Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Mullins, Louise

  ‘I’m going to bring this step up in your self-awareness to the attention of the manager during our next meeting.’

  I left the consulting room feeling confident I’d worked through most of my problems, then walked, quite literally, into another.

  Kirsty Richardson.

  I’d met her during recreation after lunch one gloomy afternoon a couple of weeks into my stay. She’d switched the television over as soon as I sat in front of it, took the book I’d been eyeing from the shelf but didn’t bother to read it, and had done her utmost to unsettle me until I wanted to score bloody lines down her arms with my nails.

  Her gaze felt cloying on my skin. ‘Mel,’ she cocked her head my way.

  ‘Kirsty.’ I walked round her, raising my foot higher than necessary to avoid stumbling over hers. I lost my balance and she shot me a look of barely contained triumph.

  ‘How did your session with the head doctor go?’ she sneered.

  ‘Good. I’ve a feeling I’m going to be leaving here soon.’ I wanted to rub it in.

  She appeared to be thinking of a comeback then unexpectantly asked the one question I was still unsure of: ‘Where is home?’

  With Brandon, was my initial thought. But although our love would never die, he had.

  ‘Wherever I end up.’

  I’d taken an instant dislike to her and couldn’t figure out why she seemed intent on annoying me. But then we were seated beside each other during a group therapy session about managing our emotions. And when we were asked to share our coping strategies, she said that she found it helpful to imagine murdering people who made her angry. I laughed because I understood. I did it too.

  After our session, she followed me to the smoking area and offered me a cigarette.

  ‘So how would you do it then?’ I said, leaning forward to allow the support worker to light it in the same flame as Kirsty’s.

  ‘Do what?’

  I waited until the support worker had turned around and walked a few paces and lowered my voice. ‘Kill someone?’

  ‘Oh, well, it depends. Take my husband for instance, he deserves a slow painful death. So I’d probably get him drunk, wait for him to pass out and set fire to the bed.’

  ‘He must have really hurt you, huh?’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘I don’t know if I hate anyone that much.’

  ‘No cheating boyfriend, no mother-in-law who thinks the sun shines out of her son’s arse?’

  ‘No. I’ve got no ties.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I wish I could erase my history and walk out of here someone else.’

  ‘I’m sure it can be done.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess anything is possible.’

  We discussed other things then, but the idea germinated. I’m sure now that was her intention.

  When she brought the conversation up again, a couple of days later as we sat beside each other to eat lunch, I was already questioning why I’d never considered doing it myself, before. There were many times I’d wished I could disown my heritage and I knew it could be done. Criminals used aliases all the time. It was how they got away with committing crimes.

  ‘I sometimes wish I could be someone else,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  She held my gaze for a few seconds, then she gripped my arm, forced me towards her and kissed me.

  I was stunned, confused, and my skin tingled all over. I’d never kissed a woman before. Had never even thought about it. But it felt right. Before the butterflies that had begun swarming the moment our lips met had a chance to settle in my stomach she said, ‘There is a way we could swap identities.’

  ‘I suppose there are but why would you want to?’

  That’s when Kirsty told me how challenging it was going to be for her to rent a property once she was discharged from hospital.

  ‘I don’t have a credit history and I’ve been out of work for a while. I’ve got the money, but no landlord is going to take a tenant on with no previous fixed abode, no referee…’

  I had my own reasons. Every day I spent in there was money out of Danny’s pocket. Money I’d have to make back for him as soon as I was discharged. My surname belonged to my father. The man who’d walked out and left me with my mother who made me feel like a ghost. I didn’t want to associate myself with the name Melanie Driscoll anymore.

  It didn’t seem like that big of a deal to let her use my birth certificate and bank card to obtain a citizen card in my name and use it as photographic ID to put a deposit down on a new place for her to live, using her own money. Besides, the idea of pretending to be her for a while seemed fun. Afterall, it was only acting. And it would only be temporary.

  ‘I guess no one has to know unless we tell them.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kirsty, eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘And it won’t be forever.’

  I envisioned it would be like borrowing a sander from Toolstation. When we were finished pretending to be each other, we could revert to ourselves.

  ‘Do you think we’d get away with it?’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ she said.

  I was discharged three weeks later, sober, wiser, stronger.

  We met as planned in McDonald’s. We ate cheeseburgers and fries and slurped strawberry milkshakes.

  ‘What’s your mother’s maiden name?… Which doctor’s surgery are you registered with?… Which pharmacy do you collect your prescriptions from?’

  We made mental notes of the answers, tested each other based on the questions someone who didn’t know us might ask, and practised our new signatures using the straw to write with the dregs of our drinks on the table, watching the swirls and strikes of unfamiliar lettering evaporate in the morning sun.

  Kirsty handed me the key to her car, said, ‘You’ll have to apply for a photocard licence from the DVLA.’ She looked as excited as I felt to be testing her new name. ‘My paper licence is due for renewal, so they don’t yet know what I look like. You can then use it to open a bank account in my name.’

