Due Date

  ABAM.info

  presents

  Due Date

  By

  Lee Isserow

  Copyright © 2016

  Lee Isserow

  prologue

  Lisa's phone vibrated on the bedside table for a second, before declaring its presence to the room with the tring-a-ling of an old rotary phone.

  A desperate cry for attention. The call was ignored, as it might be if Lisa were deep asleep or in another room.

  A lamp fell to the floor, throwing shadows dancing across the walls of the bedroom. They pirouetted to the music of scuffling and muffled screams over the top of the electric shrieks from the phone's speaker and the wooden rat-a-tat percussion from its vibration.

  Lisa gasped, trying to reach for the handset as it shook itself off the end of the bedside table. She watched it land on the floor, continuing to crawl away across the carpet, as if mocking her attempt to grasp across the bed and take hold of it.

  Big, firm hands with fat fingers held her back. A further set of thin, bony digits threw some kind of rough sack over her head and bound her arms tightly behind her back. They did the same with her ankles as she tried to flail her feet at her attackers.

  She tried to scream, but one of her assailants reached under the sack and shoved something in her mouth, tied a gag around her head to keep it in place.

  Outside the Weston house, a modest semi-detached in a quiet suburb, the street was vacant. The residents were all at work. An unsettling quiet hung in the air, a lack of sound that Lisa had always thought made it feel haunted. Even when children played, it was silent. Scenes that Nina would almost always sing a creepy song over to freak her out even more. Something about the way the suburb was built, she imagined, how the houses were laid out, stopped the sound from travelling.

  As the front door was wrenched open, the muffled whimpers only made it as far as the end of the driveway before they dissipated. A silent film playing out to an empty movie theatre, as Lisa was carried into the back of a white van, held down by a large figure in a big black jacket and a baseball cap. A second, thinner, identically disguised figure slammed the van doors shut, a clunk that only they heard.

  Walking from the van, the larger of the two re-entered the house and walked up the stairs. Gloved hand clasping the bannister for support as he made the steep incline.

  Returning to the bedroom, he pulled the strewn bed covers out of the way and threw shattered pieces of lamp and glass aside until he found what he was looking for. Lisa's phone stared up from the floor, a small LED in the top right corner blinking red, one missed call declared on the screen.

  He snatched it up, made his way back down the stairs and out of the house, adopting a hurried pace as he made his way to the van, seeing a car coming down the street. A white 2014 Tesla Model S edging closer and closer.

  As it came within earshot, he heard its soft electric whine in the place of the rumble of internal combustion, steadily getting louder as it approached, accompanied by the soft scuffle of gravel under the tyres.

  He hurried to the van as the car pulled in to the driveway of the Weston's house, lowering his baseball cap as a woman got out of the car. Opening the door, he fumbled into the driver's seat, turning the key in the ignition, engine spluttering to life, and peeled off the curb, speeding away down the street, watching the driver in the rear view mirror, checking she wasn't returning to her car to pursue.

  He pulled the phone he retrieved out of his pocket and turned it off. The woman would undoubtedly be the type to have an app to track it if it were to go missing or be stolen, and he wasn't going to let her find them – not until they had everything they wanted.

  1

  It was the type of hot summer evening I'd usually have enjoyed, if I wasn't leaving work an hour later than expected. Neil, the piece-of-shit bastard who manoeuvred his way into a position of minor superiority (to match his unwarranted superiority complex) had wasted my Goddamn day on a proposal for a client that he was certain would win us a D&AD.

  As soon as I arrived at 8am, I was juggling his sycophantic ravings to our boss, Claire, and trying to deal with the two clients I was in the midst of creating campaigns for. My heart wasn't in any of it. I was distracted, and I think everyone I spoke to noticed.

  Whether they said it or not, I apologised anyway, profusely, and probably more than necessary. They all pretty much had the same response;

  “Oh Nina, we totally understand, after all, any day now you're going to be a mother!”

  Despite their kind words, It didn't feel like it was acceptable. Maybe I was just punishing myself, as I always seem to do when my mind isn't a hundred percent on the job. Lisa had always been supportive of my dedication, even when it meant we didn't get to go on holidays or even take weekend breaks out of the city. She was an enabler, which was a big part of what I loved about her. But I had promised her that my outlook would change once we had brought our daughter into the world. Whether that be a natural change or one I was going to force upon myself, it was going to have to happen. I wanted the baby as much as she did, and the more I thought about it, the more I was willing to sacrifice my career, my ceaseless dedication to a job that didn't seem dedicated to me, to raise a child together.

  As I got to the car, I pulled out my phone and brought it to my lips.

  “Call Lisa.” I instructed.

  The handset thought for a moment, then searched through its memory, as it attempted to find the name that corresponded with the phonetics. An audible ticker-tack whispered from the speaker as it translated my words to ones and zeros. It started ringing through as I unlocked the car and sat in the driver's seat, placing the phone in its dock as the call rang out. After a moment, there was a robotic click.

  “Hi, this is Lisa Weston, leave a message.”

  I let out a sigh as the message played out. My shoulders dropping as I sat back in the driver's seat. Lisa was probably asleep, and I should have known better than to call. Risk waking her in one of the few patches of slumber she was catching up on.

