The Hungry Garden

Chapter Three: Dinner With Debs

After we got back home I showered off, got dressed in clean clothes and we set off to Debs' home, in the flat above her dress agency. Maise had already rung ahead to confirm, though it was never really in doubt we'd be going.

Debs met us at the door in a sparkly top and black trousers, dressed for a party. She hugged us both and invited us in.

"I'm so glad you came," she said. "Congratulations on graduating!"

Debs' living room was playfully decorated in sparkly velvet throws and patterned cushions over a black pleather couch, with a raspberry pink feature wall painted on one side. There were prints of vintage fashion advertisements hanging around the walls, along with a display of Pathé posters for the old Perils of Pauline serials. On a wooden bookcase sat a library of art and fashion books, with a number of kinkier volumes of the Erik Kroll variety mixed in. Above these were shelves of DVDs consisting mostly of musicals and films from the silent era.

We talked about our old lives, free to do so now we were all fully aware. Debs loved hearing the full story of our first kiss and the crazy films Chris, Maise and I used to make together. We didn't go into too much detail but mentioned how we'd died – Maise and Chris in a hate-fuelled street attack I'd been powerless to prevent and myself the random pedestrian victim of a reckless car driver. To be honest, we just wanted to move on from the anger and bitterness of that, the Mortal Masquerade had allowed us to reclaim our mortality on our own terms, rising us above the petty and clumsy evils of the mortal world.

It turned out that Debs was herself the victim of a violent end.

As a young fashion graduate she had begun her career as a costume designer for independent art theatre productions in the early 1980s, before marrying an Etonian yuppie who gradually set about removing her from all artistic endeavours. She was allowed to run her own dress agency on a strictly commercial level, but not in any way that would stand out beyond the level of a market-safe item in his business portfolio.

Debs had always had a kinky side and took part in what she called art-bondage photography in her early twenties. She believed this had been one of the things that had attracted her husband's advances and they'd played adventurously in the bedroom while engaged, but once he had her in the keeper net the relationship quickly turned abusive.

"It was all domination and no passion", she said. "He started dictating everything – what I wore, what we did, what I was allowed to say, and not in a playful way. I tolerated it for far too long, about fifteen years, but eventually I refused to let him near me because I couldn't trust him anymore, and I certainly didn't love him.

"One time he decided he wanted to relight the fire and set up some scene or other in the bedroom, but I told him I wasn't interested. He was furious, breaking up the house, calling me all kinds of names, telling me I was a worthless piece of shit without him. I locked myself in the bathroom and threatened to call the police. After he left, I sat up awake all night in that bathroom, terrified of opening the door in case he was still there.

"Later he came back all sweet and sorry, and like an idiot I listened to what he had to say. There were flowers, chocolates, tears... he went on and on about the pressures of his work, how he'd coped with cocaine and alcohol but now desperately wanted to be free from them, he wanted us to be back how we were, yada, yada. I must have wanted to believe him because I gave him another chance. I was the caring housewife helping him become a better person, I got him off the booze and drugs (or thought I did) and eventually let him back into my bed. Where he strangled me to death."

Wow, that story ran into a wall hard.

"I don't know whether he meant to kill me," Debs carried on. "He was a careless and clumsy asshole so he might have been trying a sex game that went wrong. Maybe he was getting revenge for when I kicked him out – he was very vindictive and power-obsessed. Maybe he'd found someone else and wanted rid of me. I hadn't thought him actually capable of murder at the time, but looking back he definitely was".