Sweetpea

by C. J. Skuse

  AJ and I have found a new game to play – texting each other photos of our genitalia. At first I was hesitant because it’s hard to take flattering angles of oneself without cropping, angling or filtering the shit out of them, but it got to be quite fun. He’s very demanding – he doesn’t realise how difficult it is to hold one dildo in your vagina, while fingering your ass and taking a photo at the same time while standing up in your office toilets but, by Jove, I think I’ve cracked it.

  It was Paul’s birthday today. Instead of cakes he brought in home-made granola bars cos they’re healthier for you’. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife, which is ironic because you needed a hacksaw to get through the granola bars. It was like chewing a log. Fucking clean eaters.

  Oh, and we’ve had a firm offer through on Mum and Dad’s house, less than one week after it went live on the estate agent’s site. So it looks like we’ve sold.

  Seren phoned me this afternoon, full of glee. She actually sounded like a sister, for once, rather than a bitter old shrew who ran a girls’ orphanage who I always imagined I was talking to.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s finally going to happen.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it was bound to eventually, wasn’t it?’ I said. It was my turn to be the bitter old shrew.

  ‘I’m sorry if you felt under pressure with it all, Rhiannon. We could just really use the money at the moment. It’s going to be such a massive help. Cody’s job is basically hanging by a thread. He might have to relocate to Vermont so we’ve been looking at houses there.’

  ‘Vermont? Where Ben and Jerry’s comes from?’

  ‘I don’t know. Look, did you contact that house clearance firm I emailed you about?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I was in no mood for her whiney bullshit today.

  ‘How much are they offering?’

  ‘They offered a grand.’

  ‘A thousand pounds? For everything? All the contents?’

  ‘Yes, Seren. A grand. And I didn’t go with them anyway, I gave it all to the Hospice who looked after Mum. For free. For charity. The house is empty now. You left me to deal with it all so that’s what I’ve done.’

  ‘Rhiannon, some of that furniture could have been worth something.’

  ‘I. Don’t. Care.’

  ‘Rhiannon, let’s keep this civil, all right? I don’t want to be talking to you any more than you want to be talking to me.’

  ‘Damn right. Well, we’re nearly there now aren’t we? Final hurdle and then you can carry on pretending I don’t exist, can’t you?’

  ‘It’s not like that, Rhiannon.’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s been like that for years.’

  ‘Can you blame me for not wanting anything to do with you?’ she said, her voice lowering. ‘After what you did?’

  ‘What I did for you, you mean?’

  Her voice was now little more than a fluttery whisper. ‘Oh, so you do remember then?’

  ‘You never forget your first time.’

  ‘Ugh, you give me chills.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have a husband and kids and a sun-kissed existence in Yankee Doodleville if it wasn’t for me.’

  She was trying not to cry, I could hear it in her voice; her quivering breaths. ‘I woke up… covered in my boyfriend’s blood… and you were stood there smiling. Dad covered for you. He knew what you were. You’re a psycho.’

  ‘I’m not a psycho. Not completely. I checked.’

  It all came spewing out then. How my violent rages had made Mum’s life a misery. How my lying and stealing and arson period had brought her cancer on. How she still had scars from where I cut her with scissor blades. How I would fake tears to curry favour with Dad. How I got away with so much because Mum and Dad felt so guilty about making so much money from my fame as the Priory Gardens Survivor. How Nanny said I got the Devil in me after Priory Gardens.

  ‘You’re a cunting liar,’ I said. ‘I bet you dribble all this crap to your friends, don’t you? How I was such a horrible sister, tormenting you, cutting your hair, serving up your favourite parakeet for dinner. What’s the real story, Seren? I got the hammer to the skull so I got all the attention. All the sympathy. And what did you get? Fuck. All. They might have left you half that house but it was my celebrity that bought it in the first place. You should be licking my feet.’

  Her breath was catching. ‘That hammer… smashed all the love out of you.’

  ‘Point being?’

  There came a long pause. Then the click and the line went dead.

