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Sheila

      The leather case containing the guns was cumbersome and heavy, making her shoulder muscles scream with the effort of pulling it towards her. Looking around to check that she wasn’t being watched, she tried to drag it out of the boot of her Porsche Panamera. Dead weight. Looked around again towards the garaging. The doors were closed. No sign of his car, thankfully.

      ‘Come on, Sheila,’ she counselled herself. ‘Grit your teeth, girl.’

      With a grunt, she heaved the case out. Dropped it heavily onto the gravel, narrowly missing the peep toes of her purple suede Louboutins. Slammed the boot shut, chipping a nail in the process.

      ‘Bastard thing,’ she said, lugging the guns awkwardly across the courtyard and up the steps to the front door. She would definitely have a couple of bruises on her shins by tomorrow. Shit. But at least the determined Mancunian rain wasn’t falling on her freshly blow-dried hair.

      Inside, her house was silent and pristine. The wooden floors shone. The smell of furniture wax was pungent in the air. The cleaners had gone for the day and the gardener wasn’t due until Friday.

      ‘Anybody home?’ she called out. Her voice bounced off the hard surfaces of the glazed banister and naked oak of the staircase. No response, though she hadn’t expected one.

      Flinging her keys onto the sideboard, Sheila kicked off her heels, carrying the guns to the lower level of the house. She bypassed the spa area and pool to enter the cinema room. It smelled of stale cigar smoke and the dregs at the bottom of Paddy’s empty single malt bottle and dirty tumbler. She made a mental note to chastise the cleaners for having missed it. Wrinkled her nose at the manly stink that reminded her too much of the Green Room in her brother-in-law’s club.

      ‘Hide it with the other guns and surprise him with it after tea, or leave it out for him to find?’ Sheila contemplated aloud, setting the leather case on the coffee table and clicking open the antique silver locks. She appraised the delicate metalwork of the shotguns, studded with semi-precious stones. Both guns were safely ensconced in their own blue velvet bed. Not her cup of tea, but she knew Paddy would appreciate these Ottoman flintlock rifles. Seventeenth century, the dealer had said. They’d go with his collection of swords, pistols and other shit, he had assured her. It was a perfect apology. She’d forked over a pile of her own cash for them, hoping they would be the ultimate oil to pour on troubled waters after Paddy had ‘discovered’ the email she had sent to Mam and Dad.

      All those years she’d fantasised about reforging the bond with her parents that Paddy had insisted she jettison. Decades of being desperate to tell her folks about the girls; about her life; about how much she missed them every single day. Bloody typical that Paddy had gone snooping through her email account when she’d finally had the balls to contact them on the quiet. She made a mental note to change her email password. Couldn’t hide anything from that nosey old bastard. Still, he had her best interests at heart, didn’t he?

      ‘Paddy, Paddy O’Brien,’ she intoned, looking over at the oil painting of her imperious husband that made him look a good deal less hatchet-faced and more sanguine than he really was. ‘You difficult, moody sod.’ She snapped the gun case shut. ‘I hope to God these cheer you up.’

      The sound of a door slamming against a wall and a trill of what she was sure was a woman’s laughter made her freeze. Sheila stood tall. Breathing in shallow gasps, she strained to work out where the sound had come from. The spa, perhaps? There was certainly somebody in the house with her. Snatching one of the antique long-barrelled flintlocks, she held the gun out ahead of her and stalked towards the spa. Heart thudding. Forcing herself to be brave. No way of creeping back upstairs to see from the alarm keypad if there had been an intrusion via another zone in the sprawling Bramshott mansion.

      To speak, or not to speak. That was the question.

      ‘Who’s there?’ she said quietly. Unconvincingly.

      The thick grey carpet swallowed the sound of her shoeless footfalls. Just ahead loomed the glazed door that separated the cinema room from the spa area and pool. A glimpse of the turquoise glittering pool, its spot-lit ripples dancing white and silver on the vaulted brick ceiling. There was the laughter again.

      ‘Oh, Paddy!’ shouted a woman’s voice.

      Paddy’s low voice, rumbling. Saying something indistinct. More laughter.

      Sheila edged open the spa door, shaking with adrenalin, poised for fight or flight. Her sharp eyes darted to the left. To the right. Scanning the tranquil scene. Clean, pale grey tiles. Perfect azure water, still but for the gush of the filtration jets set into the sides of the pool. Teak loungers, arranged at an artful angle. There was nothing to see. And yet, she had not imagined the voices.

      Her heartbeat bounced her forwards, almost audible in a lofty space where only the air-conditioning unit buzzed quietly in the background.

      ‘Come here, you dirty girl. Come to Paddy.’

      And there it was. No doubt in her mind. Paddy’s voice, thick with the lustful intent that she recognised immediately. Blatant, inconsiderate bastard. Shitting on his own doorstep. This was a new low.

      Though she knew the flintlock was not loaded, she kept the heavy gun hoisted high on her shoulder. Deciding how to tackle this situation. Her options were: walk away and pretend she had not happened upon what was almost certainly a clandestine coupling; shout, ‘Hello!’ announcing her presence, giving them time to make themselves respectable and fashion some bullshit excuse; or creep up on the bastards and give them the fright of their lives.

      Padding towards the sound of heavy breathing and the rustle of fabric, Sheila realised the sauna held her husband and his extra-marital mate. The door was standing open. The sound of giggling and Paddy’s lascivious groaning slid out on the steamy, seamy air.

      Following the gun’s line of sight, Sheila held her breath. Anger grabbing her natural reticence by the throat and squeezing the apologetic life out of it. She took a noiseless step into the cedar-clad cabana and hefted the gun up to Paddy’s head. His eyes were shut. A beatified smile was plastered across his lying, scheming face. At his feet, a naked young blonde was crouched, gobbling his cock with some enthusiasm. The soles of her feet were dirty, the heels crusty with dried skin.

      ‘Surprise!’ Sheila said, savouring the sight of her sexually incontinent husband grabbing at his heart and almost leaping clear of the cabana bench.

      With a yelp, the young woman – no more than a girl – jumped to her feet, covering her silicone breasts with splayed fingers. Bitten fingernails. Not a mark on her belly, though. This one had certainly not borne children. But then, Paddy always liked them young.

      ‘Who are you?’ the girl shouted.

      ‘I’m his damned wife,’ Sheila said, intoxicated by the heady bloodlust. She swung the barrel of the flintlock towards the girl and dug it into her right breast. ‘That’s who I am. Mrs Bleeding O’Brien. And you’re trespassing in my house and on my husband.’

      The girl’s face wrinkled up into an expression that threatened tears or a bout of hysteria. But there was something familiar about her.

      ‘Sheila. You’re out of fucking line!’ Paddy said. ‘It’s not what you think. You’re frightening her, you bullying bitch. She’s only a kid.’

      Only a kid. Only a kid. That’s where she knew the girl from. She scrutinised the line of the girl’s eyebrows beneath the heavy, dark eyebrow pencil. Noticed the shape of her lips beneath the now-smudged Ronald McDonald red lipstick.

      ‘Didn’t you go to school with my Dahlia?’ she asked, pushing the barrel hard into the girl’s breast bone. ‘Stacey Wheelan.’

      ‘Tracy Wheelan,’ the girl said. A meek, almost infantile voice, as her false lashes flickered shamefully down towards her vajazzle and back up towards Paddy. Pleading eyes, clearly wishing her sugar daddy would sweeten this

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