A Thousand Small Explosions (15 page)

CHAPTER 46

AMANDA

After three nights with little-to-no sleep, Amanda stopped off at Tesco on her way home from work and picked up some over-the-counter sleeping tablets.

She had hoped that a solid night’s slumber might offer her some perspective on Jenny’s unexpected and remarkable offer of allowing her to carry Richard’s baby. But instead, the pills left her feeling sluggish and unable to think clearly the next morning.

Regardless, she went through the motions of crawling out of bed when her 7am alarm went off, of dragging her weary bones into the shower and then making herself look less like a zombie from The Walking Dead and more like an office worker with a generous application of foundation and under-eye cream.

Amanda’s work as a team leader for an energy supplier’s telesales division began four years earlier and she hadn’t treated it as anything other than a job, and certainly not a career. Lately, she was finding it an increasing struggle to garner the motivation to turn up for work each day. In fact, after Richard, she struggled to put her broken heart into anything any more. Her work, her family and her social life were all suffering and today, instead of trawling through spreadsheets of data, she’d been staring blankly at the computer screen or towards her booth’s front partition wall.

Barely a couple of hours would pass without Amanda opening the folder of photographs of Richard she’d created on her mobile phone or picturing herself travelling the world with him, marrying him and beginning her much craved family together. She’d even removed his old mobile phone that she’d found in his chest of drawers and sent the footage of him masturbating to her own phone. Now it was in her possession and she could pretend he’d made it only for her.

She asked herself what Richard would do if he were in her position, working in a job she hated with no light at the end of the tunnel. “He’d just leave,” she said to herself. “He’d pack up his bags and go travelling, in search of a better adventure.” However Amanda didn’t have to the guts to simply quit her job, although his mother Jenny had offered her the chance to go on a very different adventure. Her offer to use Richard’s stored sperm had come out of the blue and opened up a whole new potential path for her to tread.

‘Don’t make a decision straight away,’ Jenny had told her on the hillside where Richard’s ashes had been scattered. ‘Take your time to think about it and what it would mean to you to have his baby. Talk it over with your family but no matter what they say, remember that you’ll always have Emma and me on your side. We are your family too now.’

Having a child with a man who truly loved her was all that Amanda had ever wanted and until recently, it hadn’t seemed possible. She and Richard had been Matched but they’d never been given the opportunity to meet, yet she knew how she felt about him based only on being around the remnants of his life. Was that enough of a foundation to have his child? Of course it wasn’t and for a moment, Amanda listened as the rational side of her brain made its case. How would she explain to her family she was pregnant with the child of a dead man she’d never met? Is this really how she wanted to become a mother? Could she afford it? Could she even do it alone?

‘Amanda, can I have a word?’

The voice that came from behind startled her. She turned to see her line manager, Charlie, a man that she suspected was barely out of his teens but had the ability to patronise as well as any man double his age. She followed him into a large Perspex cube with a desk, a white board and a television screwed to the wall and he beckoned her to take a seat. He shuffled some papers he was holding.

‘I’ve been looking at your team’s sales figures and if I’m honest, they’ve been slipping,’ he began, and stroked his bum-fluff goatee beard to emphasise his disappointment. ‘Over the last two months, we’ve seen a consistent drop in leads from you guys and as a result, sales have stalled. Is there anything you’d like to talk about with me?’

“Like what?’ she asked herself, “Like the love of my life is dead and I’m considering having his baby?”

‘No,’ she replied instead. ‘I have a few personal issues I’m dealing with at the moment, I’m sorry if it’s affected my work. It won’t happen again.’

‘It has, it has,’ Charlie continued. ‘The thing is, Amanda, I’ve been looking at your file, and I see that you could have a potentially fruitful career here. If you keep your head down and work harder, there’s no reason why you couldn’t end up being promoted by this time next year. I mean, you’re quite a bit older than the other girls here and your documents say you’re not married and you don’t have a family. And as it’s probably getting a little too late for one of your own, you might as well have something to aim for, mightn’t you?’ He hoped she’d feel motivated by his words.

