In Love with a Superstar Ch. 03

"Yes," said Elisabeth feeling the glow of her impending motherhood, "Yes, watch her like she was my own, which she will be when Bruce and I are together."

"He loves you very much Elisabeth," said Martin, "you know that don't you!"

"Of course I do," she snapped back.

"He's lucky to have you," said Martin turning on and turning up the control, "but we have to make sure that this new woman... Sarah?" he heard a grunt from the other end of the line, "we have to make sure that she doesn't try and spoil things." He went quiet for a moment. "Elisabeth," he said, "Can I be frank?"

"Yes of course Martin, you and I are all Bruce has in the world and we need to be there for him."

"Yeeeeaah," he said, "I need to know if you're prepared to do everything you can for Bruce..."

"And for Catherine!" she added.

"And for Catherine, of course." He coughed, "if it comes to it we might need to... err... get rid of this Sarah woman if necessary?"

"Right!"

"I need to know that I can rely on you Elisabeth!" he said firmly, "this is for B..." he stopped and rephrased, "This is for Catherine and Bruce and I need to know that you'll do your part when it becomes necessary."

"You can rely on me Martin!" she snapped back, like the young officer detailed by the general.

Knowing that the weekend and the freedom it suggested was upon her she hung around the school again all day Friday, changing her light jacket for a hoodie occasionally and saw that Sarah left work first while Bruce was still in the school. She thought like a detective again and drove back to Sarah's house and parked further up the street, seeing her walk home and stopping to chat with a couple of neighbours, including the man in the downstairs flat, all very relaxed and easy going.

She went into her flat.

Sarah drove back to the school and their was no sign of Bruce still, so she waited for him. He finally appeared in a car with someone else and she stared intently at who the driver was. She followed on desperate to see if this was another woman that she needed to worry about and to her absolute fury got stuck at some lights as the other car pulled away.

Swearing at the car that had beeped at her for trying to drive across on amber, she decided to head straight to Sarah's place and see if he was being dropped off their. He wasn't, so she headed back to the gated community and saw that Bruce's car was still on the drive and so close to the garage that he couldn't have got his motorbike out of it.

She drove to that woman's house, now she was angry! Being a detective wasn't as easy as Brucie made it seem on TV that was for sure, so she calmed down - just as DC Shears would have done.

Just as she was beginning to think about going home she saw Sarah open her front door and walk up the road. She was casually dressed, short denim skirt, boring blouse not showing off her tits, jacket hung over the shoulder bag and... no car?

Elisabeth pulled on her hat and took off her driving glasses and followed on foot some distance away and across the street. She tried to see what she was carrying but it was just a shoulder bag, the same one that she took to school with her she could see. She breathed slightly easier, probably just back to school for a parents evening, or staff meeting and she slowed. The bitch might just be walking up the to Tesco Express for four pints of milk and some bread for heaven's sake.

Sarah did indeed walk into the shop so Elisabeth stayed outside and stared into a 'Machine Mart' window looking blindly and blankly at the cement mixers, chain saws, pneumatic drills and all the other shit that held absolutely no interest to her whatsoever.

She suddenly realised that she looked too obvious and walked past Tesco to stare at the menu of the Chinese takeaway next door. She slipped off her hoodie and pulled off the hat, seconds before Sarah walked out tucking something into her bag, before looking at her watch and sitting at the bus stop.

Elisabeth looked across and saw that the next bus was due in eleven minutes and was heading into the city centre. Eleven minutes; more than enough time for her to walk back, grab her car and follow the bus to wherever she got off.

That would be complicated she thought, DC Shears had never had to follow a bus and probably would have just gotten on it. He would have sat at the back looking cool and sexy in that green three quarter length jacket of his, shit but she was looking forward to finally being with him.

She reached the corner and looked back over her shoulder to the illuminated sign that was now showing 9 minutes until her bus. Plenty of time! She walked down the road, got into her car, three point turned it around and headed back up the street. She would arrive just as the bus would got there!

