Playing Dead: Book One of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 7

Every time my phone rang, I thought I would jump out of my skin. By the time he did call, I had lived with a permanent tension headache for four days, although the pain had become so entrenched behind my eyes and in the back of my head, that I was sure I'd been born with it and had lived with the agony all of my life. I spent those three days constantly on edge and popping pills every four hours.

Thankfully, despite my almost-nervous-breakdown, Brandon believed my anxiety and my reluctance to talk was all because of the Clara fall-out and knew nothing about the fact I had agreed to see Harper. Despite that, I had convinced myself that somehow he knew. Every time he looked at me, I thought I saw suspicious glares. Every time he spoke, I heard an accusatory tone. Every time the phone rang or beeped, I was sure he would pick it up and he would have the proof he needed that I had deceived him. Eventually the phone was switched to silent. I could take the tension no more. And if I was really honest, I couldn't stand the awful, lingering wait.

I wanted him to call. I didn't want him to call. It was the most agonising dichotomy that haunted my every waking moment. In fact, the living horror even invaded my dreams. When I slept, I could hear the phone ringing, ringing, ringing and yet whenever I searched for it, I could never find it. And when I did happen to find it, I'd hit the call accept button and would be met by the most hideous, torturous screams, like I had opened a direct line to Hell and I was listening to someone endlessly burning.

By the third night, I realised I recognised the phantom screamer. It was me. I was listening to myself screaming relentlessly and the intensity of my cries never wavered for a second.

On day four, the day of The Call, I had struggled to keep down what little breakfast I had eaten and by lunchtime, after gagging on the chicken salad that Clara had bought me as a peace offering, I had decided enough was enough. This wasn't me. What the hell was I doing? I wasn't cut out for such deception. I decided then and there that when he called - if he called - I would tell him that this whole thing had been a huge mistake.

Just one big, foolish mistake.

********

"I can't see you," I hissed into the phone. It was after hours at work and the majority of the team had rushed out of the office dead on half five, leaving me and Clara who fortunately was on a cigarette break when Harper called.

The line was silent for a few seconds and all I could hear was the maddening buzz of the vacuum as the cleaners desperately tried to make the office carpet look like something you couldn't grow cultures in. I didn't envy their task.

"Yes, you can," he finally replied. His tone was very matter-of-fact but did I detect a small note of anger in his tone?

I sighed and glanced around again surreptitiously, keeping an eye on the door for Clara's return. "Please, Harper, I've thought about it and I can't. I just can't do it."

"It's very simple," he said. "You say a date and a time and we meet up. That's all there is to it. See? Simple."

"For you maybe!" I retorted, irritated now. "You don't have a marriage to think about or someone sitting at home watching your every move. Do you have any idea how on edge I've been all week? Look, I'm sorry I'm just not cut out for this kind of thing."

"How do you know that I don't have someone waiting for me at home too?"

I frowned. I didn't know. I hadn't even asked. I suppose I'd assumed that he didn't seeing as he was the one who had pushed the situation.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" I asked.

"Would it matter if I did?" he shot back.

"What?" I squeaked and the cleaner popped his head up from behind a nearby desk, Hoover pipe brandished in his hand like a weapon. I ducked my head down behind my Mac and whispered into the phone. "Look, it doesn't matter if you do or don't have a girlfriend; I'm not seeing you anyway."