by Emmy Ellis
My eyes widened, and I sucked in a breath. “Was she? Was she really? I must have missed that, then. Must have slipped me by. See, I was under the impression that she was an uncaring, heroin-loving bitch who thought nothing of using me for her own ends. And you,” I said, anger building, “you partnered her along the way. The pair of you—sick fucks. How the hell you can say that bitch was the fucking best I’ll—”
Bob lurched to his feet and swayed. He raised his pointer finger and jabbed it towards me. “Don’t say it. Don’t say nothing bad about my Annette. I won’t bloody have it. If it wasn’t for you…” He spat, phlegm landing on the toe of my shoe. “Well, let’s just say that my parting gift to you is in that book. You’ll see. You’ll fucking see.”
He threw his head back and laughed, great bellows that ripped into my soul and roused the red mist within, shattering my illusion that he had given me the gift of freedom in his notebook. Bob swayed, and his laughter and too much heroin sent him reeling backwards.
He plunked down on the stone, closed his eyes, and said, “Ow. That hurt, that did.” He rubbed his tail bone with one hand and his nose with the fingers of the other. His nose gristle clicked, turning my stomach. “Annette. Annette,” he yelled, face upturned. “Wait for me, darlin’. I’m on my way.” Roaring with laughter, he rocked back and forth, each movement intensifying my anger.
I clamped my jaw tight, clamped the pole tight, and swung it, hitting that good-for-nothing whore lover in the face. Mud flew from the pole’s end, and blood spurted from the vein in his temple, squirting with each beat of his heart. He registered the contact and flopped sideways to the ground. In the foetal position, he closed his eyes, blood dribbling over their lids, the bridge of his nose. His red life continued to spurt, high arcs from the wound, splattering the grass around him. Static, clearly with no urge to fight, he smiled.
“I’m coming, lover,” he shouted at the sky. “Won’t be long. And that bitch kid of yours…” He panted, lips paling. “She’ll not rest easy, even after I’m gone.” He opened his eyes, moved his head to look at me. “You think…you’re done…don’t you? You think…with us gone…it’ll all go with us.”
I stared at him, hatred in my heart.
“Well think again, Carmel.”
I raised the pole high in the air over me.
And brought it down on his head.
Hard.
A prickle from the hedge dug through my jeans and into my leg. I pulled it out, winced, and picked up the spoon and needle. I cleaned it on my jacket then walked back along the tow path. Under the tunnel, the dripping water sounded louder, heavier. I stared ahead and glanced back once. No barges occupied the canal. Nobody stood on top of the tunnel or on the tow path. I tossed the spoon and needle into the water. Wiped off the end of the pole and tossed that in, too. Hands in pockets, head down, I walked home, my fingers rubbing against the front of the notebook. The need to read it now wreaked havoc with my willpower. No, I wouldn’t read it yet. I wouldn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The next day, my footsteps once again took me back to the street of my youth. I entered from the top end of the road. Mr Lawton’s old house boasted white netted curtains at the windows. A woman and her two little girls sat on a bench out front—waiting for Daddy to come home and take them shopping? The children’s faces bore smiles, their cheeks reddened by the cold snap in the air. I envied them their innocence and their mother, who hugged them to either side of her. I turned away, the scene too painful to linger over.
The alleyway where I’d escaped home so often beckoned from the other end of the street, silently asking me to tread its path. To not loiter outside Mam’s house. Too late. I stood in front of it now, the nets in the window barking their filth like an angry, starving dog.
The door of the spiteful, nasty next-door neighbour opened. Snotty stepped out onto her path, black patent court shoes covering grey stockings, her head bent low over her brown leather handbag as she checked its contents. A multi-coloured headscarf, knotted beneath her chin, protected her tight perm.
That knot should be round her throat, shouldn’t it?
She closed her door, turned, and jumped upon spotting me, her rain mac crackling as her arms flapped away from her body and back down again.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. I’m…” She flicked her gaze towards Mam’s house, and her cheeks grew ruddy. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”
I chuckled under my breath. “Are you? Are you really?”
She blinked and gripped the handles of her bag, her knuckles purple against the white of the surrounding skin. “Well, yes…yes, I am. It would be un-Christian of me to feel otherwise.”
I stared at her, spite infusing my tongue. “Like it was un-Christian of you to ignore my childhood? To listen through the walls and know what was happening, yet live in your secluded bubble as if I didn’t exist? Except when you chose to send your looks of hatred my way.”
Flustered, she said, “Yes, well…I can’t undo the past, but I can apologise for turning the other cheek now. I feel dreadful…just dreadful…”
I think she means it, Carmel.
