The atmosphere between the two of us the next morning was pretty awful. I really didn't want to involve Ingrid in the problems I was having with Lindy. It wasn't fair on her.

I just drank a cup of tea and gathered all my things together. Emotionally, I was in a mess. One part of me wanted to stay but another part of me said ‘go and get the hell out of her life’. Lindy was messing life up for both of us. I couldn’t let her take both of us down into her gutter.
“Thank you for helping me out. It will be better if I go and let you get on with your life. I’ve brought you enough problems already. If I stay here any longer, there is no telling what Lindy will do to your home or even worse to you. I have a feeling that she isn’t finished yet. I think she wants something from me but for the life of me, I don’t know what it is. I have nothing of value any more.”

Ingrid looked sad but didn’t complain very much.

She helped me pack my things in virtual silence. I knew she didn’t want me to go. I didn’t really want to go but I had to leave for both our sakes.

I was almost ready to leave when I heard my phone bleep. With some foreboding, I looked at it and saw that there were two messages from a blocked number.

“Having your first quarrel then? It is so cute.”

My mouth dropped open when I saw the time of the message. It had been sent not long after I had told Ingrid that I’d be leaving.

I read the second message.

“Get on with it. When you have left the bitch I will tell you exactly what I want from you.”
I showed the message to Ingrid. I put a finger over my lips to signify that I didn’t want her to say anything.

I went into her kitchen and found a piece of paper and wrote.

“Don’t say anything about this. She is spying on us. I don’t know how but she seems to know everything we say and do.”

Ingrid nodded her agreement.

I went back into the bedroom and gathered up my things.

“Can you call me a mini-cab?”

“Yes. Where will you go?”

“I’ll try the Novotel in Hammersmith. I’ll let you know which room I’m in.”

“Do you have to go? You are welcome to stay as long as you want.”

“Thank you but after the episode with your car I don’t want you to suffer any more because of me.”

Ten minutes later I was in a cab heading for Hammersmith. Ingrid had passed me a note just as I left.

It read,
“Go out and buy a new phone. Leave the old one in your hotel room. I think that Lindy might be using the GPS system in the phone to track you. Call me with the new number.”

I’d given her a brief kiss on the cheek as I’d left and expressed my thanks for all her help. If Lindy were bugging my phone then she’d hear my goodbyes.

As the cab pulled off the A4 into Hammersmith, my phone bleeped again.

With a heavy heart, I pulled it out of my handbag and read the message.

“Good riddance to the kraut bitch. You will be hearing from me soon.”

I’d never thought of Ingrid as being German. She was only half German as her father is British. It didn’t matter to me but it seemed to get under Lindy’s skin.”

My pondering was cut short by the taxi pulling up outside the hotel. As I got out I suddenly thought that I should have checked to see if they had rooms available. It was too late now as I paid the driver and walked into the hotel trying to look confident.

My luck was in and less than ten minutes later, I was in my room and able to breathe a sigh of relief.
I didn’t stay there long but I just dropped everything into the bed and after removing my phone from my handbag, I went shopping for a new phone.

By the time I returned there were three text messages from Lindy demanding to know what room I was in. Reluctantly, I replied ‘room 810’.

Almost immediately, a reply came back

‘Where have you been? I’ve missed you.’

I replied, ‘getting something to eat.’

Without waiting for her to reply, I buried the phone under the bedclothes and after switching on the TV I went into the bathroom and called Ingrid.

“Hi. I got a new phone. I think she is snooping on my old one. It has to be the phone.”

“Yeah. I’m in the bathroom.”

I didn’t say anything for several seconds.

“Look Ingrid, I’m so sorry for going off like that. My whole life it up in the air and… I can’t afford to get involved with anyone at the moment.”

“Thank you.”

I paused again.

“Can you do me a favour?”

“No. It is nothing like that. Can you go and tell the Police about how Lindy is still going after me. She says that she will tell me very soon what she wants from me. If she it tracking me by GPS then I can’t be seen to know about it or go to the Police Station. You saw the texts she’s sent. That should be enough to get them interested in catching her.”

“Yes. Please let me know what they say. Don’t call just text me.”

“Thanks bye.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I hung up. I was missing Ingrid but I knew that I had to try to handle Lindy on my own. There was no telling what Lindy would do if she saw that Ingrid was helping me.

I returned to the bedroom and retrieved the phone. Thankfully there had been no more texts from Lindy.
Suddenly, I found myself at a loose end. Here I was stuck in a concrete box of a hotel room on my own on Valentines Day. How sad what that? Thankfully, the room I’d been given had a decent bath and not just a shower so I decided to have a long soak and try to make some sense of my life. As I took off my wig, I knew one thing for sure and that was that I was up shit creek without a paddle.

Before I knew it, I’d fallen asleep in the warm water.

It was getting quite tepid by the time I got out and dried myself. Once I was dry, I wrapped a towel around myself and sent into the main part of the room in search of some clothes.

I’d hardly taken two steps before I realised that someone had pushed an envelope under the door. With a sense of foreboding, I picked it up.

There was no writing on the outside so I began to open it. I got it halfway open before I stopped.
I said to myself,

“It can wait a bit longer.”

I chose some clothes and then sat down and did my makeup. When I was satisfied with my appearance, I put my wig on once again with more than a tinge of regret that my hair wasn’t yet long enough to get it done properly in a more feminine style. ‘That will come’ I said to myself.

