Contents: British English spelling and grammar throughout. Cheating wife. Revenge. Anal. Group. And it ends exactly where I want it to end.
***
The utility room
My name is Bill Sykes; like the Charles Dickens character in Oliver Twist. Thanks mum and dad; though they always called me William of course. Still, I suppose it's better than Fagin. I'm in my forties, and live in a large detached house in Richmond, a pleasant suburb of London. It was built in the 1930s, and I inherited it from my parents. Bigger than I need but hey, a house is an investment right? I can always downsize if the bubble bursts. At the moment, the bubble is intact; I own my own company which manufactures security systems, and am doing very well.
My wife is Sammi. She's quite a lot younger than me and was an office girl working for one of my first customers when I met her. In the lead up to our wedding, like most couples, we shared our histories. Her father had left when she was still a baby, and she and her mother lived in a pokey flat over a B & B pub.
Her mum, dead now, was a barmaid in that same pub and I got the impression she supplemented her income with the help of some of the customers. Sammi's childhood was definitely unsavoury. She doesn't like to discuss it much, so I leave well alone. Let's just say she brought nothing to our finances, and everything remained in my name. There was a pre-nup of course.
The sex is always great when you first get married and, for us, it stayed great. Perhaps she's a tad short in the intelligence department but, as Billy Joel wrote: 'I don't want clever conversation'. She more than makes up for that with a killer body and a pretty face. We do oral, anal, and everything else. She's adventurous and never refuses to try anything. Guess I'm just lucky.
Soon, Sammi wanted a job. We didn't need the money of course, but I've never been one of those who insists his wife stays at home. She landed a position as a receptionist in a three star hotel. It's in the commercial district, and is busiest with businessmen from Monday to Thursday night. She works the late shifts those four days, from two pm till midnight, giving her a three and a half day weekend. I went in with her on the first evening. Her colleague on front desk had been there a year, and seeing them together was like chalk and cheese, despite the identical red blazers.
Sammi is tall and slim with light auburn hair. The other girl, May, is blonde and more busty. They look like Gillian Anderson and a young Dolly Parton. Every businessman that ever stayed there must have fancied one or the other; probably both. The hotel has a resident driver for airport and train pick-ups. And he takes the receptionists home when their shift is over. Convenient, as Sammi doesn't drive; much safer too.
Turned out the guy usually got her home between twelve thirty and one, which suited our lifestyle. I'm sometimes away on business trips during the week and when I'm at home, I stay up late most nights, tweaking our software systems. Sammi puts her salary into a separate bank account, where she can do what she likes with it. She's been at the hotel four years now.
There came a a phase of home baking, as well as her job. Bread, pies, cakes, and soon she needed an extra freezer, then a dishwasher. The expense was no problem, but we were becoming cramped for space. It's a big house but the kitchen is a bit on the small side. Finally, she asked if she could have a working island to give her more preparation space. There wasn't really enough room, so we got a local company in, to design and build a utility room extension to free up space in the kitchen.
For a month Sammi was in her element, 'overseeing' the contactors every moment she could. Our attached garage is flush with the front of the house, so the utility room went straight onto the back of it. It's accessed by the original back door from the kitchen, and from the garage itself. It houses the washing machine, the extra freezer, dishwasher, and a range of cupboards. An investment really, as an integral garage and utility room add more to the value of the property than I spent on them.
All this then gave us the space needed for her precious island. The worktop, on its dining side, extended far enough to accommodate two stools under, and acted as a breakfast bar. In fact we use it for most of our meals, except when we have people to dinner.
Then, right out of the blue, I nailed my biggest client ever. They had a branch in London but their main office was down in Brighton. I visited both sites, seducing them into the sale. Sometimes I overnighted in Brighton but always made sure I got back for Thursday night, and my long weekend with Sammi.
I took a massive commission when they made their down payment, and my team started the installations. I suggested to Sammi that we invest the money in a property in Brighton; somewhere for us to weekend by the sea.
"I know your job is important to you." I said. "So we'll keep living in London and just go to Brighton when we have time off. It'll be fun. A place where we can relax. I'll line up some viewings, while I'm down there, and we can look at the best ones together at the weekends."
"OK." she said, and then went rather thoughtful.
"Something wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Yes there is, spit it out."
"Well I was thinking ... perhaps part of it could be in my name? I mean, I know it's all your money and everything, but, well, would that be all right?"
"Of course, it can be in joint names."
Not long after that everything seemed to happen at once.
My new customer wanted full training sessions in their London branch. Their system involved clocking in and out, flextime calculations, tracking personnel around the buildings, and a fire alarm system. The latter could identify who was on site and what location they were in, if the Fire Brigade was called. We broke the sessions down to mornings and afternoons over two days, all to take place on site at their London premises. The Brighton managers, fancying an extra evening in London, came up a night early. Naturally, when asked if I could recommend a hotel for them, I suggested Sammi's Excelsior. And forgot to tell her.
Remember I said it all kicked off at the same time? I got home early from their first training day. When my car was parked, the garage door rattled down and squeaked loudly. It had been doing that for weeks and was really starting to piss me off. Today I resolved to do something about it. I hunted round the garage shelves and drawers for the WD40 but couldn't find it. Sammi had complained of strange noises from the washing machine so I looked in the utility room.
I opened the cupboards; they were all full. Strange how stuff will expand to fill the space available; a bit like the way work expands to fill the working day. No sign of my blue and yellow can though. I was about to leave when something niggled me. I'd just seen something out of place, in the corner of the wall. I opened each high cupboard door again but couldn't spot anything wrong.
On the point of leaving, I returned and opened both corner units together, and there it was. They were the same size; the same width as their doors. But one of them should have been bigger, extending back to the brickwork. I tapped the underside of the void. It was the bottom of a cupboard, like the rest of them. There was no access through the tops, as they fitted flush to the ceiling. This was weird. What was in the hidden corner?
Pulling trays of icing nozzles out of the way, I discovered a finger hole, low down in one of the cupboard walls. It wasn't quite visible but I could feel it and reached round and tugged. The side popped out and I peered into the void. A torch revealed bundles of cash. I removed the top stack and counted it. Five thousand pounds in fifties. I put it back and replaced everything. Fifteen bundles in all, gave a total of a seventy five thousand pounds! In some parts of the country you could buy a house for that.
No way a contractor could have left such a large amount, it could only belong to Sammi. She must have specified this design when she was monitoring the installation. But where on earth had she got it? Stolen it from the Excelsior? I'd occasionally checked her bank statements in the past, but there had been no unusual activity. Her salary went in each month and mostly stayed put. Sometimes she bought herself something extravagant, and recently had been financing her own driving lessons. Her balance was about thirty five thousand pounds.
Next morning:
"Problem? You usually eat a big breakfast." she said.
"No, nothing. Just thinking about today's training course, it will be the Brighton managers this morning."
"Is something wrong?"
"No. It's just we've never done this amount of instruction before. Our clock-in systems now remove lunchtimes, whether staff clock out or not. Maybe it's time for me to start delegating some of the training."
