason, and it had nothing to do with love.

all of this is so real i had to highlight it all.

PART THREE

Jeff was pleased that he was going to teach him a lesson about the importance of family. He was going to make him wish he’d kept in touch with his mother.

The major difference this time was that the house’s owner was tied to her bed.

Don’t worry, she’d replied. I actually think I’ve found somewhere already. It’s a big, beautiful house with enough room for all of us. I think you’ll love it. It’s on a really nice street called Cuckoo Lane.

smh

Gemma had replied straight away. Don’t worry about him, she wrote. He won’t cause you any trouble.

mm mm mm..

There was only one thing left to do now. One loose end.

He let her stand there for a while, enjoying the sun on her face. He let her smoke a cigarette too. Then, with a word of apology, he pushed her into the swimming pool and, after stripping and jumping in beside her, he held her under – again, being careful not to leave any bruises – until she went limp. He left her floating face down.

yikes

An unfortunate accident. Elderly woman falls in her swimming pool. Her neglectful son, who never came to see her, would get the blame when she was eventually found, by which point her body would be rotten, any bruises on her skin long gone.

‘Just remember,’ Jeff said, ‘when we get there, we need to be on our best behaviour.’ ‘Oh, of course,’ Lizzy replied with a smile. ‘Aren’t we always?’

‘So our whole relationship was a sham,’ I said.

‘How can you expect me to believe that?’

‘And tonight you decided they’d finally pushed me far enough? That I would agree to help you kill them?’

‘I don’t know what I believe anymore.’

One lie was enough. The foundations of our relationship were built on deceit. There would be no getting over this. No way forward.

Toulouse, August 10th. Next to that she had written, Check news reports. Beneath that she had copied out a few headlines, surrounding them with question marks. Amira had been trying to find out what the Robinsons had done in France.

Then music came on and I realised it was the radio: the talking I’d heard had been the DJ. It seemed out of character for Amira – who had told me off numerous times for leaving the lights on in the office – to go out and leave the radio playing.

Something definitely wasn’t right here. Next to the kitchen window was the back door. Without expecting anything, I tried the handle. The door opened.

oh shit..

The bed was unmade, with a top and a pair of jeans laid out on it. The clothes Amira had planned to wear today? Clothes that, for whatever reason, she hadn’t put on.

Because I knew I was going to find something terrible. Something that would change the course of my life.

Amira was lying face down on the carpet. There was a deep red wound on the back of her head, blood glistening in her hair, one arm stretched out before her like she had been trying to crawl away from her attacker.

damn. damn yo.

I didn’t tell her I was certain this wasn’t the botched burglary it had been set up to look like. I didn’t tell her I knew who had done it and why.

Maybe she’d left a message to tell me that, using the extra pages I’d sent from Chloe’s journal, she’d found out what Jeff and Lizzy had done in France, a message that Jeff had read or listened to and deleted.

And even if Jeff did end up in jail, which was hardly enough of a punishment for what he’d done, Lizzy would still be free; Lizzy, who was complicit in all of this, even if she hadn’t murdered George and Edith and Amira with her own hands. Jeff and Lizzy needed to be punished.

Jeff and Lizzy needed to die.

‘It’s a slow, painful death. Nausea, bloody diarrhoea, seizures, a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, stomach pain. And that, unfortunately, is the main problem with ricin. It’s slow. It takes three to five days.

We’re going to need his help to get Chloe out of the house, because we clearly don’t want her around when we do this. And he’s the only other person she knows in London.’

Chloe would believe that. Because she knew what they had done to her boyfriend in France.

Again and again, the Robinsons hid themselves away in other people’s houses, destroying the lives of the original residents.

By getting rid of Jeff and Lizzy for good I would not only be avenging Amira, George, Edith and Jean-Claude – plus I couldn’t forget Mickey and Delilah, who had burned to death in their caravan – I would be setting Gemma, Stuart and Chloe free. And I would get my house back. My house and my life.

I pictured Amira’s body. ‘We’re not the evil ones, Gemma.’

After he warned me about Jeff.

He laughed nervously and I wished he would calm down. He looked ill, with beads of sweat popping on his forehead. His eyes kept flicking to his parents and I shot him a look over Jeff and Lizzy’s heads, urging him to chill out.

I had been shocked to see the expensive wine that had gone missing. It had turned out that Jeff and Lizzy had given it to Stuart as a birthday present and here he was now, offering it up to me with a sickly grin. I had to pretend I didn’t recognise it, despite the smug expressions on Jeff and Lizzy’s faces.

So although I probably only needed one quarter of a gram each to kill them – much less than a teaspoon’s worth – I had decided to use double that. And then I’d added a little more, just to be safe.

I poured Gemma some more wine. Better that she was tipsy later than a nervous wreck now.

I had asked Jeff if he had my phone and he had shrugged and said, ‘I gave it back to you. Don’t you remember?’ He had stared at me, daring me to challenge his lie, because it was obvious he had destroyed it.

smh

I had acted like I was too afraid of him to argue, then gone out and bought a new phone.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jane eat,’ Lizzy said. ‘I never thought you’d end up with some anorexic bird.’

OMG WHAT LMFAOOO

Remember that big girl you went out with at school. What was her name?’ ‘Natalie,’ Lizzy said, pulling a face. ‘Fat Nat.’

‘We might not be the world’s greatest parents but at least none of our children ended up fat.’ ‘Yeah, glad to see you’ve lost some weight since we got here, Gem,’ said Lizzy.

Stuart had put his knife and fork down and was clenching his fists. I wi...

Jeff turned to me. ‘Really sorry to hear about your colleague. Killed by a burglar, was it? Tragic.’ Now it was my turn to contain my rage. How dare he bring it up? He...

‘First, your parents died in a hot-air balloon crash. I mean, what are the chances of that? Then that nice old couple next door got their heads bashed in. Another burglary gone wrong. And now your partner. I’m going to start calling you The Jinx.’

oraaaa

If I’d had any lingering doubt about this being the right thing to do, it had now vanished.

But then I had thought about Amira and George and Edith. I reminded myself what Jeff and Lizzy had done to Mickey and Delilah, torching their caravan. I pictured the scars on Gemma’s belly.

‘Haven’t given us food poisoning, have you, Elliot?’ And then it started to happen.

the magic is abt to happen.

With a terrible groan, she bent over double, her face almost touching the tabletop. Jeff jumped up from his chair and crouched beside her.

A spasm of pain must have hit him too. He clutched his chest and fell on to his knees. Stuart and Gemma were both on their feet now, staring open-mouthed at their mum and dad. Lizzy tried to get up, but her legs gave out beneath her and she collapsed on to the wooden floor.