In Bloom

by C. J. Skuse

  Scarlett is the youngest Pudding at nineteen. She’s as vain as a WAG and cranially underdeveloped but I guess that doesn’t make her a bad person. She takes a selfie every twenty minutes and thinks World War Two started with an iceberg. She’s due at exactly the same time as me – to the week. I said:

  ‘I’m envisioning a scene from that terrible Hugh Grant film as our babies come out in the delivery room and some strange foreign doctor is shuttling back and forth between our gaping vaginas like a rhino on speed.’

  Nothing.

  Scarlett didn’t get the reference – nor did she know what ‘envisioning’ meant. She then asked ‘Was High Grant the one in The King’s Speech?’

  Then there’s the tedious one, Helen. Ginger hair, milk-white skin covered in fish food freckles, huge overstuffed bump. She is slightly cross-eyed and her chin zits look like spheres of chorizo, though of course it’s de trop to mention either.

  ‘Helen Rutherford,’ she said, all pinched and evil. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ I returned, more evil. She only joined in the conversation to correct some statistic or brag about how easy her last pregnancy was, how she ‘breastfed Myles until school’ and how tight she is cos she ‘kept up her exercises.’ She thinks anyone who doesn’t breastfeed or give birth ‘naturally’ is the Devil incarnate. Helen is my least favourite pudding. In fact I hate her already.

  A baby started screaming in its high chair on the next table and all of them looked at it with that same expression of ‘Ahh, bless.’ I was horrified. This was no place for the noise-sensitive.

  There was one Pudding who wasn’t as ball-achingly thick, arrogant or tedious as the others and this was Marnie Prendergast – twenty-eight, conker-brown eyes and a soft, Brontë-country accent. She’s due in September but has a tiny bump so her clothes still fit. Her parents are dead too – her mum after birthing her brother (a blood clot I think but the cakes were coming) and her dad had ‘some kidney thing’. Her brother lives abroad and they don’t speak.

  ‘Orphans Unite,’ she beamed, clinking her coffee with my water. ‘We’re like Annie and that little kid she sings to in the night, aren’t we?’

  ‘Molly?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she laughed. She laughed at many of my comic asides today. Nobody ever laughs at my comic asides. I liked Marnie immediately.

  I liked her outfit today too – a Frankie Says Relax t-shirt, black jacket and pedal pushers. She had on black and white Vans too – like the pair I wore until Craig got paint on them. We got onto the subject of Sylvanian Families – she adored them as a child. She even still had her Cottontail Rabbit family and Cosy Cottage Starter Home, though it was ‘still in the loft somewhere’. I can forgive her for that. But yeah, despite her incessant phone-checking and the Take That badge on her lapel. I’m pretty sure I’ve made a friend.

  I asked her where to buy cool maternity clothes, not Helen’s kind that looked like she’d crash landed on a chintz marquee.

  ‘If you want to trawl threads, I’m your gal,’ she said. ‘I love shopping.’

  ‘I hate it,’ I said. ‘But yeah we could go to the Mall or something.’

  ‘It’s a date. Let’s swap numbers and I’ll give you a buzz at the weekend.’

  This was the only nice conversation I had at Pudding Club – the rest involved either pre-eclampsia, nipple-hardening or pissing oneself. I strained to hear most of it over all the screaming and though I laughed along and enthused about joining their antenatal classes I wasn’t feeling it. I kept thinking, Is this my life now? Is this all there is? The one saving grace was that no one was bringing up the Craig thing.

  Until someone brought up the Craig thing.

  ‘So what’s happening with the trial, Rhiannon?’ asked Pin, chewing her apricot Danish. All heads except Marnie’s turned to me.

  ‘Uh, nothing at the moment. He’s due to plead in November and then I think the trial will be set for some time next year.’

  Nev was working her way through a vegan brownie. Her teeth were covered in brown clods. ‘What’s he going to plead?’

  I fiddled with my engagement ring. ‘Not guilty.’

  ‘But did he do it? Did he kill all those people?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s been a lot to process.’

