Catherine Hunt - Someone Out There

There was a look on Anna’s face that Laura had seen before. A set, purposeful look and it meant that Anna had gone into fight-back mode, like a switch had flipped in her brain; the victim mentality was banished, replaced by total determination never again to let her husband bully or control her.

‘Don’t let up on him, Laura. I don’t want to give him an inch.’ Anna’s eyes were bright, not with tears this time, but with a kind of crusading zeal. The traumas she had gone through seemed to have given her strength; she wasn’t bowing her head now.

‘We’ll get there in the end. You’ve done fantastically well so far,’ Laura encouraged.

‘I couldn’t get through this without you, I’d fall apart.’ Anna shuddered then looked at her watch. ‘I should go, I have to pick up Martha.’

‘Soon as I hear from the police, I’ll you know.’

Anna stood up to leave and Laura stood too, gave her a hug.

‘Take care,’ she said.

Anna eyes went to the cut on Laura’s face. ‘You take care too.’

‘Oh, that. It’s nothing. Just me being careless.’

There was a knock on the door and Sam O’Donnell, the office manager and IT expert, stuck his head in.

‘Laura, sorry to interrupt but could I have a quick word when you’re free?’

‘It’s OK, I’m just going,’ Anna said.

Sam shut the door carefully behind her. He was a big bear of a man who liked a chat and a joke but now he stood silent, fidgeting with a piece of paper he had in his hand.

‘I thought you should see this. It was posted on our divorce forum.’

It was from someone with the username ‘themaxwellbitch’. Laura felt her face turn scarlet.

Morrison Kemp had a divorce message board on its website where members of the public could share experiences, give opinions, or ask advice and it was part of Sam’s job to keep an eye on it. The message had been added to a thread called ‘Final Settlement’.

‘I’ve removed it and blocked the sender so they can’t post any more,’ he told her.

Laura read it, conscious of Sam’s eyes on her. She hoped he wouldn’t be chatting about this.

‘Do you have any idea who did it?’

‘Afraid not. Whoever it is, is a bit of a joker though. The email they’ve used is registered as “marcus.morrison3”.’ Sam grinned awkwardly at her. ‘I know the boss can be a bit of a shit but I don’t think it’s him.’

Laura couldn’t raise a smile.

‘Sorry, Laura.’ Sam cleared his throat. ‘Lousy sense of humour.’

‘Laura Maxwell, you are an evil bitch. You destroy lives. You feed off men’s misery – you take their daughters away from them. Understand how much I hate you. I think about it all the time, how to put a stop to you, how to settle the score. I’m not planning on settling in court. I have other plans for a final settlement. Better watch out.’

It was not the first time in her career that Laura had been called a bitch and threatened; in fact, she’d been called a lot worse and had had to grow a tough skin over the years. Really, she thought, the posting should not have rattled her as much as it did. But the last twenty-four hours had left her jittery.

Laura watched Joe as he read the message; saw his expression change to one of outrage. They’d been together for five years now but she never got tired of looking at him. He was distractingly handsome; tall and muscular, without being too beefy, he had thick black hair and a broad smile that brought dimples to his cheeks. His eyes, framed with long lashes, were blue and dazzling.

‘Charming. Any idea who sent it?’ he said.

‘I’m wondering if it could be this guy Harry Pelham. I’m representing his wife and he’s been sending her death threats. Maybe he’s lashing out at me too.’

They were sitting on the sofa after dinner, cosy in front of the TV, half watching a programme about the hotel industry. Joe had wanted to see it as it featured a hotel he knew further along the coast but he’d lost interest, complaining it was rubbish and only interested in negative, headline grabbing stuff. Laura took the chance to raise her own problems. She didn’t often discuss her work with Joe but tonight, just for once, she had an urgent need to spill it all out. She’d had a night and a day from hell and it had left her feeling anxious and vulnerable. She reached for the wine bottle on the table and poured herself another glass.

‘Have you talked to the police?’ he asked.

‘I got some info from them this afternoon. Harry Pelham was arrested this morning but now he’s in hospital for some reason. He’s under arrest there apparently, but I couldn’t get any more out of the duty officer and can’t speak to the guy in charge until tomorrow.’

Laura wished she had more contacts in the local police and could use the back channels to find out more details, but she hadn’t been around long enough to get to know many of the officers. The name of the man running the Pelham investigation, Detective Inspector David Barnes, meant nothing to her.

Joe picked up the remote and turned off the sound on the TV. He put his arm around Laura’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

‘Sounds like the crazy Mr Pelham needs locking up permanently.’

‘Fat chance. Best I’ll get is a restraining order to keep him away from his wife.’

‘If he’s threatening you too now, they need to do something.’

‘The trouble is Sam says it’s impossible to prove who posted the message. Whoever it is has hidden their tracks well.’

‘So it might not be him at all.’

‘No, it could be one of my other admiring fans.’ Laura forced a laugh and snuggled up against him, touching the cleft in his chin, then running her fingers down to his chest.

She told him about Mary Hakimi and how Morrison had behaved, and Joe called Morrison a pathetic old wanker and then did his impression of him which made her laugh for real. It was good to be able to talk to Joe about work for a change. He hardly ever asked about it and she knew he found it a difficult subject. She had had, was still having, a very successful career. He had not. Of course, he’d chosen the most precarious and unpredictable of jobs. He’d wanted to be an actor, and although he had the looks of a Hollywood leading man, he’d never made it. His biggest claim to fame had been playing, if that was the right word, a corpse in Holby City . Now he was playing second fiddle to his younger brother in the family hotel business.

Laura understood why it might bother him and never gloried in her own success. She thought it was not her success that rankled with him, he was not that petty, but his own failure, at the age of thirty-five, to have done much in the world, to have made any kind of mark. She hoped his reinvention as a businessman would change things. As a mark of faith she had invested a substantial sum of her own money in the Greene hotel chain. She loved him very much and it had been one way of showing that love.

Joe had resisted joining the business. Since his father died ten years ago, his mother had run it with the help of her younger son, Peter. Helen Greene had been an iron lady, managing the family’s four hotels with tremendous energy and sound business sense accumulated over more than thirty years. But two years ago, when she was only fifty-nine, she’d had a stroke. It had paralysed her and she’d recovered only a bit. She could talk but her mental sharpness was gone and she could walk no more than a few steps. The hotels would have to soldier on without her for Helen Greene was not coming back. Now she lived in a nursing home on the South Downs, a few miles out of Brighton.

Joe had been forced to give up his job as a director with a small experimental theatre in London and become Peter’s business partner. It had made up Laura’s mind. She was burning herself out working for a big London legal firm and beginning to wonder why. Yes, she had a big salary and a glittering CV and great prospects, but she was into her thirties now and she wanted other things in life, was keen to have a family. She had been happy to scale down, move out of the fast lane. She would aim for a partnership in the provinces and maybe become a big fish in a regional pool.