by C. J. Skuse
No, I thought as he walked away. You never know what you’re gonna find in them shadows. Chihuahuas, savage 27-yearold women carrying wallpaper scissors. All sorts. All sorts.
Saturday, 2 March
Got on the scales again this morning – that eclair I had last month is still punishing me. Two pounds heavier than Christmas. The consequences? Well, nothing at all really. I can grab myself in both hands around where my waist used to be. Definitely need to go to more of Lucille’s aerobics classes. I wish our Nando’s would just shut down. And Krispy Kreme. And Starbucks. And Greggs.
About lunchtime, I harnessed up Tink and we drove over to Mum and Dad’s. The smell’s even worse, like old milk, so I had to get on my Marigolds and give the carpet a good scrub once Madam was back under lock and key. Julia has a new tactic to get me onside – talking about my parents. It’s to soften me up, get me emotionally weakened so we’ll bond and then I’ll eventually let her go.
‘You have to have feelings to cry, Julia,’ I told her. ‘Get back in the wardrobe.’
I’m pretty lucky, being a woman and having these urges, granted. If I was a man, they would have caught me by now for sure. I’d have left clues. DNA. But I am careful when I do what I do. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. No hair, no fluids, no footprints. No trace I was ever there at all, unless I want there to be.
I’ll let them tie themselves in knots, the police and the mob at the Gazette. One day, no doubt, they’ll come back to the simplest conclusion as Occam’s razor dictates. It was just one very fucked-up woman out for revenge, for cheap thrills, for blood.
I am the music maker. And I am the dreamer of dreams.
And even if I am fingered by a witness, society’s latent, and sometimes blatant, sexism will work to my advantage. You have to play the system. They think you’re weak and girly? Act weak and girly. Use their own prejudices against them. Then when they’re not looking, cut their fucking throats.
As the great Bart Simpson himself once said, Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.
Sunday, 3 March
1.My sister, Seren ‘Let’s all fuck off to the good ole US of A while everyone back in the UK dies and rots, Gibson
2.Aled Jones – who died and made him king of Sunday TV?
3.Lewis Hamilton
4.Pippa Middleton
5.Basically anyone who covers OK! magazine
Well, what a nice way to spend a Sunday – a run out in the park with my dog, a roast lamb dinner cooked by my guilt-ridden boyfriend and a phone ear-bashing from my older sister. Laila the estate agent had taken the liberty of calling Seattle and informing her, like the becankled little pig face she was, that I’d taken the house off the market. So there I was, dressing-gowned to the max, stinking of night sweat, taking a call at 2 a.m. It was around six in the afternoon there. There was a long delay.
‘Rhee? It’s Seren.’
‘Oh. Hello, there, Sissy-woo,’ I yawned.
Long pause. ‘Why have you taken Mum and Dad’s off the market?’
She sounded like she was inside a metal drum at one end of a factory. ‘Yeah, I’ve taken Mum and Dad’s house off the market.’
Longer pause. ‘Why did you do that?’ She was shouting, but I could barely hear her.
‘It’s a terrible line, Seren. Did you just ask how I was? I’m fine, thanks. My back’s playing up again but that’s to be expected with a desk job, I suppose. Otherwise, I’m pretty hunky-dory…’
‘Rhiannon, why did you *mumble mumble clang clang* off the market? You had no *muffle scritch scratch* to do that.’
‘The estate agent was messing me around. I didn’t like her.’
Long pause. ‘That house belongs to both of us and as joint executors we both have a say in what happens to it. You should have consulted me.’ Her Seattle drawl had got a lot more pronounced since the last time we’d spoken. More whiny. Or it could be that she was just whining.
The next long pause allowed me just enough time to grow another lie in the window box of whoppers I was already cultivating. ‘Look, don’t worry, I’m going to place it with another agency – one with a much better track record.’
Longer pause. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me about this before *clang clang mumble*? We have to make these kinds of decisions together.’
I could tell it hurt her to say that. ‘Together’ was not something she and I had been for such a long time now and the words had stuck in her throat like bones.
