Bloody Women

by Helen FitzGerald

  I was as fucked-up and as selfish as he was, ruining the lives of the only people I loved. My mum. My Anna.

  Something was looking down at me.

  Was it Dad? Telling me to come to him, to fuck them, fuck them all.

  Or was it Mum, saying, you’re not terrible, my love, you’re wonderful and I will sacrifice my life for you?

  Anna perhaps, my Anna, saying, when are you ever going to see the real you?’

  Or was it Lucia Bellini, looking at me and smiling, just as she did in the photo on her grave, her beautiful black shiny hair tied back in an Alice band?

  Who was reaching for me? Guiding me through the door of the bell tower? Leading me up, helping me follow the bubbles to the surface?

  Or was I doing it? First with one arm, then with the other, then kicking?

  ‘One day, you’ll understand who you are, it’ll fill you with pride,’ Anna had said.

  And I knew.

  I was someone who was not fucked.

  I was someone who was not bad.

  I was someone who was not my dad.

  I was someone who loved my dad.

  Moving my arms now, the hand of the girl, or me, whoever it was, disappearing down again, a flicker of white, gone into the deep.

  I was swimming.

  I was good at it.

  I was doing the front crawl. My body was a machine.

  Alternate breathing. Push through the water. Cut through it.

  The water was loud. It was gushing in now, full pelt. There were waves, and sometimes when I tilted my head to the side to grab enough air for three strokes, I grabbed water instead, coughing my way through the next strokes.

  Focus. Mental attitude.

  I counted as I swam. One, two, three. Breathe. One, two, three. Breathe.

  I bashed at the water with my hands.

  After a while, I stopped, treaded water, and looked towards the shore. I was getting close to the water’s edge. I turned and looked the other way. The village was gone. Was there something floating above the place I’d swum from? Did it look at me? Was it beckoning me to keep going, keep going?

  I turned around and took my mind to a place it rarely went, where there is nothing but movement and breathing. Counting. Not thinking.

  Forward. Forward.

  Crack.

  I’d hit the ground with my arm. Which meant I’d made it.

  The rocks were sharp and irregular, and my knees were bleeding by the time I scrambled onto the steep grass of the bank. The lake was full now. Buried again, for another ten years. I watched it spread out, smoothing over the past, the white girl who’d saved me no longer floating at the surface with her hand held out.

  I looked at my own hands. To my surprise, I was still holding the small, scratched, faded-red Pinocchio toy. Holy shit. I remembered the story of Lucia Bellini leaving the toy in the ghost village, returning to retrieve it, then disappearing.

  I scrambled as fast as I could up the hill before me. I had no idea where I was, which side of the lake I’d ended up on. I discarded my heavy wet shoes and scrabbled in the dark to the summit of the hill, hoping there’d be a road, or a track, visible from the top.

  There were flickering lights. The cemetery. I ran towards it, into it, hiding, scared. Where would he be? Would he find me again? Crouched below a wall of tombstones I caught my breath and tried to think. Perhaps I should stay there till the morning, wait until his car had gone from the hotel, and ask Massimo to call the police.

  That’s what I’d do. I felt calmer as I stood up to find a better place to hide. I scoured the garden in the middle of the cemetery, and then turned to look for refuge on the perimeter.

  A candle flickered on the face of Giuseppina Rossi. I screamed.

  I ran towards the hotel. The front light was on. The curtains of the bedroom we’d paid for were closed. I looked in the window of the bar. The fire had gone out. No one was there. Joe must have gone to the room.

  Opening the front door, I tip-toed into the foyer of the hotel. There was a phone on the front desk. The only number I knew was Anna’s. I pressed the digits slowly, knowing what I had to say – that Joe was trying to kill me. Making it look like I’ve killed myself, exactly the way Dad did. That she should call the police. Now. That I was at Massimo’s hotel in Vagli di Sotto and I would hide in the cemetery till they came. That, if they don’t come in time and he finds me, I was sorry that I’d been scared all these years, running from man to man hoping they would make me feel the way she made me feel: that being me is okay, great even.

