Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Mullins, Louise

  I poured the boiling hot water from the pan of potatoes into the sink, forcing Brandon to back away fast to avoid another burn. ‘I should ask you the same thing.’

  He stared at me, shook his head, said, ‘I don’t know you right now.’

  ‘Not as well as you know her.’

  ‘Who’s her?’

  ‘Don’t pretend not to know who I mean?’

  ‘I don’t even know what you mean, Mel.’

  ‘You’ve been screwing your apprentice.’

  ‘Not this again. She’s seventeen, Mel.’

  ‘I was her age when we started dating.’

  ‘So was I.’ He grabbed his keys and wallet off the kitchen counter, left the room, stuffed his feet inside his Doctor Martens and dragged his jacket off the coat hook, slinging it on as he reached for the front door handle. ‘You’re going to have to get used to me working alongside women. There are loads of female engineers, Mel. There’s my fucking boss for a start.’

  ‘Don’t swear at me.’

  ‘I don’t need this shit the second I get home.’

  ‘Stop swearing!’

  ‘I’ll swear if I fucking want to. It’s my fucking house.’

  ‘Oh, it’s your house now, is it?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I’m surprised you remember where you live considering you’re rarely here.’

  ‘Fuck this again.’ He slammed the front door so hard the pendant lightshade that hung from the passageway ceiling swung from side-to-side.

  I stomped down the hall and flung the door open. It was dark and misty. Rain bounced off Brandon’s helmet. ‘Where are you going?’ My words battled against the wind that whipped my hair from my face.

  He spun round on his twin turbo low-rider to face me, and I caught the disappointment I’d often seen in my father’s eyes. He kicked down and turned the handle, sparking his precious Harley Davidson into life.

  The chrome wheels shone from the orange glow of the streetlight above him. I watched until the roar of its exhaust was swallowed by the fog.

  The sky flashed then crackled as I entered the house, turning my back on the storm that was about to descend upon our home.

  I lay awake for hours waiting for Brandon to return, convinced he’d gone to her, to spend the night in her bed.

  I answered the door angrily when I heard someone thudding on it with their fist.

  My stomach somersaulted when I met the police officer’s stoic demeanour. ‘Can you give us your name?’

  ‘Mel. Melanie Driscoll.’

  He was accompanied by another officer, slightly shorter, who was taking note of the garden fencing fronting the house, that now shuddered on the ground where it had blown down in the gale.

  ‘Do you live alone?’

  ‘No. I live with my boyfriend, Brandon.’

  ‘Can we come inside? We need to speak to you.’

  I stood aside and let them in. My feet heavy and my heart strumming overzealously against my ribcage as I led them into the lounge.

  One of the officers tapped a photograph pinned to the corkboard I’d nailed on the wall to prove Brandon wrong when he’d argued there were cables running up behind the plasterboard.

  When I’d ignored his warning and hammered the nail into the wall he’d said, ‘It’s a good job there aren’t any, or you’d have been thrown across the room.’

  ‘Who’s this?’ The officer drew my attention back to the photograph.

  ‘That’s Brandon. He’s who you’ve come here to speak to me about, isn’t he?’

  Not a flicker of emotion passed between them.

  ‘Does he drive?’

  ‘A motorbike.’

  ‘Do you know the make and model?’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ my voice broke. ‘He’s had an accident, hasn’t he? He shouldn’t have left in this weather. He was angry. I tried to stop him—’

  ‘We’ve recovered a motorbike registered to a man named Brandon Miller, who according to the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency lives at this address.’

  ‘Is he hurt? Where is he? What hospital did they take him to?’

  His colleague stepped forward and reached out to catch me as if he knew I was going to collapse when he spoke. ‘I’m sorry, Mel. Brandon didn’t make it.’

  The next few days were a blur. I declined the invitation to say my final farewell at the chapel of rest despite the chaplain’s assurances that I could. The funeral was held by a vicar in Newport Cathedral. The eulogy written by his Catholic brother, who blamed me for Brandon riding to his death because I was the last person to have seen his younger sibling alive and, ‘should have stopped him from leaving the house’.

