A Grave Christmas (Erica Swift - Christmas Special) - SIGNED

Chapter One

It was only supposed to have been one drink,
Jade thought as she blearily checked the time. How the hell had it ended up
being almost midnight?

She’d bumped into two friends on Oxford Street,
all three of them laden down with Christmas shopping bags. They’d squealed and
hugged and then mutually agreed it was only right that they grabbed a quick
drink. Everywhere was doing specials on prosecco or mulled wine at the moment,
and every restaurant had turkey on the menu. With only four days to go until
the big day, the festive period was in full swing. It was impossible to ignore
the buzz of excitement and anticipation mixed with stress and frustration in
the air.

So Jade had looped her arms through her
friends’, and they headed off to Soho in search of a bar, of which there were
plenty. They’d settled on a place on Dean Street, and, to their amazement, they’d
even managed to get a table near the rear. Christmas music played beneath the
constant chatter of the pubgoers, and, though they’d managed to find a seat,
their only view was that of people wedged hip to hip around them.

Jade had shoved her huge number of shopping
bags under the small round table and wished she hadn’t left all her Christmas
shopping to the last minute. She hadn’t considered the practicalities of
carrying it all through Oxford Circus or having to get it on public transport
afterwards.

She’d bought an expensive eyeshadow kit for
her mother and a set of aftershaves for her father—ones he would most likely
never wear. For her sister, she’d purchased a pretty cashmere jumper in pink,
and she’d got both her young nephews boxes of Lego, that, in her mind, cost an
absolute fortune for what they were. Of course, she couldn’t help but buy a
couple of small gifts for herself as well. What was the fun in shopping if you
couldn’t treat yourself? Then there was the food. She wasn’t going to show up
to her family’s house for Christmas without taking some offerings with her. She’d
also added to her bag a huge Christmas pudding from Selfridges plus a bottle of
Baileys, a good box of biscuits, and some chocolates for the boys.

The vague thought that she hoped no one would
steal the bags when she wasn’t looking had occurred to Jade. But there was hardly
enough room to bend over to tie up a shoelace never mind snatch up a whole
bundle of bags and make a run for it. Anyone trying to run through this crowd
wouldn’t get very far.

When one of her friends, who had gone to the
bar, arrived back at the table with a bottle of prosecco and three glasses,
Jade had sensed it was just the start of the drinking.

Now it was late, and she stepped out of the
bar and onto Dean Street, where she’d walk up to Oxford Street in the hope of
flagging down a taxi. There was no way she was taking the night bus home with
all this shopping and after drinking so much. She would guarantee she’d fall
asleep while she was on there, and then someone was bound to steal her stuff.
There were cameras on the busse[MF1] s now,
but, even with video footage, she doubted the police would do much. They had
bigger problems on their hands these days.

Her low-heeled boots clacked along the
pavement as she walked. She was glad she hadn’t put on her high heels that morning
so at least her feet didn’t hurt and she could keep up a moderate pace. Ahead
was another bar, the sound of music and laughter coming from inside. A group of
men stood on the pavement, cluttering it up, smoking cigarettes and laughing.
She kept her head down, suddenly self-conscious, worried they’d catcall her.
But she wasn’t dressed for partying, and she also wasn’t twenty years old anymore,
and the men ignored her, even as she had to step into the road to get around
them.

She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or
insulted.

Up ahead, a homeless man sat in the doorway
of one of the shops shut up for the night, his legs sticking out onto the
pavement. She experienced a pang of empathy for him, while also being fully
aware that she was an inebriated woman on her own carrying several hundred
pounds’ worth of shopping. It wasn’t that she thought every homeless person was
capable of stealing from her, or worse, but she’d have had to be an idiot not
to at least be aware of the possibility. She didn’t think any woman walked
alone at night without being conscious of their vulnerability.

The man had cardboard flattened out underneath
him and a half-domed-shaped pop-up tent sheltering his head and shoulders. She
didn’t think he was asleep, but he didn’t look up as she passed. She sent him a
fleeting glance, not wanting to make eye contact for fear of engaging him in conversation
or encouraging him to ask her for money. Nothing made her feel guiltier, especially
when she was laden down with bags full of presents. Clearly, she had money, or
she wouldn’t have been able to buy them.

She passed by without comment from him and
exhaled a long breath and relaxed a fraction.

A young couple walked towards her, arm in arm.
They huddled together, both wrapped in scarves, and the girl with a woolly hat
pulled low over her head. The girl gazed up adoringly at the man, and he
glanced down at her with a smile.

A flash of hot jealousy went through Jade. It
would be yet another Christmas where she was going back to her family home
without even a boyfriend in tow. Her younger sister was only thirty-two and was
married with two kids already, while Jade was the older sibling at thirty-four
and couldn’t even get anyone to hang around longer than the third date.

