Mrs Barnes

Prologue

This morning, I was just a middle-aged stay-at-home mom and wife. Now I’m a killer.

Lord knows I never would have thought I’d say those words.

I’ve no regrets, even though I’m seconds from death myself. In fact, I’m strangely calm. Who’d have thought it? That’s probably why I’ve made it this far. Nobody would have thought it of me.

I’ve often wondered what being dead will be like. I’ve imagined that at first it will be as though I am standing in a heavy snowfall. No wind. Just the steady downwards curtain of big fat snowflakes covering me, creating that blanket of muffled silence on the world, which only snow can do. Until you walk, that is, and then it’s very loud and crunchy; but if I were dead, I wouldn’t be walking.

Is that how it will feel as I slip from the world? Muffled, until even the silence can’t be heard?

This death I have coming will begin with a loud bang or two, no doubt some pain; then I suspect my consciousness will fade into the snowfall and I will become as cold as the wintry flakes in my mind.

The gun is still pointing at me. There’s no way they can miss at this range. Its bullets are going to rip into my soft flabby flesh, and I will bleed out onto our dining room carpet.

The real estate agent will have to do a good sales job on this house.

Why is my mind babbling?

I have a gun pointed at me. I have to focus.

Just a few hours ago, I had set our dining room table for dinner—the best china and cutlery. I’d sat with our guests making small talk, laughed at my husband’s jokes. Imagined a tomorrow. Now my body is battered and bleeding. I’ve nothing left.

I scan the room, but I can’t see any way out of this.

I am about to die.

Chapter One

Twelve Hours Earlier

“Beef stroganoff? That’s easy to slow cook ahead of time.”

We are standing in our kitchen, my favorite room in the house because it’s where our family gathers at meal times—when they’re here. The breakfast things are still out on the table, a bowl discarded from where Liv had quickly stuffed something in her mouth before rushing off to school. I’d been upstairs getting changed and when I came back down, David was sitting eating his in relaxed clothes, which means he’s working from home this morning. He’d sprung this business dinner on me a couple of days ago, and has been banging on about just how important it is that we get this right. I’ve been trying to think of what I can cook that is easy, guaranteed to taste good, and not require me to spend all my time in the kitchen instead of playing host.

“No. It’s almost Thanksgiving. I want them to experience a bit of American tradition. Roast turkey. They’re Russians, they’ll eat stroganoff back at home, and no doubt they’ll be experts at cooking it.”

I ignore my husband’s slight dig at my cooking skills, and my heart falls at the thought of all the prep for a roast. I’ll need to get it ready ahead of time so I’m not spending an hour in the kitchen before we sit down. Or maybe David wants that, it’s a business dinner after all, and they’re bound to be talking shop.

“And make sure it’s cooked properly this time. I don’t want you poisoning them!”

I know he’s referring to our very first Thanksgiving after we’d got married. It’s a fair point as I didn’t allow enough time and the turkey wasn’t cooked all the way through. He has, however, reminded me of it every year since; but I’ll take it. I know how important this is to him. He’s been telling me often enough over the past couple of days. I can’t screw up this dinner. It has to be perfect. It was why I wanted to do stroganoff. All you have to do is slow cook the beef for a few hours and it’s melt-in-the-mouth tasty.

“What about dessert?” I don’t respond to the turkey reminder. David loves his desserts, although how his middle isn’t more reflective of that fact I don’t know. He’s not exactly fit and carrying a six-pack, but I only need to look at a profiterole and it increases my thighs by an inch. If I ate anywhere near as much dessert as my husband does, I would be another two dress sizes bigger than I already am. He’s just what I’d call rounded, all soft edges. “How about pumpkin or apple pie?” I suggest.

“God no! Too common and filling. What about one of those little creamy desserts with the crispy sugar topping we had in New York last year?”

Common? He’s just told me he wants traditional American Thanksgiving and now he’s asking for a European dessert. I don’t argue, the stress is radiating out from him.

“Crème Brûlée?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s them. I want them.”

I nod. At least I can prep those ahead of time and then just do the coating last thing.

“And make sure you wear something…” he pauses, his eyes looking me up and down, “something appropriate for the occasion. We need to create the right impression. This is going to make me a lot of money. Why don’t you go buy yourself something new? My treat.” He smiles with his mouth. It doesn’t quite reach those blue eyes I’d fallen in love with twenty-seven years ago. He’s so tense. I sense it in his body language, his voice, and in his attitude. This dinner really is a big deal for him.