  The wake was held in a small parish hall in St Woolos. There was a buffet spread and a gathering of sixty people – my mother counted – I’d never met, who were eager to stuff their faces with salmon and goat’s cheese sandwiches and miniature fruit salads while I stood alone.

  Brandon’s father signed the house over to me and continued to pay the mortgage to ensure I didn’t become homeless. His mother gave me a character reference to secure a waitressing job in the pub where she worked as a barmaid.

  But the inquest is the only event I can recall with any clarity during those long winter months. The words in the low solemn notes of the coroner’s voice played on a loop like an unrhyming poem until I sought solace from them in the same way I had when Maddison died: by pretending he was still alive.

  ‘Brandon left the house on his motorbike. It was dark. It was raining heavily. There was thick fog, and strong winds. Brandon was an experienced driver who was driving within the speed limit, but his vision was compromised. His braking even more so. We cannot say with any certainty what caused Brandon to lose control of his motorbike, but the wet tarmacked road meant that when he did the tyres span and he skidded beneath a heavy goods vehicle. One of the large wheels on the articulated lorry drove over him, and he tragically lost his life.’

  When the coroner read out the post-mortem report, I felt my legs buckle, the room tilt on its axis.

  ‘Brandon’s organs were crushed. He suffered several fractures: to his pelvis, ribs, shoulder, leg, neck and skull. The most damaging injury was the excessive trauma to his head. Along with internal bleeding to his stomach and the collapse of his left lung, there was evidence of severe haemorrhaging to the brain, consistent with the rupture of the major artery that runs from the base to the top of the spine, the cord partly severed.’

  He was almost decapitated.

  I don’t remember being driven home, curling up on the sofa wearing Brandon’s sweatshirt that no longer smelt of him, or playing Puff Daddy’s version of ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ on repeat, but that was how Gran found me a few days later. Hair matted to my head, face blotchy, eyes red, breath stinking of vodka, the room smoky and cluttered.

  ‘I’ll run you a bath,’ she said.

  She eased me off the sofa, steered me upstairs, poured Radox into the tub, rolled one sleeve up and tested the temperature of the water with her elbow like my mother had done when I was a child. She helped me to undress because I didn’t have the energy to, and retreated downstairs.

  I listened to her tidying things away, temporarily distracted as I sank beneath the water and inhaled it through my nose.

  I awoke to the sensation of choking. I coughed. My throat was sore, and my chest felt bruised. I opened my gritty eyes to a brightly lit room painted white. The curtains were red, and the bathtub had turned into a bed. I shifted onto my side, hit my arm on a metal safety rail. Gran was sat beside me in a blue hospital chair.

  She blinked then sprang from her seat and grabbed my hand. She looked over her shoulder and yelled for my mother. ‘She’s awake!’ She leaned over me, kissed my forehead. ‘You’re awake.’

  Her tears soaked through my hair and her grip tightened until my fingers tingled. ‘You don’t want to die. You just want Brandon back.’

  My mouth went dry and my
chest tightened.

  How could I explain to her that he was stood at the side of the bed holding my other hand?

  ‘Your grandfather died at sea before you were born. I’d never replaced a fuse in a plug before my husband died. I was too frightened to live alone, and the Valium removed my ability to feel.’

  Gran studied my reaction and I nodded my assent for her to continue.

  ‘I stood over the M4, the wind lifting my hair, and tasted the salt from the Severn Estuary in the air…’ She licked her lips as if the memory of it remained on her tongue.

  Mum gave her a sharp look and stood straighter as if she’d predicted what Gran was about to say.

  Gran squeezed my hand. ‘I wanted to die, but your mother stopped me. She started crying. I’d left her in her buggy with the brakes on at the other end of the bridge so it wouldn’t roll into the road and so someone would find her. A car zoomed past and I ran to her, saw the worry in her little eyes.’

  My mother’s jaw clenched. ‘She doesn’t need to hear this, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, she does,’ she snapped. ‘You’re both at risk of depression because my illness is hereditary. My psychiatrist said you could have a genetic predisposition to mental health problems.’