She’d always imagined that, by now, she’d
spend Christmas packing stockings for children of her own, sneaking into their
rooms after they’d stayed up too late, filled with excitement about the
following morning. She’d thought she’d be woken up far too early to watch them
open their presents and spend the rest of the day surrounded by her loving
family and absorbing the magic of the season.

Instead, here she was in her mid-thirties,
still going out and getting plastered in the city. Maybe it was the depressive
nature of the alcohol, but she couldn’t help feeling low.

She reached Oxford Street.

Ice-blue illuminated stars fell from the sky
in a waterfall motion. Red, twinkling lights were strung on each of the trees bordering
the pavement. Christmas displays of smiling snowmen and stacks of beautifully
wrapped presents filled the shop windows. It had rained earlier in the day, so
the tarmac road was wet, reflecting the crisscross of lights above it.

It was almost midnight, but there were still
people around—though nowhere near as many as earlier, when the street had been
filled with the madness of Christmas shoppers all weaving around each other
while laden down with bags. A red double-decker bus trundled past her, full of
people who were either partygoers, finished for the night or else exhausted
workers on their way home. She looked around for a taxi, and though she spotted
several black cabs—which all had the obligatory piece of tinsel in the windscreen
and bauble hanging from the rearview mirror—none had their light on to signal
they were available.

“Shit.”

She wished she’d stayed in the bar with the
others, but she had work in the morning and her friends had been heading into
an all-nighter. She just didn’t have the stamina for it anymore.

Maybe she’d come the wrong way to find an
empty taxi. She had more competition here, with the road being busier, but if
she left the main roads, she’d be less likely to find a taxi at all.

The bags were getting heavier by the second,
and she groaned under their weight. The haze of alcohol was also starting to
wear off, and the cold seeped through her coat and down to her skin. It had
been hot in the pub with all those people crammed in there, and she’d felt too
self-conscious to strip down to her thermal vest, so she’d remained in her
cream jumper, occasionally tugging it away from her body to try and waft some
air up there.

She hunched her shoulders to try to keep her
neck warm. She wasn’t sure why she should be surprised about the cold—it was
December in England, after all—but she was. She hadn’t even worn a decent scarf
out, thinking she’d only end up overheating, nipping in and out of all the
shops.

A voice came from behind, startling her.

“Excuse me. You dropped something.”

Damn. Something must have slipped from one of
the bags while she’d been moving them from hand to hand, trying to give her
sore fingers and aching arms a rest.

She stopped walking and turned towards the
voice. “Oh, than—”

A loop of something thin and strong fell over
the top of her head and then tightened around her throat. Automatically, she lifted
her hands to try to pull the thing away, and her shopping fell to the ground,
scattering around her feet. Cardboard boxes of Lego tipped onto the pavement
and, miraculously, the bottle of Baileys didn’t smash.

But Jade hardly noticed any of these things.

The wire cut into her skin with a flash of
red-hot pain. Her fingers touched something wet and hot, and she realised it
was blood, the taint of copper cutting through the air.

Standing under the sparkling Christmas lights
and in front of the cheery festive window, she caught a glimpse of a reflection
in the glass. Her, in her long red coat, her cream sweater now crimson with
blood, and, behind her, a blurred, dark shape. A figure out of a child’s
nightmare.

The noose was tight, too tight, closing off
her airway. She choked and spluttered, still trying to claw at the wire.

In the distance came the rise and fall of a
siren, and the hope that the police were coming to help soared inside her. But
then the noise faded, and she realised they were nowhere near her, and no one
was coming.

Why wasn’t someone rushing to her rescue? Was
no one else seeing this? She couldn’t believe so many people were still around
and yet no one was helping her. Who was doing this to her? What had she done to
deserve this?

The wire pulled tighter…tighter…tighter.
Blood rushed from her neck in a hot, wet apron, merging with the red of her
coat. A part of her almost felt grateful for the warmth.

She clawed frantically, trying to get her
nails between the wire and her skin. But the wire had cut deep now, sinking
into her flesh. She’d have needed to get her fingers right into the layers of
skin and muscle to be able to get her nails under it and a strength greater
than the person currently strangling her to be able to wrench it away again.

Raw, white panic filled her brain. Adrenaline
flooded her veins. She was going to die here. There was no doubt in her mind.
She had a moment filled with sorrow, for the children she’d never have, for her
family’s grief when they got the news, for the way it would ruin Christmas for
them forever.

She was barely aware of the man leaning
closer to her, pressing his mouth against the shell of her ear as he told her
the reason she was dying.

 [MF1]One
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