There was the big double decker bus, slowly pulling forward and Sarah looked for that woman to stand and get on. Instead she heard the honk of the bus's horn at the car that was parked in the layby in front of it. She looked at the front of the bus, no sign of HER yet. Perhaps she was taking the next one? But that was going to the town centre too and was fifteen minutes away...

So intent had she been on the bus, she had altogether ignored the car. Fuck! It was Bruce's British Racing Green Grand Voyager and in the failing light she could just make out through the darkened windscreen two people in the front kissing and the obvious blonde hair of Catherine in the back... her... her daughter! That woman was taking her daughter away for the weekend!

It pulled away and into the line of traffic and she was stuck still with two cars in front of her at the junction and able to do nothing but scream at the unseeing, smiling face of the front seat passenger as it drove past her closely followed by the double decker that hid it from view.

She could see the bus slowly working forward through the Friday evening traffic and she still had a chance so long as she kept it in sight!

The first of the two cars in front of her pulled away smoothly but the second, an older lady, stalled at the gap. She was obviously not the most confident of drivers as she seemed to wait for a gap that at least four cars could have slipped out of. She stalled again as Elisabeth looked to her left and the large multi-lane, multi-exit roundabout and saw the bus and Bruce's car in front pull away and out of her sight.

She leaned on the horn in frustrated fury; this flustered the lady even more and as the bus disappeared Elisabeth screamed in her impotence. The lady in front applied her handbrake, put the car in neutral and after two more attempts was able to pull into the stream of traffic.

But the time Elisabeth was able to do likewise a full seven minutes had passed since the bus departed and by the time she reached the huge roundabout with seven exits two of which led to motorways heading north and south with another two 'A roads' that connected to another motorway and...

And the rest of England.

She drove towards the Cotswolds thinking that perhaps they were going to his parents caravan there. She remember that she had no idea where the fuck that was even likely to be. She drove along the dual carriage way until she reached the first exit and turned back for home howling in frustration and sounding her horn in long angry bursts until she saw a car in the distance.

She pulled into a large service station and rang Martin and with tears in her eyes told him of her wasted hard work and the frustration.

He told her to stay calm, insisting that all was still OK and he, Martin, would sort it out. He told her to wait at the service station she was in and grab a coffee and he would call her back. She wasn't to fret or get cross, between them they could still save Bruce from that woman.

He called her back and told her to drive to Cambridgeshire and the parsonage and look for the car there, while he would go to London and he would check there. He sent her the postcode for her satnav and she drove through the evening to Cambridgeshire and found that he wasn't there. She let herself in with keys that he had given her at their last meeting.

He'd copied them, he said, while Bruce was in working on the superhero movie which saw him in make-up for two hours, acting for eight or nine, then another two to remove the make-up and prosthetics. He taken them, slipped out of the studio to the local shoe repair and key cutting place, had a set of all of them made, being back in plenty of time to slip them back into his jacket pocket.

When she got to the Parsonage, she carefully let herself in listening just in case there was an alarm. There wasn't and the pile of wires sticking out of the control panel made her realise why.

The house was empty of almost everything. The kitchen cupboards were stocked with plates, bowls pans and all forms of cutlery but nothing else. She walked around the house and found a partially decorated child's bedroom with furniture ready to be assembled and installed, a spare room with the same until finally she found the master bedroom with all the wardrobes fitted but nothing inside them. She stepped back and imagined her things in that cupboard next to his. She pulled the dustsheet off of the bed and lay down on it, imagining Bruce lying next to her.

She slept well and woke refreshed the next morning and headed into the ensuite all of which was still unconnected. She imagined walking into the shower cubicle and motioned like she was having just the best shower of all, waving to the invisible man shaving in the mirror. Then she went down to the bathroom on the ground floor. In the kitchen she went through the motions of making a breakfast for her man and with a large piece of wood as a pretend tray she walked back upstairs with it.