  I glanced at my mum who confirmed it with a nod.

  Gran sighed. ‘I gave myself until your mum was eighteen to live. But then she met your father and I had a wedding to attend. Then she had you, so I gave myself until you were eighteen. And I expect I’ll have to hang on now to see you get married and have kids.’

  Brandon wove his fingers through my hair and stroked my chin with the back of them.

  I brought his hand to my lips, kissed his knuckles. ‘I love you.’

  Gran tilted her head, and my mother narrowed her eyes. ‘Who are you talking to?’ they said in unison.

  ‘You two, of course.’

  Gran smiled but my mother refused to take her eyes off me for the duration of her visit.

  ‘Don’t ever do anything like that to me again,’ she said before they left. ‘Don’t you realise I already have enough crap to deal with from your grandmother. I can’t have you trying to take your own life too.’

  I didn’t remind her that it was my childish attempts to get Gran to take her pills that had caused her to overdose.

  ‘I didn’t. I fell asleep.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘It’s true. I was tired. I must have slipped into the water.’

  The hospital psychiatrist tasked with assessing my risk of attempting suicide agreed, handed me a leaflet about Talking Therapies, and I returned home twenty-four hours after my admittance to a cold, dark house that no longer felt like home.

  I spent that night on a bar stool drinking Pinot Noir, and the following morning throwing up the kebab that the man I woke up beside had bought me before hailing and paying for the black cab that had brought us to his rundown house-share.

  I opened the front door of his Georgian abode to a dazzling sun that cast a reflected beam of light off the wing mirror of his neighbour’s Mazda and onto the zip of his Calvin Klein jacket which hung on the bannister. I leafed through his bulging Burberry wallet and stuffed a wad of notes into the pocket of my jeans.

  I couldn’t afford Tommy Hilfiger, but my one-night-stand wore Levi’s. He wouldn’t miss £380.

  I walked the backstreets in case he woke up and decided to come looking for me. I didn’t know if he owned a car or had a propensity to violence so I caught a bus from Malpas into the centre of town and through Bettws to get back to Maes-Glas, stopping in an off-licence for wine and cigarettes on the way just in case he was following me.

  I ate, tidied the house, showered, dressed into my finest attire, poured and drank a couple of glasses of wine for courage, took the train to Cardiff, then hit the swankiest looking nightclub I could find. There I met a nameless man who kept my glass topped up and insisted on taking me somewhere quieter ‘to get to know me better’.

  He ensured my plate was full at the French restaurant his friend owned and gave me my own door key to the hotel room paid for by his company. I stayed for the weekend, visited the spa and jacuzzi during the day while he worked, and ate with him in a diner before watching a romantic film that night. I put the film on his tab just like I’d done with the daily facials, massages, fine food and wine.

  ‘Thank you for a wonderful evening.’ I kissed him on the cheek as we left the restaurant on what was to be our final evening spent together, and, feeling generous, let him guide me into his room. We had hard, fast sex that filled a void I didn’t know was there then he paid for my taxi home.

  When the driver dropped me off, I took the bus from the address I’d given to the man I’d fucked all weekend to the house he didn’t know I lived in.

  I dumped the Chanel handbag I’d stolen from a stuck-up bitch who’d turned her nose up at me while I struggled to open my locker in the sauna earlier that morning onto the bed and shook the rose-gold Breitling watch down my wrist. I unclasped it and wrapped it carefully inside the silk scarf I’d nicked from an elderly woman who’d tutted impatiently at me while I’d emptied the face creams and body oils from the gift bags into mine just before I left the hotel.

  I sold the watch and the proceeds covered the council tax, gas, electricity and water bills for the next three months. I used the sale of the handbag to gain entry to expensive nightclubs and the theatre where I met older men seeking companionship and sex. Most were too drunk to perform by the time we reached the hotel room. Others wanted to meet for lunch the following day or asked me to accompany them to business conferences. I robbed most of them subtly, but some got rough.

  Sean was one of those men.

