Sarah put her keys down on the hallway table as she entered the flat. She’d spent some time with Sue after the doctor’s appointment as she’d seen how angry and upset her friend had been. Even when Sue had pointed out how much work Sarah still had to get through today, Sarah was reluctant to leave – she could always pull an all-nighter if necessary. Eventually though, she realised her friend was hinting heavily for some alone time so made her excuses and left. It hadn’t taken her long to get home.

Her flat was much smaller than Sue’s but served Sarah’s purposes. The narrow entrance hall permitted access to three of the four rooms. The first door on the left took you into her only bedroom. Today, like most days the door was closed as she hadn’t had time to tidy up before leaving. Far easier to shut it and pretend the room didn’t exist than to keep the place immaculate all the time. The door on the right was a small but functional bathroom. The room she moved into was a reasonably sized lounge diner; opposite was an archway leading to a Tardis of a kitchen which brought to mind phrases of cats and swinging but still managed to pack in everything she needed.

She moved towards the corner dedicated to her home office dropping her handbag on the sofa as she walked past. Her home office consisted of a desk, whose surface was briefly glimpsed under computer equipment and piles of papers, and a battered green office chair she’d “rescued” from its previous life in a ill-fated start up dot com when she got made redundant. As she switched on the computer and waited for it to whirr into life, she noticed the red light flashing on her answer phone on the shelf above.

Three messages. She pressed play while flipping through the specification she was currently working on. The first message was from work.

“Hi Sarah, it’s Frank. Hope you’re enjoying your day off.” Sarah winced at the sarcasm. Oh well, perhaps she could convince him later that she’d been feeling so ill that she’d fallen asleep and hadn’t heard the phone. The message continued, “I’ve emailed you the client’s comments on the first phase. They’ve got a large list of amends and corrections which they want done by the end of next week. I told them I wasn’t sure if that was possible, with you being so sick and all, but they were insistent. Let me know if you think you can do it – if not I’ll allocate it to someone else on the team. Bye.”

Sarah fumed. Of course she’d get it done even if it required working every waking moment for the next seven days. There was no way she was going to let someone else get their hands on the project – this site was her baby, she’d put too much work into it already to let it be taken away from her. She grumpily played the next message.

“Sarah, it’s Mum. Just to remind you that it’s your grandma’s birthday on Saturday and she’s staying over this weekend. Your brother has promised to come over and I want you to be here too. It’s not often she makes the journey down from Blackpool so please make the effort. Give me a call when you get in please.” Sarah pulled a face. Her grandmother was nice enough but liked everything just so and was very critical when it wasn’t. Mum was probably rushing around like a mad thing getting all the housework done and planning the entire weekend to the minute. She’d forgotten all about the birthday and she hadn’t even looked to see how much work was involved in these corrections Frank had sent over. Perhaps she could sort something out with Darren, her brother. Some sort of home visit tag team where they took turns to spend time with grandma allowing her to get some work done this weekend and not lose too many familial brownie points. On to the next message.

“Hi… it’s Darren.” She smiled, Darren obviously had had the same idea. “Just thought that I ought to warn you. I had a phone call this morning, from someone who said they were an old friend and wanted to get in touch with you. Fortunately, I recognised the voice and didn’t give your number out. It was Ben. I’ve no idea how he got this number. I’m not ex-directory but Lewis isn’t exactly a rare surname, is it? Anyway, thought I’d let you know – forewarned is forearmed and all that. See you at the weekend.”

Sarah’s blood ran cold. Ben had been her first love and her longest relationship. They’d met at university, he was on the same computer studies course, and they had started going out in their second year.

The author interrupted her reverie, “oh for fucks sake sound interesting woman. I’m sick of the lot of you, whining lot that you are. Do you always have to have introspective flashbacks whenever I’m feeling just a little bit stuck for an idea? And call that descriptive writing – I SUCK at description. Maybe I’m only destined to write plays then I can get other saps to design the sets. And really, to have spent half an hour crafting a dedication for the front of the book, that was truly, truly pathetic. Oh and can one or two of you get a name change or something? You’re really confusing me let alone my readers. Now hurry up and get some interesting dialogue or something. I want to actually go and do something interesting with my Saturday at some point, you know. Look if you lot don’t buck up and start doing something interesting, I’m sending in the man with a gun or maybe busty lesbian ninja warriors to spice things up a bit. You have been warned.”

