Death in the Family, Carolyn Smith [free ebook reader for iphone TXT] 📗

she didn’t question anything I did. I could now roam freely around the house under the pretence of helping with jobs.

So when the time came on Sunday afternoon to put Plan B into action it was almost too easy. I asked Nana if I could polish the furniture in the living room for her. She had no objection, in fact she was delighted at the offer. So I set to work cleaning the side board under the window. This side board was quite close to the living room door, too close for my needs, so as I ‘polished’ it I leant my weight against it and moved it ever so slightly away from the door. I kept doing this until inch by inch it was positioned exactly where I needed it to be. Just far enough so that when Nana fell she wouldn’t be able to grab it for support, but also close enough that she would hit her head on the corner of it.

After polishing the wooden table and dusting the top of the T.V. I told Nana that the skirting board could do with a bit of a clean. I told her that I would get on with that while she and Karl hung out the washing in the garden. When I was sure that they were both out of the way and busy I knelt down by the living room door and began to inspect the telephone wire which ran along the top of the skirting board. It was kept in place by those little white plastic thingies which you hammer into the wood to keep the wire against the wall. I saw that there were a couple which were not completely secure. I took the thread from my pocket and tied one end of it tightly around one of the plastic things ensuring that when pulled it stayed in place. I measure across the threshold of the doorway so that I would have the exact amount of thread to be pulled tort and reach across to the plastic thingies on the skirting board on wall opposite. I cut the thread with a pair of scissors and left it hanging loose in the door way for now. I wouldn’t be able to attach it until we had all evacuated the living room and Dad and Karl were safely outside. I couldn’t have a repeat performance of Plan A.

Dad arrived about 30 minutes later and he was in a big rush to get back home so he didn’t come in for a cup of tea again. Nana looked quite hurt by this, but Dad said he was running late and needed to stop for petrol on the way home. Karl and I grabbed our bags and left the living room. Nana was stood at the garden gate talking to Dad and Karl went straight out to join them. This was going so well. I kneeled down at the living room door and attached the thread to the wall. If anyone came back I would pretend to be doing up my shoelace. The thread was now a very tight, perfectly placed tripwire. When Nana returned to the living room she would trip, fall and hit her head. Because she was so heavy she would fall harder and the impact would be more severe. The thread wouldn’t be able to withstand the force and would snap meaning that there would be no evidence should anyone suspect foul play. It was fool proof.

I stepped over the wire and walked out to meet everyone at the gate. As we said our goodbyes I could barely look Nana in the eye. I didn’t feel guilty about what I was doing, I felt justified. But I thought she might see deceit in my eyes and know that something was different. As we all piled in to the car and began to drive away my heart began to beat faster. Watched out of the rear window as Nana stood at the gate and waved. I didn’t wave back. She turned and then as if in slow motion began to walk back into the house. We had turned the corner at the end of the street before her front door had closed. “That’s it,” I thought. “It’s done!”
My mind was racing now, but not with thoughts of shame and guilt, like I had expected, but with excitement. I was so elated. This was it! We would be rich. I could finish school and never have to see those bullies ever again. I let out a deep sigh and felt the weight of all the stress that I didn’t know I had been carrying leave my shoulders.

That’s when Dad’s phone rang.

We hadn’t even pulled in to the petrol station yet. They couldn’t have found her body already. Unless…Maybe the neighbours had heard the crash as she fell. Maybe they heard her scream. Everything happened so quickly. Dad pulled to the side of the road and answered the phone.
“Mum? Mum, calm down,” I heard him say. My head began to swim, I felt very dizzy and faint. ‘Mum?’ that is Nana. Nana is on the phone. Nana can’t be on the phone, she’s dead. A wave of nausea swept over me and I had to get out of the car and stand on the side of the road. I gulped in fresh air, but I couldn’t stay on my feet and I fell to the ground. Dad was out of the car in an instant still talking on the phone but picking me up in his strong grip at the same time.
“We’ll be there in 5 minutes Mum. Just stay where you are and don’t try to move.” He hung up the phone and used both of his hands to steady me. He knelt down and looked into my eyes.
“James? Are you alright? What happened?” His readable face was filled with the lines of worry. He was worried about Nana and now he was also worried about me.
“I’m alright. I think I got car sick,” I said. My mind was starting to clear again now. I had one thing on my mind. The tripwire.
“Is Nana ok?” I asked as we got back in to the car.
“I don’t know. She’s had a fall. We’re going back there right now.” Dad turned the car around in the middle of the road pulling a perfect 3 point turn and sped off back up the road towards Nana’s.