  She hadn't been sleeping well during the pregnancy, and I had been staying up with her through the insomnia, stroking her head and holding her close. Trying to remind her without words that, even though she was the one with the life in her belly, we were going through it together. I could feel a knot tightening in my stomach as the answer service beeped.

  “Hey Lis’.” I said. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, got stuck in a meeting... and then another meeting, then a phone call, and another dumb meeting. I’m heading back now, see you in a bit.”

  I hung up and rested my hands on the steering wheel, trying to suppress all the concerns about work. Trying to turn my mind to the journey home. I leaned forward, put my heavy head on the steering wheel, thinking of the weekend I had promised to spend with the woman I loved.

  After a minute of readjusting my thoughts to the things that mattered, rather than the work that (in the grand scheme) didn't, I clicked the ignition and the engine came to life.

  Rolling out of the parking lot, I started my journey. The same roads as every other day, the same traffic jams that eased up at the same places, as I turned the corner to our neighbourhood. Passing the same houses, the same lights on inside as the families that lived near us prepared for dinner.

  Hate to admit it, but I wondered if I could ever really leave the work behind like they seemed to. I loved it as much as I hated the people I worked alongside. The clients were idiots (clients always are) but the work itself, getting to create and design and be paid ridiculously well for it. That was endlessly rewarding, assuming I got to have things my way.

  I thought about that life, the one that lay beyond the curtains of the houses I drove by every weekday. Imagining the 'domestic bliss' ideal from back in
the fifties; woman at home cooking whilst the husband worked a nine to five. If I were part of that world, I guess I'd be the husband. Even though Lisa had her own career, and had only been on maternity leave for a few weeks, I knew that she wouldn't want to go back to work when the clock ran out.

  Turning down the street, I pulled into the driveway, trying to forget about maternity leave and push thoughts of gender roles by the wayside, along with the thoughts that belonged locked up in the office. It wasn't a conversation I was ready to have, not for so soon before Lisa was 'about to pop' as she had insisted on calling it. I didn't like the term, it made me think of my wife as a water balloon that could burst at any moment, and that didn't exactly conjure nice imagery.

  Killing the engine, I pulled the phone from the dock before getting out of the car. The street was as quiet as always. Haunting. I loved that quiet as much as Lisa hated it. How many places in London can you find actual quiet? There were rarely people loitering or walking, our neighbours were seen far and few between, apart from when their kids played in the front gardens. For the most part they were only silhouettes against net curtains, or brief glimpses of three-dimensional people as they made the short walks from their front doors to their cars.

  Hitting the remote to lock the car, I noticed a figure getting into a van parked up outside the house. The man slammed the door and brought the old engine to life with a cough. It reminded me of how my grandfather used to clear his throat, lungs clogged from decades of cigarettes.

  The van careened down the road, disappearing round the corner at the end of the street. It was a little odd, but not entirely out of the ordinary. There had been roadworks and telephone line repairs in the area over the last few months, and I shrugged it off as I walked up the path, struggling in my bag to find the house keys, which out of sheer stubbornness I insisted on keeping separate from the car keys. Finally digging them out, I reached up to insert one in the lock, when my heart skipped a beat.

  The door was ajar.

  “Lis?” I said, looking around the front yard, in case she had come out for some fresh air.

  There was no response.

  I tried to think back to that morning, wondering if I had left the door open. It seemed like an impossibility. I was obsessively careful and paranoid about those kind of things, and knew for a fact that Lisa was the same.

  Pushing the door open, I took slow, tentative steps into the house, looking left and right, judging and second-guessing every shadow in case it shrouded a hidden attacker.

  “Lisa?” I said again, when I was more confident that the coast was clear from potential threats. There was still no reply.

  I closed the door behind me and made my way up the stairs. As I came to the landing, I stopped dead in my tracks, discovering a bookcase knocked over, old leather-bound volumes of Dickens, Poe, Swift and Stevenson I had inherited from my grandfather strewn about the floor, dirty bootprints on their otherwise perfect covers.

  A chill came over me, a quiver on my lip I couldn't seem to stop. Bursting in to the bedroom I felt my legs weaken, falling to the floor uncontrollably. My eyes begged to cry, but refused to well with tears.

  I hadn't been able to cry for years, not since my grandfather's funeral, where Lisa had stood by my side and held my hand as I shed more tears than I ever imagined possible. It had been four years since I last cried, as if my body had become overwhelmed, tear ducts overloaded, the function plugged up for good.

  Cemented to the floor, I couldn't move, couldn't think. Surrounded by the shattered pieces of the life I and the woman of my dreams had made together. The lamps we brought back from Morocco, the jug we squabbled about playfully in the antiques shop in Notting Hill, the crystal glass from the set we bought in Canada that Lisa had insisted were not only too expensive, but would get broken instantly. The shards of the last survivor of the set glittered in the light from the unsheathed lamp bulb, its surround destroyed.

  The silence over the desolate room was shattered, just as our possessions had been, by my phone. I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID.

  It was Lisa.

  “Lis?”