She lay it on the empty bed, chatting to the film star she could see in her mind and his firm manly chest she had seen in his last film. That done it was into the child's room to wake Catherine, calling her 'Mummy's little sleepy head' and for some reason lifting her from an imagined cot.

This continued for most of the morning and only her thirst and hunger for real food made her finally leave her dream home and head back to her parents' place for a real shower and a late lunch. She had a nap in the afternoon happy that with Martin's help her life would soon be back on track.

This was confirmed by a phone call from Martin saying that he had found them in London. The car was just visible through a grating under his apartment block overlooking the park and he was going to be visiting in an hour or so to break up whatever might be going on there.

While she was idly tripping through Bruce's empty house, what he was really doing was arranging for a freelance photographer, but because this was the height of several fashion weeks, a premier and some racing, one worth having just couldn't be found.

He used his key and got into the front entrance of the apartment building and waving it to the security man, explained that he was Bruce's manager.

All was going to plan except for being stopped from his usual pushing through to wherever he wanted to go by the door chain.

He managed to get in and he could tell he had stopped something. He pretended he didn't know who Sarah was pretending that he thought she was a prostitute, thereby laying the foundations for his story that he knew nothing about Sarah or her eventual murder by Elisabeth.

At a bit after eleven thirty that night he eventually managed to get a photographer happy to camp out in his soft top MPV across from the apartment building.

Sat back in his car with the roof down and watching both the front of the apartment building, the garage entrance and the balcony the photo-journalist was just testing his infrared zoom lens when all of his client's dreams came true.

The curvy brunette he had described to the photographer had walked out on to the balcony in a short diaphanous gown that left nothing to the imagination and he captured picture after perfect picture of her as she leaned forward, with just enough flesh to make them more than interesting and just rude enough for the red-tops.

The photographer thought about taking them to the Sunday newspapers himself but figured that they wouldn't be worth half as much as the strange bald guy was offering. After all Martin hadn't told him WHO the pretty brunette was or who she was with, that was a chance he'd have to take.

He rang him.

"Mr Lonsdale?" said the photographer, "you offered me a grand for the right pictures yeah?"

"Right?"

"Well mate, I ain't taking any less than five. Mate? You're gonna fucking LOVE me!"

Lonsdale drove to his office and met the photographer who showed him the pictures on the screen of his laptop. Martin wanted desperately to beat him down but couldn't take the chance of losing this fantastic shots that were just what he wanted!

Using an app on his phone he transferred the money straight away while getting the now very happy snapper to sign exclusive rights to the pictures to him. As the photographer drove away Martin smiled to himself and in perfect calculation emailed one of a blissfully happy, semi naked Sarah to her slightly insane rival with the caption, "it's worse than we thought..."

Elisabeth woke from her happy slumber to the ping that announced she had mail. She woke and saw Sarah on his balcony...

She flew into a rage and climbed out of bed. She threw on her clothes intent on going to that woman's house and burning it down, but knew that the bitch wasn't there! She had to do something and settled for wrecking the fucking bitch's car!

She silently searched through her Dad's garage looking for anything flammable and found the small petrol can for the lawn mower and the two stroke oil that went with it. Next in his cupboard of car stuff she found a tin of brake fluid and remembered what her Dad has said about how it affected car paintwork, perfect!

She drove to THAT street where THAT WOMAN parked her car and after checking the street for lights and passers-by found the small 12 plated dark Renault hatch and poured the entire tin of brake fluid across the car spelling out B and Y happy that the owner would get the significance.

It was the wrong car though...

With her weekend of disturbed nights she only found that she attacked the wrong car two days later but Martin told her later that Bruce had paid for the damage once he knew that it was part of the plan.

That same night Martin convinced her that she should 'keep up the scare' and it was time for another letter. Using her bunch of keys and the gate number he had managed to get a few says before from Bruce's babysitter (daughter of the head of security no less), they both went in on a day that Cathy was with Grandma Teasdale, and using his printer, his paper and one of his envelopes from the pack in his desk wrote the next letter, pasting an address label into it taken from her parents recycling bin early the night before.

