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Butterfly House – Chapter 3
If you’re new to the story, please read the prologue here.
Chapter 3
A ringing sound woke Declan abruptly, he lifted his face from his pillow and blinked up at the clock on his bedside table. The time just changing from 09:23 to 09:24.
“Shit!” he swore as he rushed to get up out of bed, tripping on the bedsheets and fell to the floor, knocking his head on the cheap scratchy carpet.
He pulled himself up, groaned as he rubbed his head and picked up his ringing mobile.
“Harris,” he muttered into the phone, the best awake voice he could muster.
“Where are you?” said a hurried voice, his partner; Fiona Boyd.
“Pass, next question.”
“Declan!” Fiona’s voice hissed at him.
“I’m sorry! I…” He paused, and tried to think of an excuse. “I can’t come up with an excuse right now, can I get back to you on that one?”
“This is the last time I’m covering for you, you need to get your act together.”
“I know.” Declan groaned, and sat up, leaning against the bed frame. “I’ve already been told I need a holiday, maybe I should?”
“You’ll be seeing the inside of a morgue soon if you don’t.”
Declan laughed. “At least you’re friendly with the prison staff!”
He heard his partner sigh. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, I… I just slept through my alarm again. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Fine, but you’re doing some of my paperwork!”
“I’ll buy donuts.”
“Very funny!” The phone suddenly went dead.
Declan stared at the floor of his bedroom for a few minutes, wondering about whether he should redecorate—or maybe moving was a better option?—until he sighed, pushed himself up from the floor and got dressed, putting his standard police trousers over the top of the same boxers he wore yesterday and pulled a plain black t-shirt up over his muscular frame, the rest of his police uniform would be in his locker at the station. He didn’t even bother to shower, he didn’t have time. He would drown himself in deodorant and aftershave instead.
***
When Declan walked into his tiny kitchen, his stomach rumbling angrily at him, he walked over to his fruit bowl and picked up an apple. He pressed a button on his answer machine to play the messages he missed to listen to last night and walked over to the blinds, pulling on the string to open them with one hand while biting into the apple with his other.
“One new message,” he heard the mechanical voice of his answer machine. It proceeded to tell him that a new message was received only last night, ironically only minutes before he had finally got home last night. Having left the station late, skipping dinner and collapsing straight into bed. Only just managing to strip before doing so.
“Declan, hi, it’s me,” he heard a familiar female voice. His blood ran cold, his heart stopped and he stood still, the apple to his mouth and the blinds half-way open. “I’m sorry to call, but…” The woman sighed. “This is awkward.” She laughed. “Well, I’ll just come out and say it; I think I left my passport in our… your… filing cabinet.” The line went dead for a long time, Declan wasn’t sure if the message was over, or the machine started to play up, he looked round at it, taking the apple from his mouth, but just as he did, she continued again; “Sorry.” She continued, sounding like she was sobbing. “I… I need it need it by next week. We… I… I’m going away. So, could we… I don’t know… meet up? Or… if you don’t want to… which I completely understand, could you somehow get my passport back to me?” Another long pause and Declan was sure the message had finished this time, when her voice came back. “I did love you, you know that right?” Declan snorted and shook his head at the answer machine. “Anyway, you have my number, call me when you get a chance… but… please don’t leave it too late. I need my passport… Bye.”
Declan closed his eyes as the answer machine told him his options, pressing buttons to save, delete, and so on. He rushed up to the machine and pressed the delete hurriedly. He wanted to pretend he never heard her voice. Pretend she never existed. Pretend she never came into his life, tore his heart out and stamped on it. He’d find the passport alright, but he wasn’t sending it to her, it’ll go straight to the station and he’d report it as lost. She had no chance leaving the country. It’s the least she deserved anyway.
He threw the rest of the apple in the bin, no longer felting hungry, grabbed his keys and left his flat, his already bad mood had worsened.
New Chapter coming soon!
Please check out my other written works! 😀
If you like what you read, please do check out my WattPad account here: https://www.wattpad.com/user/penny_bones16
I also have a few ‘samples’ on my other works here:
New Story Idea – “I fell in Love with a Psychopath”
Butterfly House – Chapter 2
Note: If you’d like to read the Prologue and Chapter 1, please find them here:
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
The sound of music filled the air as a red Aston Martin Vantage convertible drove down a relatively busy road in the city centre of London, its roof down. The owner of the car, a young pretty woman with long brown hair tied back into pony tail, sunglasses and a large smile on her face, tapped to the beat of the song on her car door as she rested her arm out the window.
The car gave a bit of life to the street for a few minutes, the happy song filling everyone with joy, and the bright beautiful car turning most men’s heads, even a few of the women who either appreciated the car too, or were hoping to see a hot rich guy in the seat instead.
The woman grinned as a set of pedestrian lights turned red, signalling her to stop. She grinned because stopping the car was sometimes the best bit, being able to concentrate on the people around her and not the road, taking in their looks and agape faces as they stared. She winked at a young lad, no older than eighteen, but realised he probably couldn’t see her eyes behind her glasses so gave him a cheeky grin instead.
But just as the lad stumbled across the road, his cheeks going red, the music dulled and her car speakers were filled with a ringing sound instead. She sighed, looked down at her mobile which was on the passenger seat, recognising the caller ID, she pressed the answer button on her steering wheel.