  Marnie cleared her throat. ‘Rhiannon might not feel comfortable talking about this—’

  ‘Yeah do say if you’re not comfortable talking about it, Rhiannon,’ said Pin, at full volume. Pin used to be in the army so could easily project her voice like it was still fighting for attention with the landmines. Several eyes from the other tables turned to ours as she was talking. ‘But you must have known something, surely.’ The tiny tantrummer on the carpet started up again, furious at having her face wiped.

  I smiled meekly, my Just-Your-Average-Preggo smile. ‘I really didn’t know anything.’

  The others nodded along like they were stuck on a back windscreen.

  ‘I saw you on Up at the Crack a few months ago,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘Oh, for the Woman of the Century award?’ I said. ‘Yeah, that was fun.’

  Not.

  ‘Yeah you had a lovely top on. Sort of peach with frills?’

  ‘Miss Selfridge,’ I informed her.

  ‘Cool,’ she said, getting her phone out and Googling it.

  ‘Why aren’t you talking to the press?’ said Helen. ‘Bit of a wasted opportunity if you ask me.’

  Marnie sighed. ‘Helen, for goodness sake—’

  ‘No it’s fine,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel right. Feels like I’m selling him out.’

  ‘Why don’t you though?’ asked Helen, her fish-flake cheeks pounding down her banana bread. ‘He’s left you high and dry with a baby on the way. You need all the money you can get, surely.’ She was looking down at my engagement ring. ‘That must have cost a pretty penny too.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘My sister Seren and I inherited our parents’ house—’

  ‘He is a murderer after all. Don’t you think the victims of those appalling attacks deserve some answers?’

  ‘What victims?’ scoffed Nev. ‘That guy in the canal had it coming by all accounts. And the dude in the park was a –’ pause to lower voice to a whisper ‘– sex offender – and that woman in the quarry—’

  ‘What?’ said Helen, all raised eyebrows and pass-ag. ‘The MOTHER in the quarry who was held for weeks and tortured, then raped and thrown into a pit? She had three children, Nevaeh. Thee!

  Nev shut up. Scarlett looked at Pin. Helen looked at Scarlett, snooty as a fox. My heartburn scorched my throat and my arse had begun to twitch. Pin called the waiter over for our bill. Marnie patted my forearm and mouthed ‘I’m so sorry.’ I think she meant it.

  I turned to Helen. ‘It hasn’t gone to trial yet.’

  ‘And you’re standing by him, are you, Rhiannon?’

  They looked at me. The waitresses looked at me. Tiny Tantrummer looked at me. Old Me would have said something meek and non-controversial but today, I just couldn’t be bothered. I could see the Pudding Club becoming like the PICSOs – bloody hard work. In a parallel universe, it might have been different. We’d have dinner parties, drink Prosecco into the small hours and bond over risqué conversation about fluffy handcuffs and fisting. Perhaps we’d have had barbecues and playdates and swapped ideas about nativity costumes in the schoolyard. But in this universe? No chance.

  ‘Yes Helen, I’m standing by my knife-wielding, rapey-lady, torture-happy, murderous asshole of a boyfriend. Now get me a doughnut before I pass the fuck out.’

  Monday, 16th July – 10 weeks, 1 day

  1.TV programmes about billionaires who spend millions on lampshades and ornaments and STILL find stuff to bitch about.

  2.TV programmes about benefit cheats who buy fags, tattoos and Heineken but have ‘nothing to feed their kids’. Cry me a river.

  3.People who say ‘might of’ and ‘could of’ not ‘might have’ and ‘could have’
.

  Plymouth Star guy was on the doorstep when I went out the front to shoo seagulls off the bird table. Him and a curly-haired camera guy.

  ‘Hey, Rhiannon. How you doing?’

  ‘Good thanks.’

  ‘Any chance of a couple of words for the Star?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got two words that would be perfect for you.’

  ‘Come on, throw me a bone, I’ve been in the job ten weeks and the most interesting thing has been Kids Set Fire to Furby in Precinct.’

  ‘I know what it’s like. I used to work for a local newspaper. Not the heady heights of crack reporting mind you – just editorial assistant.’

  ‘So you know what it’s like?’ he said. ‘Please. I need a scoop or they’re going to fire my ass. This is a huge story and you’re right at the centre.’