  39

  Anna reached under the wardrobe and retrieved the small booklet.

  The latest ludicrous ringtone on her mobile shot through her.

  ‘Hello? Hello? I’m sorry, you’re breaking up . . . Cat, is that you? I can’t hear you, honey . . . Are you all right? What? What’s wrong?’

  Cat was rambling, not making sense. Bits of whispery words. ‘Joe’s try . . . hide . . . get here in time . . . I love you . . .’

  ‘I love you too,’ Anna said. She could hear sobbing. Cat had lost it. She was in hysterics.

  ‘Go slowly, hon’. What was that last bit?’

  ‘I . . . really love you,’ she heard Catriona say. ‘You’re the one . . . I always have. I need you . . .’

  ‘You too, honey, but you’re scaring me. Are you okay? Where are you? You’re breaking up . . .’

  ‘Anna, you need to call . . .’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Call the . . .’

  Clunk.

  Anna was so distraught she almost forgot the booklet in her hand. Anxious, but also deeply moved that, at last, her best friend, the woman she’d always loved, was letting her in. She smiled and opened the booklet almost nonchalantly. What had she been snooping about for anyway?

  It was a passport. She turned to the page with the photograph.

  Joe, hair slicked back tightly, with an expression that made him look very, very different. Squinting, almost.

  Underneath was the name: Jonathan Hull.

  ‘The picture isn’t very flattering, is it?’ Joe said, standing tall in the doorway behind her.

  40

  We were cut off. I don’t think she heard me. Someone was coming down the corridor. Heavy footsteps. Was it Joe? I ran to the door, shut it behind me as quietly as I could, raced to one of the Apes parked at the front of the hotel and tried the door. It was locked. A light had gone in the hotel. I squeezed the handle of the one next to it and it opened with a creak. I got inside – no keys – then got out and pushed the small three-wheeler onto the road. Back inside again, I closed the door. It floated downhill slowly at first, everything dark and silent.

  Dark and silent, floating, like I felt when I was diagnosed – without an engine, no control. I’d always assumed I’d be the same as Dad. There was always a good chance, and when it became obvious I had the same illness, it seemed to me I would end up doing what he had done. I would ruin lives and hurt people who loved me. Perhaps Anna was right all along. Perhaps that was why I chose men who would hurt me first. Otherwise, I’d torture them with my moods and one day – perhaps – I’d wind up overdosed on a sofa or at the bottom of a lake. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I would give myself over to men who would get in there first.

  The Ape gathered speed. I steered right and left, careering down the never-ending bends.

  There was a car coming behind me. It was loud. It was tooting its horn. It was getting closer. It . . . Oh, God, it passed me. A white Fiat. Not Joe.

  It seemed to take longer than an hour, but eventually the road flattened and the truck ground to a halt. I wasn’t far from the town now. I left it at the side of the road, got out, and began walking towards the lights. If I could just get to the police station, then I’d be okay.

  There were frogs on the road. Hundreds of them. The moon was shining in their eyes and they stared at me as I walked through them, drenched, barefoot and unsteady.

  I
arrived at the end of Joe’s driveway. I crept past as quietly as I could, unable to stop myself from peering in the windows. His parents’ house was closed for the night, all dark. Did they know about Joe? Pietro must have suspected him – he was always so kind and protective of me, and always suspicious of his brother. Did Joe’s mother have any idea? I would probably never know the answers to any of these questions. The family held their secrets close.

  There were lights on in Joe’s house. Tip-toeing as quietly as I could, I peeked through the small gap in the shutters of the living room window. I could see Anna. My God, she had come for me. She always came for me. My instinct was to run and open the door, to throw myself into her arms and hold her tight. But she looked odd. She was sitting in a chair. She couldn’t see me. She was looking at someone else. She was crying. Someone walked towards her, his frame so large that the small opening in the window was almost blackened by his torso. The man stood over her for a moment and when he turned around, I saw that it was Joe.

