A GLOWING FUTURE by Ruth Rendell

This is a strange and ghoulish little story, more popular with young women than men. Maurice comes back to London after a year in Australia and asks his old girlfriend Betsy to put him up for a couple of nights. They sleep together on his first night. In the morning over breakfast Maurice tells Betsy he plans to return to Australia with his new resident permit, start a new job, and then get married to his new girlfriend Patricia. Betsy is profoundly shocked since she thought Maurice had come back to be with her. Maurice orders tea chests and a large trunk to pack all his stuff from the flat in London where he and Betsy had lived together for two years. Betsy gets violently upset, and after various arguments and humiliations, she kills Maurice by smashing him over the head with a lamp, then stuffs his body into the trunk together with the note Maurice had written to Patricia: this is for you, my darling, for ever and ever. The trunk (and contents) will probably take three months to get to Australia.