Angela tried to push such terrible thoughts out of her head. Steve had been a violent man in the past. He�d been in jail four times for assault but he was a changed man. Every week he attended anger management counselling sessions, that was where he was now, and he was having his violent tattoos removed.
Angela plunged the spade and hit something metallic. Dropping to her hands and knees, she scrabbled away the dirt and pulled out a metal box, just about the right size to fit a human head inside. Angela braced herself, took a deep breath and opened the box.
It was the perfect place for a vegetable patch, Angela had decided. The sun shone on it almost all day and it was just big enough for a row of carrots, some lettuce and a few runner beans. But Steve was adamant that it stayed as it was, however much she tried to persuade him.
�It�s only a piece of turf!� Angela insisted.
Steve folded his arms. �It stays like it is!� he replied. �There�s plenty of other spaces in the garden.�
�But this space is perfect,� said Angela but Steve shook his head and walked away.
�You�ll disturb her,� he muttered as he walked up the garden path.
�Her?� but however much Angela asked him, Steve always changed the subject.
The patch of garden wasn�t the only strange thing she�d discovered about her new boyfriend. Steve had been married for over twenty years but there were no pictures of his ex-wife anywhere in the house. Angela expected a few pictures of his life before her around the house but there were none at all.
None of Steve�s friends knew what had happened to Sheila. One day the pair of them were together, seemingly happy. The next day Sheila had gone and Steve refused to talk about it. There were rumours of police involvement but nobody could assure Angela of that.
Whenever Angela brought up Sheila in conversation, Steve would grunt that he didn�t want to talk about her and change the subject. He was very good at that. The only thing he ever let slip was that Sheila had a very pretty face, one that he could look at forever, and he would fly into a rage if another man so much as glanced her way.
Angela had known Steve since childhood. They had lost touch when they left school and had only met each other again by chance. Angela had been going through a messy divorce and Steve had taken her out to help her forget some of her troubles. Over the year, Angela had fallen deeply in love with him especially when he told her how hard he was working on his temper. The day that Steve had asked her to move in was one of the happiest of her life and she had said yes straight away.
Yesterday, whilst Steve was having laser surgery on a tattoo, Angela decided to move some junk into the loft. Whilst she was up there she noticed a pile of photo albums propped up beside the hot water tank. Curiosity got the better of her and she began flicking through them.
There were photos of Steve and Sheila on holiday, at home and their wedding day. Steve looked very handsome in his suit and Sheila would have looked very pretty, Angela supposed, if she�d got a head. Every single photograph of Sheila had her head cut off!
It was very disturbing flicking through endless decapitated photographs but Angela couldn�t help herself. There must have been one photo in the collection where Sheila had everything attached but there wasn�t.
It was then that a terrifying thought entered Angela�s head. Nobody knew where Sheila had disappeared to, Steve said that Sheila had a pretty face, all the photographs of his ex-wife had her head cut off and Steve wouldn�t let Angela dig in the small patch of ground at the bottom of the garden. Was Sheila�s head buried under that patch?
That night as Steve lay asleep beside her, Angela lay wide awake too afraid to sleep. In the morning Steve was attending his counselling session and Angela was determined to discover what terrible, dark secret lay under that patch of turf.
Angela opened the box with trembling hands. Inside was a skull and a collection of bones. Angela reached inside and pulled out the skull.
�That big, soft lump!� she laughed as she held the tiny rabbit skull.
Inside the box was a collection of photographs of Steve and the little rabbit. The photos all showed the pair of them playing on the little patch of turf Angela had just dug up.
Underneath the photographs was a folded piece of paper. Angela delicately unfolded the paper and almost cried as she read the poem dedicated to Steve�s bunny, Fluffy.
Fluffy had been his loving pet for almost eight years and had helped him control his temper. When she died he must have been heartbroken.
Angela carefully placed Fluffy�s remains back into the box. She painstakingly replaced all the soil she�d dug out and patted the turf back into place.
The mystery of Sheila�s missing head was solved that night when Angela plucked up the courage to tell Steve all that had happened. Steve had not been angry, instead he explained that he�d bought Fluffy after his divorce from his wife, who�d left him for another man who wasn�t in and out of prison all the time. He had cut the heads off the photos in silly rage but couldn�t bring himself to throw away the albums.
Angela cuddled her boyfriend. Tomorrow she would drag him to the pet shop � she�d always wanted a rabbit.
