Stories from the Edge

Angela

The phone rang twice and stopped.

Angela put down her book, got up and walked to where her mobile phone lay on the kitchen table. 'Unknown caller', the screen displayed. She frowned and bit her lip. The third such call that day. On each occasion the call had disconnected before she had time to answer. Angela went to sit again, hesitated and moved to check the door and window locks instead. She set the curtains to make sure the inside of her small flat couldn't be seen from the outside. Pop music came softly through the wall, from the flat next door. It was a comfort to know that the neighbours were close.

She put water in the kettle and switched it on, going over in her mind a list of who had her mobile phone number. She had been in her new job only a few weeks. She had been careful, or at least, she thought she had. The phone dated only from when she had returned to Adelaide to reclaim her life. Of course, one of her new circle could have given her number away, but she couldn't think why. She wouldn't give another's number to anyone without checking it was ok first. She would ask the others at work tomorrow, trying to appear unworried. It was probably nothing. Someone kept dialling a wrong number, that was all. She poured the boiled water into a cup and added a teabag. It was unsettling, though. Not the sort of worry she wanted weighing on her mind. She had, after all, only six months ago, killed husband.

***

The seagulls had saved Angela's life all those months ago.

The birds had gathered around her, flapping down to the sand from the sky, eyeing her and hopping closer, hopeful for some morsel. She sat alone on the beach, down from the house where Warren would be pacing and brooding following their furious argument. Her anger was subsiding; the beach had a calming effect on her. She sighed, knowing how the evening would go. Warren would follow her to the beach, apologise in a hollow, plaintive voice and make the usual empty promises to treat her better. He would cajole her to come back to the house, open a bottle of wine and make elaborate plans for their future while she cooked dinner. Later, there would be cold lovemaking that would leave her feeling alone, and he would sleep and snore as she lay awake.

She would ask herself how she, a grown woman in her forties, came to be in this situation, hundreds of kilometres from the city, with a man she no longer loved - no, with a man who wasn't the person she fell in love with. She thought of the charming man who had changed her flat tyre and then courted her, all those months ago, then married her and persuaded her to leave her office job in Adelaide and move to a remote beach. Not charming, after all, just controlling. The over-attentive, chivalrous carry-on had been a front. Not so much a wolf in sheep's clothing as a python, squeezing the life, and the love of life, out of her. Not completely, though. Lately, as she lay awake at night, she had been making plans and during the day she had been, like a magpie, collecting things she would need to live on and hiding them in her underwear drawer, where Warren never looked. She had found out, during a drunken argument, where he had hidden her driving licence and birth certificate. She picked up change he left lying around, the odd note from his wallet while he was asleep or in a drunken stupor. She bided her time.

The seagulls fluttered and she heard the irregular fall of Warren's footsteps in the sand. Her gaze lingered on the waves, the sea beyond and the reddening horizon, as she waited for him to speak. He stopped behind her, kicking little sprays of sand against her back as he approached. She could hear his heavy asthmatic breathing. There was silence, as if he was watching her. This was odd, and she felt a tremor of anxiety. Then his voice came, not cajoling but thick and ugly.

"Goodbye, Angela," followed by a sharp metallic click.

This wasn't the way it usually went and a warning intuition sent a pang of alarm up her spine. She twisted to look up at him. Her sudden movement startled the seagulls and one flapped into the air, toward Warren's head. He threw up his right arm and turned his face away from it. As he did so, there was an ear-splitting bang. Angela sprang to her feet and looked with horror at the gun in Warren's right hand.