A Stranger Death (Ch 5)

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Chapter 5

When she got home, Sarah sneaked in through the back door, hoping she had made it home before her parents. There was no sign of them, but as she approached the stairs, she heard them arrive. As soon as they were out of the car Sarah could hear her mother's voice outside in the driveway complaining about the lawn not being mowed properly. Typical! She quickly made her way up the stairs so that she wouldn't bump into her. She just made it as she heard the front door open. As soon as she stepped inside her room, however, there was that vicious yell that she had heard so many times before.

"Sarah! Sarah! Come down here right now. I told you to get rid of this load of junk before someone trips over it."

She was referring to a box of artwork that Sarah had done when the tea rooms were quiet. Sarah was excellent at drawing, but her mother disapproved of it, saying drawing is not a profession, and she needs to think about what she will do with her life. You can't want to be just a waitress for evermore, she would say.

"Coming mother!" answered Sarah, still sitting on her bed. She was trying to catch her breath so her mother wouldn't know that she had only just got home ahead of them. She then headed down the stairs and picked up the box. She was about to head back up the stairs with it when her mother stopped her.

"Where do you think you're going with that junk? I told you to get rid of it, not to hoard it along with all the other rubbish in your room. It's getting to be a job to clean your room when there's so much of it" she said.

A frown came over Sarah's face. "It's not junk mum and I'm going to my room with it," responded Sarah, feeling very annoyed to hear her mother brand some of her prize possessions as rubbish.

"No, no, no Sarah. You're not taking that stuff up to your room. You're going to go outside and throw it in the rubbish bin," asserted her mother.

"I am not throwing it away mother!" she squealed.

"Watch your tone, young lady. You're not too big to feel my hand you know. Now this is the last time I'm going to tell you. Get rid of it or I'll do it myself."

It seemed that the events of the morning had made Sandra Maddison even crankier than usual, and Sarah was now paying the price.

"Dad, please tell mum to stop," Sarah said to her father, who by this time was sitting quietly on the couch.

"It's okay honey, you can take them to your room," said her father. It was just about the worst thing he could have said. His wife began yelling at him at the top of her voice. Everyone on the street and their neighbors in their houses could hear her. It was a routine, so much so that they've got used to her cursing and swearing.

"Why do you have to encourage her? My job in bringing her up is hard enough already without you siding with her." Sandra screamed at her husband. "It's high time she filled her head with more ambitious thoughts. Why doesn't she look for a better job than being just a waitress?"

"She loves that job," replied Richard. "When someone is doing a job that they enjoy it can be a very fulfilling experience. I should know because it's how I feel about my job as a nurse at the hospital."

"And where will it get her? There's no future in it whatsoever; it's just another dead-end job. She'll never amount to anything. Her only hope now is to marry well, someone with money and influence, but how is she ever going to meet anyone like that in a cafe?"

"I think you're forgetting that we ourselves met in a pub," said Richard. "How is that so different to the tea rooms?" Reminding Sandra of this just caused her to snort as she tossed her head and stalked off into the kitchen to get the evening meal.

Sarah locked her room door and plugged in her earphones as her mother entertained the community. She had heard it all a thousand times before. Her mother never seemed to consider her happiness. She just continued trying to turn Sarah into another clone of herself.
She lay there thinking about what life could be like with Darren. How it would be so different to her life now? She knew that one day he would ask her to marry him, and she couldn't wait for that day to come. The only other person who she has always been comfortable around is her father, who has always been more gentle and understanding towards her than her mother. He was her rock in the stormy seas that made up Sarah's home life.

When she went back downstairs, having judged that her mother's fury would have subsided, she was just in time to see Robert walk through the door.

"Is there any news?" Sarah asked him. "Has anything new been discovered?"

"Yes, there is. The results of the autopsy came through just before I left to come home. Although I can't be involved in the investigation at all, DCI Morgan was good enough to keep me in the loop. It has been determined that the cause of death was poisoning, so unless the guy poisoned himself accidentally, it looks extremely likely that this is now a murder investigation."

"How horrible," said Sarah, "but that still doesn't explain how he got to be in our garden or what he was doing there. It's all very strange. I'll be glad when the police come up with some answers."

Chapter 6 will be posted tomorrow. Follow me to make sure that you don't miss an episode.