The Grey Woman: You never know who's watching

  The

  Grey

  Woman

  by

  M J Hardy

  Copyrighted Material

  Copyright © M J Hardy 2020

  M J Hardy has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes only.

  Contents

  Have you Read

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Note from the Author

  Other books

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  Quote

  Stop living in the shadows of others.

  Break away and make your dreams become reality.

  Tricia Inniss

  I am the grey woman.

  I walk in the shadows of other people’s lives and have no life of my own to shout about. Nobody sees me because I shrink away into my own little world. I am a nothing, a nobody, and people like us don’t draw attention to ourselves. We have nothing to shout about anyway, so we listen. Watch and listen and move in the shadows where the invisible people live.

  But now my dreams have changed and I want more than I ever thought I deserved. I want what they have and I don’t care how I get it. Money is a powerful aphrodisiac and the ruin of men. It sucks you in and promises the world and people will do anything to grasp it for themselves.

  I am no exception.

  It’s time to venture out of the shadows and take what I want, and the secrets I have heard will get it for me.

  Will I want what’s waiting for me, or will I wish I had never left the shadows at all?

  Prologue

  Something’s wrong. I feel it as soon as I open my eyes. I can’t see anything; there’s only darkness. I feel cold and I’m shivering as a draft caresses my body with a chilling breeze. My limbs ache and I’m lying on something cold and hard and the smell - it’s overpowering and I can’t breathe.

  Am I dreaming? I must be because this isn’t where I fell asleep, where am I?

  Something touches my leg and I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. I’m screaming and screaming, but I must be deaf. I can’t hear anything; all I can do is feel. My senses are shutting down one by one, and yet I hear the soft breathing of somebody nearby - someone’s here.

  A prickle of fear quickly gains momentum until I feel so afraid, I almost pass out. I feel sick and retch, but nothing happens. I try to move but can’t. Am I paralysed or worse – dead?

  Where am I? The stench is overpowering me, it smells familiar but I can’t place it.

  Then the pressure on my leg increases and I hear a soft, “She’s coming round.”

  I try to put a face to the voice, but it all seems so distant. Then I hear a man’s voice, louder, more urgent. “We don’t have long.”

  What’s happening, where am I?

  Then I feel a liquid running down my leg that burns and I scream and this time my voice works, although it’s weaker than normal. A sharp voice hisses, “Shut up, we are just cleaning you up to prepare you for transit.”

  Transit, what the hell is happening, who are these people?

  I want to be sick; the smell is too intense and I retch. Then I feel a calm hand on my forehead and the man says, “She’s burning up, how much did you give her?”

  “The usual dose; she’ll be fine.”

  I feel her hands all over me now. Scrubbing, kneading, burning and torturing. They move to my stomach and I wince as the pain grips me and she says angrily, “She’s damaged; they may reject her.”

  “No, they won’t care. She’ll look a lot worse by the time they’ve finished with her.”

  I can’t move and I can’t talk. What the hell is happening?

  I start to shiver, I am so cold, so sick and in so much pain it consumes my entire body. It’s too intense and I can’t breathe. What is that smell?

  Then I hear, “It’s done, you can bring the truck around.”

  I hear movement, loud noises and the scraping of a heavy object across a concrete floor. The cold is intense and the pain hurts from the inside out.

  Then I hear a whisper, a soft sound in my ear as she says, “It’s time to go.”

  Go where, what is she talking about?

  Somebody is lifting me, but still I can’t move. Then another grabs my head and pulls it back by my hair. I cry out in pain and then the light hits me, blinding me as something is torn from my eyes. I can see again.

  As my eyes focus and their faces swim into view, I stare at them in shock. “You!”

  1

  Three months earlier

  The house feels cold. The clock radio beside my bed tells me it’s time to get up, but my body begs to differ. Why leave the warm comfort of my bed for a routine that’s becoming increasingly difficult every day?

  The darkness surrounds me, and not just because the sun has decided to have a lie in. I’m not sure when the darkness decided to attach itself to me like an unwanted virus, but I can’t remember when I last felt – normal.

  Sighing, I swing my legs from the bed and shiver as the icy air bites. Steeling myself, I run for the shower, desperate to feel the warm jets of water shocking my body back to life and giving me some much-needed energy for the day ahead – I’ll need it.

