Lady Lovecome's Diaries: 05

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"Is OK." Gabrielle found us drying and changing a few minutes later. "She won't leave me. She said she's seen worse. And I promised Bill will stay in the attic when she's here."

What? "You know we're only hiding for his own safety? Not because he's dangerous!" Sometimes Gabrielle worries me. "Can your cleaner be trusted not to let on we're here?" The last reward my father offered for my location was £50,000.

Gabrielle shrugged. "I pay her well."

"It's a matter of life and death, Gabrielle."

"Oui! Oui! It's fine." She picked up a bottle of moisturiser. "Now. Who will rub this all over me?"

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It wasn't fine, the very next day, a shitload of paparazzi gathered outside our house. "Lady Bathsheba!" They shouted, shutters clicking as I peeked through the curtains. "Is your gardener with you?"

I spent the day on the phone to my lawyers. They were waiting on one last minor judgement, then my father would be overruled, my money could be transferred and we'd finally be free. A very discreet agent friend found a luxury cabin for us somewhere way out, somewhere even Gabrielle wouldn't find. As soon as my cash came through, I'd charter a jet, a helicopter, hang glider, anything and disappear.

Then the knocking started. "Lady Bash! Lady Bash!"

Two days were spent like this, hounded, with Bill and I holed up, hiding from the world. At least Gabrielle hated it so much she kept her distance and our poor nethers got a chance to recharge. Well, except for a couple of tender sixty-nines that were more therapeutic than multi-orgasmic. Though we did both come a few times, now I think of it.

On the third day, two things happened. First, my money came through, so we were hurriedly packing, with a helicopter coming to pick us up from a nearby embassy roof. The second thing was that our new cleaner arrived. Or rather both our new cleaners.

They hardly looked old enough to work: Two identically pasty, round little girls in tracksuits. They couldn't have been much older than fourteen. When they caught me sneaking up to the attic, they couldn't stop giggling and gawping. "You're Lady Bash ain'tcha? Can I get a selfie?"

"Yes I am Lady Bash. And no, on no account can you take my picture."

"Well la-de-fucking-dah." Then they split up and, strangely, commenced charging about the house, slamming about from room to room.

"What do you need, girls?" I shouted after them.

"Where's the attic, Miss?" One shouted. The other shut her up. They both cackled.

I followed them up the stairs, with a jolt, finding the attic steps lowered and a nike-trainered foot disappearing into the loft.

"Oi mate!" One girl shouted from inside the attic. "You're Bill aintcha? The gardener?"

"Can I get a selfie?"

Fucksake. Had the papers paid these girls to get an exclusive?

I charged up the ladder after them to find it was worse than that. Much worse. The scene that greeted me was something out of a gothic horror.

The huge loft was lit by a dusty beam of sun from a single small rooflight. A blade of light.

In the middle of the crooked room stood Bill. He was clutching his stomach. His shirt bloomed red. Red dripped through his fingers. Red dripped onto the floorboards.

The girls turned dead eyes on me, huge kitchen knives clutched in their podgy little fists. One blade was red.

Bill took a step toward me, then dropped to his knee. Both girls turned on him, stabbing, laughing and stabbing again. He crashed onto his back.

I picked up the nearest thing to hand, an old lamp, and swung at them. A roar escaped me, a roar I didn't know I could make: a curdled, banshee shriek I never want to hear again.

The girls jeered and danced from my swings, laughing. They jumped down the ladder.

"Posh cunt!" one shouted and they pounded off down the hallway.

Bill was white, shaking, and bleeding everywhere.

"I love you, Ma'am," he blathered, his mouth bubbling blood. "I love you."

I fumbled out my phone and dialled 999.

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But that's not the sad ending I warned you about.

One week later I went to visit Bill in hospital. No, that's not quite true. One week later, my father took me to visit Bill in hospital.

Bill would recover, in time, but I realised that if I really loved him, I'd value his safety. I visited him to tell him we couldn't marry, and that he needed to forget all about me.

He squeezed my hand. "That's my risk to take," he said. "And it's worth it to be with you. Let's try again. Hide somewhere better."

I didn't answer. We held hands until they told me I had to go.

A year later, I saw Bill interviewed in a documentary: "Great Loves." He said it was all made up by the press, and that we never ran away together. He said he had quite a crush on me, but we were from different worlds so he never acted on it, and that eventually we drifted our separate ways. It stung, this lie, but it sounded more true than the facts: That a Lady loved her gardener so much her father had to hire teenage girl assassins to kill him.

I think of murdering Father every day.

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One last note, Dear Diary.

I won't need you anymore, but please don't think this is the end of our tale. For, some years later still, nature took hold of the situation and Father died--not by my hand, I hasten to add!

If you'd like to read what happened then, you might like Bill's own confession: "Tending Lady Lovecome's Garden." You'll find it where you found these tawdry tales, I suspect.

And when you read it, bear in mind what happens when a story starts sad.

Mwah.

Lady Bathsheba Ottoline Lovecome.