Chapter 1: Heartbreak

The evening had come. Twilight was upon the horizon as Joe walked slowly, comfortably with Amy on his arm, down the hill from their home. Her head leant against his shoulder as she entwined her arms around his. Their pace was relaxed and the beat of their shoes against the pavement was as steady as a heart beat. Joe released his arm from Amy’s grasp and wrapped it around her slender shoulders. As he did she looked lovingly up at him with her dark brown eyes. Strands of her dark hair fell across the edge of her face and Joe left them for the briefest of moments as he admired her beauty, before he gently brushed the hairs aside. Still with her eyes fixed on his, Joe answered Amy’s look with a soft kiss before they walked on.

The memories of the day were still fresh in Joe’s thoughts and he watched them through his mind’s eye…

“Honey, come quick!” shouted Joe as he threw a damp cloth over the alight pan. Joe snatched up the pan and was walking towards the back door of the kitchen when Amy ran in behind him.

“What?” she cried out as she arrived and saw the emergency, then quickly stepped around her husband to the back door. Amy unlocked the bolt and threw the door open for Joe to carry the pan outside, where he set the pan down in the middle of the small patio of their garden and jumped back.

It was mid summer and a lovely afternoon. Amy smiled and put her hands on her hips, “Well, it looks like you’re taking me out for dinner as well as the show after all.”

Joe gave a short laugh. “Sorry honey, I didn’t mean to screw up our anniversary dinner.”

“Mmm,” she giggled, “after seeing what you were trying to make in that pan I’m kinda glad you did!"

“What!” cried Joe in exaggerated offence, as he made a lunge for Amy’s hips.

With a yelp of surprise she ran back into the house. Joe chased her through their small house, nearly knocking over a tower of boxes containing things still to be unpacked.

Amy reached the bottom of the stairs and gave a quick glance over her shoulder to see Joe leap over a box of their things and gain ground on her. She ran up the stairs as fast as she could, but was laughing so much that by the time she got to the top, Joe was right behind her.

As soon as they cleared the top step, Joe threw out his arms and caught Amy round her waist pulling her back to him. She gave a scream of surprise and the game continued as he wrestled her to the soft new carpet. Joe began his attack and started tickling Amy all over her body. Her laughs and screams became mixed as she begged him to stop between breaths. At just the right time, he knew when to stop and looked deeply into his wife’s eyes, reflecting her joy.

Amy recovered from her uncontrolled laughter, while Joe’s eyes smiled at her in the way they had when Amy had first fallen in love with him. She reached up and ran her fingers through his blond hair, something she often did. As the two lay together catching their breath, each was seduced by the other as they had been so many times before. Joe bent his head down and kissed Amy, hard and passionately. Amy responded with a passion of her own and as the two became heated by their excitement, she whispered, “I will love you forever.”

Joe smiled again at the happy memory and held Amy to him just a little bit tighter. The street lamps had a hazy glow about them as the evening strolled on with them and like the afternoon had been, the night was warm tickled by a soft breeze. Amy admired Joe in the new white shirt that she had bought him for their anniversary, and felt comfortable in the equally soft wine-red dress she wore, perfectly suited to the warm night. Joe thought she looked stunning and had told her so as soon as she had emerged from their bedroom earlier. Her make up was perfect, making her long eyelashes stand out around her dark eyes and her lipstick made her lips seem even more full and kissable than usual to him. “You’re wearing that perfume, aren’t you?” asked Joe.

“I know you like it,” Amy confirmed.

“It’s the one you were wearing when we first met.”

“I remember,” she agreed as she cast her mind back…

Amy worked her way through the crowded bar, trying to get back to her friends at their corner table. The bar was packed solid, the music loud and it was very hot, and knowing that it would be like this, Amy hadn’t wanted to come here tonight. Suddenly a man in front of her turned around sharply and collided with her. The cold drinks he had been carrying spilt all over Amy’s new dress and she gave a sharp inhale as the chilly liquids and ice within made contact with her neck and bosom.

“Hey!” cried the man, “You spilt my drinks all over you!”

