Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Mullins, Louise

  Cai said it made me look gentler, that I could get away with almost anything.

  Except with him. He saw through me.

  Cai hid a part of his personality too.

  His thick, dark hair curtained deep hazel eyes that flashed an amber warning when he was angry. The first time I witnessed him lose his temper was towards our biology tutor.

  Mr Hudson hadn’t been our teacher for long. He appeared mid-term and left soon after his altercation with Cai. His fault: he stuttered as he spoke, his voice was so quiet you had to stand close to hear him speak, and he never seemed able to look anyone in the eye. I don’t know who started the rumour, but it spread rapidly.

  ‘Mr Hudson’s a paedo,’ the kids chanted as he walked into the classroom.

  Cai was leaning over his textbook. He’d been struggling with the terminology for the different sections of a neuron for over ten minutes and was grumbling with impatience. Mr Hudson passively repeated the names of the individual structures of the cell: nucleus, soma, dendrite, axon, myelin sheath, synaptic terminals – each time duller than the last until his voice was barely illegible.

  ‘Yes, but where does each label go?’ said Cai, his jaw tense and eyes narrowed.

  ‘It’s your job to work that out. That’s what you’re being marked on.’

  Cai’s foot was tapping the table leg and his exhalations were getting increasingly louder.

  ‘If you’re struggling, perhaps you could read the diagram pinned to the noticeboard and—’

  Mr Hudson stopped talking as Cai stood, the legs of his chair screeching against the tiled floor. He thundered across the classroom to the front, ripped the picture off the wall, screwed it up and threw it at Mr Hudson. It landed at his feet.

  ‘I don’t think… that’s not… please calm down,’ said Mr Hudson, arms outstretched, palms up in surrender.

  The other kids remained seated. A few gasps and a snicker could be heard from one side of the room.

  Cai thought they were laughing at him rather than with him. He picked up the heavy wooden chair from behind Mr Hudson’s desk and threw it. It landed on Mr Hudson’s foot.

  His high-pitched squeal was heard down the corridor by the headteacher, and the school inspector who was walking alongside her. ‘Couldn’t you have waited until the Estyn report had been written before violating the rules of appropriate behaviour?’ she said.

  Cai was suspended for the rest of the day and the next. We spent it together. We met at the end of my road in the morning, caught a bus into town and walked, holding hands, to the station. We jumped on the next train to Cardiff, hiding in the toilets to avoid paying for a ticket. We ate pasties on the bay, and pick ‘n’ mix on the grass in the centre of the castle walls.

  ‘What does your dad do?’ he said.

  ‘Blondes.’

  He laughed. ‘What does he do for a living?’

  I shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen him in a while.’

  ‘Nor mine. He’s in Iraq.’

  ‘He’s a soldier?’

  He shook his head. ‘He is in the army, but he’s a caterer so less likely to get blown up.’

  ‘What does your mum do?’

  ‘Auburn-haired wasters,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘Same.’ I looked up as a fat raindrop fell onto the crown of my head. ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘Yes, but she left home last year to go to college. You?’

  ‘I did. Her name was Caitlyn. But when my mum split up with Tony she stopped coming over.’

  ‘Is he your step-dad?’

  ‘Was. Sort of. He didn’t stay around long enough for them to get married.’

  ‘If you don’t have any other plans and my mum doesn’t find out about my suspension and ground me for the weekend do you want to hang out tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I waited on the corner for three hours, but he never arrived. He wasn’t in school on Monday, and I didn’t see him for the following fortnight. When he eventually returned to school, he ignored me. So when he caught my gaze and smiled at me from his desk inside the hall a month later I was pissed off and intent on revenge.

  I cornered him in the corridor and shoved him on the shoulder.

  ‘Hey, what was that for?’

  ‘I thought you were my friend.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you show up that Saturday? And why have you been ignoring me for the past four weeks?’

  ‘I couldn’t. My mum… she had cancer…’ He lowered his head with his voice.

  ‘She died?’

  He raised his head and a lone tear trickled down his face. ‘She was getting better… I thought she was going to be alright… she didn’t tell me how bad it was. I wasn’t expecting her to… she wasn’t supposed to…’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Explain? I thought you didn’t like me anymore.’

  ‘I wanted to, but it was difficult to say the words. I couldn’t believe she’d actually gone.’

  ‘She hasn’t. We don’t.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘Because I still see my best friend.’

  He wiped his bleary eyes and waited for me to expand.

  ‘Her name was Maddison. We were the same age. We went to playgroup together. My mum babysat her while her mum went to work. We were practically inseparable. Then one day, when we were four, Mum left me in charge, and she slipped and fell into our swimming pool and drowned.’

  ‘That must have been tough,’ he said.

  ‘It was. I always felt guilty for not being able to save her.’

  ‘You were just a kid. Your mum shouldn’t have asked you to look after her.’

  ‘I was jealous of her. Her parents spent time with her, bought her nice clothes. Mine were always busy and skint.’

  ‘You weren’t to blame. It was an accident.’

  ‘I wished it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Right before she fell, I almost wanted her to. I think that’s why she haunts me.’