‘It would have taken too long. Seriously, the woman was such a shrew and the kinds of people she was showing round were just… ugh. One of them had needle tracks in his arm. And another I’m sure I’ve seen on Crimewatch.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, so you were there when *muffle muffle* showed them round?’
‘Yes. That all right?’
‘Oh. Yes. We don’t want it going to just anyone, do we?’
‘Precisely. I’m going to place it with Charles Burridge and Sons. Their offices in town are so nice. Brand-new carpets. Jo Malone handwash in the bathroom. It’s fine, honest. I’m sorting it.’
‘Oh,’ she said. Was that a convinced ‘Oh’ or a passive aggressive backing down ‘Oh’? I didn’t know. Then she said ‘Do you need me to do anything at my end?’
‘No thanks. I’ll send you the details when it’s been placed. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of days to appear on their website and email you the link. All right?’
Long pause. ‘Yeah, OK. Thanks.’
She was so easy to get round. If she was that worried, she’d have got on the next plane over here and sorted me out but she couldn’t, you see. Because she was afraid. My own sister, three years older, three years wiser and over four thousand miles away, was terrified of coming anywhere near me.
‘What about a house clearance firm?’
‘I’m sorting that too,’ I lied. ‘So how are you then? How’s my little niece and nephew? Did Ash like his dumper truck?’
Long pause. ‘Yeah, they’re both fine.’ Long pause. ‘OK, well let me know when the estate agent’s sorted out then, yeah?’
‘Yep, I surely will, byeeeeeee!’ I hung up. I went back to my life, she went back to her kids and her double fronted house and her pool and strings of popcorn and Twinkies and her group of Yankee Doodle mates clinking beer cans watching the Superbowl. Sisters were ten a penny to Seren, especially ‘mentally deranged’ ones.
I spent all afternoon Photoshopping a screen cap of a brand-new estate agent to show her. She emailed back just before I came to bed.
‘Thanks for sorting it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get it off both our backs sooner rather than later. Take care Sx’
That x meant little. What she was saying with that x was that ‘once the house is sold, we can cease all contact, once and for all’. That x was for the sister I once was to her, before I went ‘psycho’. That x was a sticking plaster on all the comments I’d heard her make to our mother, our grandmother, our father.
‘I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.’
‘Why can’t you send her away again?’
‘The only cancer in this family is Rhiannon.’
‘Rhiannon was with him when he died. What if she killed him?’
Tuesday, 5 March
1.Craig
2.Man in front of me in the coffee shop who was ordering about eighteen differently flavoured lattes – also, your ass is way too big for those shorts
3.Chemist bitch in Boots who asked if my supplements were ‘doctor recommended’. Who died and made you a medical practitioner? Just let me buy my sodding Clit Vits, you cheese-breeding tripe hound
4.The man who whistles across the car park on his way to work at 6 a.m.
5.Thieves – the batteries from our remote, a half-packet of frozen peppers and a roll of Sellotape have definitely migrated to the land of Whittaker
So a bit of a dramatic morning so far – Ron and Claudia met with the mayor and Ron said AJ should sit in on the meetin
g (after he’d made the coffees, of course) so he could learn more about mayoral procedure and local politics. A while later, Ron’s office door opens and AJ practically runs out.
So I follow him out to the staffroom. The door is shut, the kettle boiling to a pheeeeeee on the stove and he’s sitting in the armchair with his head in his hands.
‘Hey, you all right?’ I asked. I turn off the stove and sit down on the sofa next to him, taking care to avoid the glob of taramasalata that’s been there for weeks and for which no one is claiming responsibility.
‘No,’ he sobbed.
‘What happened?’
‘Ah, nuthin. Just made a complete tit of myself in front of Ron and the mayor and everyone.’
‘Tell me.’ It felt like a back-rubby moment so I got stuck in.
‘The mayor was talking about her daughter and I made this joke about taking her out on the town and getting her legless.’
‘Oh.’
‘I didn’t know she was legless, did I?’
I wince on his behalf. ‘Yeah. Drunk-driver.’
