In Bloom

by C. J. Skuse

  A while later, our conversation restarted and we were back being easy together – I was telling her about WOMBAT and begging her to come along to the next meeting to save me from certain kindness brainwashing. I told her all about the little names I’d given them all—

  When her phone rang again. I saw the screen – Tim calling.

  She gurned apologetically. ‘This is the last time, I promise… Hi, love… yeah, I think so… oh, that’s good, well done… yeah that sounds—’

  I grabbed the phone out of her hand and hit the End Call button.

  Marnie shot up, grabbing at her phone. ‘Why did you do that?!’

  ‘Well for one because it’s rude when you’re talking to someone—’

  ‘He’s on his lunch break! It’s the only time he can call!’

  ‘—and two, your husband’s being an endless little bitch.’

  She called him back and spent the next ten minutes apologising and eating shit like an absolute pro while I finished my crepe and sipped my tea. When she came back to the table she breathed out long and slow.

  ‘He’s fine. He’s fine.’

  ‘Thank god,’ I said, still chewing. ‘I was so worried.’

  ‘Why did you do that, Rhiannon?’

  ‘Cos you’re sleeping with the enemy. I staged an intervention.’

  ‘Please don’t ever do that again.’

  A silence fell.

  ‘Allison, the childminder at Priory Gardens, she was a battered wife.’

  ‘I’M NOT A BATTERED WIFE!’ she shouted.

  Faces looked. Marnie sank down in her seat.

  ‘I never said you were.’

  ‘You don’t understand him, I’m okay with it.’

  ‘Make me understand it. I dare you.’

  Marnie frowned. ‘It’s actually none of your business actually.’

  ‘Two actuallys.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Show me your phone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Show me your phone.’

  ‘No.’

  I grabbed it out of her hand again and she tried to snatch it back.

  ‘Give it to me. Rhiannon! Now, I want it, give it!’

  ‘Uh, pregnant woman being accosted here!’ I shouted, garnering glances as I fought her off me, but nobody in the café paid much mind. Typical. Pregnant women are pretty much invisible to the human eye.

  There was a selfie of Marnie and Tim together on her screen saver. She was smiling and he was hugging her from behind – like a chokehold. Hmm, attractive in an Aryan kind of way but a bit too much pulse for my liking.

  I checked her call log and messages and once my suspicions were confirmed, I handed the phone back. She was hot in both cheeks, grabbing her jacket off her chair and flinging it on.

  ‘Fifty-seven calls. In two days. And you live with the guy.’

  She wouldn’t look at me. She threw her handbag strap over her shoulder and shuffled out of the banquette.

  ‘One hundred and seventy-six messages in a week,’ I called after her as she waddled back through café, as fast as she could.

  She snapped her head around. ‘So what? He’s protective. I told you.’

  We got to the top of the escalators. ‘Just cos you’re married, doesn’t mean he owns you. That kind of thinking went out with McBusted.’

  ‘He’s not your grandad, okay? He’s not that Priory Gardens guy either. He’s ex-army so he likes things just so and he fusses a bit, that’s all. I get him. I get why he’s like it and it’s okay. I love him. End of.’

  ‘No not “end of”. Did he make you stop dancing?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Does he hurt you?’

  I tried to think of something women’s refugey and supportive to say, but nothing came. All I saw was her eyes not daring to water and the only way I could think of helping was to go straight round to that plastics factory and anally violate the gutless little piss-tray with some sort of pointy thing.

  She started down the escalator.

  ‘Uh, what am I supposed to do, get the bus home?’ I called out.

  She waited at the bottom. I went down and stood beside her in silence.

  ‘He doesn’t hurt me. I promise. He needs me. But I don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay? I’m asking you, please.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Just be a friend today.’

  For some reason that word ‘friend’ changed my outlook. I didn’t want her to leave and I didn’t want her anger. I wanted to stay being her friend.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else, yeah? How about the museum?’

  ‘Why the museum?’

  ‘I used to go there all the time when I was a kid with my friend. Shall we do that?’ She checked her phone. ‘Oh sorry. What time does Goebbels want you back in the Stalag?’