Do you?
Yes. So she’s safe, then?
I thought about it for the tick of ten heartbeats, locking gazes with the woman who could have freed me from a life of abuse. Her eyes watered, and her bottom lip wobbled. She held her bag in front of her, its belly resting against hers, a shield against my wrath.
She stepped onto the grass, soiling her posh shoes, wet earth swallowing the three-inch heels. One hand reached out, touched my arm, fingers squeezing, the skin as wrinkled and leathery as her bag.
“I’m so sorry, my dear,” she said, eyes beseeching me, begging for forgiveness.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, my body betraying me by revealing my emotions.
Yes. She’s safe.
She skittered away, glancing back once, and I stared at her shoes, dirtied by the patch of grass that served as a front garden to both her house and Mam’s. I fancied my dirt had sullied her—and not just the mud, either—perhaps even giving her nightmares, nights of restlessness in not knowing what to do. Had she batted away her sorrow for me as a child by putting me and Mam in a socially unacceptable box?
Yes, I think she did.
With one last look at Mam’s dirty windows, one last peek into the memories that hovered behind the bricks and glass, I turned and walked down the street for the last time, down that alleyway, across the park, smiling at the swings, the trees, and the many memories they held.
I sat on a swing, the seat the same one I’d occupied back then. The swing’s rusted chains dirtied my palms, leaving orange streaks on the undersides of my fingers, but I didn’t care. It would wash off—one stain I could banish with water, unlike the many others inside me.
Gary came to mind. Would I stay friends with him forever, despite what he’d done? I hoped so. Could I confess everything to him? Unsure of the answer, I swung high, the dampened air whipping my hair in all directions. And what about Richie? How did I feel about him? I mean, he liked me, that much was obvious, but did I feel anything for him? No. He’d been useful, but now that it was over, I didn’t need him anymore. I swung higher, higher, wishing Mr Moon hung in the sky so I could kick him in the head once more.
Liberation flew through me. I was free, free at last.
The swing slowed, and I waited until it stopped completely before getting off. Swiping my rust-coated hands against my coat, my palms brushed the bulge of the notebook in my pocket. I ignored its presence and jogged past the site of Belinda’s accident. And smiled. Rain fell, sheets of it battering the top of my head, cleansing the dirt. I smiled again, laughed.
I was going home.
* * * *
“You took your time.” Belinda was on my sofa, yellow pus dripping onto one of the cushions. She chanted, “I know what you’ve been doing!” over and over, getting on my nerves. I ground my teeth and inhaled through my nose
, the air drying my throat.
Don’t let her rile you, Carmel.
A sense of despondency crept over me. Would Belinda ever go away? Would she always be there, dogging my thoughts, my steps?
“Yes, I will. Already told you that before.” She sniffed, the liquid from her eye-socket face disappearing. “That’s the price you pay for bumping off your best friend.”
I closed my eyes, wished my heart rate would slow, and took off my coat. Nelson smiled from the top of the wardrobe, wobbled on her perch as I opened the door and hung my coat on a hanger. The fleeting thought that my rain-soaked coat would taint my posh silk-covered hanger poked at me, and I removed it, placing it on a metal one.
“You going to open the book, then? Come on, I want to know what it says. You’ve had it since yesterday.” Belinda’s life-face appeared, and she smirked, her top lip curling.
I wanted to slice it off.
“Actually,” she said, “I already know what it says, but I want to see your face when you—”
“Piss off, Belinda. I don’t want you here. Go and haunt some other poor fucker for a change.” I closed the wardrobe door, walked to the fridge, and picked up a Coke.
She cocked her head in contemplation. “Hmm. I could do. But d’you know what?”
I sighed, already knowing her answer. “What?”
“I’m not going to.”
Her sarcastic smile needed wiping from her face. I stepped forward, intent on gripping her throat, choking her words, killing her all over again.
“So you admit it, then?” she asked.
I frowned. “Admit what?”
“That you killed me.” She twirled her hair round her fingers, fingers muddied with the dirt of her death site.
“I admit no such thing. Leave me alone.”
The snap of the Coke can tab made her jump. She stood and then sat cross-legged on the floor. I drank, easing my dry throat, and plopped down on the other end of the sofa that Belinda had occupied. A film had formed on the glob of yellow pus on the cushion, and my stomach churned with disgust and anger. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and thought through my feelings.
You’ve got them all, Carmel. All the people who affected you. Will you be okay now? Has it all gone away?