‘I know, Linus just told me. He was just in here. He said the mayor could have me on emotional abuse charges.’
‘He’s joking, AJ. He’s just trying to get you going.’
‘I’d never have said that if I’d known. Never in a million years.’ He blubbed again. ‘And then I was laughing at one of her jokes, probably a bit too hard to make amends for the legless thing, and I said I was going to have a heart attack.’
‘Oh, gawd.’
‘I didn’t know her husband was in hospital, did I?’
‘Everyone knows that!’ I laugh.
‘I didn’t!’ he says, evidently in no laughing mood. ‘I can’t go back in there, I just can’t. What if he fires me? I need the money for travelling, Rhee.’
I rub his back again, all down the bumps in his spine. ‘It’ll be all right. Claudia knows you wouldn’t say anything so insensitive on purpose. She’ll speak up for you.’
‘What about the mayor? I’ve hurt her feelings.’
‘Well, she’s nuts for a start.’
‘Ron’s face, man. He hates me now. He thinks I embarrassed him. And Auntie Claudia looked at me the way my nan looked at me when I crapped on the carpet.’ I frowned at him. ‘I was three.’
‘Right. I guess that’s excusable then.’
I move my hand from his back to his forearm and rubbed that instead, looking into his eyes. I can feel his goosebumps. ‘Come on, you go and fix your mascara, I’ll make the coffees for them and I’ll see you back downstairs. This is no big deal, AJ. Trust me. OK?’
‘All right. Cheers, mate.’
‘Hey, I got some fart sweets at the joke shop at lunchtime. They’re dissolvable.’
His smile goes wide though his eyes are still teary. ‘And why would you be telling me that, Miss Lewis?’
‘Well, Mr Sixgill will be wanting his daily cappuccino pretty soon, I imagine. They’re in my desk drawer.’
There’s been another serious sexual assault out on the old road between town and the quarry. Two men again, driving a shiny black or possibly blue Ford Transit van. The latest woman – this one in her fifties – has given the police some good descriptions and the police are ‘as sure as they can be that the three crimes were perpetrated by the same duo’ and are maintaining a ‘very visible presence while the investigation continues.’ I’m wondering if I should start making my presence felt too.
AJ told me later how he made it up with Ron and the mayor. Ate shit, like a pro. I wasn’t surprised. He has one of those winning smiles that gets even the coldest heart onside. You can’t be mad at him for long. And dat ass, my God. No one could be mad at dat ass.
*
OMG OMG OMG, I’ve just got back from lunch and Craig has just informed me he wants to have a baby.
WHERE HAS THIS COME FROM?!
I was so not prepared for this today. It’s probably a case of him trying to build a bridge over the canyon that had opened up between us ever since he started bonking Lana. I made the fatal error of taking him a bacon roll and an Americano out of the goodness of my cold black heart. He’s refitting a shop in the High Street. My new patent wedges got covered in white dust the moment I set foot in the place and the expletive-filled conversation immediately stopped because, of course, ladies were now present. His chubby chippy mate Steve, whom he affectionately calls Stevewise Gamgee, didn’t make any eye contact, or affect a greeting, so in love was he with his task of planing down a bit of wood.
‘I thought you had to work through lunch today?’ said Craig. I think he was pleased to see me. He smiled anyway. It could have been the effects of the roll and the aroma of nicely crisp pig.
‘I do. I just took fifteen to get some lunch. Then I remembered you were here.’
‘Ah,’ he said and kissed me on the cheek. It was unexpected. We hadn’t been this intimate in weeks. The nearest we got to touching lately was when his sponge lay on top of mine on the side of the bath, like a sort of pube sandwich.
‘Steve’s wife brought their baby in earlier. She was just on her way back from Debenhams. Bought it the cutest outfit – black and yellow stripes, like a little bee.’ And then he got out his phone and showed me a picture he had taken. Two pictures actually – he kept scrolling back and forth between them. ‘Look at his little feet.’
‘Why do you have a picture of some random kid on your phone? Do I need to inform Operation: Yew Tree?’