“What!” screamed Amy. “It was your fault and just look at me!” Amy looked into the man’s deep blue eyes and at once she thought how handsome he was, the dress and drinks forgotten. Without realising it, Amy had began to stare. The man stared back, both of them lost in the other’s gaze before he spoke again with a changed attitude.

“I’m really sorry,” he said apologetically. “Please, let me buy you and whoever you’re here with some drinks,” he offered in a sort of ‘who are you here with?’ way.

“Well, that would be a start I suppose,” said Amy catching on to his subtle hint, but not wanting to give anything away just yet, and letting the chase had begin. Amy moved closer to the man to let someone else pass through the crowd and as she did, she brushed up against this handsome stranger.

“My name is Joe,” he said into her ear.

“I’m Amy.”

Joe looked down and realised that Amy had not stepped back when the passer by had gone. “Pleased to meet you, Amy.”

“Not so pleased to meet you,” said Amy as she looked down at herself. When Amy looked back up she was wearing a smile and as Joe smiled back at her, both knew that what had just happened was the beginning of something new and wonderful.

Amy had her arm around Joe’s waist and as she recalled this memory, she squeezed him tightly.

The two walked on to their favourite restaurant at the bottom of the hill, wrapped in the warm blanket of their love and memories of happiness.

The area they lived in was not unpleasant, but it was not without its share of problems. Just ahead of Amy and Joe sat a vagrant leaning against a building site fence. A reasonably young man, who could not have been much older than Joe, but unlike Joe, he was dirty and unshaven and as the two lovers neared him he watched them intently with a fierce, maddened look in his eyes. Joe was not scared because Amy was on his left and the homeless man on his right. As long as he was between them, Joe knew that this man could not hurt Amy and so treated the situation calmly. As they passed the vagrant asked in a low voice, “Spare any change?”

Joe and Amy were not well off, but they had enough for some of life’s little luxuries. Joe was in a good mood, looking forwards to the night ahead, so he stopped and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the small amount of loose change that he had. There couldn’t have even been a pound there, but without counting or any real care, Joe tossed the coins into the plastic cup in front of the vagrant and continued walking with Amy.

The man looked into the small cup with disgust at the pennies Joe had so casually discarded. He stared at the back of the couple intently as he knew that this guy obviously had money, judging by his nice clothes and the beautiful woman on his arm.

‘Why shouldn’t I have all this instead of this rich pig? Why should one man have so much and another have so little?’ the vagrant asked himself.

Anger possessed him as he climbed to his feet. He began to shake with rage that this man who had so much could so carelessly throw away a few pennies thinking that it would make a difference. The vagrant reached into his old trousers feeling for his knife, then withdrawing the weapon, he ran at his enemy.

At the sounds of the footsteps Amy turned around and saw the vagrant charging Joe with a knife in his hand. Amy saw the look of pure anger in the man’s eyes and she became afraid for Joe. Without thinking she simply reacted, stepping out from Joe’s arm and into the path of the knife to protect him.

Joe spun around to see what Amy was doing and saw in a flash what was happening. The next few moments seemed to happen in slow motion, in the single breath of Joe’s gasp. The blade flashed in the street light and then was gone from sight, buried within Amy’s heart.

Immediately her attacker stepped back and removed the knife. He wore a terrified look of realisation on his face and dropped the bloody blade before he turned and ran, running as fast as he could away from his horrible mistake.

Amy collapsed into Joe’s arms and he laid her down. Desperate, Joe tried to stop the blood pumping from Amy’s wound and screamed in anguish as his attempts failed. Amy’s hand closed around his forearm and she looked into his eyes for the final time. As her last breath left her body Joe felt a cold, emptiness within him. Amy’s hand fell to the hard ground and as it did Joe felt himself falling forwards, collapsing onto his hands he looked at them and saw they were red, covered in Amy’s blood. His white shirt had been stained and dyed in a new colour of death. Joe struggled to take deep breaths, disbelief threatening clashing with reality to traumatise him. Uncontrolled, his breathing continued as the shock of the past few moments overwhelmed him and these facts scraped across his mind. Joe stared at Amy’s lifeless face and in his mind he saw her lips smile at him, heard her laugh with him, then releasing that he would never experience these things again, he felt his own heart breaking. The most important thing in his life had been snatched away from him - Amy was gone.