“Hello, beautiful,” she said, making a balding middle-aged man look round in shock as he walked passed the car, and suddenly looking embarrassed when he heard another voice come from the speakers, knowing instantly that that hot woman in the expensive car wasn’t talking to him.
“Al, next Saturday!” said a woman’s voice.
The woman in the car, just as she started to drive off now the lights were green, gasped and said, “Have you realised you love me, so you’re leaving Dillon and running away with me?”
The woman in the speakers laughed. “Lunch, babe.”
“Ah, that’s the next best thing I suppose.”
“Is twelve okay?”
“Midnight?”
Another laugh. “Lunch at midnight?”
“You know me, I like to live life on the edge, thought maybe you were taking a leaf out of my book?”
“I’m in bed by nine these days!”
“That’s usually the same time I get up!”
“At night, babe.”
“Exactly!”
Another laugh. “Then what are you doing up this early?”
The woman in the car looked round at the time on the screen in her car, it read nine-thirty in the morning. “Haven’t gone to bed yet.”
Another laugh. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not!”
“Sometimes I can’t tell either.” She laughed.
“So, you free next Saturday?”
“Will Dillon be there?”
“No, he’s working, just you and me.”
“That’s a shame, I’d quite like a threesome.”
“Allison!” her friend groaned, and she could almost see her friend going red from embarrassment.
The woman called Allison laughed, just as she saw a disgusted look from an old lady who was walking down the street as she drove past, clearly having overheard Allison. “I’m kidding!” she said, and gave a small pause before saying; “It’s all about foursomes now! Much more fun and no risk of someone missing out.”
Her friend groaned loudly. “I’m regretting booking this place now.”
“Where have you booked?”
“It’s that new place the other side of the city, beautiful willow trees in the gardens.”
“My house?”
“No.” Her friend sighed. “I can’t remember the name of the place.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“So, you free?”
“I’m always free for you, baby,” Allison replied. “I’ll even wear my kinky outfit.”
“I wonder why we’re friends sometimes, you know.”
“I pay you well.”
The woman on the phone laughed again, and then was cut off by sirens as an ambulance drove past.
“Where are you?” her friend asked.
“Victoria Street.”
“Oh god, you’re talking to me on hands free through the speakers with your top down again, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” Allison said, a huge grin on her face, as she stopped by another set of traffic lights. She glanced to her side as another car rolled up next to her. A rather plump looking couple in a beat up Volvo glared at her from within, the passenger; a woman with greying hair and a large mole on her chin, had her window down in the sun. “Oh, toats hot couple right next to me in traffic!” Allison yelled deliberately loud. “Shall I ask them if they want to have a foursome with us?”
“What?” said her friend on the phone, she must have not heard her or was momentarily distracted at work.
“Hot couple, three o’clock, say hi, Kathy!”
Just at the same time as Kathy groaned on the phone, the woman in the passenger seat of the Volvo went red and rolled her window up. Allison just burst out laughing.
“I have to go,” Kathy said, her voice sounding absolutely horrified.
“Don’t worry, you can have the guy, I’ll have the hot chick. Her mole is a strange turn on.”
“Allison,” Kathy groaned. “I have a meeting in five minutes, I’ll ring you later or something to give you the details for next Saturday.”
“Bollox do you have a meeting, you have an awful lot of them when you’re on the phone to me.”
“I was being polite.”
“Don’t be,” Allison said, as she started to drive off again. “Just tell me to fuck off, I don’t mind.”
“Alright, fuck off.”
“Well, I say!”
“Bye, Allison.”
“Love you, sexy.”
There was another groan before the line went dead and the music started to run back up, Allison just drove, singing along without a care in the world, as she drove towards the Wellington Arch.
***
Click here to read the next chapter!
Thanks for reading!
If you like what you read, please check out my other works.
Rose Garden Sanatorium – Prologue
I also have a book published, “It’s My Mistake” with 5-star reviews!
It’s My Mistake – Chapter 1 – UPDATED
It’s also out in paperback where you can get a physical copy here!
Getting my head around WordPress…
So, I’ve been using WordPress for about a year now (I think I got a notification to say happy anniversary or something) and I’m still baffled by the thing!
I’ve mostly been using it as a blog, and set up a Wix account to use as my main website. But I see everywhere that WordPress is the biggest website host… so I’ve been dabbling in trying to understand it a bit more.
So, because I have all these posts, some posts are about my book; Rose Garden Sanatorium, others about my other book; It’s My Mistake. I have posts about author problems, I have posts about other crap too.
But can I arrange them into sections? Apparently not. There is a function in the ‘customize’ view to list a navigation, so to begin with I just added posts to that navigation, updating it frequently for my audience.
Then I realised I can add layers to it. So a page can have posts attached to it. So I thought that was brilliant, I can create a page for my Rose Garden Sanatorium book, another for my ‘It’s My Mistake’, and so on. But I can’t seem to have more than two posts per page and for some reason I have random pages turning up where it doesn’t show on the customise section.
And don’t even get me started on reaching people! Tags and categroies doesn’t seem to do anything for me!
Anyway, that’s my little rant over with… Might need to do some research into utilizing WordPress and maying do some training or something. Hopefully Udemy has something helpful!
The Girl Who Whispered 