My eyes closed again. Condensation from the Coke can dribbled beneath my fingers, pooling on my leg. A shiver trundled through me. Elation? Or a reaction to the wetness? Childhood visited, images of me as a kid darting against my closed eyelids, the pictures tinted red-yellow from the sunlight filtering through the window. It had stopped raining. Was that a sign? Did the sun’s rays mean something?
“Oh, stop it. You’re over analysing. The sun has come out because it does, that’s all. There isn’t a divine meaning to why it’s heating your face. Get your head out of your arse and face some facts. You’re a bad girl, committing those so-called accidents. You can deny it all you like, but you intended for all this to happen. You did.” Belinda languished on the floor, her stretch resembling a food-sated cat.
My nostrils flared.
“Open the damn book and be done with it. There isn’t time to think about the past and try to justify your actions. To relax now would be silly.”
I snapped my eyes open, my heart thumping an erratic beat. “What do you mean?” I asked, sitting upright, holding the Coke can so tightly my fingertips hurt, whitened. The can dented.
“Just open the fucking book.”
I stood on quivering legs, placed my Coke on the table, and staggered to the wardrobe, fumbling inside my coat pocket, fingers unable to grasp the notebook.
Take a deep breath, Carmel. It’ll be all right. It will.
The book snagged against the pocket opening, and I yanked, my frustration hindering its exit. I stamped my foot, tears burning the backs of my eyes, insecurity engulfing me, rendering me five years old again. Freeing the book, I took it to the sofa and placed it on my lap, unable to touch it.
He’d touched it. He’d written in it. Had she touched it too? Had she scrawled on the pages with her illegible handwriting? Did her uneducated words fill the pages? I stared at it, the book that possibly held the key to end my suffering. The page edges, cream with age, mocked me from beneath the cover. A yellow sticker decorated the top right corner, a smiling face within a circle, the universal graphic for acid, its edges tatty, dirty.
Dirty like him.
I glanced at Belinda, who now sat upright, hands clasped in her lap, eyes wide in her life-face. “Open it.”
The first page showed a list of names, the title of NETTIE’S CUSTOMERS underlined. I recognised some first names, recalled their faces, the way they had spoken to me. Or not. The policeman—the old one who had visited that night so long ago—his name featured near the bottom of the page, as did Mr Lawton’s. When had he visited?
Must have been while you were at school, Carmel.
Yes.
Three more pages of Mam’s customers followed the first. None of them had harmed or touched me, not that I could recall, anyway. Except Lawton, who had seen me…
They’re safe, then.
Yes.
The next heading, SMACKHEADS, told its own tale, many pages of the book dedicated to them. And the next, PIC CUSTOMERS, had my stomach lurching and my heart thumping so hard it hurt. How can my legs go to jelly when I’m sitting down? How can they feel full of fluid when bones and muscles fill them?
Names. And addresses.
Is it over, Carmel? Please say it’s over. Please…
I swallowed, turned to look at Nelson, my beautiful dolly. She stared blankly ahead, her one eye releasing a single tear. It plopped down onto her dress, the same tear plopping from my eye and settling onto my T-shirt.
“Over, my arse,” said Belinda, standing now, her eye-socket head bleeding, her fingers dancing against one another like spiders’ legs.
My mind raced, and my throat throbbed with unshed tears—tears I couldn’t set free. Not yet. Not just yet.
“No,” Belinda said, hands on pudgy hips. “Not just yet. Time for that later. Now, you’ve got work to do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
This is serious now. Like I keep telling you, I can’t just go up to them and do it. It has to be right. If you want me to get all of them, I have to be careful. Can’t go round being lax now, can I? If I get caught, that leaves some still out there, out there to perv on someone else. So stop pushing and shoving, will you?
Pardon? You just want it to be over? Well, hello? Like I don’t? Do you think I like living this way, on the edge, wondering if this time, this time I’ll get caught? I assure you, I don’t. I dread hearing the knock on my door. I dread opening it. The relief when it’s only Gary standing on the other side is massive. But you know that, don’t you? You watch me from the top of the wardrobe every time.
You’ve changed. Changed since the day I opened that damn book. Everything has to be done now, each of them suffering accidents as quickly as possible, their death one after the other like a snake of dominos falling.
Well, tough. It can’t be that way. You’ll have to be satisfied with how I’ve chosen to do it, as will Belinda. I can’t stand the pair of you going on and on and on at me anymore.
What? Why are you gabbling about Richie now? What’s he got to do with it?
Ah, I see. An alibi. That’s a good point, but I’m telling you, if you push at me any more today I’m likely to snap.
Leave me be. Let me dispatch them in my own time. After all, they’re not going anywhere. They’re like Mam’s medicine. My drug.
They’re in my veins.
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