  I ducked down beneath the sill. Had he seen me? No. He moved to the side of the window and then walked towards Anna.

  Anna, my Anna, was in the chair.

  Joe had a knife in his hand. He stood over Anna and cut her arm with the knife.

  ‘One day,’ Anna had said, ‘when you’re ready, you’ll understand what you want, and you’ll just go and get it.’

  I knew what I wanted now.

  I was just going to go and get it.

  41

  I retrieved Nonna Giuseppina’s garden fork out of the tool shed and walked to the back door, which, as usual, was open. I edged into the dark living room – they’d gone, upstairs perhaps. My bare feet made no noise on the blood-stained spiral staircase. I followed the trail of red to the wet room. The light was on.

  I pressed with my palm and opened the door.

  Anna was lying at the bottom of the shower. Was she dead? She wasn’t moving. There was blood coming from her arm.

  Joe had his back to me. The knife was on the side of the sink. He was pouring liquid from an unlabelled bottle into a glass.

  ‘Eccoci!’ I said.

  Joe jumped. When he turned around, his face drained. ‘Cat? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said, holding the fork to his chest.

  ‘You slut. Get away from me, you fucking crazy bitch.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not a bitch,’ I said, pinning him against the shower screen and pressing the fork into him – one prong in his belly button, one in his chest, one in his crotch. I winced at the piercing of his skin, the bubbling of flesh, the scraping of bone.

  Joe gurgled, looking into my eyes – not charming now, not nice. He slid to the floor.

  ‘And I’m not a slut,’ I said, holding my distance with the wooden handle as his hands flailed to grab at me.

  ‘Anna!’ I said, pinning Joe to the floor with the fork, his three holes oozing blood onto the tiles.

  ‘Anna!’ I reached with one hand and shook her. Was she gone, my Anna? Had he killed her?

  ‘Anna!’ I yelled more loudly, reaching to turn the shower on.

  Oh God, nothing. The water was pouring onto her back and she wasn’t waking or moving.

  Neither was Joe now. His eyes were closed. Perhaps I’d killed him.

  ‘Cat . . .’ A tiny, shaky voice.

  She was alive. She was sitting up, slowly pulling herself up. She was shaking her head at the scene she found herself in.

  ‘He cut me on the arm,’ Anna said, spitting the blood he’d made her lick because her behaviour had hurt him the way his had once hurt his Nonna Giuseppina.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said, getting up and standing behind me.

  ‘Is he dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Not sure . . .’ Anna said, crouching down towards his head to check if he was breathing. Her ear neared his mouth and she listened for air on the lips I had once, foolishly, kissed.

  Suddenly, he propelled his head forward to butt against hers. Anna fell to the floor. He started kicking at me with a terrifying growl.

  I pushed the fork in a little deeper. Something inside him cracked and his head and legs became still.

  ‘You watched me,’ I said.

  He foamed at the mouth. He convulsed.

  ‘You tested me.’

  He kicked feebly at me again and I pushed the fork in further.

  ‘You were wrong to do that.’

  He was praying now, perhaps to God, probably to his Nonna. He was crying.

  ‘Ring for an ambulance,’ I said to Anna.

  She looked at me.

  ‘Make sure it arrives before the police. Make sure it hurries. I’m not going to kill him. I’m not a bad person.’

  I didn’t want to look at him anymore. He thought I was weak and vulnerable and crazy. He targeted me. He set me up. He killed my friends. He put me and my mother in a dark, lonely place that seemed worse than death.

  ‘Don’t worry, Joe,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to let you die.’

  ‘Puttana,’ he whispered, looking into my eyes.

  I realised Anna hadn’t left the bathroom to call the ambulance. She was staring at me with something like irritation.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Cat, you always over-complicate things,’ Anna said, trying to take the fork handle from me.

  I resisted at first, but I knew she was right. I always over-complicated things.

