Monday 20 July 2015

The Silver Bullet

For audio click here

She asked questions like a tortoise eats lettuce, slow, steady, methodical, her mouth seemingly munching the words thoroughly as she spoke. Then, once the questions were asked, she stared at me intensely, like she was scared I might disappeared if she let go of my gaze. She was an insignificant woman; small, mousy, quiet, the wouldn't say boo to a goose type, you wouldn’t notice her in an empty room. Not the usual style of client I get. She sat nervously in my office, clutching her bag on her lap like it contained the crown jewels or something.
‘So what can I do for you?’ I said, tired of answering her questions, she'd probed my credentials plenty. 
She looked around making sure no one else could hear her.
‘I think they are trying to kill me,’ she said quietly. I tried not to roll my eyes, how many times had I heard that line? It must have been 2nd on the list after I think my husband is having an affair.
Molly chose that moment to come in with a tray of coffee. The woman jumped a mile at the sound of the door, she was genuinely scared, something had spooked her, but it was probably nothing. She took her coffee with one hand, the other still firmly on the bag. Molly sat down and took out a pad to take notes. I was teaching her the ropes.
‘Who are they?’ I asked.
‘My ex-husband’s family,’ she said. Again I struggled to control my response; it was always the ex-husband’s family.
‘Why?’ I asked, but I knew the answer would be something about custody.
‘Because he lost custody of our children,’ she said. Bingo! I thought. 
‘So why do you think they’re trying to kill you?’ 
99.9% of these cases were just paranoia, noticing things that weren't there, imagining threats that didn't exist, but if she wanted to pay me to put her mind at ease, I’d take her money.
‘I was followed home,’ she said quietly. I’d heard this before, usually it was just a figment of their imagination, their paranoid minds playing tricks on them. ‘And’ she added ‘someone tried to break in to my house.’ Again this might have been true, but we lived in a town where 1 in 3 houses were broken into, that’s a lot of people trying to kill their ex-wives.
‘And then there was this,’ she dipped her hand into the bag she’d clutched so firmly on her lap and pulled out an envelope. She handed it to me. I looked inside and there was a silver bullet and a crudely written note,
'die bitch' 

Maybe this wasn’t an invention of a suspicious mind, after all.

For part two click here, part three herepart 4 click here (available from Saturday 1st August)

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