  Ungrateful, worm-infested cunt jockey from Hell. I’m so DONE with sisters. I’m so done with families. I wish she’d gone under Wesley Parsons’ tyres, not Joe Leech.

  ‘You’re a psychopath.’

  My grandmother said a similar thing the day the undertakers brought Granddad back to the house. I’d been at horse riding. I remember walking into the living room and he was just lying there, in his coffin. Hands folded on his chest. Eyelids stitched shut. So much make-up on he looked like something out of a drag act. My grandmother stood behind me as I looked down, scanning his body from feet to face. I saw her face in the mirror above the fireplace.

  You should see what you’ve done, she’d said.

  That was the last summer I spent at Honey Cottage. The last time I saw Granny. The summer before Julia.

  AJ wasn’t in today – ill apparently, according to Claudia – so I had to make all the coffee, do all the filing and get Ron his lunch. I was so stressed at lunchtime I texted him. He was in bed watching Star Wars (eye roll). I missed him being around. I missed his little love messages in my cappuccino foam. I missed watching him walk past my desk. I missed making him laugh.

  I texted him: Come back to work and sort the cables out under my desk. Then accidentally on purpose stick your head between my legs.

  Oh, God, don’t tempt me. Streaming cold though, babe. Miss you heaps!!! Come over and rub some Vicks on me xxx

  Even through his snot he couldn’t resist me. They never can.

  *

  BTW – Claudia’s house is MASSIVE. It’s one of the newbuilds on the hill on the way out of town. It looks like a show home. Open plan kitchen with grey granite work surfaces you can see your reflection in. Copper accessories. King size beds in all four bedrooms. Huge cinema-style TV in the lounge. Everything coordinated. Everything clean. Everything top of the range.

  Next door to AJ’s room was a little box room, completely bare but for a lemon yellow border all around the centre. The border depicted little bees and flowers.

  ‘Is this a nursery?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘for the baby she’s not going to get. Sad, innit?’

  ‘She’s a mum with no baby,’ I said.

  We went to the cinema after work. I can’t remember anything about the film we saw – some crap about mermaids – but the theatre was empty and we were in the back row the whole time, testing the squeak in the chairs.

  Friday, 24 May

  1.Creepy Ed Sheeran – hanging around outside my office again today, this time with a black eye. Good

  2.Edmund – the ‘Golly gosh’ and ‘Crumbs, I had better get a wriggle on if we’re going to make that deadline’ and ‘Me and some chums met up for a chinwag’ is getting on my last tit

  3.People who leave their dogs in cars on hot days – would you leave your child inside your lit oven wearing a fur coat while you went and ‘just grabbed a coffee’?

  My nightmares have stopped. I thought it might be a fluke at first but I haven’t had a single bad dream since I offed Derek Scudd. How cool is that?! Better than Nytol. I should bottle it and sell it… Peedol: Kill a Paedophile now and have night’s sleep every night of the week. While stocks last. Not available in pharmacies.

  Had lunch with Daisy Chan again. The Reaper still dominates most of our conversations and, for the rest of them, she’s quizzing me about my family. I’m beginning to tire of it. I gave her the bare facts over an avocado salad at The Roast House.

  �
�You said your parents packed you off to stay with your grandparents in Wales?’

  ‘Yeah, at Honey Cottage. It’s my favourite place in the world. My granny had bright red hair and walked around the place barefoot in ethnic clothes. She said you have to walk barefoot in the summer “to get connected to the soil and the earth”.’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Daisy. ‘I love Wales. We used to go there on trips to Monmouthshire with the children’s home. What did you do there?’

  ‘Make cakes for the tourists. Horse-riding. Pick the vegetables for the box scheme. Swimming. They had a river running right past their cottage. One summer my sister Seren came up with me and we stayed out lying on the hay bales in the fields until it got dark. In the days we used to get on.’

  ‘Sounds idyllic.’

  ‘It was. Until Granddad died. Then Granny wouldn’t let me visit. She blamed me for his death.’

  ‘Oh, gosh. Why, what happened?’

  ‘He had a heart attack while he was swimming. He liked wild swimming. Said it always woke him up, ready for the day. I’d gone out with him just to watch. And that’s what I did. I stayed on the bank and watched. I watched him drown.’

