Page 53 of Then She Vanished

She went over to the window again, looking out. There was a slight platform under that window where the previous owners of the house had built the kitchen extension, and her bin was just underneath it. She never left her bin there.

She googled Pete Bloxwich and his website came up. Heading straight to the contact page, she typed out a message.

We need to speak! What the hell are you doing stalking me at work???

After hitting send, she’d been left with no option but to call Briggs. Just as she went to call him, a voice came from behind her. ‘Hello, Gina.’

She grabbed the nearest thing she could find – the iron – and held it in front of her chest. ‘Come any closer and I will cave your head in.’

Pete Bloxwich stood there and held his hands up. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Besides, I’m not armed, and I have no intention of hurting you, but oh, that doesn’t matter, does it? You’ll probably just push me down some stairs and claim it was self-defence.’

How dare he? Bloxwich had gained illegal entry into her house and now he was blocking her only exit out of the room. ‘I will expose you and everything you did. How you set up the MenRTakinItBack website. Your readers would love to know what a misogynist you are. I still have proof.’

He waved a hand dismissively. ‘Oh, Gina, I can also play tit for tat, but that’s not why I’m here, so why don’t you shut up and listen.’

‘Or why don’t I just call for backup and cave your head in with this iron?’

He shrugged. ‘Do it. It’ll be a lot messier, though, and right now you need me. If you hurt me, I can’t help you out of this sad mess, and things will only get worse for you.’

She put her phone in her pocket and the iron down on the bed. ‘Speak.’ Her thudding heart felt as though it was in her throat.

‘I’ve actually come to help you. Believe it or not, I closed that website down and someone has hijacked and rebranded it. They’re even using my old profile name as the administrator so this will come back to me. Unless we work together, we’re both over. I can end this. It will take time, but I can do it.’ He smacked his lips. ‘I just have conditions.’

‘Stuff you and your conditions?—’

‘Gina, just shut up. Our relationship isn’t a democracy, it’s a dictatorship, because how I see it, I hold all the aces. I have the necessary skills and time. You have neither, because this is currently going around the forum.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. After a bit of scrolling, he held up a photo.

It was like the air had been sucked out of Gina’s lungs as she gasped. In the photo, she was blindfolded, in her underwear and tied to a metal ring in the shed covered in bruises.

That had been taken when Gina was about two months pregnant with Hannah. Terry had come home angry and drunk and she’d pushed him away from her. Their argument had led to him knocking her over. Terry had changed before her, tearing her clothes off and dragging her out to the shed in the cold. She had no idea he’d taken photos. She had looked so different back then; so scrawny.

‘Next time it might not be a photo of you wearing a blindfold and the world will get to identify you. Lovely Stephen put thisup during the last stint and someone saved it and recirculated it. Your lovely ex-husband must have had quite the collection of photos from your past. Some psycho happened to get hold of this one and republish it, and this time, people are liking what they see and they’re all looking for you.’

‘That’s not me.’ Her stomach roiled.

Pete nodded slowly. ‘Don’t try to deny it, Gina. We both know it’s you. I dig deeper than MikeTheMan ever could. There are no depths to where I will go to get my facts.’

She shivered at the mention of her pseudonym on the site. How did he know?

‘There are paths in this rabbit warren that you are not privy to. The release of your address is barely a click away and I’m going to temporarily stop that from happening until I can come up with a permanent solution. I will put an end to this, but I need time, and I also need something else.’

She shook her head and clenched her fists until her nails pierced her hands. ‘You’re not having that, no way.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Gina. I don’t want to be here. I started a new life. I’ve been living in a cutesy cottage in Devon with an amazing woman I met on Tinder, then all this reared its ugly head. I can help myself and I will help you, too, but only if, when it’s all over, I can have all the copies of our last conversation.’

‘You mean your confession? How you were behind the BoyzRTakinItBack forum, showing you to be the woman-hater you are?’

He nodded. ‘Exactly. Like you, I want a second chance in life. I want my hideous past to be buried for good. Sometimes humans do stupid things in the heat of the moment, and I’d just come out of a really fucked-up relationship back then and was angry, okay? Does it mean I should pay for that mistake for the rest of my life? Neither of us should. We both have so much in common and we can get out of this unscathed.’

‘Don’t bank on it.’

He smirked. ‘Said the murderer to the ex-misogynist.’

She sighed. She had so much more to lose. ‘I amnota murderer.’ She had never confessed to anything.

‘Stephen thinks you are, but whatever, I literally don’t care anymore.’

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ she asked.

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