Dear Richard

PROLOGUE

It was a beautiful day. The warm air was bursting into the opened windows of the buildings. That wasn't typical of London. Usually, it would rain for hours. Alas, today it was an exception. A rather big one for the natives.

Richard Johnson, a man in his late twenties, was quietly working at his home office. He was in the business industry and he had to work hard to succeed. He was pouring himself into his work. Some would say he was married to his job, always working hard. No one knew how his job had turned into a coping mechanism for the past few months.

He was working in peace, almost done with yet another of his projects, when the telephone rang.

"Argh!", he hissed. He hated being interrupted, especially when he was trying to focus. He rolled his eyes and picked up the phone. It was from the local post.

"Mr Richard Johnson?", a low voice spoke. What did they want?

"That would be me," Richard chuckled.

"There's a parcel for you. Would you like the parcel to be delivered to your home, or do you prefer taking it from the post office?", the low voice asked.

Richard thought for a while. A parcel? Who could that be from? Could it be from his best friend, Tom? He doubted that. Tom was more of a Facetime guy.

In the end, he agreed for the parcel to be delivered and continued working on his project until his delivery arrived. Before he could open his mouth to speak, the postman had already left. Richard picked up the parcel. Such a heavy one!

I hope that this is not from some insane person; he thought.

Rick walked inside and opened the package. It surprised him to find instead... a bunch of DVDs. He didn't bother to check who had sent them.

Who would send them to me? He said to himself. He opened the one which was labelled to be the first one and studied it before putting it in the DVD player of his laptop. He was lucky his laptop could read DVDs still. Newer models couldn't.

But the contents of the DVD took him aback. It was nothing he had expected to see. The DVD had only one video file. And when he clicked on it, he imagined it would be a stupid, childish prank, that a clown would appear and would scare him off.

But none of that happened.

Instead on the screen appeared a familiar face. Not just anybody. It was the face of his wife. Although in the footage, she wasn't married to him yet. Instead, it was the face of an adolescent girl. The video had to have been shot years ago, probably even before he had met her.

His heart began racing. It had to be a mistake. It had to have been sent to the wrong person. Perhaps there was another Richard Johnson who was supposed to receive these DVDs.

Alas, it was no mistake.

"Dear Richard," the fresh-faced teen spoke into the camera.