Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Mullins, Louise

  ‘I didn’t,’ I’d wanted to say, but my vocal cords froze.

  I closed my bedroom door and listened, like I always had, to my mother yelling and Jason trying unsuccessfully to keep her calm. ‘You should have left him to die.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Deadly. I wanted to kill him.’

  ‘It was an honest mistake.’

  ‘The word genuine and Neil don’t go together, Jason.’

  ‘You don’t really believe he’s that way inclined?’

  ‘Why else would he wander into Mel’s room?’

  ‘Accidentally? He’s a mate, and I trust him.’

  ‘You’re useless.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Fucking useless.’ Her voice rose an octave.

  ‘Sam, don’t.’

  ‘Waste of fucking space.’

  ‘Sam!’ The thud, the crack, the faint murmur of, ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ and I felt we’d done a three-sixty, returning right back where we’d come from.

  While Jason slammed the door and revved his engine, and my mother sobbed, I sat on the windowsill with my face pressed against the glass.

  When Jason had gone, I crawled back to bed and huddled beneath the duvet with a pillow over my head to block out my mother’s whimpering. Sleep found me just as the birds began their dawn chorus.

  I opened one eye, shrank back into the gloom of my duvet to hide from the dull rainy morning, roused by the kitchen door rattling against the frame directly below the floor of my bedroom. A cold blast of air forced me out of bed, downstairs and into the kitchen where I found my mother, hollow-eyed, hair a tangled mess, an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth, lips stained red from the wine she’d drunk the night before.

  She flicked the lighter, pulled on her cigarette, exhaled a puff of smoke and continued staring through the open window at a sparrow pecking at the rooted bark of an alder in search of food.

  I filled a bowl with Frosties, poured half a pint of milk on them and scraped a chair back to sit at the table beside her.

  She paid no attention to me as I ate, washed the bowl, left it on the draining board and collected my rucksack from the coat hook in the hallway. But when I opened the front door, her voice came rough and thick. ‘Go straight to your gran’s after school.’

  I nodded in acknowledgement as I slammed the door behind me.

  *

  Stacey greeted me at the school gate. ‘What have you got for lunch?’

  I shrugged and poked the bottom of the bag on my shoulders. ‘Whatever it is I’m not eating it.’

  Maddison hovered behind me, staring at the ground. She was a couple of inches taller than me but stood as if carrying a heavy load on her back.

  The bell rang and the playground became a frenzy of rushed parents and unhurried kids. The adults continued chattering to one another as they sauntered to the exit and the learn-shy children dispersed from their huddled groups and swarmed into neat rows outside the classroom doors. Stacey was among them, but Maddison made no move to follow.

  I tilted my head up to the sky as the first droplets of rain began to fall which I welcomed by sliding my puffer jacket off over my head and snapping open the poppers while I waited for the teacher to call us in.

  I don’t know how many minutes passed, but my hair was wet, and my polo-shirt soaked through when I felt someone tug on my arm. I turned slowly and met Maddison’s worried face. ‘They’ve all gone in.’

  I snapped my head round. The playground was deserted except for us. I moved towards the building, but Maddison stepped out in front of me, eyes pleading. ‘We can’t go in now. We’ll get into trouble for being late.’

  I glanced back to the gate. The caretaker hadn’t yet locked it. ‘Let’s go to the park.’

  Her eyes followed mine. Our teacher’s shadow darkened the blinds inside the classroom. ‘What if we get caught?’

  ‘We won’t.’

  We exited the playground and traipsed the hill, scuffing our shoes along the pavement as we walked alongside each other, so close our hands almost touched. When we reached the railings and scooted through the kissing gate and onto the weed-riddled grass – covered in a blanket of autumn leaves that crunched underfoot: blood red, canary yellow, and tawny orange – we ran. The soundtrack to the changing season crackled beneath the soles of our Kickers as we neared the park.

  I picked peeling paint off the metal frame of the slide while watching a group of kids my own age crowded round the swings, moving in time to the wind, braiding each other’s hair with multicoloured yarn. Maddison whistled and tugged on the sleeve of my jacket and said, ‘Race you to the pond.’

