Sally walked out bolting the door. Hilary took out a tissue and tried to staunch Kate’s bleeding, helping her into a sitting position.
“Oh, God Kate. I’m sorry. I’ve created a monster.”
“This isn’t anything you did to Sally. Whatever has happened to her, she’s gone quite mad.”
“But what the hell can we do? We need to get out of here.”
27
Unwelcome Visitors
I leapt from my bed. The wailing alarm cutting through the night. I pulled on my dressing gown and rushed to the stables. The horses were snorting and stamping as red flashing lights and sirens screeched throughout the stables.
I fumbled with my keys, finally opening the door to the stable’s office, looking at the source of the terrible noise. The supposed state of the art fire alarm system was going off again. This was the third time this week. The third time I had rushed from my bed in the middle of the night to find lights and sirens going off and the horses in a state of sheer panic.
Typically, as I had done every other time. I looked around, and there was no fire. I silenced the alarms and went to calm the horses down. “Bloody system!” I hissed under my breath an hour later when I finally was able to return to my bed.
* * *
Many hours later, I was leaning on the paddock fence, daydreaming all this was mine. The fine horses, the stable yard with its bell tower and square of brick-built stables, the expensive tack all polished and immaculate in the perfectly laid out tack room and in the distance the manor house.
Yes, it could almost be mine. If it wasn’t for the lady of the house. Just because she had a movie career and was married to a rich member of the landed gentry. It could so easily have been me.
Just like Hilary, the spineless bitch, just for a twist of fate I could have been the star or the famous rider. I could have had my horses and my photos in the press. However, for now, I was happy to live vicariously and found myself lost in thoughts of owning all I surveyed.
“Excuse me?” I yelped as I felt a touch on my shoulder, spinning around. I saw a short balding man standing in front of me.
“Oh, I am sorry, you were in your own little world there. Crown Fire.”
“What? Who the hell are you? Creeping around here?”
“As I said, I’m from Crown Fire.” He gestured to a flame logo on his shirt. “You reported a fault with the fire alarm system? False alarms? Our company maintains your fire alarm systems.” He was speaking slowly as if I was an idiot and not just sleep-deprived because of his stupid alarms.
“Oh! … Yes… Fire alarm, sorry. I didn’t sleep much last night. What with the bloody alarms going off! Come on this way…”
I showed him to the office, he prodded at the fire panel, saying a cup of tea would be nice, before removing the covers and eventually stating there was an issue with something internally. New parts would be required.
“Okay, well switch it off. I can’t have it going off every night. It’s upsetting the horses.”
He’d sucked his teeth, telling me he couldn’t switch the system off despite my pleading with him to do. However, he instead pulled out a lead within the panel stating it would isolate the sirens in the stables. Ensuring that, while it would still make a racket in my cottage and the office, it would not disturb the horses if and when it went off again.
I’d accepted this would be the best we could do, in the circumstances and he promised he would order parts which may take a week or so to arrive.
I watched him finish before showing him back onto the yard.
“While I’m here. I’ll just check the farm’s alarm system.”
“No!” I yelped.
“Sorry?” He stepped back giving me a strange look.
“No… I mean, there’s no need. The farm is empty, it doesn’t need anything.”
“Well, then it’ll just take a moment. I do need to sign off that the unit in there is operating correctly still. We don’t want any more false alarms, now do we?”
A shudder ran down my spine. I didn’t need someone snooping around the farm potentially discovering who was hidden there. I panicked. What could I do? He had grabbed his tool kit and was walking towards the farmyard.
There was only one course of action, I reached for a shovel standing beside the fence. One swift blow would solve this issue… I had the shovel raised in my hand, ready to strike the man when he stopped in his tracks. I swiftly put the shovel down.
He turned towards me. I stood, eyes wide, sweat on my brow as he looked straight into my eyes, opening his mouth to speak. “Sorry? What were you doing?”
I stuttered. I was doing nothing, honestly.
“Ah, no… That would trip it out. Look I’ll come over now and reset it for you. Bye now!”
I stared at the man as he touched his ear. It was only then I noticed the Bluetooth earpiece.
“Sorry about that, you were saying?”
“Oh, nothing…”
“That was a call from a supermarket down in Exeter. The alarms in their