  By the time I’m washed, dressed and ready, it’s been exactly twenty minutes and I venture downstairs to carry out the final ritual before I leave for work. Breakfast.

  As if on autopilot, I carry out the same routine that I do every morning of the week bar one. Sunday.

  I flick the kettle on and while that boils make my cereal. It takes all of five minutes to make my breakfast and just as long to eat it. While I do, I flick on the television to watch the morning news.

  The grave face that greets me tells me it’s another
day for bad news. Then again, there never appears to be a time when there isn’t.

  As I settle down with my cereal, I focus on what the woman who appears to have it all is saying.

  “Melissa Roberts has been missing for three days and Police fear for her safety. Her family have held a press conference to plead for any information.”

  The picture switches to an elderly couple who look like a deer caught in the headlights as they stare at the camera with ashen faces and trembling lips. The man keeps on wringing his hands as he pleads for information on the whereabouts of his daughter. My heart goes out to them as I see the worry in their eyes mixed with nerves at being forced to address the nation on a subject they never thought would happen to them.

  The door slams and I jump up, reaching for the kettle as if on autopilot. Then I fix a welcoming smile on my face as my husband heads wearily into the room. “Morning.”

  He just nods and slams the keys on the counter, and I can tell it’s been another long night.

  “It’s bloody freezing out there. You’ll need to wrap up.”

  I watch as he sinks down into the chair I have only just left and stares at the screen moodily. I’m not sure he even registers what they say as he stares blankly in front of him, seemingly wrapped in his own thoughts as always.

  Handing him a steaming mug of tea, I say brightly, “How was it?”

  “Quiet.”

  My heart sinks. “Oh.”

  He doesn’t even look up as he takes the hot mug of tea and I say wearily, “I should get going then.”

  I’m not sure why I even bother because he never answers me. In fact, we don’t have many conversations these days and I’ve always put it down to the fact we are like ships that pass in the night. He works while I sleep and vice versa. The only day we have off together is Sunday, and most of that is spent cleaning and doing the multitude of jobs that pile up throughout the week. We never socialise with other couples, and our life has become dull in the extreme. I tell myself that this is normal. The life they portray in magazines and on the television is the dream, not the reality. We are what passes as normal these days, and anyone that says differently is obviously lying. However, the only person I am fooling is myself because they are all around me. The people who blow my theory out of the water because I hear them talking. I hear their stories of a life well lived and see the excitement in their eyes as they spill another juicy tale to entertain their friends. These people have a life I can only dream of because mine appears to have set up residence in the deepest rut possible.

  I call out, ‘goodbye’, as I head out the door but as usual get nothing in return.

  Yes, my life has taken a path where nothing much ever happens and increasingly I decide that I’m not ok with it.

  “Morning Emma.”

  As I push open the door to Barrington’s, the coffee shop I work in for most of the day, I feel the warm air hit me, welcoming me in from the cold. I look up and see Leah smiling sweetly at me as she works. “You look frozen, grab a coffee to warm you through.”

  “It’s fine. It won’t take long to warm up, I’ll just get started.”

  Shrugging, she carries on preparing the cups for the morning rush and I stow my belongings and join her.

  We work like this, side by side for most of the day, until we are replaced by the evening shift. Just Leah and me mainly, but then Hailey arrives for the afternoon rush and sometimes, if it’s busy, the owner Calvin lends a hand.

  Leah says in a low voice, “I see another girl’s gone missing. That must be the third one this year already and it’s only February.”

  “Do you think she’s run away? I hope so, for her sake.”

  “Nah, too much of a coincidence. The police wouldn’t hold a press conference if they thought she’d just run off. You could tell by her parents they weren’t the sort of family with issues.”

  “How do you know that just by looking at them?”

  I laugh and shake my head. “They may have a whole cupboard of issues that will soon come spilling out.”

  “No, they’re normal people and normal people’s issues usually involve paying the bills and missing the odd credit card payment. They don’t file missing person reports and go on national television to plead for the safe return of a loved one, unless it’s completely out of the normal running of their lives. It’s sinister, you mark my words.”

