Fatal Dose

Where did he put it? He thought he'd pinned it up on his noticeboard - still folded, of course - but it wasn't there. There was no way he'd moved it because there was nowhere else for him to keep it, and besides, keeping it out in the open meant that his mum was less likely to snoop around. He'd learnt that the more he tried to hide stuff, the more she would dig. Eventually, when he was about sixteen, he learnt to hide the boring stuff deep and keep the stuff he wanted to hide in folders marked as school work. Not that he often did school work, but she never went through those.

Kicking his bed in frustration, Carwyn breathed heavily through his nose. He was about to throw himself down on the bed when he noticed his washing basket was empty. That meant his mum had been in his room.

"Mum!" he shouted, turning to the door and pulling it open, "you went through my stuff!"

"I'm not shouting up to you," she replied, her voice sounding like she was at the bottom of the stairs.

Carwyn really hated her at times. Now he had to leave his room and go downstairs just to argue with her when she could have just shouted back up at him and saved him the trouble. Honestly, sometimes it seemed like she wanted to make his life more difficult despite the fact that it was her who didn't want him to move out. If he had the choice, he would not have continued living at home for as long as he had been.

He stomped downstairs and wandered into the kitchen only to find it empty. "Mum!"

"I'm in the sitting room," she called back, and he followed her voice down the hallway.

She was sat on the sofa with the note in her hand. He just wanted to take it off her and go back upstairs but she motioned for him to sit in the chair to her left. He obliged with a huff.

She unfolded the note. "'Mr Dythen. Be vigilant. They're watching you. Don't open the door to anyone you don't know. CB.' What is this?" she asked, looking up with worry in her eyes.

After the initial read, the note had ceased to have the same effect as it did to begin with. He'd only pinned it up on the board because he wanted to keep looking over it, to see whether there was any indication that it had been written by Claire as some sort of payback. So far he hadn't found anything that could indicate that, and now that his mum had the note, he was uninterested in pouring over it any more.

"Carwyn. I'm seriously. Where did you get this?"

He shrugged. "The other night. It was on her windscreen."

"Claire's? Was she with you?"

"Honestly, it's nothing. Just a stupid note on a windscreen--"

She interrupted me. "With your name on! It's one thing when it has your first name, but that's your surname. It identifies you," she stressed.

Carwyn shrugged again. It didn't bother him, not like it was bothering his mother. A name was something that could be easily found, so he wasn't sure why she was getting so concerned about a note. He didn't even know who 'they' could be anyway. There had been no one he'd pissed off so why would someone be watching him? It didn't make any sense.

Their conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. He stood up only for his mum to push him back down and tell him to stay in his seat before she disappeared down the hallway. He heard the door open and moved to the seat closest to the sitting room door.

"Hello. We're with a programme called WACH and was wondering whether Carwyn was home?" a voice said, sounding like one of those perky Jehovah's Witnesses.

He wanted to watch from the window but knew that whoever was at the door would be able to see the curtain move. Come to think about it, WACH sounded familiar. Didn't they call for him before? He'd have to ask his dad about that when he got back from work.

"Oh? What is WACH?" his mum asked.

"That's strictly confidential, ma'am. Which is why we must speak with Carwyn."

There was a pause. "That's too bad. He's not in at the moment, but I'll tell him you stopped by."

He heard the door close and a few moments late his mum came into the room. She crossed the room and went to the window, watching through the netted curtain as the people who were at the door turned away and walked back to their car. Carwyn joined her just as they got in. The curtain blocked most of the details but he could tell that the one who got into the car from the door closest to them was a man. His fingers twitched to move the curtain but he restrained himself.

After watching them pull away, he spoke. "Why did you tell them I wasn't in?"

"They weren't good news," she said, turning to look at her son. "The way they looked, it didn't look like they wanted to just talk with you."

She sank onto the sofa and put her head in her hands. For a moment Carwyn didn't know what to do. He didn't understand why his mum was freaking out like she was. He was twenty-five, for Christ's sake. Surely he could decide whether or not to speak to people who were asking after him. After all, they had phoned for him before and maybe it was important enough for them to have made a home visit. But either way, he'd avoided them both times. Maybe it was for the best.

It wasn't long after that his dad returned from work. Carwyn was channel hopping when the front door opened and he heard his dad call out for his mum.

"She's in the kitchen," he replied, changing the channel once again.

Instead of going into the kitchen, his dad came into the sitting room and stood by the window, looking out at the street from behind the netted curtain. He reached forward to move the curtain but stopped at the last moment, obviously thinking the better of it. He was still stood there when his mum came into the sitting room, drying her hands on a tea towel.

"What's the matter?" she asked, her eyes flicking to Carwyn before settling back on her husband.

He kept his eyes on the street for a moment longer before he turned to look at both of them. "I think we're being watched."