Part 2 - Padlock

Padlock

There’s a thread to every story no matter how badly written. The cards dealt can as easily lead to a quick game as one that takes you through the night. Harriet often mused as to why her cards had fallen on the long game but then figured c’est la vie. She was good like that.

Still, every game must end sometime and tonight the stage was set for the final curtain. The padlock that had held her life in a seeming perpetual path circling around the runway of monotony was tonight, yes this night, to be unlocked and she could be free at last.

It was unfortunate for Timothy for sure. His ability to be exceedingly boring was not all together his fault. Nor was it his doing that he’d had to wait so long for his mother to die to inherit the estate making him, and of course Harriet, sole heirs.

Now, at last, Timothy and Harriet had become exceptionally and unbelievably rich and Harriet, safe in the knowledge that the money was theirs, could now release herself from the shackles of her husband and have the lot. Did she feel a slight twinge of compassion and indeed regret for her soon to be deceased’s husband’s death? Not at all. She’d given him the quite literally best years of her life, born three highly annoying children and put up with his monster of a mother. Now it was her time, her future, her destiny.

It was 9:58pm and the opera had just finished. Right on cue Timothy took his wife’s hand and they left the grand building. Their car would be waiting as always just around the corner and they turned right, dodging people and a London downpour, as they headed toward the waiting luxury Range Rover.

It all happened so quickly. From behind a masked assailant appeared and grasped at Harriet’s wrist that was wearing her timeless Christophe Claret Margot watch. She shrieked in practised terror and Timothy, gallant to the last, dived over to his wife’s attacker. A knife was drawn, the blade expertly delivered, and the deed was done. It was over.

Can life really change like that? Harriet asked herself this question as she sat in real shock at the back of an ambulance. Time would tell. It was sure to not be silent.

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