Once created she put a stamp on it and let the Royal Mail do their work.

"Back to my early morning and evening patrols," her diary said for that fateful day, "Martin says that even though we sent the letter, I can't rest on my laurels. That skinny cow isn't going to give up that easy #bringiton."

She was proved right.

On the Wednesday evening she got home from her nightly patrols and parking the rental with the other one around the corner from her house so her no one would see her getting out of them. She got home and her parents were both off to bed.

She lay on the sofa and with no one about started to write up her diary for that evening.

"Another quiet night, really hope that bitch has FINALLY got the message! Would LOVE to have a good night's sleep for once and not have to worry about what SHE is doing and who she is doing it to. Martin told me again today that I am all Brucie talks about. I asked him why, if that's the case, does he go for evenings and weekends with HER. Apparently it's just because she screws him so regularly and is a bit 'dirty' and Brucie just needs to get it out of his system; ah well #itsjustsex!"

She went to bed and noticed a light coming from under the spare room door, she opened it and peaked around the corner. There was Catherine sound asleep, so if she wasn't at Bruce's house what was to stop him from going... or HER for that matter!

She lay there all night worrying about what could be going on at either house. At five o'clock she could stand it no more and went out for a drive. There was no sign of Bruce's big green Chrysler so she felt better, but as she settled to drive home she looked to her left and saw his motorbike. The big BMW, the same green as his car.

His betrayal boiled away inside her and all she could do was sit there and stare up at the room she guessed was the bedroom that THEY were sleeping in. Her mind went back to that wonderful Saturday morning in the house in Cambridgeshire and she had a killing fury on her now. Fuck what Martin said, she had the petrol and oil in her car from Saturday night still.

As she built up a level of anger in her sufficient to 'do what needed doing' as Martin had had it, the front door opened and Bruce came out.

Perfect timing.

She waited for him to get far enough away, and get back to his house and get back into bed and hatched her plan. She walked to the house and poured the two stroke oil through the letter box. Next she tried to pour the petrol through the letter box but there wasn't room. With her car keys she punched out one of the small coloured glass pieces in the Victorian stained glass window panel and it made a bit of a tinkle as several bits went with it. But there was more than enough room now for the black pipe to go through so she could pour in the petrol.

The smell was more noticeable than she thought for and she could hear sounds of life happening in the place. Grabbing a newspaper from the recycling bin by the door she scrunched a piece and stuffed it through the hole. Using a lighter she had bought weeks before for just this purpose she took a deep breath and after several aborted attempts finally lit the paper.

With the fumes of petrol catching she had to jump back as the flames leapt up.

Realising just what she had done she ran back to her car with both containers and her lighter and drove away as quickly as possible. She went home and sat in her car around the corner, waiting until her trembling had stopped.

She put Dad's containers back in the garage remembering that she'd have to refill both, and after a shower took that car back to the rental place.

Nothing happened and no police came for her.

There was a small comment in the local news about an arson attack on a flat and it talked about two residents, an older man and young woman both taken into hospital with smoke inhalation and minor burns. Elisabeth was half relieved and half annoyed at the same time and the phone call from Martin came as a surprise.

"Well done Elisabeth," he said, "It just goes to show that you do have what it takes when the time comes." There was real lift to his voice. "it was just what Bruce needs."

"Bruce?"

"I meant that woman, Sarah... Hopefully now he'll realise that you mean business..."

"WE mean business Martin?"

"Yes of course, WE mean business. Hopefully that'll be an end to it. And at least her parents house is closer to his place and you won't have so far to travel when you're on patrol!"

"YEAH!" she said with a cheer, "Yeah, that's right, about time things started to go my way..."

Elisabeth heard nothing about Sarah for the next two weeks, all the time happy that Bruce was still going to school and serving his debt to society without that fucking tramp being around and she noted it in her diary.

"All seems to be going well and I'm actually starting to get ready to visit Bruce and discuss our feelings for each other and when we can all move into our house in Cambridgeshire together. #happyeverafter."