  As I set out the cakes and pastries under the counter, I have to agree with her. I’m pretty sure those people would have covered every avenue possible before subjecting themselves to the spotlight that going on national television shines on you and my heart goes out to them. Hopefully, their daughter will show up and the nation will breathe a collective sigh of relief, but I doubt it. That never seems to happen, and I expect the next press conference will be to advise us of the body they’ve found in a secluded woodland or somewhere similar.

  The door opens and my first customer of the day heads inside, shivering from the cold and I smile. “Morning sir, your usual?”

  He nods and I set about making him the usual Americana he orders every single day. While he waits, he looks around him with the usual boredom and never appears to want to make conversation, even though we have met at the same time every day for the last two years. It’s almost as if I’m invisible, and I doubt he would even recognise me if I passed him in the street.

  As I hand him the hot beverage, he scans his card on the machine to pay without even looking at me. Then he takes his drink and joins the rest of the workers streaming into the city, all heading for the tower blocks of high finance.

  I don’t have time to be annoyed at his rudeness because he is no different to anyone else. They don’t see me and yet I see them. Every last one of them because I am hungry for information. I listen to their idle chatter and pounce on every word. I look eagerly at their fine clothes and take in their appearance as they stand patiently waiting for a cup of something hot to accompany them to work. I relish their conversation mainly into their phones and wonder about the silent ones as they stand waiting, hunched inside their jackets avoiding eye contact with the rest of civilisation. Yes, I love my job because it indulges my hobby. People watching and the people that come in here are the ones who have it all – at least it appears that way.

  I work in the city near Canary Wharf. The power house of London where the country really runs from. There is more money here than in the bank of England, and it oozes from every crack of every building surrounding Barrington’s coffee shop. The women are dressed immaculately with the finest tailoring. The men are no exception and their clipped tones of an educated person make them far superior to me. I find myself emulating their accents where I can, trying to prove I’m one of them, but I’m not.

  No, I’m Emma Carter from Croydon. Born into a life of near poverty with none of the help they have received along the way. I slotted into my position in life as is required and barely scraped an exam pass at school before meeting Ronnie Carter and marrying on my nineteenth birthday. We grabbed the council house we were given with greedy open arms and have scrimped and scraped to drag ourselves through life, telling ourselves that we are happy with our lives. I am not.

  Ronnie drives a mini cab at night with the occasional day thrown in, and his only pleasure is the game of cards he attends at a friend’s house once a week. While he works at night, I sleep and while he sleeps I work in Barrington’s and then move on to clean the very offices my customers migrate to everyday. By the time I return home, Ronnie has left and we don’t think anything of it. In fact, if I was brutally honest, I prefer it that way. My own company has always been welcomed and any friends I had have either moved away, or found new ones because I work every hour I can and when I’m off, spend it cleaning my own home and preparing for the week ahead. No, I don’t need friends because I surround myself with much more interesting lives every day and I lap up any small pieces of information they spill like a hungry animal.

  As the line gets longer, my atten
tion falls to the job and I set about feeding the workers with the fuel they need to make it into the office.

  2

  The morning passes quickly and soon the lunchtime rush hits. This is my favourite time of all because the workers take a minute to sit and chat and I move around the coffee shop clearing the tables and listening in on their conversations. I relish their tales of life in the steel-clad offices that cast their shadows over our lives. The very offices I enter as they leave and find myself trying to match the face with the job, which has become a favourite game.

  At 1.05 pm on the dot, she appears and I feel the excitement grip me.

  Claire Quinn is the personal assistant of Julian Landon. The big boss of Crossline Asset Management, one of the most successful companies in Canary Wharf. They trade in stocks and shares and I often see the euphoria on the faces of the traders as they make another killing, or the abject misery on the ones that fail and lose more money in one minute than I will make in a lifetime.

  Crossline Asset Management is a world I can only dream about, and I dream a lot. If I could have one wish in life, it was that I was part of it. It’s exciting, intoxicating and a world away from my own one and certainly not attainable to a woman like me.

  I live out my fantasies by listening in for any information at all about a place I know nothing about and move across to clear the table near to the one Claire has taken up temporary residence at and listen as she speaks into her phone.

  “Hey, it’s done.”

  She listens and then laughs softly. “He was surprised, which made me laugh. For a man as clever as he is, he obviously didn’t see this one coming.”

  I wipe the table and hang onto her every word. “One month. Hmm, he tried for longer but I told him we have plans and they don’t include an extended notice period.”