  She laughed at that. I didn’t think she would. ‘Six.’

  ‘Bags of time,’ I said. ‘Come on. It’s not far.’

  We drove across town without another word about He Who Must Not Be Named and I gave Marnie a potted tour of Bristol and the harbour side. We took a slow walk up Park Street, tried on hats in a hat shop, shoes in a shoe shop and finally we went to my favourite place: the museum. I showed her all the best bits first – the gift shop, the Egyptian mummies, the rocks and gemstones, the amethyst the size of my head and the stalactite that looked like a willy. Then the stuffed animals gathering dust in their enormous glass cases – The Dead Zoo, as me and Joe called it. I could smell the Dead Zoo before we got to it – musty and pungent with age – and I was drawn to it like a moth. We found Alfred the gorilla, arguably Bristol’s most famous son.

  ‘Me and Joe used to imagine we were in the jungle and these were all our animals,’ I told her. ‘We lived in the gypsy caravan and at night, the mummies would come alive and we had to hide in case they got us. Alfred would roar and beat his chest and all the mummies would run away. This is Alfred. You have to say Hi when you come here. It’s like a Bristol law.’

  ‘Hello Alfred,’ she said, waving at him. ‘Who’s Joe?’

  ‘Joe Leech. He was my best friend when I was a kid. I only knew him for a couple of summers. He was killed. Got knocked down.’

  ‘Oh that’s awful. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Apparently when he was in the zoo, Alfred used to throw poo at people and piss on them as they passed underneath his cage. And he hated men with beards. I don’t like men with beards either. Don’t trust them.’

  Marnie laughed.

  ‘Does Tim have a beard at the moment?’

  She thinned her eyes. ‘No he doesn’t.’

  ‘Just checking. We used to spend hours up here, me and Joe.’

  ‘Smells a bit strange. Some of them look so sad.’

  ‘Yeah but look at the ones who are grinning. They look insane.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Don’t you find it fascinating? I find death fascinating.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I find it quite creepy actually.’ She moved around the glass cases with caution as though any moment the ocelot or Sumatran tiger or glassy-eyed rhino might crash through the glass and flatten her.

  ‘There’s a dodo somewhere,’ I said. ‘That was Joe’s favourite.’

  ‘You look genuinely happy to be here,’ she remarked.

  ‘Yeah, I think I am. I was happy as a kid. Before Priory Gardens. And when I was with Joe. And Craig. Not so much since.’

  This remark seemed to trouble Marnie all afternoon. She brought it up several times as we were wandering round but put it down to the whole Craig-being-in-prison and not-having-a-baby-daddy-around thing.

  After the gift shop – where Marnie again noted several things she liked but wouldn’t buy – we went over the road to Rocotillos where me and Joe Leech ate short stack pancakes and shakes for breakfast, and dared each other to blow cold cherries at the waiters. We sat on stools overlooking the street outside. Marnie said she wasn’t hungry but I ordered her chocolate brownie freak shake with whipped cream and salted caramel sauce, same as me,
and she ate every bite. The sky darkened and rain began spattering the window.

  She sucked her straw in ecstasy. ‘Mmm, I’d forgotten what chocolate tastes like. It’s not good for you, too many sweets.’

  ‘Is Tim afraid you’ll get fat?’

  She nodded, seemingly forgetting herself as she chewed the tip of her straw. ‘He’s worried about diabetes, that’s all. He doesn’t think it’s good for me to gain too much fat.’

  ‘No, I suppose it absorbs the punches too well.’

  Marnie rolled her eyes like she’d known me for years and this was something ‘typically Rhee’. ‘Things change after you have a baby. Men can… stray. That’s what I’m most afraid of I guess. I couldn’t handle that. My dad cheated on my mum and it broke her heart and mine.’

  ‘So if he cheated on you, you might find the strength to leave him?’ A little thought owl flew into my mind.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d never forgive you.’

  My thought owl flew out again. ‘I’d like to meet Tim.’

  ‘Why?’