What he couldn’t recognise was that as Amanda stared back at him in disbelief at his comments, he’d also inadvertently made up her mind for her along with offering her an escape route.

‘Thank you, you patronising little prick,’ Amanda replied and rose to her feet. ‘You have definitely given me something to aim for. And it’s not going to come cheap.’

‘What I mean, what I was trying to say…’ Charlie began to backtrack but Amanda wasn’t prepared to listen. Instead, she stormed out of the room, headed across the corridor towards the Human Resources department and entered without knocking.

Within two hours she had negotiated a generous voluntary redundancy package including a bonus on the provision she wouldn’t take Charlie’s sexism or intrusion into her private life to an industrial tribunal. Then after walking down five flights of stairs, out of the building’s revolving doors and towards her car, she pulled her mobile phone from her pocket.

‘Hi Jenny, it’s Amanda,’ she began, trying to contain her excitement. ‘Yes, I want to do it. I want to have Richard’s baby.’

CHAPTER 47

CHRISTOPHER

‘Are you ready?’ Amy shouted up the stairs at Christopher.

              ‘Yes, just give me a moment,’ he replied from his office and looked at the chart on his computer screen to double check where Number Thirteen was. He was happy to find that she’d stuck to her schedule and was exactly where she was supposed to be. He liked it when they were creatures of habit as it made his job that much easier.

Faceless contacts buried deep on the World Wide Web provided him with downloadable programmes and software to help him learn everything he needed to know about the women he targeted and more, and it all began with a mobile phone number. That would lead to a name, age, address, their occupation, medical history and employment records. He could determine almost anything from their blood types to what they’d last purchased on eBay; the number of rewards they’d received on their supermarket loyalty cards to which drinks they’d ordered from Wetherspoons on a midweek-night out with their friends.  He’d discover everything from what contraceptives their doctors had prescribed them to their favourite movies list on Amazon Prime; their chosen brand of tampons to how much they spent on fake tan and cat food. Their lives were no longer their own to live and Christopher would be the one to determine how much time they had left.

Early on, he was aware secrecy and anonymity would be the key to his success. So on the off-chance Amy might use his computer without asking, she’d only have access to a guest profile he had set up in her name. His own profile had a password cipher programme he’d been assured would take months to crack by even some of the most experienced minds.

A Virtual Private Network made sure that Christopher’s IP number, his computer’s unique identifier, was buried at all times and ran all his online data via a secure and encrypted virtual tunnel that stopped all websites from tracking his online activity.

Each email he sent and received went through a programme that encrypted and decrypted each message and he used unlimited aliases and disposable addresses to register with Uflirt, the one and only App installed on each of his dozens of phones. Even his most basic searches were carried out by bypassing favoured search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, and using ones that never followed his searches thus retaining his privacy.

              It was the Tor network that allowed him to access the deep web where millions of websites and pages were created anonymously and individuals communicated privately. Even for Christopher, it was an eye opener as anything from drugs to firearms and paedophile pornography were available to purchase for the right price. It was there where he’d bought a job lot of smart phones for a fraction of British prices using Darkcoins, a more discreet version of Bitcoins. Then he had them couriered from somewhere in Eastern Europe to a PO Box he’d set up in London.

‘Chris!’ Amy shouted again, ‘Come on, we’re going to be late!’ He narrowed his eyes as he loathed abbreviations of his name.

By the time the couple found a parking space two streets away from the restaurant in Bow, they were ten minutes late. And while not being on time for an allotted appointment often made Christopher irritable, it didn’t matter so much if Amy was with him.

‘This menu looks lovely,’ she said, flicking through the pages of the leather bound book the maȋtre d’ handed them at their table. She smiled at Christopher and he felt his stomach perform somersaults. He smiled back at her and meant it.

‘It earned superb reviews in the Guardian’s Weekend magazine,’ Christopher replied, ‘that’s why I suggested it.’

He began to feel anxious and his muscles were tense but he disguised it from Amy. Tonight was going to be the most important night of their relationship so far and he’d managed to keep his preparations under the radar. He had booked the right table in exactly the right spot and now all he had to do was to wait for that special moment. 