  There was no voice back. I could hear mutters that were too far from the microphone to make out. Two voices, one higher pitched than the other, but both indecipherable, like a hand was placed over the phone.

  “Lisa? Are you ok?”

  “Missus Weston.” said a voice. Gruff and deep, a distorted mock-cockney accent that was quiet, as if were spoken from behind a window.

  “Who is this?”

  “We have your wife.” the caller grunted, his tone emotionless, robotic almost, tinted with the notion of a threat.

  An anxious, empty pit punched through my stomach. I felt physically ill, and found myself dry-retching uncontrollably, the vomit reflex mocking me just like my tear ducts.

  The grip I had on the phone loosened. It tumbled out of my fingers to the floor as I tried to control the bodily functions that seemed intent on spasming of their own volition. I could hear the mumble of the man speaking faintly, took deep breaths trying to quell the desire to throw up, and picked up the phone with trembling hands.

  “Missus Weston?” the caller said, an uncertainty in his tone.

  “I'm here.” I said, with a rasp, dry throat scratching out the words.

  “If you want to see her again you’ll need fifty thousand pounds by Friday.” his statement was followed by a soft double-beep.

  “We don't have that kind of money!”

  “Find a way.” his voice was wavering again, the accent he had adopted faltering. “Call the police and you'll never see her aga--”

  The call cut off.

  I looked around the room at the devastation left by the kidnappers. Wondering how much of it was accidental, how much was just mindless, wanton destruction. I knew Lisa was a fighter, could recall in great detail a number of altercations we had got into in our university days, where she'd take on two or three grown men at a time when they'd call us 'lesbos' or 'dykes'. I had seen my lover hold her own and beat the unabashed shit out of anyone who threatened or mocked our love.

  Before I knew what she was doing, I had redialled Lisa's phone, and was sent straight to voicemail.

  “Hi, this is Lisa Weston, leave a message.”

  I hung up.

  My hand fell to the floor with the phone. The knot in my stomach had strands reaching up through my body, lungs tight in my chest, legs weak and unresponsive.

  I stared into middle distance blankly, absorbing the weight of it all. Couldn't move. Couldn't think. Couldn't imagine the hell Lisa was going through.

  And somehow, I felt that it was all my fault.

  2

  A half hour passed, maybe an hour, before I was able to get my head straight and regain control of my body. I knew I would do anything, whatever it took to get Lisa back.

  It felt like everything was on autopilot as I burst into the study, the room that was slowly being turned into a nursery for our child, a mural half-painted on the wall, paint pots and brushes resting on plastic sheets laid out on the floor. My desk still lay at the centre of the room. A monolith of a life before family life. Opened my laptop, pulled up the browser and logged in to my bank account.

  NINA WESTON E-BANKING DIRECT ACCT

  £2,152.31

  NINA WESTON ISA ACCT

  £4,012.65

  NINA WESTON & LISA WESTON JOINT ACCT

  £14,106.52

  I muttered a flurry of curses and expletives under my breath, hating myself for not being better at saving. Our outgoings, the house payments and maintenance, the conservatory Lisa wanted built, all of it was taking a massive bite out of the eighty thousand I was on, and the forty-three Lisa brought in. I searched the desk for a pen and paper, and after finding them in a drawer, started scrawling down a tally of how much cash we had together

  £20,271.48

  “Shit!” I shouted. “Fucking, fucking shit!”

  I threw the pencil across the room, it h
it the wall, scratching into the rainbow drawn above the farm scene Lisa had been painting. The scar in the paint stared back at me, driving guilt into my heart for the outburst. Lisa always told me I needed to learn how to control that side of my personality.

  Had to keep focus. That line of thinking, reminiscing, was a distraction. Had to stay on track. I started trying to work out how another thirty-thousand could materialise, and knew there was one option for quick cash, but it wasn't one I wanted to rely on.

  I wasted fifteen minutes scouring my mind for an alternative, any alternative, and gave up. I was already back on my feet, pulling car keys out as the front door slammed behind me.

  The car sped through the streets with an electric hum. I only slowed when the GPS screen told me I was approaching speed cameras, after which I floored it, going ninety on the North Circular, the route embedded in my mind from the seventeen years of being driven back and forth along the road.

  Still working on autopilot, I turned at the off ramp that was drilled in to my brain, slowing at the lights as they turned red. The thoughts cycled again; perhaps there was another way, another person, another place I could go. A same-day loan company, or a back-alley loanshark, anyone else. I didn't trust the former, with their history of lax security and thousand percent interest rates, and couldn't imagine where to find the latter. If I did, or if I knew someone who might know that kind of person, I'd have gladly gone for the loan shark over my intended destination, preferring to risk missing a payment and having my kneecaps smashed in for Lisa. It would certainly be more pleasant than what was invariably waiting for me when I parked up.

  The lights changed, and I kept to the speed limit through the suburbs of north London, pulling up outside the house I grew up in. There was a reluctance in my bones that kept me fixed in the car for a minute, before I finally flicked the engine off and got out, walking up the path I knew so well, and hated so much. The same cracked paving, badly trimmed hedges and overgrown weeds that had been there for as long as I could remember.