David has always been ambitious. His family had no money, and from an early age he worked hard to get himself an education and then crawl up the career ladder. In those early years of our marriage, it had been me who’d sat with him in the evenings, helping him to learn how to write reports, proofing them, and practicing his presentation skills. I’d offered advice and he’d taken it, we’d been a good team. The hard work had paid off. He is now chief operating officer at a financial tech company that is doing really well. Something has been worrying me, though, ever since he surprised me about this dinner and I have to say it.

“You say they’re Russian,” I begin tentatively, “is Doug and the rest of the Board okay about that? The company has taken years to win the trust of all those banks and now you’re doing business with Russians. They might be one of those hacking gangs we get warned about.”

His face ripples with anger and I know I should have kept my mouth shut.

“How dare you try to tell me how to do business. Just because they’re Russian doesn’t make them any less legitimate. What would you know about business and international relations?”

His challenge bristles between us. I’ve got no answer other than what I read in the news and online. I’m well aware of the fact that I don’t work anymore. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom since Luke was born. He’s right, what do I know?

David spins around in anger to leave the kitchen but, not concentrating, stubs his toe on the heavy wrought iron doorstop that my mother had given me. He hates that thing and this wasn’t the first time that his toes had found its hard unforgiving surface.

“I thought we agreed to get rid of that,” he snaps at me.

We hadn’t agreed, he’d just told me to and I’d ignored him because my mother had given it to me. He storms out without waiting for my answer.

I pick up the doorstop and slide it under the central counter where it’s out of the way.

I’m angry at myself for opening my mouth and upsetting him when he’s already clearly stressed about this evening. I can be an idiot sometimes. More so lately. I’m sure my brain has become foggier since I hit the menopause, it’s like wading through molasses sometimes just to get a clear thought; and I seem to be clumsier in so many different ways. That, though, was just plain insensitive. Why am I so stupid?

I can’t hear his office door slam from here, but I imagine it all the same. He’s set himself up an office at the far end, next door to the dining room. We rarely use the dining room, anyway, and so it’s the quietest end of the house. I spend most of my time in the kitchen or living room, and Liv is always up in her bedroom, when she’s not out. We only use the dining room for special occasions.

David had a whole lot of tech fitted about a month ago, so he could work from home more. Don’t know why he couldn’t have done that four years ago, and then maybe we wouldn’t have had to move a thousand miles away from all our friends so he could work in head office. It’s not that I’m not grateful for what we have. Back home we’d lived in a cozy but compact townhouse right in central Pittsburgh. It was adequate. When we moved here, although the house isn’t huge, the rooms are two or three times the size. It felt like we could all breathe and have our own space. If I’m honest, I have wondered if all this space has had the opposite effect on our family that we’d hoped. We are rarely all together nowadays, and even when our son, Luke, comes back from Washington for a visit, we don’t seem to do much all together.

This is an old Texan farmhouse, although there’s no farm that comes with it anymore because we’re in east-side Parker County, which is a forty-five-minute to an hour’s drive into David’s Fort Worth office. The house has been modernized, but it still retains some of its old house quirks, not least its layout. It has hardwood floors throughout most of the house: two huge living rooms on the first floor, four bedrooms, plus an attic. I’m standing in my dream kitchen. In here is flagstone flooring, all the storage and cooking space anyone could need, and a cozy sitting area for family meals. It seems to have been tacked onto the end of the main structure as an extension. It’s also where I sit to read my books, there’s a small but comfy two-seater sofa by the window. Duck-egg green I think they call it. It’s my favorite spot in the whole house. There’s a kind of dogleg passage between the kitchen and the other living rooms which makes it feel a little out on its own, but I don’t complain. It puts David’s office and the kitchen at opposite ends so whatever noise I make when I’m cooking, which can involve me singing loudly to music, he isn’t going to hear. The only downside to this arrangement is there’s a bit of a walk to the dining room when you’re serving food, but seeing as that’s not a frequent occurrence, it’s not a big issue. I think I’ll have to get David to carry the turkey through, though; it’s going to be heavy.