  I hadn’t been down there since the summer. The grass bordering the pond was overgrown. The mud squelched beneath my feet and splattered up the backs of my legs as I ran to reach the dark, still water before Maddison.

  I recognised the girl instantly. She wore the same doe-eyed expression on her perfect alabaster face as she had all those years ago. And I knew she remembered me because she instinctively reached for her nose and swung away from me, noting the flash of my smile.

  Maddison knelt on the dew-covered grass verging the playing fields. She collected a pile of stones at her feet, looked up at me, then turned fast and began pelting them at the hazel trees where the girl who’d fallen from the slide and onto her face five years previously fell onto her backside, arms crossed over her face to protect her adult teeth.

  The girl and her friends kicked leaves and mud up in the air as they ran, ascending the hill like a flock of frightened geese.

  Maddison bent over, giggling so hard she snorted. She stood, her shoulders shaking, holding her stomach until she caught her breath.

  The rails rattled as a train passed behind the dense grove of trees behind us, causing dust from the grit path to swarm through the air. ‘Come on.’ I grabbed Maddison’s hand and she pressed her fingers between mine and squeezed tight. ‘We’re a team,’ she said.

  I had an ally.

  We spent the rest of the morning running along the railway line and jumping off the moment the tracks started to vibrate, indicating that a train was imminently approaching. We made it as far as the River Usk then retraced our steps and headed back to Liswerry.

  Gran was peeling potatoes when we entered the kitchen. She ripped off a piece of stubborn potato skin with her teeth and chewed, then threw the vegetable over her shoulder. It bounced off the bin and skidded across the floor, landing beside another two that had made the same journey.

  ‘Why don’t you cook them?’

  ‘They’re bad.’ She began to sing an out-of-tune Celine Dion and I guessed that was all the explanation I was going to receive.

  She was so absorbed in her bizarre ritual of peeling then throwing away her fourth potato she didn’t notice Maddison in the doorway until she cackled. Gran twisted round, aimed the knife at me and barked, ‘What’s got into you, girl?’

  I shrugged and frowned, glanced back and saw that Maddison had disappeared.

  I followed the sound of her footsteps and found her in the living room, flipping through the pages of a yellowed newspaper perched on top of a pile of dubious-looking bottles half-filled with murky water the colour of piss.

  ‘Stop chewing your nails.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Maddison.

  I huffed, turned my head to the door and yelled, ‘Gran, have you got any sweets?’

  ‘No. But the sausages and mash will be ready soon, so you won’t be eating anything until you’ve had your dinner.’

  Maddison pulled a disgusted face.

  ‘You said the potatoes were rotten.’

  ‘I’ve got instant,’ she replied.

  ‘Maddison doesn’t like mashed potato.’

  Gran stomped down the hall and peeked her head round the open door. ‘Well, Maddison’s going to have to learn to eat what she’s given then.’

  ‘Can I go to the corner shop?’

  ‘Have you got any
money?’

  ‘No. But you still owe me fifty pence for the weeding I did for you on Saturday.’

  She sighed, turned, and called out over her retreating shoulder, ‘Top drawer of my bedside cabinet. There’s a couple of pounds in there. Buy some chips.’

  ‘Thanks, Gran.’

  I went upstairs in search of money. I found the dosette box while rooting through the cabinet. There were four days’ worth of pills still secured behind the individually labelled foil. I closed the drawer and heard a commotion outside. I stood at the window and looked down onto the garden where Gran was throwing potatoes at a pigeon.

  My face burned.

  I used the bottom of an ornamental vase of flowers to crush some pills into a tissue, stomped downstairs, poured a cup of tea, tipped the powder into it, binned the tissue and handed the cup to Gran. I watched her sip it tentatively then I grabbed Maddison’s hand, and marched out of the door.

  The wind whipped my hair in front of my face as I hurried along the pavement. I stopped at the end of the road and poked Maddison in the chest. ‘If you tell anyone Gran was arguing with pigeons, I’ll kill you.’