  ‘Oh, my gosh.’

  ‘He had a heart attack. There was nothing I could do.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘That’s awful.’ I nodded. ‘Why don’t you and your sister get on?’

  My fork clattered loudly to my plate at the exact right time to cause a bit of a scene and have some of the other patrons looking my way. ‘I think I’m done with the inquisition for today.’

  Daisy’s cheeks immediately suffused with red. ‘Sorry. I was doing it again, wasn’t I?’

  ‘If you’re so fascinated by my family, why don’t you just look them up in the Gazette archives? They’re all there: “Local Boxer Hero’s Father Dies in River Tragedy”; “Local Boxer Hero’s Wife Loses Brave Fight with Cancer”; “Priory Gardens Survivor is Local Boxer Hero’s Daughter”. Pretty sure Ron only gave me the job as receptionist because I was a local sleb.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rhiannon. I just like hearing people talk about their families. I like hearing you talk about your family. I can see how much you loved them.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You talk about your dad like he was some kind of god. I’ve never had that, you see. A dad to look up to. A big sister to play with. My parents and I moved here from Qingyuan City when I was just a baby. Four months later, they were both killed in a car accident. They’d just dropped me off at nursery. I had no one else.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, not quite knowing what to say.

  ‘I went into care. I was fostered out a few times – nothing really stuck. I was a bit odd. Had a bunch of insecurities – OCD, anxiety. I just couldn’t seem to settle anywhere. Then in my early teens I developed an eating disorder. I was just too problematic.’

  I nodded. That explained the thin. ‘How did you… get better?’

  She sighed. ‘I guess in time, with a lot of love, a lot of patience from other people, you just do. I also had massive determination that my life would be better. That I would achieve something. It gives you a killer instinct I think, when you have a bad start. Sometimes anyway.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. The similarities between us were suddenly striking. We were going to be friends at this rate if I wasn’t careful. After that, the ice between us broke and we had quite a pleasant lunch hour. I’m not used to this – just being friends with someone because they’re friendly, not for what they could do for me.

  Maybe this is where I’ve been going wrong.

  Saturday, 25 May

  1.Women who go shopping with their husbands then moan about it – did you honestly expect them to be helpful?

  2.Queue-jumpers

  3.Stores who make their shop assistants ask about a thousand questions when you eventually reach the till. Did you find everything you were looking for today, madam? Would you be interested in 25 per cent off Katy Perry’s new perfume, madam? Would you like a £1 Toblerone today with your Tampax, madam? Would you like any stamps or batteries with your clit vits, madam? SHUT UP AND LET ME PAY!

  So, first thing, Lucille and her sister Cleo came round and took me shopping for our prostitute outfits for the Weekend That Must Not Be Named. Never have I ever felt as out of place or awkward as I did when we were going around those shops, collecting up every scrap of shoddily made tight neon Lycra we could find and the cheapest gold jewellery our contactless cards could buy. The only thing that made it in the least bit enjoyable was that every now and again I got a WhatsApp nake from AJ.

  Just woke up. Had a dream about you and woke up with this…

  Lucille sent me into the changing rooms with every leopard-print, thigh-skimming, knicker-showing, breast-enhancing, camel-toe-inducing bit of material she could get her hands on. And the worst part was she and Cleo looked good in all of it – I looked like what I was – a miserable fat twat in cheap tarts’ threads.

  Baby, I need you again. I’ve got a permanent hard-on for you. I cum every time I think of us together.

  ‘Yep, that’s it, that’s the one,’ said Cleo, as I came out wearing my selected outfit – skin-tight leopard-print leggings, black miniskirt, patent leather wedges I could barely stand up in, a neon pink boob tube and large gold hoop earrings. I tried not to notice either of them staring at the areas of flab my clothes refused to hide. ‘How will you have your hair?’ asked Lucille, scraping it all up into a hooker topknot for me, then letting it all down again. ‘Like that? Or maybe pigtails?’

