Sarah's lament

Sarah was scared. I could understand because here we were, conducting an affair under the nose of her powerful, influential and possibly psychotic father who didn't like the idea of her dating anyone and we'd just killed his beloved dog. We'd managed to sneak some time together after the events of the garden party. She told him she was going to stay with a friend for a couple of days until the stuff with Pepper had been dealt with.
Truth was, she was never really fond of Pepper. Like all Pomeranians, Pepper was a yappy, annoying ball of fur that had a tendency to get underfoot and take up more of her parent's time than she would have liked. Between grooming him, feeding him, walking him and then preparing him for shows and going to shows, there were definitely times when Pepper had got more attention from them than she did.
This didn't mean she wanted to kill the dog, but that was the way the plan turned out. We realised that killing a person would end us both with jail time - not a great way to go if what you want is to be able to spend time together. We knew however, that killing the dog would certainly put an end to the party and stop her father talking to Bentenman, who knew about us and wanted to use that knowledge to hurt her father to get back at him for a deal that went south.
Neither of us wanted to kill Pepper. It had almost destroyed me to do it, as it broke my first commandment. In my eyes the only thing that should be held sacred is life - all life. I'm the guy who literally wouldn't hurt a fly, but here I was, having killed an innocent Pomeranian with a rifle. I drank heavily the night it happened, which I haven't done in a long time. It was the only way I could cope and get some sleep. I couldn't imagine what people who killed people went through. It must torture you constantly. I'm not making the distinction between people and animals - I think it's wrong to kill anything but if the thing you're about to kill can plead for its life with you... that has to make things harder. You'd hear their last words in your head over and over.
We couldn't go out for fear of being spotted so we stayed in and ordered takeaway food to keep us going. We talked about what we thought would happen next, how things might end up and what we wanted to do once this had all blown over.
We talked about getting a little place together in the future, when her dad had calmed down and accepted the fact that she was a woman and had been for some time. Sarah wanted dogs, I wanted cats. Some people have both so we agreed to get them all at the same time so that they would grow up together and get along. We talked about their names and what our place would look like. We even had a mock argument about curtains and throw pillows.
Sarah brightened up somewhat but neither of us knew how this was really going to go. It could all end badly. We had to consider the possibility that if her father found out I shot the dog then it would be time for me to emigrate. She said that she'd come with me if I had to go, but we both knew that would be problematic at best.
It was so difficult to sit there with the woman I loved, knowing that despite the regrets we had, we had to do what we did, but at the same time knowing there was a chance that we might have ruined any chance we had of being together if things went wrong.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, things would go very wrong indeed. Things have a way of getting out of hand, the best laid plans and all that. That was something we forgot to take into account when we formulated our plan. The original idea was to make sure Sarah's father and Bentenman didn't get to speak, thereby ensuring our secret stayed safe, at least a little while longer. We really hadn't thought what the repercussions might be for killing Pepper. If you asked me now, I couldn't tell you which of us came up with the idea or even how. It just seemed to grow out of a conversation we were having about how to stop Bentenman telling Sarah's dad about us, at least until we were ready to broach the subject with him.
So now we had to make sure he didn't find out that it had been me. I went over and over the day in my head. I'd been careful - careful enough to pick up the cartridge casing from the rifle. Of course, they could still do a ballistics test based on the actual slug, which I felt certain they'd have found by now, unless I'd gotten really lucky and it was lodged deep in the earth or somehow deflected off the skull of poor Pepper and flown off somewhere, never to be found. I could but hope, but it was better to think along the lines that the bullet would be found and if that was the case, then the type of rifle I used would be known pretty quickly.
I'd also been careful there - I'd chosen a rifle in common use for hunting, rather than go with something more custom, which could be more easily traced. Of course this is England, so hunting rifles are still not a common commodity in any household, but going with the most common model gave me a little leeway.
I knew I was safe with the van. I'd hired it under a false name and a very good friend of mine had supplied a driving license under that name and accompanying documents that only someone with training would be able to spot as fakes. I assumed that the spotty pleb that sorted out the paperwork wasn't an adept when it came to forged papers. I'd also hired the van from a town a hundred and fifty miles away, driven it down for the shooting and then back the same day.
What we hadn't figured on, was Sarah's father - Henry Porter Lanchester, taking the killing of a small, annoying Pomeranian as an act of war. Henry was not the sort of man to treat lightly in your dealings with him. Fuck, I'd worked indirectly for the guy for nearly ten years and I'd yet to meet him. He didn't generally get involved with his businesses on a day to day basis, but he knew everything that went on in each one of them. He was like some presiding omniscience, overseeing all. Those that worked for him knew better than to fuck around as you knew he'd find out somehow. If you were lucky, you'd just get the sack. Somehow I knew that sleeping with his daughter and shooting his prize Pomeranian would have a more dire consequence.