  She mimed zipping her mouth shut.

  I grabbed her arm and dragged her across the road towards the chip shop. The queue snaked from the doorway and stopped two houses past the chippy. When we got to the front of the line I glanced at the clock on the wall above the counter and saw that half an hour had already passed since we’d left Gran’s.

  ‘What can I get you?’ said the woman serving.

  ‘Two small bags of chips.’

  ‘Salt and vinegar?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘One pound eighty pence,’ she said, eyeing the customer behind me.

  I handed her the coins, took my change and held out my hand for the two paper-wrapped parcels. The smell made my mouth water. I inhaled deeply as I squeezed past several men wearing high visibility jackets gathered in the doorway.

  A tin can rolled along the road and a carrier bag flew into a red-leaved tree. The wind seemed to follow us back to Gran’s where we found her staring vacantly at the TV, her mouth hung wide like a Venus fly trap, dribble running down her chin.

  Maddison sat on the other end of the sofa while I checked on the food. On the counter beside the lukewarm kettle there was a pile of thick white dust that looked like plastic shavings in a bowl that I guessed was instant mash, and an unopened packet of refrigerated sausages well past their expiry date perspiring inside their wrapper.

  Gran’s chest was rattling when I re-entered the living room and Maddison was frowning at her. I turned the volume of the TV up and, noticing Gran had fallen asleep, switched the channel over to catch Sweet Valley High.

  I was midway through the episode when my mother burst through the front door, giggling, cherry-red lipstick smeared across her teeth. A car horn blared behind her and my stomach knotted when I glanced over her shoulder at the man seated behind the steering wheel of a Ford Escort. He honked the horn again and gave my mother a salute. She fanned her eyelashes, blushed, and held the wall to support her legs. Once she’d regained control of her muscles, she swept down the path to open the passenger door for me to get inside. ‘Come on, Goldilocks. Time to go.’

  I heard footsteps behind me and turned to find that Maddison had already reached the gate.

  My mother was resting her chin on her elbow as she leaned on the top of the car door, tapping her faux talons against the green paintwork of the roof as I approached. I could smell the Lambrini on her breath, noted her dewy complexion and the tremble in her fingers as she straightened my hair with her damp digits.

  She was hesitant to offer me affection but willing to lust after a man I guessed she’d only met earlier that afternoon in the pub.

  I caught the man’s smile. ‘Hello, poppet,’ he said, eyes focused on something ground level. He wore the rest of my mother’s lipstick on his moustache.

  My mother nudged my arm. ‘Say hello to Tony.’

  Maddison rolled her eyes.

  ‘Gran’s making weird noises.’

  My mother’s smile dropped. She huffed, turned to the house and sauntered inside. I followed her into the living room and stopped in the doorway.

  Her legs buckled and she released a shriek. ‘Mum! Oh god. Mum!’ She rushed towards me and pushed me violently in the direction of the phone. ‘Call an ambulance.’ Then she knelt at Gran’s feet, holding her wrist to check for a pulse like Jason had done after she’d strangled Neil.

  I picked up the phone, blew dust off the earpiece, and felt the grime on the buttons coat my fingertips as I pressed 999. There was no dial tone. I held the cord out to her. ‘Shouldn’t this be plugged in?’

  She was shaking Gran and trying to rouse her. ‘Tony! Give next door a knock. Her breathing’s laboured and she’s unconscious.’

  He’d already stepped out of the car and rushed to my mother’s side. He ran back down the path and hurried up to the front door of Gran’s neighbour’s house.

  As the minutes passed my mother grew more frantic. Tony rubbed her arm and bit his lip. Neighbours opened windows and doors to get a better view. Blue lights flashed and sirens wailed. Paramedics donned in green carried Gran out on a stretcher. The ambulance sped off. Tony steered me to his car, and I hopped into the back. He strapped me in, jumped into the front, started the engine, and drove away. I stared at Maddison’s emotionless face through the glass and pressed my hand to the window.

  She didn’t wave back.

