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Chapter 24
Thea closed the front door. She was looking forward to seeing her sister, but wondering what on earth had gone so wrong with their financial situation that she’d had to return to work – although she wouldn’t be working for the next few weeks, unless she could work from home, and her job was desk-based.
Apart from spotting an old laptop gathering dust in the lounge, Thea hadn’t seen a spare room set up as a study. She had looked through the window of the summerhouse in the garden, but that wasn’t a home office either. Thea found the hoover, and decided to vacuum round the house and nosy around. Half an hour later, she’d been in every room and had found no computers, laptops or office equipment that suggested either Jenna or Mark were working from home.
While she was hoovering and cleaning the bathrooms – there were three ensuites, a family bathroom, and a downstairs cloakroom – Thea found a pile of ironing in the utility room on top of the washing machine. Before she found the ironing board, she used her mobile phone to search for information about the hospital. Despite promising Toby and Katie she’d take them to visit their mum after school, she realised she didn’t know the visiting hours. She was hoping to pop along that morning as well; she didn’t want to wait all day to see Jenna. However, she was disappointed to learn that visiting hours were in the afternoon.
Thea wanted a private conversation with her sister to find out what was going on; she’d discovered there were none of Mark’s clothes in the ironing or the laundry. She finished the piles of ironing and took the clothes upstairs, depositing Katie’s and Toby’s in their bedrooms.
Thea returned to her room, picked up the pile of used bedsheets she’d left in a pile last night when she’d made up the bed with fresh sheets, and headed downstairs to the utility room. As she was loading the washing machine, she guessed who had been using the spare bedroom – Mark.
As Thea pressed the start button on the washing machine, she heard the sound of a mobile phone. She knew it wasn’t hers; she didn’t recognise the ringtone. She raced into the kitchen. It was Jenna’s phone. Was it the school contacting her because something had happened to one of the twins? Or maybe one of them had mouthed off in class and was suspended?
If Mark and Jenna had split up, wouldn’t that be par for the course, that one or both of the twins would go off the rails? But they’d got up, showered, and got dressed in their uniforms, and they had done their homework the previous night. They were acting like it was another ordinary week in their household. But it wasn’t – not at all.
Perhaps she was reading way too much into the situation; Mark had just found a more lucrative job in the city to help pay the bills, so it probably wasn’t as bad as Thea thought at all.
She knew why she’d jumped to conclusions; after what Miles had done, Thea couldn’t imagine trusting anyone else, not even her brother-in-law. Not any man.
Thea grabbed her bag, fumbled inside for the phone, and answered it. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello Jenna.’
Under normal circumstances, if she’d had to answer someone else’s phone, she would have immediately corrected the caller as to the identity of the person they were speaking to – but Thea was so surprised by the sound of the caller’s voice on the end of the phone that she barely managed a ‘Yes?’ The voice sounded inhuman, like something she’d heard once on a Hollywood movie where the caller had disguised their voice. It sounded as though she was talking to a computer.
She wasn’t surprised the caller wouldn’t question who they were speaking to. Thea knew that she and her sister sounded alike.
‘I would like to acquire the package.’
‘The package?’
‘You know – the book.’
‘All right.’ Thea didn’t know what else to say.
‘We talked of a figure before. Is that still agreeable?’
The disguised voice sent shivers down her spine. She had the urge to put the phone down, but if the caller had her sister’s mobile phone number, perhaps they knew where she lived too.
Her mum’s boxes in the garage came to mind. She rolled her eyes. What would someone want with her mum’s old things?
‘Are you still there?’ the artificial voice on the end of the phone asked.
‘Yes.’
‘So, what are your thoughts? Are you agreeable to the arrangement?’
Agreeable to the arrangement?Thea had no clue what this was about, but she did get the impression she wasn’t speaking to someone of her generation; she imagined they could be middle-aged, perhaps older.
‘Remind me what figure we were talking about.’
‘I see. All right. I’ll up the figure. I remember you asked for more money before.Ten is my client’s final offer.’
Thea raised her eyebrows. His client. So the caller was a go-between, acting on behalf of someone. What was with all this cloak-and-dagger stuff about for what she presumed was a second-hand book? ‘I suppose ten pounds sounds fair,’ Thea said.
The caller on the end of the phone started to laugh, the synthesised voice sounding even more creepy – if that were possible. Thea held the phone away from her ear until she heard him – she presumed it was a man, but really had no idea because their voice was disguised – speak again.
‘Ah, okay, I get it. We are speaking in code. Now, are we going to make the transaction in the same way as before?’