A rabbit hopped across the flat and dived out of the window for comedic relief. A little parachute popped out and helped him land safely so I didn’t hurt the cute bunny, you can all stop glaring at me like that.

Sarah wondered what the hell had just happened there, but chose maturely to ignore it and carry on remembering about the past. Anyway, where was she…. oh yes… the Ben bloke, I was supposed to be doing some padding … um … I mean character background, that’s right, character background. All in the interest of having some well-rounded characters, of course. Not because I still have another eight hundred and eighty six more words to go before I can call it quits for the day, oh no. I suppose you’re tapping your fingers right now, glaring at the screen and yelling at me to just get on with it. Well, it’s all very well for you, but you haven’t got to sit here and churn out all this dross, have you? All you have to do is read this stuff, and I bet most of you have just skipped over this, haven’t you? Admit it, damnit!

Things with Ben had started off well enough – the pair of them were inseparable throughout most of their university career. Slowly, and without Sarah noticing, he had come to emotionally dominate the relationship, constantly dictating what they did as a couple and being very manipulative when he didn’t get the results he wanted. Sue had been quite concerned about the changes in her friend when Sarah came home for the holidays and had voiced her reservations which Sarah had immediately dismissed.

It was once they’d both left university, however, that the true power struggles began. Sarah had wanted to stay close to her family but Ben disliked them and with the feeling generally being mutual, cracks started appear in the relationship. They began to argue more frequently, and when during one such argument Ben threatened violence, Sarah realised how destructive the affair truly was and knew it was the time to get out.

If only breaking up had been that simple. Ben, at first, had simply refused to believe she was serious and kept coming around her flat creating a loud scene when she refused to let him in the door. As he realised that wasn’t going to persuade her, the phone calls had started – sometime as many as thirty or forty throughout all hours of the day and night: begging, pleading, threatening and cajoling. Driven to desperation, Sarah moved and got an ex-directory number, giving her family and friends strict instructions not to give the new number out to anyone without her permission. It had now been over seven years since she’d heard from him. Now it looked like he was trying to search her out again. Why?! To say she was fearful was an understatement.

Her first reaction was to telephone Sue and ask her advice, but then she remembered how much Sue was having to cope with at the moment, and decided that she didn’t want to worry her friend with her own problems. Instead she dialled Darren’s number.

“Hi Darren, it’s me. What exactly did he say?”

“Hey, sis! Not a lot – I gave you most of the info on the message. He just said that he was an old friend from university and had lost contact with you. Casually asked what you were doing now and if he could have your number as he’d lost it.”

“Good job you recognised his voice.”

“Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t have given out your number anyway, not without asking you first. I know how paranoid you are about the whole thing anyway.”

“It’s not paranoia, Darren, not when it’s justified. So what did you say?”

“True. Um, just said something about how I was on to him, knew who he was. I think he was quite surprised that I’d sussed his game so soon. Told him to leave you alone, that you weren’t interested and he was wasting his time. Don’t think he’ll bother trying anything else, to be honest, but thought you’d want to be told either way.” Darren was far more capable of being blas? about the situation than Sarah, but then he hadn’t been on the receiving ends of the threats and emotional abuse.

“Hmm. Well, we’ll see. While I’m here, did you get a call from Mum about this weekend?”

“Yeah. Looks like a general family Call To Arms. Don’t get any ideas of getting out of this, Sarah, this is a one for all and all for one occasion. We can’t leave mum to the mercy of Grandma.”

Sarah sighed. “It’s just I’ve got a shed load of work to do and a really tight deadline. I was hoping we could come to some sort of deal.”

“Uh uh, no way. My life would not be worth living. I’m not going to cover your back on this one, sis. I’d work out a way to do without sleep this week, if I were you.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll see you on Saturday. Thanks, Darren.”

She put the phone down and opened her email, still sighing dramatically. She might as well see just how many shares in Costa Coffee she was going to have to invest in this week. Before she could do more than scan down the list, the doorbell rang. She ignored the intercom, being in the ground floor flat it was far easier just to go straight to the front door and open it.

She flung the door open then stood staring in shock.

“Hello Sarah. Long time no see,” said Ben.