  ‘You’re not bad. You’re good. Stop thinking too much. In some situations, hurting someone is the right thing to do,’ she said. I looked at Anna and then pushed her hand away from the garden fork. I grasped the handle, placed one foot onto the top of the fork, and pushed it right down through Joe’s belly, chest and crotch. I could hear the sickening crunch of the prongs as they made their way through his wet insides then the scratch as they finally met the floor tiles.

  I gasped, but not as much as Joe did. Despite the fact that three large pieces of metal had travelled all the way through him, he was still breathing, his legs were still kicking, and his hands were still clawing at the fork. But my resolve did not weaken. I gripped the fork tightly and pushed my foot down again, then watched, unflinching, until Joe’s legs stopped kicking, his hands stopped grabbing, and his gasps petered out along with the life in his wide-open eyes.

  42

  Twelve months later.

  A bang beckons me. I go to the door, open it, and see a parcel on the mat. I take it into the kitchen where Anna is serving us chicken thighs, banana and tomato chasni. We both shudder at the brown slime, and then we shudder again as I open the parcel and see the picture on the hardback cover.

  JOE ROSSI

  PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER

  Janet Edgley

  I look at the black background, at the gold lettering of the author’s name, at the tanned face, the eyes staring from the blackness with pure deep-brown hate.

  It has an acknowledgements page.

  Firstly I would like to thank Catriona Marsden for forgiving me, after all the nonsense I believed, and wrote, about her.

  Thanks to Irene Marsden, a devoted and loving mother, and a wonderfully dear friend.

  To Anna Jones, for restoring my faith that, for some people, there is such a thing as the one.

  And lastly, to my ex-publicist, Davina Bastow, who is a cunterale of the first order.

  We laugh, but we don’t read any further. I put the book in the bin, face down, where it belongs. I am no longer interested in my exes: in their private parts, their clothes, their kisses, their behaviour in bed, in the backward steps each of them caused me to take. This was not my life’s journey after all, not my itinerary, but my running round in circles; it was lost time, buried now.

  Johnny is in Edinburgh. Under a flat plaque on a piece of green earth.

  Rory is in the same cemetery, but his gravestone is big and marble and shiny, with a better view.

  Mani is scattered somewhere in Udaipur.

  As for Dad’s grave, Mum and I visited it a few months after the
police let me leave Italy. It was the first time since his funeral. It poured with rain as we drove all the way from Glasgow to Inverness, pelting so hard that we could barely see through the noisy windscreen wipers. When we reached the cemetery on the Black Isle, the sun suddenly came out to yell ‘Surprise!’

  And, sitting by his grave, we were surprised.

  James Marsden, it read. Loving husband of Irene, devoted fat her of Catriona. Resting in peace now.

  We were surprised that we had forgiven him. He had been loving and, in many ways, he had been devoted. We were also surprised how happy we felt, because like him, we were at peace now.

  There is another gravestone I think of a lot. It makes me weep whenever I do. It is well polished because I polish it when I visit, and has fresh flowers because Pietro changes them for me each Sunday.

  I touch something that sits in prized position on the dining table. A miracle. A battered and scratched and faded red wooden toy, Pinocchio.

  ‘To Lucia Bellini,’ Anna says, knowing what I’m thinking and holding up her glass. ‘We thank you.’

  ‘To Lucia,’ I say, clinking Anna’s glass with mine. ‘Thank you.’

  It’s because of Lucia that Anna and I are navigating wild, unpredictable graphs together. It’s because of her that we’re throwing the curry in the bin and ringing for a pizza, and while we wait for it to arrive, sealing a few invitations for a small do at the old Italian Cultural Centre, where nothing would be asked of me except Can I love, and will I? It’s because of Lucia that promises mean something to me now, because of her that I feel alternately tearful, scared, nervous, excited and euphoric.

  Jitters are a wonderful thing.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Alison Rae, Seán Costello, Adrian Weston, Angela Casci, Sergio Casci, Isabel FitzGerald and Justin Crean.