Gregory Chalmers, a philandering man who needed to chase other women, needed to feed his ego, was, he knew, at heart a one-woman man, and that woman was Stephanie.
He was aware that she knew about him and Ingrid. He had sensed it the last couple of times he and Stephanie had made love. Sure, she had been affectionate and yielding, pushing all the right buttons, but something was missing: a lack of tenderness, a tightening in her body that he had not seen or felt before.
She knew about his activities at the office with one of his clients, an attractive woman in her forties. He was almost certain that she knew about him and the wife of the local golf club captain. One of his so-called friends had called him twentieth hole Greg in front of Stephanie. Gregory knew that his wife’s laugh was purely for the friend’s benefit; to show him that she was naïve and silly, both of which she was not.
Only once in their years together had Stephanie referred to Gregory’s wrongdoing. ‘Don’t bring it home,’ she had said, and here he was, doing just that.
‘I thought you cared,’ Ingrid said in the kitchen of the house, a substantial three-storey terrace in Twickenham.
‘You knew what it was,’ Chalmers replied.
‘Just a screw, is that it?’ Ingrid said. The woman was becoming irrational, and he knew that Stephanie was due home within fifteen minutes. He now regretted that he had not resisted one last act of seduction in the elder child’s bedroom.
‘What did you expect? That I would leave my wife?’
‘I love you, and now you are throwing me out.’
‘No, I’m not. The job is still here.’
‘I took the job because of you,’ Ingrid said.
It had not been normal for Stephanie to phone when she left her business to drive home. It was a fifteen-minute drive when the traffic was flowing, thirty when it was not, and he knew after her phone call which of the two it would be.
Gregory Chalmers was frantic, attempting to reason with a hysterical woman and to ease her to the front door and out of the house. There was no way that either he or Ingrid could pretend to be idly conversing when Stephanie entered, and she would wonder what Ingrid was doing in the house anyway. After he had noticed that first time that Stephanie had checked the bed and seen the crumpled sheets, they had been extra careful. In fact, apart from their arranged meetings at the house, he had rarely seen Ingrid. She had wanted to meet at a local hotel, take a room, but he had declined. He had been with Stephanie a long time, and though he had seduced a few women, none had become clingy like this one.
Maybe she was too young, too immature, too unknowledgeable, he had thought, but he had discounted that very early on in their short relationship.
He knew now that Ingrid Bentham was a troubled woman, possibly delusional.
‘Take your hands off of me,’ Ingrid screamed as Gregory Chalmers took her firmly by the arm and marched her to the door.
‘Stephanie will be back soon,’ he shouted.
‘Good. Then you can tell your wife that you love me, and we are to be together.’
‘We cannot be together. I will stay with Stephanie, and you will leave.’
‘You have never loved me,’ Ingrid said. The woman had freed herself from Chalmers and was back in the kitchen, opening drawers, slamming them shut, picking up pans and hurling them to the floor. She even tipped the casserole that Gregory had prepared for Stephanie over on the floor.
She will be home in five minutes, Gregory thought. He knew there was no way he could clean up by then, and no way the woman causing mayhem would leave. He was unable to think straight, unable to even contemplate an explanation that would satisfy Stephanie when she walked in.
‘Go, please go.’ Gregory grabbed her again, manhandled her towards the back door. He knew that whatever happened, the evening would end badly.
Ingrid freed herself, using superhuman strength. She opened the drawer next to the sink. She took out a razor-sharp knife.
‘You bastard. The same as all the other men,’ she said as she drove the knife hard into Gregory Chalmers’ rib cage. He fell back, stunned by what had just happened, but still alive.
‘What have you done?’ he gasped. He held his hand over the wound, the red blood staining his white shirt.
‘I thought you were different; someone I could love, someone I could trust.’
With Chalmers leaning back against the pantry door, Ingrid came forward, her eyes ablaze, her mouth grimacing, as she thrust the knife forward, again and again. Chalmers collapsed to the ground, and died.
***
Stephanie Chalmers burst into the kitchen; she had arrived within fifteen minutes, as her now-dead husband had predicted. ‘What have you done?’ she screamed.
Ingrid stood at one end of the kitchen, the bloodied knife in her hand. ‘He deserved to die,’ she said.
Stephanie, unable to comprehend the scene, stood mute. Her husband lay on the tiled floor, covered in blood. The children’s helper, a person she had trusted with the safety of her children, had murdered her husband.
Ingrid Bentham moved towards Stephanie, grabbed her by the hair and struck her across the body with the knife. Stephanie reacted, grabbed the knife, and threw it away. Ingrid, fiery mad and no longer in control, grabbed a thin knife that had been on the wooden table in the middle of the room and thrust it into Stephanie.
Stephanie Chalmers collapsed, apparently dead.