He laughed. ‘Just thought it was cute, that’s all.’ He had this glazed look in his eyes and he was still rubbing my back from the ‘thanks for the bacon roll’ conversation.
‘We’re not having a baby, Craig.’
He laughed again. ‘Might bring us a bit closer together, you never know.’
‘Yeah, it would bring us closer together. Then it would split us right down the middle. You’d fertilise my bored little egg, then bugger off to work every day while I’m back at the flat, stinking of shit and crying my eyes out.’
‘It wouldn’t be like that.’
I gave him a look. Steve of the Shire, or whatever his name was, walked past with a different plank of wood.
‘He was getting all broody earlier when my Mrs brought the nipper in.’
‘So I hear,’ I replied.
‘You wanna watch out, Rhee,’ said another stubbly bloke in jeans covered in white paint. ‘He’ll be begging for a good seeing-to tonight. It’s all he’s talked about all morning.’
‘Oh, well, I’ll look forward to that then.’ I smiled and rolled my eyes as though he did this all the time.
Truth was, Craig didn’t do this all the time. He never mentioned babies, ever, never even showed an interest in them, and I wondered where this latest flurry of interest had come from. Then I put some pieces together – Lana. He hadn’t seen her for a few days. I wondered if he’d broken it off – or if she’d broken it off. The way they’d been at it previously, it was any wonder it hadn’t broken off by itself.
‘So can we talk about it tonight?’ he said more quietly, moving me slowly back towards the entrance so the other guys – who were now entranced by pasting chintz wallpaper and painting cornices – couldn’t hear. ‘Just talk, that’s all. See how we both feel about a little Criannon?’
‘Criannon?’
‘Yeah. Or Rhiannaig, if you prefer? Baby Wilkins. Can we just talk about it?’
‘Well, you could talk and I could sit there and laugh at you.’
He took a great greasy fat bite out of his roll and swigged his coffee. ‘Come on. We’ve been together nearly four years. You’re not getting any younger, you know.’
‘And you’re not getting any better looking.’
He stopped chewing. ‘Do you wanna get married first, is that it?’
‘No, I mean, I haven’t thought about it,’ I said, sipping my latte and looking out into the street where an old lady pushing a shopping trolley had stopped to chat to a robin on the edge of a planter. ‘I’d have
a pretty empty side of the church, wouldn’t I?’
‘That doesn’t matter. We could elope. Gretna Green. Nigel did that. Stayed in a great Travelodge.’
‘Oh, how marvellous, look can we have this conversation another time? Like when I’m not standing on wood shavings and staring at the inside of your mouth?’
‘Cheers for the food.’ He sighed and went back to his ladder with the scrunched-up Greggs bag and his coffee. No kiss this time. Hmm, I thought. This could be the clincher. A baby to save to relationship, or else he’s out. Maybe we had been climbing up the water slide to Splitsville for some time and now he had just lain down his mat. Down or out.
A little thought flittered across my mind – I had to keep him sweet. I had to remember the long game.
I stood there in the doorway, internally debating my options for a moment. And then I just came out with it. ‘OK, we’ll talk about it tonight. If that’s what you want.’
His face turned away from the ladder, his mouth still full. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. We’ll get a Nando’s and we’ll talk about it. We’ll talk about you impregnating the shit out of me. All right?’
He blushed and looked around at the other guys who’d both stopped pasting and sawing and were now looking at him in amazement.
I walked out of there feeling about three feet taller.
*
In other news, Linus took A LOT of trips to the toilet this afternoon.
Thursday, 7 March
Craig’s full of romantic gestures at the moment, all guilt-driven of course, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless. Yesterday, he bought me a jar of Nutella without having to be asked. Today, he came home with a small mushroom nightlight he’d seen in a gift shop in town ‘because he knows I like all that woodland shit’. How precious.
The baby talk went well. Craig feels he is ready; I feel I’m not. He wants to leave something of himself behind when he dies; I want a book deal and a cottage retreat with my own beehive. He wants a ‘son and heir to play football with and teach how to ride a bike’; I want size-10 hips and a new Sylvanians’ bathroom.