  ‘You can see her?’ he said, incredulously.

  Maddison stepped out of her class and leaned against the wall, waiting for me to walk home with her.

  I turned my attention back to Cai, saw the curiosity in his dilated pupils. ‘All the time.’

  *

  Dr Watkins’ office was at the end of the long corridor of the Glen Usk wing. My bed was in one of six dormitories on the Adferiad Unit. Those who were counselled in the Outpatients Day Care Department were considered no risk to themselves or others, and that was where I continued to meet with my clinical psychologist for eight weeks of intensive psychotherapy after my release. I had no home to return to once I was discharged, so my keyworker was in the process of organising supported accommodation for me. My landlord didn’t wait longer than one missed payment before starting eviction proceedings.

  Dr Watkins had lots of letters after her name I was uninterested in enquiring about and several certificates recognising them were hung on the wall above her desk. She had long, wavy, natural blonde hair that fell to just above her elbows. She wore flowing cotton fabrics that disguised her thin frame, and bangles on her wrists that jingled as she moved. Last time we spoke she’d asked me what metaphors I could see in the text of my journal.

  ‘Are there any underlying themes that stand out to you?’ When I bit my lip and allowed my eyes to wander across the room towards the snow framed window, she tapped a page of the notebook I was using to write in and added, ‘For instance, here, you mention your father fleetingly as though he had a secondary role to your upbringing.’ She flicked the pages back and her hand dropped to another, her finger tracing a line of words she’d highlighted. ‘And here, you do the same for Tony. Yet he lived with you and your mother for four years.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’m interested to know what impact these men that your mother dated had on you while you were growing up. Neil and Jason too.’

  My teeth found th
e inside of my cheek and began to chew on it until I tasted blood. The salty metallic flavour had an instantly calming effect on me. ‘They were there then they were gone.’

  I watched her circle the words she’d written on the notebook spread open on her lap:

  Men – Disposable.

  She didn’t pursue the subject. Not then.

  ‘And your relationship with your mother. Would you think it fair that from your depiction I’d consider it strained?’

  ‘My mother’s behaviour is self-destructive. She’s unhappy on her own.’

  Dr Watkins circled the words:

  Insecure and Co-dependent

  She smiled. ‘Abandonment comes in many forms. While your physical needs may have been taken care of, your emotional needs were often neglected.’

  ‘I thought we were talking about my mother?’

  ‘We learn from our elders. We repeat the patterns of behaviour they express. Which they recite from their own parents.’

  ‘My mother was conditioned to act that way because of how her mother behaved towards her?’

  She nodded. ‘Perhaps because of your gran’s struggle with poor mental health.’

  ‘Or her father.’

  She tilted her head conversationally and motioned for me to expand.

  ‘My grandad was a sea fisherman. He worked away for weeks at a time and he died young. The vessel he was on capsized. He and his brother were onboard. They both drowned.’

  ‘Perhaps you understand then, how a lack of both physical and emotional attachment can affect a child.’ When I didn’t reply she continued. ‘For example, here,’ Dr Watkins tapped a sentence three quarters of the way through my story, ‘you wrote that you would “go mad with loneliness.” And here,’ she shifted her fingertip across the page to another paragraph, ‘that your mother “feared she’d inherited the genetic predisposition for mental illness” that your gran exhibited: paranoia, delusions etc.’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘You had a breakdown, Mel. You suffered an unimaginable trauma and placed immense pressure on yourself to avoid processing your grief.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m crazy?’

  ‘Not at all. Your first experience of bereavement after the death of your friend Maddison when you were a pre-schooler impacted the way you deal with loss. Denial is a normal part of the grieving process, but for you, it has become a defence mechanism.’

  ‘Like my mother. Men became her crutch.’

  She smiled again. ‘You can break the cycle, Mel.’

  BETHAN

  Now

  The thick heavy wood lands with a thump on top of the pile of loose upturned floorboards, three-feet-high. I scoot back until the heels of my shoes hit the wall, lean over the next and, with the nail-puller grip, tug the nails out before raising and throwing the board onto a bare patch of floor where the rest will follow. The room is filled with dust and I sneeze as I continue ripping up the floorboards until there are only the edges of the joists left to step onto, which I use to tip-toe out of the room.

  My clothes are lagged in underfloor dirt. I wipe my grimy hands on the knees of my Yves Saint Laurent jeans and gag when I detect the scent of body odour emanating from my armpits.

  After I scoured the house for the money, I decided it must be in one of the crawlspaces between floors but, aside from flakes of dried lead paint in primary colours that had slipped through the cracks from the decorating of years past, and coins no longer of legal tender, there were just a few buttons and an ice-lolly stick. No stacks of notes to be found.

  I’m red-faced, my skin is hot and damp with perspiration, and I’m breathless when I head down to the basement to collect a bottle of wine from the store. The angry thudding starts almost as soon as I pass the front door. ‘Humphrey?! Time’s up. Keith wants his money. Answer this fucking door now or I’ll get Pablo here to knock it off its hinges.’

