Steeling herself, she carefully reached out and touched the fitting with a single finger; there wasn’t even the slightest feeling of discomfort. Full of confidence now, she turned both hot and cold taps off and on repeatedly, laughing as the water started and stopped, splashing into the foam that Ingleby had been preparing to luxuriate in. Amber recalled the look of disbelief that had crossed his face when realisation came, a fraction of a second before the puff of life escaped his body to be encapsulated into her essence; he knew what she’d done, although he had no idea why she had done it. And he never would. Not now.
Amber checked again to make sure that everything looked normal. The bath was almost full; everything else was neatly in place. The bath! It was too full. If Ingleby had died while it was still running, it would have overflowed and water would have flooded the bathroom. Alternatively, if he had turned the water off first, and died while taking a drink prior to stepping in — which would certainly fit with the spilt tea on the floor — then the bath wouldn’t have been this full. It was lucky she’d noticed in time. She reached in and pulled the plug out to let some of the water escape, and was surprised to find the bath was still pleasantly hot. An idea formed. What better opportunity to wash away all vestiges of the deed than to have a nice long soak amongst the soapy bubbles? Besides, she was in no hurry.
She undressed slowly and walked over to the steamed-up mirror, wiping it with the back of her hand so she could get a good look at herself. Hmm, that is definitely not bad for my age, she thought. It was as if she had lost twenty years in an instant, with barely a wrinkle or an ounce of fat to be seen. Only the closest of inspections would have led anybody to believe that she was any older than her mid-thirties. And that was externally; internally, she felt as if she had only recently said farewell to her teenage years. “It’s a good job this isn’t the sixteenth century—” she laughed “—else I’d probably be burnt at the stake for being a witch. And they wouldn’t be far wrong,” she acknowledged. After all, hadn’t that been behind her choice of name, with Amber being the real name of one of the witch actresses in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? A far cry from the vampire films she had seen in years past, with whimpering women victims there only for the delights of Bela Lugosi. “Am-ber Da-vor-ez,” she said, in her best Transylvanian accent, enunciating each syllable as it tripped off her tongue.
She climbed into the bath and basked for a good half-hour before the waters at last began to cool. After drying both herself and the bath — as the water had obviously been used, there was no longer any point in trying to pretend that Ingleby had died after filling the bath — and cleaning the floor around the corpse, she put the damp towels in the laundry basket. Then she carried the now-cold mug of tea downstairs, poured the contents down the sink, and washed and dried the mug. She took a look at her watch. It was half an hour before midnight.
She took the back-door key from her pocket; it had been a simple task to take the original from Ingleby’s jacket while he was lunching in the company canteen, and she had been able to replace it before he had noticed it had gone. With the wax impression she had taken, it had been an easy job to make the crude — but effective — key that she now held. Amber was certain that nobody had spotted her entering the house that evening, but it was a little too early to leave; the last thing she needed was to be seen now, just as everything was more or less finished. She went into the living room and sat in the dark, waiting for the clock to tick slowly over, and almost three hours later she left the house for the last time.
As for Amber —Well, she thought, this is the part I’m used to now. I’ll just lie low and remain patient, keep a low profile until it’s time. Just once more, that was all. She turned the corner and disappeared into the night.
I stood outside the college wondering whether or not I’d done the correct thing; it had all seemed so worthwhile less than a week earlier when I had signed up for the Local History course that the Adult Education Department had included amongst their offerings for the new term, but now it came to it – well, to say I was having doubts was an understatement of hyperbolic proportions.
I suppose it was the thought of the others on the course that bothered me. I had seen some of them while enrolling, and they all looked so much more, well, scholarly really, than I was. It had come home to me when I was about to leave home an hour or so earlier, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror; what I saw didn’t exactly inspire me, and I almost turned back.
When you don’t see yourself every day — I don’t mean looking in the mirror when you’re having a shave or anything like that, but really seeing yourself — well, you tend to build up an image that doesn’t conform to reality. At least, that was what I did. But as I looked closely at my reflection in the glass, I had to accept that time really had taken its toll. Yes, that really was me looking back at myself: Ethan Hudson, late fifties, recently retired, with thinning brown hair flecked with grey. Or, to be more accurate, thinning grey hair flecked with brown. Still slim, I thought, trying to ignore the paunch that hung over the top of my trousers, obscuring sight of my belt. But I wasn’t kidding anybody. Who on earth would be interested in a body like that? So all I had to go on was personality, and that had taken a back seat ever since the acrimonious divorce two years ago that had destroyed whatever vestiges of confidence I might have had. With my daughter married but now living in Hampshire, and my son away for the next year as a volunteer on a project in Argentina, I was, I suppose, living a lonely existence; with post-work days seeming to last forever, it hadn’t taken a lot of prompting to make me take a look in the Gazette Adult Education Department’s column advertising the new session’s courses.
It was actually my daughter, Julie, who had persuaded me to take this action, during one of our weekly phone calls:
“Hi, Dad, how are you this week?”
“Much the same, much the same.”
“So that means you’re still stuck at home every night, then?”
“Well, love, it isn't that easy. Not at my age…”
“Of course it is, Dad! Especially at your age. You’ve no commitments, nothing to stop you getting out there. I worry about you. It isn't as if I can just pop in and see you every night, is it?”
“Hey, I don’t need looking after to that extent. I’m quite capable of doing something about it myself.”
“Then go on and do it. Why don’t you book on one of those evening classes? It’ll give you something to think about, and you might meet somebody nice there.”
“Oh, so you’re the matchmaker now, are you?”
“We’re just concerned, that’s all.”
“We? So you discuss me with your friends, do you?”
“Very funny, Dad. I was talking with Gary last night and he feels the same as I do. He was even talking about cutting his volunteering trip short and coming back home.”
“Tell your