  I spooned some cream from my shake. ‘Just to be sociable.’

  ‘You’re not sociable though,’ she chuckled.

  ‘I’m out with you, aren’t I? What more do you want?’

  She looked out of the window but I knew she didn’t want to look at me. ‘He’ll be coming to Pin’s cheese and wine. And she’s planning a big fireworks party in November for her birthday as well. No expense spared.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I groaned. ‘She’s not going to invite me to those, is she?’

  ‘Of course she is,’ said Marnie. ‘You’re one of the gang now.’

  ‘Ugh. I need that like a hole in the womb.’

  ‘Pin’s house is amazing. They’re millionaires.’

  ‘Whoopee shit.’ I blew a cold cherry at a passing waitress. It missed.

  Outside it was raining hard. People rushed past the window with briefcases on their heads and newspapers folded over like makeshift hats. ‘What do you want to talk about then?’ I asked. ‘You choose. Ask me anything. Any question you’ve always wanted the answer to. Priory Gardens, Craig, you name it. Open season.’

  Marnie stared at the window and took two bites before answering. ‘If you counted every raindrop as it fell, how many raindrops would there be?’

  ‘Huh?’

  She laughed. ‘I like those kinds of unfathomable questions, don’t you? Makes me feel so small in the world. Like, how long would it take for you to count every single grain of sand on Monks Bay beach?’

  ‘You must be the only person in the country at a private audience with me who doesn’t want to ask me questions about Craig.’

  ‘It’s none of my business, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘I’ve got another one,’ she said, the light flicking on behind her eyes. ‘How do you know you’re a real person and not in someone else’s dream?’

  ‘Isn’t that a Take That lyric?’

  Below the bench we were both swinging our legs beneath the counter, like we were children again. I wished we were.

  I don’t know how long we sat there – enough to share a cherry Bakewell freak shake between us and two slices of blueberry pie – and our questions kept on coming.

  ‘Why is the sea salty?’

  ‘Who picks up a blind person’s guide dog poo?’

  ‘Can you remember when you stopped being a child?’

  ‘What was the first word ever said?’

  ‘Do you ever hear your baby talk to you?’

  Of course I said ‘No’ to that one. It wasn’t time to play the ‘mad’ card.

  ‘What’s the best advice you could pass onto your child?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘Mind’s gone blank.’

  ‘I like “Find your bliss”,’ said Marnie. ‘I heard someone say that once and it stuck with me. What’s your bliss?’

  ‘Don’t know. Haven’t found it yet.’

  ‘You said in the museum you weren’t as happy now as you were when you were a kid. Maybe it’s having kids? Maybe that will make you happy?’

  ‘Mmm. Life’s full of maybes, isn’t it? You never know for sure.’

  ‘Maybes and babies,’ she smiled.

  ‘I still feel like a kid myself.’

  ‘You’ll be okay, Rhiannon. It’ll all fall into place. It’ll click, all of a sudden. And then you’ll know who you are for sure.’

  I smiled like my face meant it. Would have been much easier if it did.

  Tuesday, 31st July – 12 weeks, 2 days

  1.Grown adults who are afraid of dogs. Strap on a pair, FFS.

  2.Pop up advertisers. In fact anything that ‘pops’ at all.

  3.Woody Allen.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ said Jim, crunching through his All Bran. ‘No bookings at all?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I packed my face with as much humility as it could muster.

  ‘No it’s not your fault, love. If you ask me the tourism board has a lot to answer for. This isn’t a destination area anymore. Nothing for the kiddies. The funicular hasn’t had a lick of paint for decades. Council keep putting up the rates so the little independent shops can’t afford to stay put, and that new leisure centre’s still not finished. Six years they’ve been promising that.’

  Note: I don’t get an iota of blame. Note: he doesn’t check Airbnb himself. Trust, you see. Complete and total trust. I can’t help finding Jim almost unbearably sexy sometimes.

  Another dizzy spell on my way back upstairs – it’s altitude that seems to affect it. I had one yesterday on my way up to the Well House. I lay on AJ’s grave for a full half-hour until it passed. Something to do with my blood pressure. I’m going to have to start carrying around emergency chocolate with me like a St Bernard.