Outside the windows, our backyard stretches into a view of farm fields and green trees. This is a blissful location—unless you’re a teenager, of course, because Liv is still learning to drive. She’s eighteen and I hope she’s going to be ready to pass her test very soon, before she disappears off to college. In the meantime, we’ve had to listen every day since we got here about how we’ve imprisoned her, “You’ve deprived me of my constitutional right to freedom of movement,” is her latest gripe. I don’t remember her brother being quite so difficult in his teen years, but then maybe it’s like childbirth: you forget about it as soon as you’ve gotten through the worst; nature’s trick to enable the survival of our species, making sure you don’t stop at just one child. To be fair, Luke was a teenager when we lived back in Pittsburgh and there were a few more amenities and entertainments on our doorstep then.

I check my watch. I’ll need to get to the mall in the next hour or so if I’m going to allow enough time to roast the turkey. Rosie shuffles next to me. She’s sitting on the kitchen floor looking up at me with those beautiful brown puppy eyes. She’s not exactly a pup anymore, but she is my surrogate baby. With our Luke away working in Washington and Liv not wanting to spend more than five minutes in the same room as me, Rosie has become my number-one child. She gives me unconditional love and I can hug and spoil her as much as I like without fear of being rejected.

As soon as we’d arrived here in Texas, I’d wanted a dog. It was a bit too quiet and empty when Liv was at school and David at work. David hadn’t been so keen.

“What do you want a dog for? They put hairs on everything and crap all over the yard. And I’m too busy to take it out.”

“It will be my responsibility, I’ll look after it, besides getting out and walking will be good exercise.”

Seeing as David had been on my case to do more exercise and lose some weight, that became my winning argument. He couldn’t possibly disagree with that.

I was determined to get a rescue dog, give a home to an animal that needed a family. I’d registered with the local dog home and scoured their current availability for a face that I could connect with. I wasn’t looking for ‘cute’ or some Instagrammable puppy, I just wanted a dog that I could love and loved us. I’d watched those videos where some shelters put wannabe owners in a room and then just send the dog in to choose. Our local one doesn’t do that so it was going to be down to me to make the right choice.

It didn’t take me long.

She looked so sad in the photos, abandonment was written across her face. I was in the car and at the pound within minutes.

I’ll never forget the moment I was introduced to Rosie, or Sparkles as she was called then. She came up to me. I was kneeling on the floor to greet her, not wanting to frighten her. She just clambered onto my lap and looked up at me, tail wagging hesitantly, as if she was asking me “Are you going to be my new mommy and take me away from here? Please.” It might sound sappy, but that’s just how it was for me.
Dog rescues are a strange dichotomy. They save them and do an amazing job at rehabilitating animals which have had some really bad experiences of humans, but when you go in there and look around, the dogs look so sad and desperate for love and a new home. They know that this is just a temporary situation and so many of them are scared by the noise and the general environment. It never ceases to amaze me how even the most abused dogs will still seek human love and wag their tail at the first sign of it. I just wanted to take Rosie home straight away. I’d signed the paperwork and authorized the home check, within the hour.

I look at Rosie now, the picture of happiness and love. She filled our empty home as soon as she arrived and I can’t imagine life without her now.

“You ready for your walk?” I ask. I’ve taken to chatting to her when we’re at home alone. I’m not sure if that’s a sign I’m going crazy, or just that after living with a teenager, I like not having my conversation partner answer back.

I pick up her balls and some treats. I’ve been working on her retrieval after David got fed up with her running off with socks and various other things and not bringing them back to him. She’s gotten pretty good now. If I throw something she brings it straight back and sits looking up at me, pleased as punch, tail wagging. She knows that what she’s done is good and will be rewarded. The walk will do me good, give me a chance to clear my head ready for this evening. De-stress. Everything has to go to plan.

Chapter Two

Eleven Hours Earlier

With Rosie exercised and happily snoozing in her basket, I head to the kitchen supply store first. I’m not going to allow any room for mistakes tonight so I’m buying one of those meat thermometer things. Using a bit of tech to reassure me that the turkey is well cooked throughout. I also need a little blowtorch to do the topping on the crème brûlées.

It’s a bit like walking into a foreign land. I’ve always cooked for my family, but this is the domain of cordon bleu chefs and those who create food art, not just nourishment. There are so many instruments and gadgets that I wouldn’t have a clue how to use, or why I’d need them in the first place. I’ve never seen so many different types of baking trays, and some of the food mixers look as though you could run the risk of losing your arm if you stirred the mixture at the wrong moment. Don’t even get me started on the array of knives. I have no idea what whittle tang, tape ground and half tang mean. What even is a tang? I just want some sharp knives in various sizes to do the jobs I need, without all this jargon.