What Lies Inside by Iain Maitland

Author:Iain Maitland [Maitland, Iain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

28

THURSDAY 27 JULY, 9.57PM

Six hours on from their return – Beauty, the Beast, the little girl - we are all now finally settled into place. I have agreed that Josie and Lily can stay, at least for tonight, until the danger from this Leon has passed.

As Adrian said - as he sidled up behind me in the hallway – this Leon will never let it go. He will not leave them with Adrian. He will go back to where they live and will lie in wait there for their return. “They are only safe here,” said Adrian, surprisingly firmly. “This is the one and only place he can’t find them.” He then added, “We don’t want to call the police.” And I agreed with that. Not here anyway. I don’t want them at the bungalow.

So we all had tea together and smiled and nodded as Adrian jerked and fiddled his way through that and the washing-up and the sitting around and playing with the little girl afterwards. They then went to bed in Adrian’s room while he “kipped down,” as he put it, in the living room. I have retreated to my room where, finally, with the sweat of the day drying on my back at last, I write in my diary one more time. About her. And how it ended.

As she stood by the bins, tipping in the rubbish, she looked across at me as if she wasn’t surprised to see me there at all. She did not look ashamed or guilty about what she had been doing - nor was she worried or concerned about me in any way. She did not even smile. She simply raised her eyebrows, pulled a face (as if to sneer ‘oh, it’s only you’) and kind of sniggered to herself. I swear she sniggered. I know she did. I saw her. I heard her too.

It was the snigger that made me so angry, if I am honest.

If she had not sniggered, I would have thought better of what I was going to do and walked away. For sure, I would have. Yes.

But she did. And so I had to do it. The fact is, she made me.

I smiled back at her when she sniggered. And then I hit her in the face with the heavy saucepan as hard as I possibly could. The first blow seemed to stun her into silence. Before she could regain her senses and scream, I hit her as hard as I could again. And Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. She was not able to scream after that. No, not at all.

If I am frank, I did lose my temper somewhat - my little ‘moment of madness’ as it were – and I struck her more times than I care to remember. In fact, I cannot recall just how many times I actually did.

I do know that I hit her quite hard each time and, towards the end, I found myself grunting out loud in time with the blows.

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