  I checked out Tim Prendergast’s social media to get the measure of the man. His avatar is a pic of himself in one of those seaside cut-outs – a fat man in a stripy bathing suit wearing a Kiss-Me-Quick hat.

  What a wit.

  His eyes are blue with ice splinters in them. I don’t even have to meet him to know he’s a fungus-addled prick of the highest proportions. And for a self-confessed ‘outdoorsman’ who loves hill walking, he doesn’t half spend a lot of time tweet-stalking celebrities. You know the type of thing – RTing how good their books/films/TV shows are. Incessantly @ing them in, saying Good job on The One Show tonight… or Loved your movie – what a talent you are! We’re lucky to have you, and asking them for shout outs and free tickets. The worst part about it is he gets replies. He trades on that tried and tested logic – people will believe anything if it’s a compliment. And it works.

  I honestly don’t know what Marnie sees in him.

  Talking of her, I haven’t heard anything since Saturday. Two texts so far have gone unanswered. I wonder if he’s throttled her. I wonder if I should go round there. I know where she lives – in one of the new houses in Michaelmas Court. She mentioned it at Pudding Club as the number was the same as their anniversary – the fifteenth.

  The Plymouth Star guy was back on the doorstep today, along with several others from the tabloids. He is such a snack, honestly, and it thrills me to wind him up – to play the part of forbidden fruit now I know he wants to eat my ass so badly. I felt quite sorry for him, jostling to be the first to hound me as I sashayed down the front path in my heels and swishy top, like I was at Paris Fashion Week.

  ‘You brought my doughnuts yet?’ I called out to him.

  ‘You were serious about that?’

  ‘Of course,’ I smiled, gliding through the garden gate. Oh boy was I working it today. On the other side I turned back to him and he smiled like we were sharing a secret.

  Gusset dryness = history.

  Wednesday, 1st August – 12 weeks, 3 days

  Drove myself back to the flat to pick up the last of my stuff – only had to stop once on the motorway to vom at the roadside. Otherwise, uneventful.

>   The flat is all but empty – most of Craig’s stuff has gone into storage. AJ’s blood dot remains – barely visible to the human eye, but to the psychopath’s eye, there’s no mistaking it. Looks more brown than red now.

  Mrs Whittaker’s moved out – gone to live in Margate with her sister Betty. She ‘can’t be trusted to live on her own anymore’, so Leafblower Ron informed me in the lift, as he coiled his extension lead around his elbow.

  ‘Has anyone else moved in there then?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But the cleaners went in yesterday so I suppose the agent’s found someone.’

  ‘It’s probably for the best,’ I said, trying not to think about the night I cut him up in that bathtub. The foetus doesn’t like it.

  I like thinking about my daddy being alive, not cut into six pieces on an old woman’s lino.

  Afterwards, I bought some Rice Krispie cakes and a bunch of pink gerberas and roses and went round to Lana’s flat. I took a chance that she still lived in the one above the charity shop in the precinct and lo and behold, when I rang the bell at the side entrance, she came to the door. She nearly slammed it in my face but I put my hand out at the last moment.

  ‘Please, Lana, please let me in. I’ve come to apologise.’

  She pulled the door back slightly so that I saw for the first time the extent of my handiwork. She was purple from her forehead to her chin – I almost laughed but stopped myself in time.

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t press charges,’ I said. ‘You should have.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘I figured I owed you that at least.’

  ‘Thank you. I truly am desperately sorry. I brought cakes.’

  She opened the door wider and I followed her up the narrow staircase – think Anne Frank’s house with junk mail and stair rods.

  I passed her bedroom – the door was ajar, the duvet unmade, clumps of clothes dotted around the floor – knickers, socks, some hideous pyjama bottoms covered in Minions, a dressing gown draped across the bed. The bed where she’d moaned in my boyfriend’s hot ear and bitten his lobe as her vagina gripped his penis and he slid into her so many times…