The Role Model: A shocking psychological thriller with several twists by Daniel Hurst (big ebook reader txt) 📗

Maybe I should send him a picture.

He’d probably drop his phone in fright.

The self-deprecating thought cheers me up for the shortest of seconds as I finish drying off and wrap my towel around my torso before unlocking the bathroom door and stepping out into the hallway. I’m almost expecting to see Chloe waiting out here for me based on her knocking on the bathroom door a few minutes ago, but she isn’t. The sound from behind her bedroom door lets me know where she is now, and I walk past it on the way to my bedroom, hoping that she will just stay in there for the rest of the evening so I can sit downstairs and get drunk by myself.

Walking into my bedroom, I throw off my towel and pull on an old pair of pyjamas, aware that tonight is not a night that requires me to look sexy. That’s a job for twenty-four hours’ time, which reminds me, I need to send a message.

Going into the back pocket of my jeans on the bed, I take out the bit of paper that Jimmy gave me in the park and unfold it to see the line of digits scrawled across it. Then I take out my phone and go into my texts, my fingers moving slowly across the screen as I type out a message to my blackmailer.

Reading it through several times, more because I can’t believe what I am saying rather than because I’m checking for any spelling mistakes, I decide that it is time to press send and I do it quickly before I have a chance to change my mind.

I wonder how long it will take Jimmy to come back with a response. I imagine he will be feeling very pleased with himself when he sees my message. I just hope he treats this like the business transaction that it is, which would be professional, with no room for gloating or exploiting. But I’m also aware that he is much younger than me, so maybe there will be some childish element to his reply. It turns out I don’t have to wait too long to find out.

Good call. Meet me in the lobby of the Royal Tree Hotel at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Wear a red mini dress and black heels. Have your hair down. And I prefer blondes, so you’re going to have to do something about that. See you there.

I throw my phone onto my bed, angry and frustrated at the response. While it was fairly professional and business-like, that isn’t much consolation. There’s treating me like a transaction, and then there’s that.

It’s as if I’m some product he has just ordered in a magazine.

Trying to keep calm, I walk over to my dressing table and prepare to start going through my usual skincare routine that I conduct after every shower. But I pause when I catch sight of myself in the mirror and what I see is a reminder of the torment that awaits me tomorrow.

My long black hair. Wet. Scraggly.

And soon to be blonde.

26

CHLOE

‘What the hell have you done to your hair?’

I pause in the doorway of the bathroom when I see what is waiting for me on the inside. Mum is standing in front of the mirror, an empty bottle of hair dye sitting in the stain-covered sink in front of her, looking like an intruder in our home.

I recognise her, but only just.

‘I fancied a change,’ she replies, glancing at me a little self-consciously before turning back to the mirror and getting another good look at what she has done to herself.

‘Since when did you want to be blonde?’ I ask, walking in and scooping out the bottle of peroxide from the sink as if I needed that to confirm what I already know.

She looks like a bloody Barbie doll.

‘What do you think?’ she asks me, although judging by the expression on her face, that could also be a question for herself too. She doesn’t seem too sure about it.

‘It’s just a bit of a shock,’ I say, putting it mildly. ‘You’ve never dyed your hair before.’

‘Yeah, well, I figured it was now or never. Last year of my thirties and all that.’

I frown because while that might make sense to some people in some weird way, it doesn’t sound like anything my mother would think of doing.

‘So this is your mid-life crisis?’ I ask, putting the empty bottle back into the sink and taking a few steps away from her so as not to be overwhelmed with the fumes from the dye.

‘I just thought I’d try it,’ she says, turning to look at me again, and I try to focus on her eyes and not the bright mess of hair around them. ‘A fresh start, maybe.’

I suddenly feel bad for judging her because I get what she is alluding to. The whole thing with Rupert. The guilt and remorse of what she did. She probably hates herself every time she looks in the mirror. This must be her way of changing the picture.

‘I think it looks nice,’ I say, trying to cover for my initial surprise. ‘I just wished you’d warned me, so I didn’t think there was a stranger in the house.’

Mum laughs, and I realise that’s the first time she has done so since that night over a week ago. But it’s as if she catches herself, and she quickly returns a blank expression to her face.

‘Sorry about that,’ she says, moving her head around to get a glimpse of it from all angles in the mirror. ‘It was a spur of the moment decision.’

‘Maybe I’ll go blonde too,’ I suggest, standing alongside her again by the mirror and trying to visualise what I would look like with a different hair colour.

‘We can talk about that another time,’ Mum replies with a small grin, and I laugh before I too am reminded of the realities of our world and return to a