Then I notice that Mum is shaking her head again.
‘Tell him it has to be here, or you won’t do it,’ she whispers to me.
‘I’m not doing it!’ I whisper back, but I fear that Jimmy might have heard that because he speaks again.
‘Stop speaking to your mother. This is between you and me,’ he tells me, confirming my fears.
I’m just about to tell him that I will not do what he asks of me when Mum snatches the phone from my hand and tries her luck with him again.
‘Jimmy. This is Heather. I can convince Chloe to do what you want her to do, but you’re going to have to speak to me. She is too upset to be on the phone right now.’
I have no idea what my mum is doing, but I don’t like it, whatever it is. She is treating me like I’m not even a part of this sordid exchange, which of course, I am because it’s my body they are talking about.
I try to grab my phone back from her, but she ducks out of my reach before I hear her speak again.
‘Have some understanding. She’s seventeen years old. This would be her first time.’
Mum avoids making eye contact with me as she speaks, so she must know that she has no right talking about me in this way. But I’ve given up on trying to get my phone off her, and instead, I’m just about to storm out. It doesn’t matter what kind of plan she makes with Jimmy on this call, I don’t have to go along with it. She can’t force me to.
‘It has to be here, or it doesn’t happen, and I guess we’ll just have to take our chances with the police in that case,’ Mum says, and I pause in the bedroom doorway. ‘Tomorrow night?’
Mum looks at me standing across the room from her, and I wonder if she is only now going to ask me for my input in this decision that affects me. But I was wrong.
‘Tomorrow is fine. Seven o’clock. I’ll make sure she is ready.’
Then she hangs up.
I storm out of the room, disgusted at my mother and too angry to even have it out with her at this time.
‘Chloe!’ she calls after me, and I hear her following me into the hallway, but I race into my room and slam the door shut before she can get in behind me.
‘Chloe! Open the door!’ she cries, and I can feel her trying the handle, but I keep a tight grip on it, preventing her from entering.
‘Go away! I tell her, my body leaning into the door as a backup in case she overpowers me on the handle. But then I feel the tension release on it and figure she must have let go of it from the other side.
‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ she says, but I keep the pressure on the door just in case she is tricking me and is going to try it again as soon as I move. ‘If you would just let me explain?’
‘What is there to explain? You told him that I would have sex with him! What kind of mother are you?’
I’m aware it’s a harsh question to ask but screw it, I’ve said it now, and I hope it hurt. It certainly hurt me when I had to listen to her talking about me like that with him on the phone.
‘Chloe, please! Just open this door! You don’t understand!’
‘I understand that you don’t give a damn about me! You’re just trying to protect yourself!’
‘How can you say that? I buried a body for you!’
Mum has a point, but I don’t acknowledge it.
‘I’m not going to sleep with him!’ I call back.
‘You don’t have to!’
‘You told him that I would!’
‘I was lying to him!’
‘Why?’
‘Because I just need to get him to the house?’
‘What for?’
‘Because I’m going to kill him!’
I release my grip on the handle and step away from the door.
Did I just hear her right?
Did she just say she was going to kill Jimmy?
Mum must have sensed that her statement would have caught me off guard because she tries the door again, and it opens this time.
Stepping into my room, I see her in the doorway, but she looks different now.
She looks determined.
‘I’m going to kill him,’ she repeats, her voice much lower. ‘I just needed a way of getting him here, so I told him that you would have sex with him, like he asked. But you don’t have to do it. I’ll make sure of it.’
‘What the hell are you talking about? You can’t kill him.’
‘I don’t have a choice,’ Mum says, and she looks like she really means it. ‘I’d hoped that if I did what he asked of me in that hotel, then that would be the end of it. But it’s clear now that this will never be over unless we do something. He won’t stop with the demands. He has all the power. Unless we take it from him.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ I reply, taking a seat on the edge of my bed. ‘You can’t honestly think that you could get away with killing him and hiding his body.’
‘Why not?’ Mum asks, coming over to join me on the bed. ‘We almost got away with hiding Rupert’s body. All I have to do is the same thing again but this time, make sure there are no witnesses.’
‘But this is different. Rupert was already dead. Jimmy isn’t.’
‘I know,’ Mum says, still with that determined look on her face. ‘And I’ll need to make a plan. But this is the only way. What else can we do? Jimmy won’t stop tormenting us unless we make him stop.’
As much as it sounds like madness to even think it, Mum is right. The only way we could ever guarantee that Jimmy wouldn’t just keep coming back with more demands is if we eliminate him. But that’s easier said than done.
‘You really think