  ‘Shaved off against my will in front of several baying Dutch villagers perhaps? No, not pigtails, for God’s sake.’

  I turned back to look at them – Cleo smiled briefly. ‘How about a high ponytail?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to cheapen the effect.’

  ‘Fake tan!’ cried Lucille.

  ‘Shit, we forgot!’ said Cleo and I was ushered back into the changing room tout de suite to fold everything up so we could pay for it (the entire outfit plus shoes came to less than £15 so we’re talking real-assed quality merchandise here).

  Rhee, can I see you tonight? I need to see you. Send me some pix to be going on with, would ya? Love u xxx

  I sent him some up-the-skirt shots and several of my tits pressed together while I was changing. Within seconds, he’d fired back an image of a wet patch on his duvet.

  Ur awesome. Love you – AJ xx Kissy face emoji followed by cat and chicken emojis for some reason. Then I realised it was a pussy and a cock. Yawn. Such a child, yet somehow I enjoyed the shopping expedition more because of him.

  I heard Cleo and Lucille talking while I was in the changing room – bitching about Imelda and how she was micro-managing everything. How Lucille had ‘just about had it up to here’ and how Cleo was ‘will be glad when this bloody wedding’s over’.’ Très intéressant, j’ai pensé.

  Then we hotfooted it to Superdrug for a shitload of tan towels.

  Monday, 27 May

  1.Wesley Parsons

  2.Makers of Sylvanian Families – they have discontinued the seaside restaurant I was going to ask Craig to buy me for Christmas. There’s one on eBay but you don’t know what idiot has crapped on that

  3.Aerobics teachers – particularly Cleo Fullerton. And I thought I was a sadist

  It’s getting impossible to avoid AJ. He was like a dog on heat all day today. His texts are becoming increasingly more cloying and suggestive and he says something to me every single time he passes my desk, even if it’s just ‘Your window could do with a wipe.’ I didn’t know if that was a euphemism or what. I have to have sex with him again soon as he’s clearly gagging for it. Not exactly a hardship but some nights you just want to eat Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, watch EastEnders and shave your pits, you know?

  Claudia and Ron had their joint birthdays today – and both had chosen to have the day off. I don’t think there’s anything sexual going on there
. I just think they’re both too tight to buy their own doughnuts. So selfish.

  Imelda and Lucille texted to see if I wanted to come to Cleo’s aerobics class after work – an actual aerobics class, rather than an excuse for sex-with-AJ or feeding-my-hostage. I think she was short on numbers. Therefore, my intended evening of hot bath, leg-shaving and chat-rooming with random dick slappers from around the world was shunted in place of ear-splitting Nicki Minaj, kicking the air in front of my face and sweating through my Juicy Couture. I had to sit out the jumping jacks marathon due to a dizzy spell but I do feel tighter. I do feel better about myself. I don’t actually want to kill anyone tonight.

  Maybe that’s the answer to keeping the world safe from my tendencies – sheer fucking exhaustion.

  Tuesday, 28 May

  Took Tink to the new vet’s surgery in town first thing for her annual injection. She was a brave girl but it cost me an arm and a leg, a springer spaniel attacked her in the waiting room, and the vet had rapey eyes so I think we’ll be going back to her old vet.

  Linus has been off work for six days now. Nobody’s knows why. ‘Mystery illness’ seems to be the party line, which probably means he’s tried to top himself, like Mike Heath. Quite a few people have tried to top themselves at the Gazette. It’s always the quiet ones. Too many people bottle stuff up. Except Inept Plunket of course. She’s always crowing about the time many moons ago when she jumped from the multi-storey. It was only the first level and she bounced off the roof of a Shogun so nothing to write home about.

  AJ cornered me in the staffroom. He asked me if I’ve ‘gone off him’ cos I wasn’t talking to him so much at work or texting back as quickly. And he called me on my bullshit ‘just so busy’ answer. So I told him:

  ‘I get bored easily, AJ. That’s all. It’s just a bit of fun, you and me, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Not for me. I’m in love with you, I told you that.’

  ‘Yeah, I think it’s just a crush, dude.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I mean what I say. You said it too.’