  He pressed his arm against the top of my chest as he pushed me up against the wall, adding enough pressure to prevent me from escaping but barely touching me so it couldn’t be classed as assault. ‘Where’s my money, Mel?’

  His forehead sheened with sweat.

  ‘That’s not my name.’

  He smirked. ‘You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Mel.’

  ‘I haven’t got your money.’

  ‘You took it,’ he said, motioning to where a small camera looked down on me stood beside the till, from the ceiling above the bar where I worked serving food and drinks to the unemployed who after collecting their giro’s crossed the road from the Job Centre to enter the pub to get drunk, play pool, and sell stolen merchandise. It faced the only games machine that wasn’t alarmed.

  ‘I needed it for food.’

  ‘Don’t I pay you enough to eat?’

  ‘I got kicked out of my house.’

  He looked down at me with pity. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘It was my boyfriend’s house. His parents inherited it, paid the mortgage so I could stay there. They saw me with a man and—’

  ‘They made you homeless for daring to move on after their son’s death. Want me to pay them a visit, break his dad’s legs?’

  ‘No! Who the fucking hell are you?’

  ‘I could buy the house off them.’

  ‘No. It’s not the same without Brandon there.’

  ‘We’ll redecorate. You were happy together, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He took my shoulders in his hands, squeezed them. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘A B&B.’

  ‘Check out, bring your stuff here. I’ll come back with good news.’

  ‘I’m guessing I don’t get to keep my job?’

  ‘You stole from me. You’re a hustler. I can get you plenty of work, but it won’t involve handling money.’

  That’s how I ended up the owner of my deceased boyfriend’s parents two-bedroom house, working as a social escort for a gangster named Danny Newall.

  The long working hours and the constant demand for my attention from men old enough to have fathered me meant I tired quickly. I had to keep up-to-date with the news, sports and fashion. Regardless of my mood I had to wear a smile, listen to their bori
ng stories, laugh at their unfunny jokes, and let them paw me as if I was a prize filly.

  One day during break I followed one of the women who worked in the strip club Danny owned from the bar to the toilets where I found her snorting coke off a CD case she removed from her cosmetics purse. ‘Do you want some?’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It’s like a strong caffeine hit.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I took the straw from her hand, bent and sniffed. My surroundings brightened, my heart began to beat faster, and my muscles contracted and a rush of heat like a hug spread from my head and down to my feet.

  Danny ran a clean ship. Drugs, weapons, personal grievances between members of staff – on or off the books – pets, and of course kids, were prohibited from his premises.

  The security guard flung me out of the door and stood like a soldier poised for battle at the entrance.

  ‘My bag’s in there?!’

  ‘It’s not yours.’

  He was right. It didn’t belong to me. I’d stolen it from Debenhams.

  ‘What am I supposed to do for money?’

  He shrugged.

  That’s how I ended up in a sleazy backstreet pub, offering my ‘services’ to a rugby player I envisioned would become my sugar daddy.

  An hour later I was in his bedsit kneeling on threadbare carpet, having my hair tugged from my scalp, and my skull squeezed in a vice-like grip as I gagged.

  When I returned home, I gargled mouthwash until my throat stung and scrubbed my skin until it burned.

  I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror until the desire to smash it overwhelmed me.

  My reflection split in two. One side of my face remained intact, the other was broken, distorting my features so that a part of me had become unrecognisable.

  BETHAN

  Now

  I slam the door and sink against it, the oakwood flooring cold and hard against my soft buttocks.

  I didn’t see the driver of the Jag. I don’t know who saw me dispose of my husband. But whoever it was is taunting me.

  I stand and hobble down to the basement to grab a bottle of Domaine du château de Martigues – wine from Roberta and Gerald’s vineyard. I drop it from my shaking hand, spraying dark crimson liquid across the floor and up the wooden shelving unit engraved with vine leaves. I tread over the shards of glass to collect another, take it up into the kitchen, and pop the cork, ducking as it bounces off the ceiling, missing the lightbulb by an inch, hits the floor then rolls into the kick-board.