  ‘Too true,’ I sighed, folding my arms.

  ‘Please? Anything I can take back to the office? You’ll be getting your own side across. Some of the tabloids are saying you knew all along what Wilkins was doing.’

  ‘I did not know anything,’ I said. I noticed then he had Voice Memos recording on his phone. The camera guy was clicking. I calmed myself with a breath. ‘Tell me why I should bare my soul to you. Give me one good reason.’

  He backed away. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘This is what I do. There isn’t a good reason.’

  ‘Come on, give me a sob story. Why should I put you through to the second round? Dad dying of cancer? Brother out in Afghanistan? Granny just too damn nuts in the nursing home to recognise your face anymore? Tell me why I should give you my story and not the Mirror or the Express. They’ve offered me shitloads more than Pleases.’

  He backed away, frowning. ‘I don’t have anything to give you. I just need a break.’ I stared him out until both he and the camera guy had disappeared through the front gate and out of my sight.

  *

  I have made a boo-boo – I shouted at Elaine. In fact it was worse than shouted. I jumped on the highest of horses, whipped its ass and rode it right through her. I caught her dusting around my Sylvanians country hotel in the corner of the lounge and rearranging things in the rooms.

  ‘DON’T FUCKING TOUCH THAT! WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING THAT?’

  I didn’t mean to say it, it just splurged out. And I know they’ve been good to me and looked after me and blah de blah blah, but JEEEEEEZUS why can’t people leave my things alone?! I’m not asking too much, am I? She’d moved the front desk into the sitting room. She’d made up the bed in the cat family’s bedroom when the maid was CLEARLY on her way there to do that herself. And she’d taken out everything in the fridge and put it on the kitchen floor.

  Nerve = touched.

  ‘Rhiannon, I was only having a look, love …’

  I could see my mother’s face in hers – What’s the big deal? It’s only a few toys, Rhiannon. You’re too old for toys now.

  ‘You weren’t “having a look”, you were touching things! Why can’t you leave them?’ My fingers were lengthening; my breathing grew sharper the longer I looked at her blank face. The room seemed to pale away and into sharp focus came the phone cord and Elaine’s saggy neck. Wrapping it around again and again, pulling on it, squeezing it, that face going purple.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elaine blushed. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She sprinted from the room.

  I took the hotel upstairs and shoved it in my closet, safe and sound. I knew it was too exposed downstairs but I had no room to display it up here. I had more Sylvanian stuff than I had clothes.

  When I resurfaced, the house was quiet and there was a note on the hallway table – Elaine was at the church hall with her Christian women’s group for the craft fair and Jim was on the beach with the dog. I walked down there to find him sitting on the large rocks watching Tink sniffing in the rock pools. He didn’t mention the Sylvanians debacle at first; he started off-topic.

  ‘Did you look into that Airy B thing for me?’

  ‘Airbnb?’ I said. ‘Yeah, all done.’

  ‘You’ve done it?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll show you later. We’ve had a few enquiries already. I think it’s looking quite good for August.’

  ‘Oh that’s great, thank you.’

  ‘No problem at all. It’s the least I can do, isn’t it?’

  He smiled, looking out to sea. ‘I don’t have a clue about this internet lark. That place needs to start paying its way to keep the bank happy.’

  See this is a lie pie if ever he’s baked one. One of the discoveries I’ve made about Jim since living with him is that he’s LOADED. He has quite the property portfolio. It’s another hobby – buying up shitholes and turning them into sought-after real estate. I’ve seen his bank statements. He’s got three projects on the go – a flat in Cresswell Terrace where a junkie melted into the floor, a five bed house on Temperley called Knight’s Rest where a hoarder stashed several hundred ice cream tubs of his own shit, and a holiday cottage called the Well House on the Cliff Road which has just finished being refurbed. For years it was used as a derelict meeting place for local teens to shag and break bottles. Jim asked me to put it ‘on the line’ now that it’s ready for holiday bookings.

  That’s Jim’s problem, he trusts me. And I, being the gal that I am, am letting him down. I’ve put the listing up but once I’ve shown him, I will take it down again. I’ve decided I need the Well House – it’ll be my refuge. A place I can go anytime I want to eat and escape Elaine’s factoids about hot baths causing abortions and the link between obese mothers and autism.