  BETHAN

  Now

  If my high-pitched cackle doesn’t indicate my lie, the seconds it takes me to recalibrate must, but Humphrey’s confused expression remains unchanged. ‘Why would anyone want to harm you?’

  ‘Money,’ he says in a dejected tone.

  My faux smile falters. I reach out and lay a hand on his thigh and squeeze. He threads his fingers through mine like Maddison used to, moves my hand back to the steering wheel and indicates for me to concentrate on safely navigating us around a cyclist.

  ‘Turn right onto High Street then left past Padarn Country Park,’ he says.

  I steer one-handed passing Joe Brown’s, a gift shop, the honey farm and winery, and follow the road as it merges onto the A4086 over the bridge, my attention pulled to Electric Mountain’s aquatic power station ahead. The hill of slate above it shimmers like a silver fortress from a ray of sunlight piercing through a bunch of puffy clouds.

  ‘Follow the sign for the slate museum,’ he says.

  ‘You’re determined to see me stumbling across the fucking stuff, aren’t you?’

  He tuts and blinks, his jaw tightening at my lackadaisical comment, then signals for me to turn into the car park. ‘We’ll walk to the quarry from here,’ he says, directing me into a space at the far end, close to the miner’s hospital.

  I slam the car to a stop, pull on the handbrake and rip the key out of the ignition. ‘You came here with your ex-wife.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘No.’ I unclip my seatbelt, spring from my seat and slam the car door behind me.

  He guides me down a tree-lined path, through dense woodland where I trip over gnarled roots hidden beneath thick undergrowth. We eventually hit a patch of spacious land that curves and dips like grassy waves in various shades of green and brown.

  The mud sparkles soot-black and crunches underfoot as we ascend the path. The surrounding lime, gold and charcoal-grey landscape leads to rock formations the colour of dirty steel. ‘There’s a viewing spot near the pumphouse.’

  ‘Did you take her there?’

  ‘My deceased wife, yes.’ He stops mid-stride. ‘Are you going to continue this act of jealousy in the hope of starting a fight or are you going to zip it and pretend you’re still in love with me?’

  I turn on Humphrey so violently I stumble. He reaches out and grabs my arm to prevent me from falling. I shrug him off the moment I gain traction on the uneven ground, limping and wincing until adrenaline overp
owers the pain that’s added to my already injured foot.

  We walk for hours along the riverbank, past the desolate rail-line, zig-zagging uphill in a steady ascent until we reach the tramway. I stand at the bottom of the steps looking up at the rusted ancillary works.

  ‘I forgot how far it is,’ he says, panting.

  ‘Do you want to head back down?’ I rub his arm and smile sadly.

  It has the desired effect. ‘The barracks are up there.’ He continues walking with renewed vigour.

  When we reach the summit, the sun blinks behind the quarry walls, bordering them in a dusky orange glow and casting shadows under the hollows. I shiver. Humphrey wraps his arms round my waist.

  We stand in silent observation. I judge the possibility of anyone hearing him scream while darting my eyes across the horizon in search of the best item to hit him over the head with. He turns me to face him, pinning me in place with his hands on my elbows, and I calculate the amount of time it will take him to tumble down the steep drop just a few yards behind us, where aside from the waterlogged pits the land is as barren as our marriage.

  Though the buildings have been neglected since the mine closed in 1961, tourists visit the hiking trail all year long. Except today there is no one to witness Humphrey fall.

  He releases me, then does a slow circuit to absorb the view while I walk towards the ledge to scan the treacherous earth below, wondering if slate can slice through skin and how much pressure must be applied to pierce a main artery when Humphrey emits a yowl.

  I spin round but don’t spot him immediately. His grey trousers are the same shade as the stone carpet beneath him. He’s lying several feet down from a chain-link partition. A few feet in front of him is a deep ridge where there is a rusty piece of machinery including a spiked wheel positioned directly underneath.

  I run to him, giddy at the sight of blood running into his ear and down his neck as he sits and tries to steady himself on one leg.

  I let him lean on my shoulder until he’s standing. ‘You’ve cut yourself.’

  He rubs his temple, smearing blood into his stubble before inspecting his hand.