  I move quietly into the cellar, the recesses of the house cold and dim and musky smelling now that Muriel is no longer filling the rooms with Vranjes Firenze reed diffusers or Jo Malone candles. I pause on the bottom step, the space lit from above by low wattage spotlights in an ambient blue, eyes fixed on the axe mounted on the wall above a bag of chopped wood. I blink away the memory of smoking sweet pungent cannabis beside a fire in the woods back when I hung out with Cai as a youngster.

  It makes me feel old.

  I bypass the ruby and white bottles of expensive vino, their labels faded with age, and unhook then yank the axe off the bolted iron sleeve attached to the unevenly plastered wall. Its weight forces me to carry it with one hand on the knob of the handle and the other close to the sharp metal head.

  I walk slowly back up the concrete steps in time to hear the first scuffle of shoes on the mat outside, the mumbled arguing, and the resultant scrape of a shoulder against the oakwood as one of the men – Pablo I presume – tries to nudge his way through the steel-plated door.

  I considered sitting in the dark of the car park at Los Reyes tapas bar yesterday, waiting for Mr Unknown to arrive to find out how much money he lent Humphrey but I was too drunk to drive and I had no cash, couldn’t even have afforded to order a glass of house red.

  I step over dirty laundry strewn across the floor and spot, through the open doorway, the dishes piling up near the kitchen sink as I reach for the doorknob.

  I’ve ransacked the place. It looks like it’s been burgled.

  I open the door and speak through the chained four-inch wide gap. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘You must be his wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, though it’s not a question.

  ‘Go get him.’

  ‘Humphrey’s not here.’

  ‘His hire car is.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘He’s run off.’

  The first rule of lying is to allow the recipient of the lie to fill in the conversational gaps. That way all you’re doing is omitting the truth.

  ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  I’m not aware of the exact coordinates of his location.

  ‘Look sweetheart, you call your husband and tell him to come home with Keith’s money or—’

  ‘How much are we talking about?’

  ‘With respect, Mrs Philips, it’s none of your business.’

  I smile, flutter my eyelashes and step back while producing the axe I’d kept behind me. ‘My husband is… indisposed. You’ll deal directly with me.’

  ‘What did you do, bury him under the patio?’ he sneers. Halted by my unamused face, his expression turns serious. ‘He owes The Man twenty grand. He wants it back by the end of the week or he’ll be seeking payment via other means.’ His eyes travel the length of me, up from my naval, pausing on my bust, and settling on my face.

  A flash of anger gut-punches me, but before I can think of a comeback he turns and strolls away. Another man – Pablo, I presume – shorter, stockier, olive-skinned and wearing as expensive attire as his boss steps out of the shadow cast by the porch and follows.

  I swallow my regret at not being able to reply quickly enough, hesitating due to my lack of sleep and the physical exhaustion of my increasingly desperate search of the house, and find my voice only as he nears the rear passenger door of the Bentley, held open by Pablo. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘The Messenger,’ he yells, not bothering to look back over his shoulder at me as though I’m not worth the effort of eye-contact.

  I wait until the car is a smudge of onyx and chrome in the distance before I close the door, leaving the chain in place, reset the alarm, and return to the basement to collect a bottle of locally distilled merlot.

  *

  I sit on the rug in front of the stone-cold fireplace, sipping cognac in a port glass and eating extra mature cheddar smothered with plum and caramelised onion chutney on seeded crackers, dropping crumbs on the handwoven rug. It was bought from a pilgrimage to India, or so Humphrey told me. Though I’m disinclined to believe a fucking word h
e’s said because I haven’t found a single note anywhere in the house.

  If I had a few thousand pounds to stash I’d keep it with my passport, birth certificate, National Insurance card and vehicle logbooks, but I can’t find those either.

  If I knew where the V5 was, I’d sign the car over to myself, fake Humphrey’s signature and send it to the DVLA before the insurers post the cheque to my dead husband. I could cash it in at The Money Shop in town.

  The fridge, freezer and cupboards are filled with food, but it won’t take me long to empty them. Without an income I’m going to need to source some finances from somewhere, somehow.

  I empty the glass down my throat, pour another, barely tasting the spiced violet and black cherry flavours the discoloured wine label boasts, bite on a thick slab of sharp crunchy cheese, chew fast and swallow it too soon. I cough and splutter as I absorb the contents of the room. The glassware alone costs more than the average worker’s annual income so I won’t starve yet.

  I’m seeing double and feeling nauseous when I climb the stairs, tripping over first edition hardbacks and discarded vinyls as I cross the landing to reach one of the guest bedrooms. The door is jammed so I kick it until it opens, splintering the wood, snapping the lock and landing face-first on the carpet.

  I’ve only been in this room once – when Humphrey gave me a tour of my future inheritance the morning after the night I’d passed out on the sofa during a game of Rummy.

  We met at the bar of a nearby golf club. I was on the prowl for a wealthy, elderly gentleman. I was about to leave when I caught Humphrey’s eye. He offered to buy me a gin and tonic. I thanked him, slugged back the one in my hand, slammed the glass onto the bar counter and pushed it towards the barman for him to refill. Humphrey said he liked my forthright attitude and asked if I’d ever had sex on a beach.