Chapter 3

Alice returned home to find the front door ajar. The flat she shared with her younger sister had a fire door with triple locks, yet Freya would consistently leave it open. 

'Because she's high all the damn time,' Alice reasoned, rolling her eyes.

Jumping over a pile of clothing that had spilt into the corridor, Alice made her way toward the sounds of crying. She thought it was the television until she saw her sisters tear-stricken face.

"What? What's happened?" she asked her younger sibling. What she wanted to say was, 'What has that douchebag done now?'

Freya looked up and placed a hand over her phone. 

"I'm on hold to the police station," Freya said, looking up from the sofa with wide, tear stained eyes. "He's been arrested."

"What?" Alice frowned.

"Yes, I'm here," Freya said, turning her attention to the phone. "I'm calling about Steven Marbridge.” 

Alice left her, walking through to the kitchen to drop her shopping. The frozen peas and pizza needed putting away, so she did so before returning to the living room to snoop.

There wasn't a lot to hear. Her sister kept repeating the words, "I understand," and "Yes."

When she hung up, Alice waited patiently for an explanation.

"Put the kettle on," was all Freya said, wiping tears from her face with her sleeve. 

Alice did so, putting away the rest of the shopping whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. She would usually hide the treats, knowing Freya's douchebag of a boyfriend would find them and polish them off in one sitting.

'I hope he's staying in prison this time,' she thought and didn't even feel bad for thinking it. The guy was a creeper, pure and simple. At 32 he should be with a grown woman, not a young girl barely out of college.

That, and his dirty drugs had killed their mother, not that Freya saw it that way. 

"It has to be a mistake, it just has to," Freya said as Alice passed her the steaming mug of tea. "Steve isn't a nonce."

Alice let out a small scoffing sound. She didn't mean to, it just popped out, earning her a death stare.

"Oh come on, he's thirty-two dating a nineteen-year-old. You have to admit it's nonce adjacent," Alice argued.

"Yeah, but I'm legal. He wouldn't look at pictures of children," Freya replied.

"That's what he was arrested for?" Alice frowned. She had assumed it would be the usual drug charges.

"It has to be a stitch-up," Freya said, shaking her head. Tears welled up in the girl's eyes. 

With a sweep of her arm, Alice cleared a space on the sofa, littered with magazines and notebooks. 

"We really need to tidy this place up," She said, looking at the piles of clothing and dishes stacked up by the sink. Now she was working full time and Freya was at college most days, it was difficult to find the time or motivation to clean.

"I can't focus on cleaning right now." Freya tutted. Alice had to resist the urge to eye-roll as the teen stomped off to her room to sulk.

"I guess I'll do it all, as usual," she muttered under her breath, picking up the plates on the table and taking them to the sink. 

It took over an hour to finish all the pots, get the first load of washing in and hover. When she was done, she made another cup of coffee, some beans on toast and sat in front of the television to eat and go over her notes. 

The first was Annie—A kid who was sent to the office for screaming after her classmate stuck a picture of a lotus flower to her desk. A severe case of trypophobia and bullying, yet she'd been told off for retaliating. So typical.

Second in the pile was Jacob, who had been caught vandalising the toilets. He'd set a small fire after the teacher wouldn't let him go to the toilet during class. In the teacher's defence—Jacob didn't need to use the toilet for anything other than a sneaky cigarette. 

'That kid is going to be an issue,' she thought. 'I can just feel it.'

At the bottom of the pile was Damien.

'Ah, Damien,' Alice sighed to herself. An interesting boy.

As she looked through her notes, one underlined in red stuck out.

"CLAIMS HE WILL GET RID OF DICKHEAD STEVE"

"Holy fucking moly," she mumbled. 

How was it possible? 

"I mean, can it really be a coincidence?" Alice fielded the question to the empty room.

She heard the creak of a door and footsteps as her sister finally resurfaced to make the most of the freshly clean flat.

"Are you talking to yourself again?" Freya asked.

"Just going over some notes," Alice said. She turned the page over, not wanting her sister to get a glimpse of the fateful words.

For the rest of the night, as she thought of nothing else, one phrase he'd said kept bouncing around her head.

'I'm going to wipe out humanity.'