Chapter 20
Zain, The Second
I don’t have any actual memories of the night I was killed that belong to me alone. Only from accessing those of my murderer do I know I was stabbed to death in my shop and left for dead. My murder remains unsolved, the police believing it to have been a botched robbery.
There are things I’ve wanted to explain to my host since I’ve been here. About how much I changed since the fateful night that brought us together the first time all those years ago. And all the positive things I did with my life afterwards. But such is the nature of my presence, I am unable to say anything they don’t already know. There are bits they pieced together about me after my death, like how I was married and father to a fifteen-month-old daughter. And it was only later, when reflecting on our meeting in the shop, that they closed their eyes and remembered the gold wedding band I wore on my finger, and the photograph of the baby attached to my keyring. Their conscious mind might have conveniently chosen to ignore them at the time, but the subconscious forgets nothing.
Deep down in parts I can’t reach, I hope it’s understood that I haven’t always been a bad person. I don’t reckon anyone is born evil. Everyone makes a thousand different choices each day, so it stands toreason some might be poor ones. Did I deserve to die for mine? No, I don’t think I did. But someone clearly thought differently.
There was someone else here inside this new home of mine when I arrived all those months ago. We didn’t get a chance to meet, but I felt her presence brush past me as I entered. And soon, I will be like my ghostly predecessor, brushing past my replacement, who presently lies in front of us, unconscious and sprawled across the sofa in her lounge. She is sick again and close to death. And I cannot wait for it to happen.
We’re sitting in a chair opposite Jenny, listening to the cackles and splutters coming from her throat. She is a familiar face to us both, but for different reasons. And we both want the same thing from her – for her to die. Because the moment I get my wish will be the moment I am set free.
Jenny’s final moments are very different to mine. My passing was instantaneous but hers has been drawn out. More care has been taken with it.
Jenny’s name, along with mine and two others’, was included on the list unearthed in a house when its occupants were packing up their belongings to emigrate. Only there was no current address for Jenny and, despite searching, no social media profile either. But a contact made through work at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency offered Jenny’s most recent location, alongside a married surname. Then, bingo! An Instagram profile was found under that name. Like me, she’d only recently returned to the UK after spending years working abroad, but as a holiday rep. No doubt she’d also been running as far as she could from her past.
Jenny liked to post throwback photographs of her carefree days, a much younger version of herself on boating excursions or bar crawls with captions suggesting that while such hedonism was fun, it was also long behind her. They were peppered with inspirational quotes about second chances, along with several references to the Serenity Prayer, often used as a comfort to those now free of addictions. I felt theanger swelling inside my host, learning Jenny was getting her life back together while her victims remained hamstrung by theirs.
She now works for herself as an event planner. At least she did until this morning. A bogus appointment was made to meet at her house to discuss a marketing opportunity for a fake company. Once invited inside, she returned from the kitchen with two cups of tea, only to find a bottle of vodka sitting on her coffee table.
I watched through the eyes of my host as Jenny panicked upon learning who her guest really was. Her face paled as she tried, with a tremulous voice, to end the confrontation. Instead, she was given a choice: she would either watch helplessly as social media was flooded with the truth about her wayward years, or she would drink a bottle of vodka – every drop, there and then.
Desperate to cling to her hard-earned sobriety, she tried to retaliate, suggesting there was no proof as to what she was being accused of. But it was quickly explained to her why it didn’t matter, that cancel culture always sides with the accuser above the defendant. Then a question was posed to her: What would upset her new husband more – that she had fallen off the wagon so soon into their marriage, or that she was being publicly accused of murder?
She glared at the bottle, then at her aggressor. And she poured her first half-pint glass.
Jenny’s initial sips were tentative, cautious, but the next were confident. It was like reuniting two old friends. She cried as she drank the second glass and said she thought she might vomit with the third. The substantial quantity of ketamine that had been poured into the bottle earlier that day knocked her out before she had a chance to pour the fourth.
An hour later, as she lay sprawled, unconscious, upon her back on her sofa, the first of the convulsions began.
And this is where we find ourselves now, in Jenny’s lounge, watching her slowly die. Any vomit that hasn’t spilled from her mouth likelava over the rim of a volcano remains trapped in her mouth and throat. As we await her suffocation, third-party fingerprints are wiped from her glass, and the vodka bottle is also cleaned and swilled out with water to rid it of any traces of ketamine. Her mobile is held to her face until it unlocks, and potentially incriminating telephone numbers and online calendar appointments are deleted.
Then finally it happens.
Without warning, I’m traveling backwards as if I’m on a moving conveyor belt, watching through someone else’s eyes as the world grows smaller and smaller until I’m completely alone. It’s then that I hear Jenny’s voice and I know for certain I’ve all but left my host behind, because Jenny is dead.
Inside our murderer, though, she is only just coming to life.
March
Eight Months Before Bonfire Night
Chapter 21
Margot
I’ve been guilt-tripped into this. A five-kilometre walk in aid of one of an endless number of breast cancer charities. It’s not that I don’t believe in the cause; I’m not entirely uncaring. It’s that I’d rather donate than actually have to beg for money like aBig Issuevendor.
‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we did the walk together?’ Liv asked Anna and me a few weeks earlier after announcing her participation.
No, it would be pretty much anything else aside from fun, I wanted to reply. And when I told her I’d check my diary and get back to her, I meant it. I’d get back to her with an excuse, then sponsor her £50 and think no more about it until she virtue-signalled her way across Instagram after the event. Then her waterworks flew like a lawn sprinkler as she explained how she was doing it in memory of a dead sister. And who can say no to a dead sister? Well, me, had it just been her and me in the room. But Anna was there too and she’s as malleable as Play-Doh. So of course she said yes, which meant muggins here got roped in.
What’s irritated me the most about this whole debacle is that Liv failed to mention it was a midnight walk. Bloody midnight!In March! Who goes for a walk at midnight in March aside from badgers and sex offenders?
It’s just before 11 p.m. when I leave our en-suite bathroom clad in a shapeless pink sweatshirt that I swear Liv deliberately ordered for me in a larger size (she claims it was a slip of the finger), with the name of a dead woman I’ll never meet emblazoned across the back. But the pièce de résistance is a headband with a light attached to the front.
‘Don’t,’ I warn Nicu when he clocks me in my full regalia. He’s under the bedcovers, smirking. ‘Just don’t.’
