Save Her by Abigail Osborne (novel books to read .txt) 📗

room leaving an open-mouthed Flora standing stock-still with the bag of money in her hands.

27

It took Flora ages to get to sleep that night. They had hidden the money in one of the new kitchen units. With no furniture in the house she had had limited options as to where to hide a sack full of cash. She kept panicking that one of the builders would find it. But the kitchen had been completed so they would have no reason to go through the cupboards. Right?

She’d felt like a thief, panicking and trying to stash the loot before the police caught up with them. Maybe she’d move it again tomorrow. Find somewhere more secure. Questions buzzed like flies around her mind. Why on earth had Sophie given her a bag full of money? None of the reasons that she had come up with so far made sense. Unless Sophie was planning on leaving?

Flora turned over, putting a pillow over her head trying to quash the worries pervading her mind. She missed Sam – he’d been away on business in London since Monday. There was too much room in the bed, no one to wrap her arms around and keep her warm in the night, his gentle snores were always enough to soothe her. She needed that more than ever, when she managed to bat off her worries about Sophie, she was then treated to flashbacks of being held down in the pool or reminded of the humiliation of not having any money in the coffee shop. She did not know what was worse: wondering what was going to happen next or worrying about who could be doing these things to her.

Her life had gone downhill ever since she had announced they were moving. Was it Linda? Had she moved on from following her and was now trying to scare her into submission? Did she think if Flora was scared enough she would want to help Ethan just to make it stop? Flora hit the pillow in frustration. That made no sense. Nothing made sense anymore. Eventually she fell into a fitful sleep.

The cold and slime drew her back into consciousness. Her eyes were heavy with sleep. Her mind was trying to find its way back into the sweet oblivion of her dreams, but it was like there was a little person in her head urgently clawing at her, battering at her consciousness to tell her something wasn’t right. That was when she felt something slick with slime making its way across her cheek. She swiped at her cheek but couldn’t feel anything. Putting it down to a rather vivid dream, she turned on her side and her hand, instead of landing on the soft cotton of the duvet, fell amongst a mass of moving wet and slimy bodies.

Her eyes flew open and she looked at her hand with growing horror. In the moonlight streaming in through the gaps in the curtains she could see a mass of worms wriggling to escape her hand.

She whipped her hand away, staring in abject horror. Screaming at the top of her lungs she dived off the bed. As she moved, she realised that there had been worms on her pyjama top and one on her face. They tried to cling to her, but she flicked them off, screaming even harder. Hysterical, she pulled off her top and flung it onto the bed. It landed on the mound of glistening, twisting worms that had made their home in her bed.

Flora stood there in shock, naked to the waist, breathing hard. She kept scrubbing at her body, convinced there were more worms clinging to her. Stepping out of her pyjama bottoms she threw them on the bed and ran from the room. Her heart was racing and tears were running down her face. She was nauseous and could not escape the feeling of slimy phantom worms all over her body.

In the bathroom across the landing she got in the shower, unable to face going back into her room to use the en suite. She needed to scrub every inch of herself and get rid of the feeling of worms wriggling across her body. Half a bottle of jasmine-scented shower gel later, she finally felt clean enough. It seemed her fear of the worms had managed to help her overcome her fear of water. Her face was red raw when she looked in the mirror. Her skin burned from the vigorous scrubbing. But despite the fact her body was burned and sore from where she had scrubbed at herself repeatedly, she could still feel the wet slimy body of the worm on her cheek. Each time she blinked, she saw their cavorting bodies twisting in the sheets, clinging to her clothes. It was like a nightmare, but she knew she was awake.

Pulling a T-shirt of Sam’s out of the wash basket on the landing, she made her way back to her room, fervently wishing it was all a bad dream. But she could just make out the pile of worms, spreading out more in her absence, making themselves at home. She shut the door firmly and slumped back against the wall in the landing. What the hell? How did hundreds of worms end up in her bed? Was this a practical joke? Was it Sam’s idea of a prank?

What was she going to do about the worms? There was no way she could go back in there. But Sam wouldn’t be back until Friday. She could stay in the other bedroom. A bubble of maniacal laughter burst from her. It was so crazy. Things like this just didn’t happen.

She made her way downstairs, shivering involuntarily as her body kept reliving the feel of the cold, wet worms on her skin. She picked up the house phone and stared at it. She scrolled down the list of programmed numbers, stopping at Sam’s name – Cecelia’s was first, obviously.

She couldn’t quite make herself hit the call