Henry had decided that Bentenman was directly responsible for the shooting. I remember Sarah telling me about it. She'd called home just to check in and allay suspicions with her father and asked him how he was. He'd mentioned a spot of trouble with an old business associate. Sarah had asked if it had had anything to do with Pepper and he'd become uneasy and non-commital. Henry Porter Lanchester - businessman, scourge of his enemies and hardened underworld man, who had the most developed poker face when it came to dealing with people who would rip your throat out if they so much as thought about suspecting you of a double cross, was completely unable to lie to his daughter.
She'd had many years of practice of course. She knew every tell he had - he'd even instructed her in the art of spotting tells and other non verbal clues that someone was lying. Sarah had been utterly fascinated by this aspect of her father's life and devoured his teachings. She'd become completely adept at reading people through his lessons. Henry had learned the hard way, through simply watching people in high pressure situations, but he was something of a natural. He could spot the merest unconscious movement, the tiny twitch in the corner of a person's eye that told him they would accept less money in a deal or conversely, that they were getting riled and that he should back off.
Sarah had told me she'd used her skills for a while when we'd met. She'd been watching to see if I had been telling her the truth and a large part of the reason we were together now was that I always did. It was just the way I was wired. In any given situation, my first instinct was to tell the truth. It usually didn't even occur to me to lie and fuck the consequences. If people didn't like hearing the truth, that was their problem. I'd been around enough bullshitters in my time to know that they would always get caught out and it was usually sooner rather than later unless they were particularly clever. The way I figured it, liars have to be very clever and on top of things. They have to remember which lies they've told and to whom to keep up their pretences. I just can't be arsed with all that hassle, so I tell the truth and then I don't have to keep track of anything. I don't have to remember anything other than what happened.
This is why this situation is so fucked up. Not only have I broken several of my commandments, but I'm having to lie about it. It's lucky I'm clever after all. The real shame of it is that I know Henry respects honesty, especially people that are so honest that they drop themselves in the shit because of it. He respects people who are willing to risk the consequences of telling the truth and here we are in a situation where there's no way I can do that because he'd have me gutted if I did. He'd probably like me otherwise. Fucking typical.
Anyway, Henry had given the game away in his conversation with Sarah and we now knew he was going to go after Bentenman. If Henry got hold of Bentenman, well, our problem was solved. If Bentenman got hold of Henry, things could get very dark indeed. Dark like an Alaskan winter. Not only would Bentenman convince Henry that he was not behind the shooting, (Henry would pick up on the fact that he was telling the truth,) but he would also tell him about us, which would be the icing on the cake. If Henry survived the encounter, and I didn't know enough about Bentenman to place any bets at this stage, then he would come for me, riding all the Valkyries of hell, ready to unleash their fury. If I was lucky, my body would give out quickly. If not, I was looking at a couple of days in the company of Mr. Pliers and Mrs Hotknife. It was not a prospect I relished.
Sarah was getting more and more scared now. She knew what her father was capable of more than most and several times I woke in the night to find her weeping next to me. On the one hand it was wonderful to have her here and the fact that she was so upset showed how much she cared for me, but the joy of knowing that was always tempered by the fact that she was crying over some imagined fate for me. We desperately needed to know what was going on, but there was little way of finding out that would not arouse suspicion.
Sooner than I wanted, it was time for Sarah to return home. I'd gotten so used to having her here for the few scant days we'd had together that I really wondered what I was going to do without her here. I considered asking her to stay, but knew before I'd opened my mouth that it was folly. If she didn't return, there would be awkward questions that may lead, ultimately to my death.
If there was a bright side to all this, however small, it was that the fear and danger intensified our lovemaking to the point of epic proportions. Romeo and Juliet never fucked this passionately. We were a blend of limbs and lips, an amorphous mixture, churning and mixing like paint on a palette. We enveloped each other completely and neither could tell where one ended and the other began. We shared breaths and caresses, kisses and climaxes. We lay spent after several hours, draped over each other, dropping little kisses on any spot we could find, arms and legs entangled like celtic knotwork, so we thought nothing bar Alexander's technique for beating the Gordian knot would separate us.
As she was leaving, she erupted into tears once more. Again I felt the comfort of her caring for me juxtaposed with the reason she was crying. I held her for as long as I could. She looked up at me with eyes full of salty droplets, which I wiped gently away with the butt of my hand. She gazed deep into my eyes and entwined our fingers together like the roots of an ancient tree and moved my hand close to her chest. For a moment, she said nothing and all I could feel was the samba rhythm of her heart beating. She looked down at our hands, as if readying herself for something.
Suddenly she looked up into my eyes again and held my gaze for a second before slowly and deliberately telling me she loved me. I felt my heart swell to capacity and told her I loved her too. It was the first time we'd said it.