  ‘Elaine mentioned you’d had a set-to about your doll’s house.’

  I sat down on the lower rock next to Jim. ‘My deluxe country hotel, yes.’

  ‘Bit OTT wasn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was only cleaning it, Rhiannon.’

  ‘I DON’T WANT IT CLEANED.’

  ‘All right, all right. Cor dear, those hormones are playing up today, aren’t they?’ He laughed. He actually laughed.

  I glared at him. ‘You don’t get it.’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘After Priory Gardens, I went into a children’s rehab facility in Gloucester. It was horrible. It stank of cauliflower and farts. I was lonely. One morning, my dad and my sister went on breakfast TV to talk about it and how I was doing. Seren mentioned I liked Sylvanian Families. And I got sent so many. All the shops, all the animals. Seren would bring them in for me to play with. The toys the centre provided were either chewed or dirty but these were new and mine. I learned to talk again using my Sylvanians. I learned to hold things again, grip things. They helped me more than anyone will ever know—’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything else—’

  ‘—nobody else was allowed to touch them except Seren and she knew she could only play with them when I was playing as well. I used to rub the rabbits’ ears on my top lip and suck the clothes. No idea why, just liked it. Mum was always complaining about it – she said it made them stink. She said it was childish. I was still playing with them when I was twelve. Then one day, I came home from school and they’d all disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared where?’

  ‘Mum had got rid of them. My post office, my supermarket, my country hotel. All the animals, all the little bits had vanished. She’d sent the lot to a charity shop. I screamed. Threw things at her. Bottles. Remote controls. Shoes. But she shut the door on me, refused to talk about it.’

  Jim blew out a breath as Tink scurried over to him and begged for a pick up. Dogs always know. ‘That’s sad, Rhiannon.’

  ‘Seren had managed to save some of them of them for me before they went – Richard E. Grunt, a few rabbits, couple of the little books and the bathroom set. We sneaked out and buried them in the garden one night when Mum was asleep. The Man in the Moon was our only witness.’

  ‘Rhiannon, you don’t have to explain—’

  ‘That’s when I started saving up. E
very bit of spare money I got, I’d spend on buying every last Sylvanian back. Piece by piece. I saved up all my pocket money, got a newspaper round, washed cars, mowed lawns. That’s the only thing I like about being a grown up. I can fight the battles I lost as a kid.’

  ‘I do understand,’ he said, stroking Tink’s silky apple head. ‘Our Craig used to say about your brain injury and how you liked things just so. I’ll have a word with Elaine, don’t worry.’

  ‘I miss Seren,’ I said, only then realising I had said it out loud. Jim seemed to be waiting for me to say more but I didn’t.

  ‘Of course you do. She’s your big sister.’

  ‘She’s half who I am,’ I said. ‘She taught me lots of stuff. Good stuff. French plaits and tying shoelaces and how to wrap presents so the corners were all tucked in. She’s practical like that. She’s a good mum.’

  ‘I expect she looked after you too when you were younger?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, the night of Pete McMahon’s death flashing into my mind. His body on top of hers. Her drunken mumblings. The knife cutting through his ribs like a spoon through jelly. ‘Sometimes I looked after her.’

  A silence fell between us. Without a word, we both got up and continued our walk. Tink trotted along between us. I placed my feet in footprints other people had left behind. It’s funny how you can’t walk in someone else’s footsteps, isn’t it? It doesn’t work. You end up taking too-long strides or placing your feet unnaturally to where you’d choose to put them.

  We’d gone about ten minutes before Jim stopped and pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. ‘This came today.’

  I knew what it was from the postmark – a letter from Craig. I’d been expecting it after Elaine intercepted the last one and set fire to it on the hob.

  Jim rubbed his mouth. ‘Can’t ignore him forever. This is the fourth one.’

  I scanned it through. His writing had got better. I’d only ever seen his scrawls on builder’s invoices or scrappily-written shopping lists. Clearly he’d taken some sort of calligraphy class while he’d been on remand. ‘I can’t see the point of visiting. It would only be more lies.’