Chapter 28

1st October 2015: 21:18 pm.

I was calling Ted’s phone and it was switched off. I knocked on Zhang’s door a couple of times, but he wasn’t there. Elizabeth was still sleeping and I knew that there was only one thing for me to do. There was only one place that Ted would go and that was the office.

I hadn’t even heard Zhang leave. I was too busy panicking about what was going on in Ted’s head. I needed him to trust me, believe that i was his only hope. I looked around my apartment, the one that he bought only two years ago and said that he was generously putting it in my name. I knew then that I had to think of a way to make sure that he was mine. I needed it to be not mine, but ours, both Ted’s and mine.

We had a three bedroom ground-floor flat in Fulham whereas Ted and her had a 5-bedroom, four story house in Belgravia. Not that I was comparing. I walked around my living room, which didn't take long, because the most that could fit into it was a corner sofa, a glass center piece table and a four-dining room leather chairs at the corner of the room. I’d tried to make the place look more spacious with the natural wooden floors, but it wasn't a proper home. Not like theirs. We had a small garden at the back and Elizabeth was happy for the little swing that Ted had put there when we’d first got the place, but she soon grew out of it. There wasn't much space for anything else. Even a barbecue would feel crowded, not that I was one for eating meat or entertaining, unlike the Rogers family.

I had been to their house on two occasions; once when Ted had been celebrating Emma’s twenty fifth birthday party and they had just bought the house, the one that would soon be my home. Emma had had no money before they’d got married and now, the only money in her account was from Ted. It was the money that I’d helped him earn by using every trick in the book to help his company grow. If someone was hacking their systems then Emma would be right back where she started: penniless with a criminal record or safely behind bars, a little divorce present from me.

Emma had done nothing to deserve it. He just felt loyalty towards her, because she’d developed a drug habit, something that I used to my advantage. She might appear clean, but I knew that once the police sniffed around the right places that they would doubt her.

My thoughts darted to Ted as I went into our daughter’s bedroom. I’d painted as if it was Princess Sophia’s bedroom. My daughter was just as good as Emma’s. In fact she was better, because she was conceived out of love.

“Zhang, just fucking call me back! Where are you?” I sat on her bed, hoping that he would call me back and reassure me.

I picked up the phone again. Again, it went to leaving a message. “Zhang, I need to know. What’s going on?”

I started to hit my hands on my head with my mobile. Ted wasn’t calling, and if I didn’t know any better I would suspect that he knew something. He had been gone over an hour. It took around thirty minutes or so to get to the office.

Didn’t he worry about Elizabeth? What was happening to her? Sure, when he left she was sleeping, but she could have woken up by now.

I needed to think.

I had to get rid of all the negativity, otherwise things wouldn’t work. I just had to get it out of my head that things weren’t going to go according to plan. I stared out at the garden. I suppose I was at an advantage to her. Emma didn’t have a garden, just communal gardens at the front of the house. The home had balconies, so that they could view the lives of the wealthy. Spying on the wealthy, watching them as they made their mistakes, thinking that no-one was looking. I would be looking. I would make sure that they paid for their ways.

There was only one thing to do that would make sure that Ted was on my side. That nothing had changed about my loyalty to him.

I called him once more, “Ted, you haven’t called since you’ve left. I’m worried.”

Elizabeth woke up and looked at me with such tired eyes. “Mommy what’s wrong?”

I stroked her hair, thinking about what I had put her through just to make her daddy see sense. It didn’t seem right that she had to suffer for his mistakes, it wasn’t her fault and it certainly wasn’t mine that he had stayed married to Emma for so long. That he hadn’t divorced her and let us move into the home instead of staying in this pokey little apartment.

“Is Daddy here?”

“No,” I kissed her on the head. I hadn’t asked her about her ordeal with that woman. The one that was living in our home.

“Did that woman hurt you?”

She shook her head, she was still sleepy, but I didn’t know what to do with her. My emotions were like an out of control steam train, completely off the tracks, because I felt as if I was losing Ted. That was what happened whenever I was worried about losing him. I wouldn’t think straight and do something that I shouldn’t be doing. Something that could completely fuck everything up.

Elizabeth whispered, “No, Mommy.”

I wondered if she thought that I was talking about one of the police officers, because she didn’t ask which woman. It had all been too easy. Everything I had predicted Emma would do, she had done. Wives were like a colony of ants, you give them a path of sugar lumps and they’d follow it. Emma never left home on time. She always left it to the last minute, so making sure that the car didn’t work and judging how she’d get to school was easy enough. I’d followed her enough times, to know exactly how her mind worked, and she was like an open book, one that anyone could read if they were paying enough attention to the fine details.

I decided that I couldn’t sit and wait here any longer. I didn’t want Elizabeth to worry about the ordeal that she had incurred today, but I needed to figure out who was taking our money and to make sure that everything was going according to plan. I couldn’t be complacent and I never assumed anything, I always checked on things to make sure that they were going in the right direction.

I smiled as I looked into her dark eyes, “Mommy has to go out for a while, I’m going to call Michelle to come and look after you. Okay?”

Michelle was a college student always desperate for money, and she lived close. She saw me one time with Elizabeth and, after helping me with my shopping, I asked her if she could babysit. I’d had a good feeling about her from day one. And she always minded Elizabeth and I never had problems with her. Elizabeth wrapped her hands around me, “Mommy I’m scared and it’s dark outside.”

I thought about the other little girl that was in the darkness. The one that I was supposed to be talking to Ted about, so we could put the final pieces together. I didn’t want her to be away from home for more than one day. That wasn’t part of the plan. Everything had to go to my schedule, because like a colony of ants, if one of them is separated the rest became lost and disorientated, and that was what was going on at the moment and I needed to put everything in line once again. I had to be the Queen Ant. The one that restored order. I was good at it. No - I was fucking fantastic at it.

I really had put Elizabeth through a terrible ordeal, but it wasn’t my fault. It was Ted’s, and most of all Emma’s. If she’d left him and happily walked away with nothing, then none of this would be happening. Or, if she’d done us all a favor and overdosed properly, then we could all get on with our lives. I would be living in the house. I wouldn’t have to go around kidnapping little girls and worst of all I wouldn’t have to put my daughter in the hands of an ex-drug user.

I shook my head trying to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Mommy will make you a pizza and then Michelle will come around. I’m sure she’ll let you watch a movie.”

Her eyes lit up. “Movie? Pizza?”

I knew what to do to get my little girl on board with my plans. It was late and Ted was at the office. I planned to go there, to show him that I was by his side, like a loyal wife. Make him see that he needed me. Make him understand that he had to have me in his life, not just as his mistress, but as his wife.