The Magpies A Psychological Thriller

Twenty


Kirsty and Heather sat in the staff canteen. Heather was going on and on about how Paul had ruined her life.

Kirsty was sympathetic, but she was also tired of hearing about it. Firstly, it wasn’t as if Heather was the first person in the history of the universe to get chucked. It happened every single frigging day, but Heather was acting as if life had conjured up a cruel punishment for her alone; something unique. All that had happened was that Paul had decided that he didn’t want to be with Heather any more. He had been through a trauma. He clearly had things to work out and work through, and Heather was in the way. End of story.

Secondly, Kirsty had problems of her own. The dreams had returned – the terrible dreams of delight turning to horror inside the gingerbread house. To make things worse, details from Paul’s coma dream had seeped into her dream, so the roof of the house was battered by flying beasts, creatures with sharp talons and a rank smell, creatures that – she knew without a doubt – wanted her dead.

Waking up offered little respite. Jamie was in a world of his own, paranoid and jittery, convinced he was going to lose his job and all his friends because of this business with the computer virus. He had stayed awake all night, making these bizarre grumbling noises. She didn’t think he was aware he was doing it. He had looked really shocked when she had taken a blanket with her into the living room and curled up on the sofa.

She was sick of it all. She wanted out.

Their dream home had turned out to be, well, a nightmare. They were living above a pair of psychopaths. That was the only word for them. Sending spiders in to terrify her; taping her in her most private moments; robbing her of the ability to relax. That was one of the worst things. She had a really stressful job – ten times as stressful as Jamie’s job, dealing as she did with mortality and sickness every day – and she needed a sanctuary. Somewhere to switch off, chill out, recover from the stresses of the day. But no – she was forced to tiptoe around her own flat, and if she forgot about the Newtons for a second, Jamie would say something to remind her. Before they went to Gretna, she had been coping. The thrill of finding out she was pregnant and the thought of being a mother had made her feel calm and happy. She had managed to switch off; she had made a conscious effort to leave the worrying to Jamie. She couldn’t afford to worry. She had another life inside her. Anxiety and stress were bad for the baby. That was common sense.

That had all changed in Gretna. As soon as she saw that grave she knew she had been kidding herself. And when they got home and found that word written on the computer screen – proving that someone had been in the flat – that was the last straw.

She wanted to leave the flat. Because now, not only did she feel stressed in there, she felt unsafe as well. Her own flat was the gingerbread house in her dream. Her subconscious had been warning her for months, telling her to get out. In retrospect, she had thought there was something not right about Lucy the first time she met her. Something about Lucy had made her bristle, although she hadn’t admitted it at the time. Kirsty thought Lucy was dangerous – more so than Chris – and she didn’t want her child anywhere near her.

It was no place to bring up a child – in an atmosphere like that. Children needed space, somewhere to run and play. They couldn’t spend their lives on tiptoe. All that ‘children should be seen and not heard’ crap had gone out of the window years ago. And it wasn’t just that. If anyone she had ever met was capable of violence – including violence against children – it was Lucy. She wouldn’t say this to anyone, because they would think she was mad, but living above Lucy felt like living next door to a child molester.

Her mind was made up on the train home from Scotland. They were going to have to move.

But Jamie refused to even think about leaving the flat. ‘If we do,’ he said, ‘we’ll be giving in to them. It’s what they want. We can’t quit.’ Or, ‘Once they get used to us living here they’ll probably stop harassing us.’ Or, ‘We can’t afford to move anywhere else.’

Well, that last excuse was bullshit. They could sell the flat and get a similar one somewhere else. Or they could sell the flat and buy a house outside London. They could find new jobs, make new friends. It wouldn’t be that difficult. That part of Jamie’s argument was easy to shoot down.

She knew Jamie didn’t really believe that the Newtons would get bored or accustomed to them and leave them alone. She had once tried to persuade herself of that, but now she knew she had been foolish, naive. And Jamie knew as well as her that things would only get worse.

So that left the real reason he didn’t want to move. Typical male shit. He didn’t want to be seen to give in, to quit, to wave the flag of surrender. As if leaving would make him less macho somehow. At first she had actually agreed with this point of view. She didn’t believe in being pushed around. She didn’t want to give Lucy and Chris the satisfaction of knowing they had won. But now things were different. They had the baby to think about. Kirsty had seen an image of death, heard the portentous caw of the crow.

They were going to move out. And if Jamie didn’t want to go with her she would go alone.