I had one priority. Make sure the trip wire was not intact and not noticeable. So as soon as we pulled up outside the house I was the first out of the car and racing towards Nana’s. Dad mistook this for concern for Nana and shouted after me, “Slow down James. I’m sure she’s fine.”
I threw the front door open and took in the scene. Nana was sitting on the living room floor, her back propped against her comfy corner chair and her legs sprawled out in front of her. She was holding the phone which she must have pulled off the sideboard using the wire. My eyes immediately glanced down to the doorway and breathed for what felt like the first time since I heard Dad’s phone ring at the side of the road. Panic over. The trip wire had broken just as I had predicted it would and could not be seen at all. I went over to Nana and sat beside her, I took her hand to show concern. The performance had begun.

All of this had taken mere seconds and Dad and Karl came running in behind me. Dad looked visibly shocked as he began asking her questions about what had happened. He helped her to her feet and she winced and let out a yelp as she tried to put weight on her right foot. He sat her on the settee with her foot propped up with cushions. While he did this Karl and I were told to put the kettle on and make Nana a cup of tea, which we did. Karl didn’t even complain, he must have worried about Nana.

Dad had called out the doctor who came quite quickly (maybe due to Nana’s age, although she’s not that old really). I remember when I had appendicitis when I was ten we had to wait for hours for the doctor to come to us. I was in agony and kept throwing up in a bucket. When he finally did arrive I was rushed to hospital so they could remove my appendix before they exploded. I thought that my exploding appendix which could kill a person were more important than Nana’s sprained ankle and I felt bitter towards the doctor for not recognizing this. How could he come so quickly to tend to Nana and yet leave me writhing in agony?

Nana’s ankle was wrapped up in a bandage and she was told not to put any weight on it for a couple of weeks. Dad said that seeing as how Nana was so poorly (poorly? It’s a sprained ankle!), we weren’t allowed to come and see her for a while until she felt better. Disaster!

When we left Nana she looked perfectly fine to me, sitting on the couch with her feet up, drinking tea and watching telly, without a care in the world. I had been foiled again and now as I thought of her sitting there I was starting to be filled with a new emotion that I hadn’t felt before. Resentment. I resented the fact that she was still alive and I had to continue going to that school with those people and Mum had to work double shifts and we had to eat Dad’s cooking. I resented even more that she would be here for two weeks enjoying being lazy while we slave away at our prospective jobs. But most of all I resented that she had defeated me twice.
Well she wouldn’t be so lucky next time. Next time I would make sure that there was no way she could escape the death that I now believed she totally deserved.

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At home I sat upstairs in bedroom inwardly fuming. I could not face sitting downstairs with Mum and Dad listening to them expressing their anxiety for Nana. She was fine! What were they getting in such a tizz about? As I had predicted almost a month ago now, Nana was not the dying type. She would be around for a long time unless I could find a way to do her in properly. My mind wandered back to the list of possible ways to commit murder which had been saved on my computer. Shooting, stabbing and car accident. It would be true to say that any one of them would indeed be extremely effective, but the flaws I originally identified still hold true as well. I could never get away with a murder like that. It is essential that it look like an accident. I’m just going to have to be even more devious and cunning than I have been thus far. With renewed determination and vigour I set my mind to creating Plan C.

It was as I was brushing my teeth getting ready for bed one night later in the week when the inspiration hit me full in the face. I had been routing around in our bathroom cabinet looking for dental floss. It was on the top shelf at the back