Girlfriend, Interrupted

By Colin Garrow

A collection of short stories that hint at the darker side of life: a dead wife comes back from the grave, a sinister agency demands a lot from its workers, an unhappy lover yearns for a way out and a cleaner finds her employers have disappeared.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colin Garrow
• Release date: Aug 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463004043

Colin Garrow

Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland. He has worked in a plethora of professions including: taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor, and has occasionally masqueraded as a pirate. All Colin's books are available as eBooks and most are also out in paperback, too. His short stories have appeared in several literary mags, including: SN Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Word Bohemia, Every Day Fiction, The Grind, A3 Review, 1,000 Words, Inkapture and Scribble Magazine. He currently lives in a humble cottage in North East Scotland where he writes novels, stories, poems and the occasional song.

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Girlfriend, Interrupted

By Colin Garrow

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Colin Garrow

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents:

The Dead Wood Option

Thank You for Your Support

The Burlesque Cafe

How Green Was My Lovely Big Sleep

In Line for Murder

Just Desserts

His Dead Mother

The Cleaner

Fresh Meat

Girlfriend Interrupted

The Silk Woman

Charades

Hanging On

His Dead Wife

Murder in the Orient Espresso

Wild Hens

Other Books By This Author

Connect With Me

About the Author

The Dead Wood Option

It's a funny thing, that old probability theory.

But since I'm no intellectual, let's keep it simple: basically, I'm talking about a coincidence, or to be precise, a series of coincidences. Like when something happens that apparently could only have come about because something else happened first. You know what I'm saying - a set of cogs in a machine, each one relying on the next in order to set something in motion. If that first cog isn't given a bit of a push to get it going, none of the others will ever move.

Well, that's how it was with the Agency. At least, that's how I like to think of it - that it was a single event, a stupid accident really, that set the whole thing in motion and ended up with me killing my next-door neighbour.

Now, I know what you're thinking - killing your next-door neighbour doesn't just happen while you're doing the ironing or whatever, does it? You don't kill somebody simply because the opportunity presents itself - at least, I don't. But that's not what happened. What happened was, like I say, a sort of series of coincidences, because if I hadn't been late for work that Tuesday, I'd have already been to the Kiosk to pick up my fags, jumped back into the car and got to the office just before nine as usual.

But I didn't.

It was Susan's fault, or rather, it wasn't. But if she hadn't called me at ten to eight as I was getting out of the shower, I wouldn't have sat on the bed longer than usual drying my hair and listening to her rant on about what a twat her husband is. But that phone call meant it was gone half-eight by the time I got downstairs and finished my toast, which is why I was three minutes late closing the front door.

And that's what did it - those three insignificant minutes. Except they weren't insignificant, because at the start of those three minutes, that stupid cow Fiona from the library would have only gotten as far as the park gates, instead of being where she was (three minutes later) in front of the Kiosk at the exact second I was running out the shop door with my fags in my hand. And of course, I wouldn't have tripped over her dog's lead and fallen flat on my face. And I wouldn't have twisted my ankle.

Okay, so obviously the reason I wasn't at work for the rest of that week was because of the ankle. But not being at work was how I came to be sitting at the table with my laptop in the living room, wondering how to fill in the rest of my Tuesday, when I should have been organising osteopathy appointments for Mr Brown and Company.

I can't remember the last time I had nothing to do during the day, but I don't usually resort to watching telly. I prefer to be more creative. Don't get me wrong, I'm not averse to keeping up with what's going on in the Soaps and whatever detective drama happens to be the current favourite, but I'm more of a booky sort of woman at heart and, if I'm honest, a bit of a frustrated writer too.

So the next cog in this line of coincidences was that same afternoon when, after filling my face with more than my share of chocolate digestives, and having finished the crossword in the Chronicle, checked my emails and done a bit of Facebooking, I eventually turned my mind to the novel I haven't been writing for several years.

When I say I haven't been writing it, what I mean is that I have been writing it, but I've got a bit confused with the plot. And what with my foot throbbing away and looking like a purple melon, I wasn't in the mood to give The Adventures of Lorna Lustgarten much in the way of creative thought. However, I did fancy doing a bit of writing - I just didn't know what to actually write about. And that's when I happened to click on the ad.

It's not something I would have looked at normally because, as I say, I wouldn't on average be this bored during the day, but after I'd Googled 'ways to make money from writing', the ad for the Agency popped up, and that was it.

I can't say I'd ever thought about anything like that before, mainly because I wasn't aware my writing was up to the sort of standard that organisations like theirs might expect. But once I'd opened the thing up, there was this test, right in front of me. All you had to do was write 300 words on a topic you liked and submit it for evaluation. Well, I thought, I've got nothing to lose, have I?

So, I did the test and forty-five minutes later I got a ping in my inbox saying Congratulations Sheila D, you've been accepted as an Associate Writer. Well, I thought, Associate Writer, whatever next? Of course, what they meant was that I'd been given a sort of middle-of-the-road grading, halfway between the Professional writers and the Crap ones. But it also meant I could look at a particular section of their assignments listings and choose, or, as they put it, 'bid for' specific articles. So, I clicked on a couple of them, just to have a look.

The first one was to write 100 words about dealing with common household pests. I thought Christ, I hope they're not all like this. And then there was one where you had to write 250 words on why we eat turkey at Christmas. That was better though it still didn't interest me, but the next one grabbed my attention - it was a website for this online shop that sold hand-made house signs. You know the sort of thing - Dun Roamin, Cosy Nook, Journey's End and so on. The job was to write 300 words relating to the history of signs using a couple of specific key words that you had to include in the article. So, I did a quick bit of research on the Internet, then settled down to write it. And do you know what? Half an hour later I'd not only finished it but had another email from the Agency to tell me payment would be processed within 24 hours!

Admittedly it was only eight US dollars (peanuts in Brit money), but in the meantime, they'd bumped me up to the next level which meant I could bid for better paid assignments. So, I did. And by supper time I'd written four more articles, intended for a whole variety of websites and on topics from feeding kittens and