Page 58 of The Taskmaster
“Angela Maynard,” he pressed. “Come on, Abigail. Drinks can wait; the answers can’t.”
I stood in my living room, trying to decide how I should play this.
“She isn’t anyone important,” I said, still not sure how much I wanted to divulge.
“She was important enough for you to risk everything. Or do you make a habit of breaking into women’s homes and tying them up, you know, just for fun. Because if that’s the answer, that’s totally fine. But let’s be real here. We both know that’s not the truth.”
“I just... I...” I was stumbling over my words. I didn’t want to admit who she was, and my dumb brain couldn’t figure out a clever enough answer.
“I’ll rephrase my question then, make it easier for you. Or harder, depending on your answer.” He regarded me for a moment, then cocked his head and asked, “Why did you target her?”
“Because she deserved it,” I blurted out, letting my mouth override my brain.
“Why?” He sat forward, looking at me intently, eager for my answer.
“Because she’s a shitty human being.”
He nodded like he understood. “There’s a lot of them about. And I’ve learned over the years that some humans don’t deserve to be here. It’s doing a service to mankind to take them out. So, now we’ve got that part out of the way, tell me exactly why Angela Maynard was a shitty human.”
I faltered, unsure what to say.
And then, I remembered, this guy had watched me kill a woman. He’d burned her house down to destroy the evidence and helped me to dispose of her body. He’d chased my stalker, and now he was sitting in my living room, telling me he got it, that some people deserved to die. I had to tell him something...
Fourteen Years ago...
“It’s probably best you don’t come in. This home isn’t like yours, Abi. The springs on the sofa stick into your ass when you sit down and you don’t get to choose what you watch on the TV,” Stacey joked as we stood on the street where her children’s home was.
But it wasn’t a joke. She really didn’t want me to go in. I knew she felt embarrassed about living here, maybe a little ashamed, but she didn’t need to be. It wasn’t her fault that she had no other choice.
Some of us aren’t lucky in the parent department. Stacey’s parents were drug addicts who were either in jail, some kind of facility, or on the streets. I’d lost track of where since I’d met her. Being in a stable home was better for Stacey than being with her parents, but that stable home didn’t look the same as it did for me.
“I don’t care about the sofa or the TV,” I told her, wishing she could see this through my eyes. I didn’t care about any of it. She was my friend. I just wanted to be with her, and make her laugh like she did at school. “I need help with my maths homework, and my dad is at work till late tonight, so your house is better than mine right now.”
“I highly doubt that.” She sighed, and then her shoulders sagged like she was resigning herself to me being here. “But fine. You can come in. But we’ll have to stay out of Jilly and Angela’s way. Be quiet when we go in, and we’ll head straight to my room.”
“I can be as quiet as a mouse.” I grinned and followed her to the front door of the home. “They’ll never know I’m there.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Stacey replied as she unlocked the door.
We both stepped inside, and the smell of cooking made me wrinkle my nose. It wasn’t the nice kind of smell, like when my mum cooked the dinner. This smelt like steamed cabbage and rotten vegetables. I looked at Stacey, but she didn’t seem to react. Maybe this was what the home smelt like all the time. Perhaps I was being too fussy. I didn’t want to be a snob. So, I started to breathe through my mouth and hide the distasteful expression on my face.
Stacey held her finger to her mouth to tell me to shush, and I nodded. There was the sound of a TV coming from the room to the right of us. It was playing some kind of game show, and I could hear an older female voice shouting out the answers. I’d have expected cartoons or kids TV to be playing at this time of the day, but it wasn’t.
There were a few girls sitting at a table in what appeared to be a dining room directly opposite where we stood. I smiled at them, but they didn’t smile back. They just bowed their heads and carried on writing, probably doing their homework.
“This way,” Stacey said, leading me to the stairs, and we started to climb up to the next floor. “My dorm is the one at the end of the corridor.”
“Dorm?” I asked. I’d always assumed Stacey had her own room. “How many girls do you share with?”
“There’s four of us altogether,” she said, a blush spreading on her cheeks. She was embarrassed, and I felt like an idiot for putting her on the spot.
“That’s cool.” I smiled a little too eagerly, trying to make her feel better. “Like a sleepover every night. I bet you never get lonely.”
She put her head down, staring at the floor as she shrugged. “I never get any peace either.”
She creaked open the door to her dorm and peered around, and then she let out a breath, saying, “It’s empty, thank God.”
I walked in and glanced around at the bare white walls and plain covers on the four beds. There were no posters on the walls like I had. No teddy bears on the bed, or even fancy cushions. My mum loved buying fancy cushions for my room. I was always throwing them on the floor because there were too many.