Even then, I didn’t open the envelope but I called room service and ordered some tea and biscuits. I knew I was putting it off for as long as possible but it wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Once the tea had been delivered, I sat down with a cup and then opened the envelope.

My misgivings proved to be true. It was from Lindy.

“This should tell you what I want and why.”

There was a photograph and a single sheet of paper inside.

I knew the photograph. It was the one with Aunt Rose and her elder sister Iris with their parents. It had been taken on a family holiday to Blackpool. I remembered Aunt Rose telling me about that holiday. Iris had wimped out going on the roller coaster because she was having a holiday romance with some local boy. It turned out that the ‘boy’ was in fact a man aged ‘23’ and managed a local strip club. Iris was 15 years old at the time. This was a foretaste of life with Iris in the coming years.

I turned my attention to the sheet of paper. It was a family tree, my family tree.

My grandfather Jack had been married twice. Iris and Rose were the children from his first marriage. That lasted until he divorced his wife Dianna because of her infidelity. She ran off with a truck driver and was never heard of again. With his second wife Amanda, they had one child, my father David.
In 1980, he married my mother, Kirsty. I’d been born almost 8 years later. By this time, Iris had disappeared from our lives. My mother never really got over my birth and sank into many bouts of depression and eventually took her own life. As a result, I’d been brought up by Rose as my father was away for long periods as he was in the Merchant Navy. This meant that I hardly knew him thus the news of his death after a bar brawl in Hong Kong didn’t trouble me much.

The last we’d heard of from Iris was that she was an aspiring actress in Hollywood. We kept looking out for her in all the films but we never saw her name in the credits let alone in ‘lights’. After a
few years she stopped calling or writing to us.

The family tree filled the missing details in vivid detail.

Iris had married an Australian Actor and had gone to live in Oz. Lindy was their daughter. When I realised this, I shuddered. I’d had sex with my cousin. I wasn’t sure if it was illegal or not. I didn’t want to know.

Then I began to realise exactly what it was that Lindy wanted. She wanted my home. If she couldn’t have it then no one would. It had been bought in the mid 1960’s by my grandfather and both Iris and Rose had been born in it. My grandfather had died leaving everything to his children. At that time, they were Rose and Iris. I began to remember that Rose had told me that the lawyers had tried to find Iris in Hollywood but had failed. It was no wonder they failed, Iris was in Australia with her family. Eventually probate had been granted and Rose got the house and everything. As Rose never married and as her only surviving relative so when she died, I got everything.

Lindy wanted the house. It was in a very desirable part of West London. When I’d inherited it, I knew that I had to sell almost all of Rose’s assets to pay the inheritance tax. I knew that it was worth well over £500,000 because I’d insured it for that amount less than 6 months before. No wonder Lindy
wanted it.

I returned to look at the family tree. I could see that her parents had both died within a year of each other about a year before Rose had died.

I knew that there was a lot more to find out. I was also sure that Lindy would let me know the missing details when she wanted me to know them.

As if on cue, my phone bleeped. Lindy had sent me a text.

“Well cousin. How does it feel to know that you fucked your cousin? Unless you want to do jail time, you won’t tell a soul about it.”

I answered a few minutes later.

“What do you want Lindy?”

She replied.

“The house and everything else that Rose left you in her will. It is rightfully mine. No bastard tranny is going to cheat me out of it like your beloved Aunt rose did to my Mother.”

I wasn’t a bastard and I knew that I’d inherited the house legally but I guessed that I’d probably committed a crime by having sex with Lindy. She would use that to blackmail me into signing over the house to her. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. My decision to live as a woman didn’t help either.

The tears welled up in my eyes.

I failed to hear my phone bleep and see the text message from Lindy that said

‘Big trannies don’t cry.’

I sat feeling very down until it was quite dark. In the end, I got up and switched on a light.

I looked at both my phones and saw the text from Lindy. Reading that message convinced me that she’d done something to my phone. How else could she know where I was and what I was doing all the time?

Then I checked my other phone. There was a message from Ingrid.

‘Come to room 820. There is someone you should meet.’

I looked at the time it had been sent. It was less than an hour old.

With renewed determination, I wrote down all the texts from Lindy and after turning up the TV Volume, I quietly left the room and headed along the corridor to room 820.

I knocked quietly and the door opened a few seconds later.

Ingrid was standing there. She saw my messed up makeup and stepped forward and wrapped me in her arms.
I held her tight. She smelt so nice. I didn’t want to let her go but I remembered that there was someone there for me to meet.

I let her go and she closed the door behind her.

“Sarah, this is Detective Inspector Lewis. He’s in charge of the investigation into the fire at your house.”

I stepped forward and shook his hand.

“Please to meet you inspector.”

“Ingrid has been filling me in on what has been happening.”

“Things have changed in the past hour or so. I guess my messed up face would have told you that. The good news is that I know why she is doing what she is.”

I spend the next half hour explaining to them both what had happened since I’d received the package before creeping back to my room to wait for developments.

The remainder of the evening turned out to be very frustrating. There were no more texts or packages from Lindy. In the end I gave up waiting so I re-did my makeup and went to one of the hotel restaurants for dinner. I had no appetite but I felt that I had to go through the motions of appearing to appear to be acting normally. In the absence of anything else to do, I returned to my room after dinner and watched some TV.

Just after 11pm, I went to bed wondering what the next day would bring. I really wanted it to end nicely but I was sure that Lindy had some surprises in store for me.

[To be continued]