  Brandon had taught me to drive but we couldn’t afford to run two vehicles, so I’d never taken my test.

  ‘We’ll meet here at the same time on the same day next month.’

  Kirsty was seated in the same spot as promised four weeks later.

  I showed her my new ID.

  ‘Great,’ she said.

  She was late the month after.

  ‘Traffic,’ she said, sitting sideways at the restaurant table, her eyes fixed on a spot across the road where a man stood, feet apart, leaning against a shop wall behind a bench, with his head down. His features were disguised by the cap he wore and the jacket that was zipped up to his nose.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  She followed my gaze to where the man stood on the pavement. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Is that your husband?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘You said you were separated?’

  ‘We are.’

  He cast a glance her way but his face was shadowed by the towering building behind him so I couldn’t see what he looked like and he was slouched in such a way that I couldn’t determine his height.

  ‘Does he make a habit of stalking you?’

  ‘Have you got my medication?’ she said, ignoring my concern.

  We swapped boxes beneath the table.

  It was one of the reasons we continued to meet up. Our doctors knew what we looked like, so we’d had to sign up to new health centres, but we still had to take our own pills.

  ‘I’ve got to collect the twins from nursery.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me you had kids.’

  Why had she felt the need to withhold from me the fact she was a mother?

  ‘Boys. They’ve just turned three years old.’

  ‘Isn’t that something we should have discussed before swapping identities?’

  She avoided looking at me and stuffed the pill packets into her handbag. ‘See you next month.’<
br />
  ‘Make that twenty-eight days.’

  She didn’t laugh.

  I left McDonald’s with a band of doubt wound round my skull and returned home with a tension headache.

  Kirsty told me she’d left her husband, that he was mean. She’d never mentioned they had kids together. It was her idea to swap identities. She said she had moved away to make a fresh start. But if that were true then why was her ex waiting for her outside?

  Had she lied to me?

  The last time she sat opposite me there was a visible tremor in her hand as she withdrew my capsules from her handbag to swap with the tablets I retrieved from mine, and her lip quivered when she said, ‘Goodbye, Mel.’

  ‘Where’s Garrett today?’

  She lowered her gaze.

  ‘Kirsty?’ I reached out a hand to place on hers and she flinched.

  ‘He found me. He must have followed me from here to the flat I was renting in Bristol. He took the kids and said if I didn’t come back with him that I’d never see them again.’

  ‘Arsehole.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ she said, eyes like saucers. ‘He collected me from the flat, then drove me to the letting agency to return the keys.’

  ‘Please tell me he didn’t come inside, overhear a member of staff call you by my name?’

  ‘No.’ She glanced down at her lap. ‘But he might have found out another way. Apparently when you sign a tenancy agreement it allows the landlord to notify your local council tax office and you’re automatically registered on the public electoral roll. It’s a form of fraud prevention or something. I’m sorry, Mel. I should never have dragged you into my mess.’

  ‘You don’t know for sure that he’s aware you’re renting the flat in my name?’

  ‘He hasn’t said he knows, but that isn’t proof he doesn’t.’

  I found the note a few hours later, folded up inside the box when I pulled the blister packet out to take my anti-depressant.

  Forgive me.

  I have no choice.

  I drove to the conventional looking, semi-detached house Kirsty shared with her husband. The three-bedroom Victorian property overlooked the mud-coloured river.

  I tried to imagine the things Garrett had done to Kirsty which caused her to scream out in the night, remembering her voice echoing down the corridor of the psychiatric unit.

  I recalled my parents arguing about my mother’s affair with Jason, the black eye my mother wore the following day. The split lip a boyfriend gave her when she dared to question his motive for bringing a homeless drunkard back to our house.

  Her husband beats her.

  I crawled the car away from the kerb and returned home and sat on the IKEA sofa Danny bought when he’d refurnished the house Brandon had once owned.

  My stomach groaned in hungry protest.

  I counted the coins in my purse.

  Apart from the name on my sole form of photographic ID, nothing had changed for me.

  The following month I waited for Kirsty, ordered our usual choice of food and drink, and sat in the same spot between the counter and window with a view to the door. When she hadn’t arrived an hour later, I called her, but her phone was switched off. I had no other way of contacting her except for the address typed at the top of her prescription.

  A few days later, I detoured past the bowling alley in the car now registered in my name – the insurance and tax paid in full up to November – on my route home from The Neon where I’d spent three hours with a client watching a live cover band ruin the original songs, hoping Kirsty would see me cruising the street outside her home, come outside and explain her behaviour to me.

  Every curtained window was lit from behind, humanoid shadows darted past them, and parked in front of Kirsty and Garrett’s house was a police car, its soundless blue lights flickering in my peripheral. There was a van parked behind it with Crime Scene Investigation written across its side. And further down the road another marked: Dog Section.

  I did a U-turn and sped off, fear flooding my chest.

  It felt as though my legs were treading through quicksand as I entered the house.

