Off the north-east coast of Kent, England, lies the Isle of Sheppey. A number of dirt roads form a lattice pattern on the harsh lowland to the north of the island where an assortment of one and two storey houses litter the sides of these potholed roads.
In late November the wind howls through the night sucking up the dead leaves from between the shrubbery and the low, ornate brick walls used as dividing boundaries, blasting them into the cold chill of the night.
AnnaLee Bradley let the curtain fall back in place shutting out the bitter sights and rasping scream of the wind outside.
Although only twenty-years-old her young, oval face carried a certain heaviness as though she held rein to her emotions. This was more than compensated by laughter lines and a dimpled chin but highlighted again by sad, dark brown eyes. Eyes that held you encompassed with reflected imagery. A small uptuned nose, a generous mouth with full lips and long, luxuriant, wavy brown hair capped her five foot seven inch curvaceous frame.
A beauty untainted? No. Life had been cruel to this young woman.
Her father had left her mother before she was born and at eighteen she had been raped and sexually abused by the unsaintly young priest who had taken her virginity as payment for administering the last rites to her dying mother.
AnnaLee had managed to survive on her mother's life insurance that provided sufficient money to pay the household bills. She had not left the house since the night of her terrifying ordeal and her days were spent cleaning, cooking and writing. She was a prolific writer, self taught and capable of superb prose. She competently produced over two thousand words in a day.
No one knew this except AnnaLee. The novels she wrote were never published, because they were never sent to a publisher but remained, for now, locked within the large writing bureau in her front room.
Her literary genre encompassed erotica, horror and biblical fact.
Part of her mind had blocked out that horrendous night and so, to those who visited the house, she appeared to be a relatively happy young woman.
There were quite a few 'social do gooders' within the towns of Minster and Sheerness but none could release her inner pain.
******
Corrin LeFay lived opposite AnnaLee. She had watched the priest arrive that night. A little while later she'd heard a scream. She'd listened to hours of silence, then seen him come out of the house and take something from the car quickly returning inside. Over the next two or three hours nothing had happened, then she saw him leaving hurriedly, peering furtively around. He got into his car and drove off in the direction of the church. She had done nothing, said nothing. She too lived alone.
Two women living alone on the same broken, rutted dirt road.
Corrin had been twenty-six-years-old when her husband had been crushed beneath the wheels of a juggernaut travelling too fast and on the wrong side of the road. He'd been walking home from the steel foundary in Sheerness where he'd worked as a crane driver. His head had been bent down into a gale force wind.
At thirty-one she had learned to cope with her loneliness, though her oval face was unlined and unblemished she was a typical country woman growing up in a country town. People would have been shocked to discover a woman could change inwardly so much in such a short time.
The ten-inch chrome dildo, bought 'just for a laugh' at an 'Anne Summers' evening party, lay beneath her pillow and had become her nightly companion. She saw no shame in using its vibrating coolness to satisfy her sexual needs. Life had changed her. After being with her husband, the thought of making love to another man did not promote arousal.
Her ultimate sexual satisfaction was to make love to another woman. Not just any woman but one who was very much like her. Her mirror image. She lived opposite and she occupied Corrin's sexual fantasies as the vibrator hummed each night between her tanned, open legs. Her full figure tensing as waves of sexual release washed through her.
After her 'therapy session' she slept so much easier.
******
During one of these sessions she became conscious of where her fantasy was leading. It gave her an idea as to how she could achieve three things with almost a single action.
Over the next few weeks she prepared for her visit to AnnaLee.
******
The insistent rapping on her front door startled AnnaLee as she sat writing beside her mother's bureau. She stood up and walked through into the hallway. Passing the hall mirror she managed to primp her hair, making sure to look presentable.
She opened the front door but there was no one there. On the porch lay a pie dish. She bent down and picked it up, sniffing closely at the crusty, golden brown, sugary topping.
"Mmmm, apple pie," she said.
Looking around she saw no one.
'Strange,' she thought.
She took the pie indoors and cut a slice. It tasted delicious. She ate the remaining pie over the next few days. She washed the pie dish and left it on the porch. The next day it had gone but in its place was a stone holding down a small brown envelope.
'Don't tell me,' she thought, 'they've left the bill.'
She took the envelope indoors and sat down beside the bureau where she slit open the end with her index finger. Inside was a single sheet of notepaper and on it was neatly handwritten, 'A robin redbreast in a cage, puts all Heaven in a rage.'
AnnaLee read and re-read this passage over and over in her mind and wondered who knew she was her own prisoner. Someone seemed to care... Someone... But who, and more importantly, why?
******
Corrin opened the kitchen cupboard and placed the pie dish back inside. The next phase was slightly more complex and required a high degree of timing.