As they glanced over the list of traditional British foods with a modern twist, their waitress appeared with bottled water and glasses.              

‘What would you recommend?’ Christopher asked politely. His mouth was dry so he took a large gulp of his water. He wasn’t listening when she read from the specials board, although he picked up on something about a toad in the hole with chilli spiced sausages and ham hock soup. He was more interested in focusing on the silver hoop in her pierced septum and how much pain she’d be in if he ripped it out.

He liked the way a dimple appeared when the waitress laughed as Amy made a joke about a courgette dish with a name prone to innuendo, and how she tucked her short, dark hair behind her ears and cocked her head to one side like a dog as she listened.

It was the first time Christopher had ever permitted his two worlds to collide. The light with the dark, the sun with the shade and his girlfriend with Number Thirteen.

CHAPTER 48

BETHANY

Bethany could pinpoint the exact moment the touch paper caught light and the fireworks began to explode throughout her body.

She was making her way towards her rental car to head into town and pick up some groceries for Kevin's parents when, through the bedroom window, she spotted Kevin being helped to dress. Without warning it was as if the floor had given way beneath her and she felt herself falling. She struggled to catch her breath and her body felt as light as a feather as if she were in zero gravity. She wasn't sure when she landed. The only thing she could be certain about was that time had frozen and the only two people in the big wide world who mattered were him and her.

There had been times when they'd been around each other that she'd felt occasional jabs and twitches, but she couldn't be certain what they meant. Then as she let down her guard and began living for the moment rather than thinking about a future she and Kevin could never have, her sensations became more frequent and she also began feeling other unusual reactions when near him. But this . . . well this was something she had only ever read about.

As she watched them make their way out of Kevin's room, through the house and into the courtyard, their eyes locked on to each other and she knew that she'd been hit with a lightning bolt. It had taken much longer than she had anticipated but then she was at the epicentre of exceptional circumstances and now a deeper connection had been made between them. It wasn't just a crush, she wasn't feeling sorry for him or his exceptional circumstances, and it wasn't something that was going to burn out long after he did. It was love in its purest form - and it scared her to death.             

'Are you okay?' Kevin asked.

'Of course,' Bethany replied. 'Why?'

'You look a bit flushed, that's all.'

Bethany smiled but found it hard to maintain eye contact. Because it was Kevin she was supposed to have fallen in love with, not his brother Mark who was escorting him.

CHAPTER 49

NICK

Everything Nick had assumed he knew about love, from his first schoolboy crush on soap star Holly Valance to Sally, the only woman he’d ever asked to marry him, was wrong.

Because what he had felt for them, plus the numerous other girlfriends he’d dated over the years, was nothing compared to how he felt when he was in the presence of Alex.

Nick’s life might have been enviable to some. He lived with a woman he adored in an apartment with ever growing equity and was working in a job that was compatible with his creative ability.  He had friends he enjoyed spending time with and parents and a brother he didn’t see too often but stayed in regular contact with through FaceTime and text. All in all, there was much to be grateful for.

It was only now, with Alex hovering in the shadows, that he knew he’d simply been content. And with each moment spent in Alex’s company, Nick knew that contentment was no longer enough to satisfy him.

In the days and weeks that followed, their friendship escalated as each found the other’s company intoxicating. They grabbed every available opportunity to spend time together, from meeting for lunch at Itsu and McDonalds to walking with each other to the tram station after work. They chatted like old friends about schooldays spent on opposite sides of the world and ambitions they had yet to fulfil. And at times, it was simply enough just to be with each other without needing to say a word.

Alex spoke candidly about his father’s battle with dementia and how his medication was keeping him on an even keel. However, his mother had warned it was a temporary measure and it wouldn’t be long before they’d lose him to the disease. And it was Alexander senior who would be the reason that his son’s relationship with Nick was destined to remain temporary, because Alex and his girlfriend’s flights to New Zealand were booked for six weeks’ time.

Along with their partners, Alex’s imminent departure was a second subject the two didn’t refer to often. Each time the elephant tried to force its way back into the room, they’d attach another padlock to the door. And neither of them wanted to hear the hinges beginning to creak under the elephant’s weight.