  I sat on the sofa drinking coffee, thumbing through my burner phone, using the browser’s incognito tab to disguise my IP address while I searched the internet to feed my guilt with news updates, until the sun rose over the distant beacon walls.

  MISSING HUSBAND AND TWIN BOYS FEARED DEAD

  Last night police obtained a warrant to search the address of a Newport residence, where Garrett Richardson lived alone.

  His wife and the mother of their twin boys, Kirsty, took their sons against an order of the court that was made last month. Police received intelligence suggesting Mrs Richardson had fled to Bristol but were not successful in locating her or the children.

  A warrant was issued to arrest Mrs Richardson on suspicion of child neglect, and the boys – whose names will remain anonymous to protect their identities – were officially reported missing.

  Mr Richardson called Blaenau Gwent Police to report a domestic disturbance yesterday afternoon at the address he’d shared with his family. During the phone call he stated that his wife had turned up carrying a knife, using threatening language and behaving aggressively. But when police arrived, they found the front door unlocked and the property unoccupied.

  Due to information the police uncovered during their inquiries, they now fear that the father and children are deceased. The search for Mrs Richardson is ongoing.

  The article was implicit in its assumption that Kirsty was responsible for the murder of her family.

  My bank manager, doctor and the DVLA believed me to be her, and until I spoke to her she would continue living as me. Yet I had no idea how to find her.

  She’d taken advantage of the fact I was dosed up on psychiatric medicine, had played with my emotions by kissing me when I was impressionable, and had manipulated me into swapping my identity with hers.

  My hand shook so violently that the phone fell from my damp palm, skidded across the carpet and landed beneath the television stand.

  I knelt on the floor, slid my hand underneath the unit and felt around for it. My fingertips touched the sleek black object just as someone began hammering on the front door.

  I slammed the phone onto the coffee table and went to answer it.

  BETHAN

  Now

  Footsteps pad down the corridor towards my cell. The lock turns, the door opens. ‘Your solicitor’s here.’

  I follow the police officer into an interview room.

  I’ve only ever seen them on TV. They’re not dark, cramped, or stinky. But bright, minimalistic, and smell faintly of linen fresh Febreze.

  I haven’t slept all night but declined my offer of coffee and toast. I can’t stomach breakfast when I’m facing a life-term in prison for a crime I didn’t commit.

  ‘Take a seat and take as little time as you need to discuss your charge with your solicitor,’ says the female officer before exiting the room.

  He looks up from the wedge of paperwork in front of him and gestures for me to sit.

  ‘I’m being framed for something I didn’t do.’

  Derek, who offered to act as my solicitor, makes notes, occasionally asking me to ‘clarify aspects of my story.’ When I’ve finished, he puts the pen down and tells me to plead guilty.

  ‘Have you not listened to a fucking word I’ve said? I didn’t do it.’

  ‘I’ve done my background checks, Kirsty.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’ I stand.

  ‘You were caught smoking cannabis on the bonnet of your headteacher’s car at the age of fourteen. He gave you a detention.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and two of your friends followed him home, threw a lit firework through the letterbox set into the front door, which set alight his house.’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head, but because I haven’t eaten anything it makes me dizzy.

  ‘You were arrested for shoplifting three t
imes at the age of fifteen and placed into foster care.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You received a six-month custodial sentence in a Young Offenders’ Institute for Actual Bodily Harm against another girl living at the children’s home.’

  ‘That wasn’t me.’ I begin pacing the room.

  ‘Police reports suggest they were called to attend the property you shared with your husband and twin boys four times over the course of a two-week period leading up to the day you murdered your family.’

  ‘Garrett was not my husband.’ I laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

  ‘Social Services had your sons on the at-risk register.’

  ‘I don’t have any children.’

  ‘Where’s Melanie?’

  ‘I’m Mel.’ I jab my chest so hard it hurts.

  ‘You stabbed your husband. You were sectioned under the Mental Health Act to St Cadoc’s hospital. You met Mel on the psychiatric unit. She collected you the day you were discharged, in a car that had previously been registered to you. You took advantage of her psychological vulnerability and got her to rent out a flat in Bristol under her name which you used to house your children after coercing her into assisting you in abducting them, after which she hasn’t been seen.’

  ‘This is ridiculous, Derek. You know I had nothing to do with their deaths.’

  ‘Suspected deaths. You were wanted in connection to Garrett, Alfie and Leo’s disappearances. The police only have circumstantial evidence to support their working theory that you murdered them.’

  ‘So? What difference does that make?’ My stomach gurgles and pinpricks of sweat dot my forehead.

  I shouldn’t have drunk so much last night.

  He consults his notes. ‘Just a moment ago you said, “Garrett was not my husband” and “you know I had nothing to do with their deaths,” despite the fact the police cannot prove Garrett or your sons are deceased without their bodies.’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m being set up?’

  ‘You deny having children, which supports the histrionic and fantasy proneness elements of the Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis that your psychiatrist formulated.’

  ‘Kirsty. Set. Me. Up.’

  There’s no other explanation.