In Bloom

by C. J. Skuse

  He shook his head. ‘I know the evidence speaks for itself but it doesn’t answer everything. It doesn’t explain that on the night that woman’s body was dumped in the quarry, he was nowhere near. He’s on CCTV at Wembley, clear as day.’

  ‘What about the others?’ I said. ‘The man in the park? The semen all over that woman’s body? The… severed penis in his van?’

  I refrained from saying ‘cock au van’. This wasn’t the time for that joke. It was never the time for that joke but it was still a good joke.

  ‘He’s still saying he’s being framed,’ said Jim. ‘That Lana sort he was seeing. He’s still my son, Rhiannon. I can’t give up on him.’

  ‘He’s Elaine’s son too. She’s given up on him.’

  ‘She’ll come round. We’re not going to leave him in there to rot, not when there’s a chance someone else is to blame.’

  Tink nuzzled into the crook of Jim’s arm. Jim turned to look at me, his eyes filling with water. ‘I was the first person in this world to hold him. Before the doctors. Before Elaine. I won’t leave him when he needs me the most.’

  Jim had brought back boxes of our stuff from the flat; his clothes, vinyl, the dehumidifier, all his old football programmes. The remnants of sawdust on his jeans. I cried when I opened the boxes. I found a bottle of his aftershave – Valentino Intense. I’d stitched the guy up like a quilt and now I’m crying about it. Pregnancy screws you right up, I’m telling you.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ I said. ‘To see him. I’ll go. Not yet, but I’ll go.’

  Jim put his arm around me, eyes all glassy. We watched Tink run after a Jack Russell, chasing it round in circles like a furry whirlwind. And we laughed. It was funny. But both laughs were too forced.

  Friday, 20th July – 10 weeks, 5 days

  1.Seagulls – this town is building-shaped croutons in a seagull-shit soup.

  2.Man in the mobility scooter who tutted that I was taking up too much of his greeting cards aisle at the garden centre.

  3.Sandra Huggins.

  One of the side effects of being pregnant is vivid dreams. I often wake up in a cold sweat, my heart racing, having spent most of the night before screaming at my mother or watching my sister Seren get attacked by birds or wolves or some strange man in a hood – those dreams seem to be on a loop in my head. Last night there was a new showing – the fortune teller from the hen weekend. It was an almost exact re-run of what actually happened.

  Me walking into her shop on the seafront. The red-haired woman with smoker’s mouth-creases and bad eyebrows. The crystal ball on its claw-footed stand. The Tarot cards spread out – The Hanged Man, Judgement, The Hermit, The Ace of Swords, The Devil himself.

  You don’t work well with others, she said. You need to have no one.

  Staring into the ball, her drawn-on eyebrows furrowing in the middle. Pulling her hand away from the ball. Her breaths getting faster.

  I won’t be on my own, will I? I ask her. I’ll have the baby?

  No, she says, tidying the cards.

  Does my baby die? I ask her.

  I saw a baby covered in blood.

  I smash her face in with the crystal ball and she crouches behind the table, cowering, her hands over her head. Even when she’s unconscious I keep going. There’s no stopping me. I couldn’t kill a baby. I’m not capable. There is good in me somewhere.

  But it’s buried so deep, she says. It’s the last thing she says.

  *

  This morning, once Jim’s morning farts had cleared from the big bathroom, I treated myself to a bubble bath and a hair wash with two shampoos and the posh antenatal conditioner Elaine bought. Thing is though, my hair is STILL greasy. What happens in a preggo’s body that makes her hair greasy? Why is my body giving my foetus all my shine and bounce?

  Also – dry hands and feet – the fuh? I’m taking on water like the Titanic but every extremity is as dry as a nun’s gusset. This kid is leaching all my moisture and redirecting it to my scalp. I looked at myself in Elaine’s mirror and I cried. I cry at nothing nowadays. I cry at burnt toast and RSPCA adverts and when I got my dressing gown cord stuck in the front door and the UPS guy saw my foof. I suppose that’s down to Heil Foetus as well.

  You wanted him to see it.

  I thought Marnie would have called this weekend about going maternity clothes shopping but I guess she was full of it like everyone else in my life. Bullshit City, that’s where I hang my hat.

  Instead I have been dragged outside the house today to ‘get a bit of fresh air in my lungs’ even though I’m perfectly happy with my existing lungal air. Elaine reckons I’m depressed but I’m not. I’ve just got the morbs. Even serial killers get the blues you know.

  We’re currently sweltering our giblets out in motorway traffic en route to the garden centre.

  ‘Do you want another Murray Mint, Rhiannon?’

  ‘No thanks. Still working on the last one.’

  I’m sitting in the back of the car, strapped in like a child. We used to go on seaside trips when we were kids – me and Seren in the back listening to music through shared earphones, Mum in the front, Dad driving. Mum feeding him wine gums. Dad turning up Spice Girls so we could all sing loudly. My Sylvanians would be buckled in beside me and on cold days, me and Seren would snuggle under the big green picnic blanket.

  Jim and Elaine have the radio tuned to Coma FM. Usually I can’t stand it because there’s too much chatting and this lunch-time quiz where the callers are a sack of dicks, but they’ve just played ‘Father Figure’ and now I’m crying. It had been playing on a paint-splattered radio in a pet shop Craig and Dad were refitting as a tattooist’s the first time we met. The week before he was arrested, Craig said it should be our first dance at our wedding. I wanted to do a routine to ‘Opposites Attract’ but he said it depended how pissed he got.

  Yes, he used to annoy me. Yes, he cheated. Yes, he used to talk through movies and stub out his blunts on my Hygena sideboard. But once upon a time he was mine. And I miss it. This is not the family I was meant to have.

  *

  We’re looking at the potted trees – well, Jim and Elaine are. I’m updating AJ’s Facebook page – he’s ‘in Moscow now, where water’s more expensive than vodka’. Found a pic of the Kremlin and some random guy wrapped in winter knits that obscured his face to accompany the post.

  I heard them talking about me when they thought I was in the loo.

  ‘I wonder why she’s not buying anything for the baby. Spends all her money on those toys. It’s worrying.’

  ‘If it makes her happy I don’t see the harm, E, leave her be.’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s harmful. Just odd. She should be nesting. She doesn’t read those books I got her, she doesn’t talk about it, ever.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘We need to find out what her plans are.’

  This exchange bugs me all the way round but I swallow it. At a quarter to midday, we headed into the café as Elaine wanted to ‘beat the queues’. We ordered scampi and Jim told me to get the table near the play area.

  I watched some toddlers on their springy ride-on things. A mum was stood behind one of the little girls, her hand on the child’s back. Another was consoling a boy who’d banged his knee. She rocked him and kissed his forehead. There was an older lady – mid sixties – pushing two girls on the swings. They shouted ‘Higher, Granny!’ and she laughed. And they laughed.

  The sun bounced off the metal swing post into my eyes. I got my bottle of Gaviscon out of my bag and swigged it.

  Jim appeared with our tray of cutlery and condiments, gibbering away like an angry badger, and plonked it down on the table.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he huffed, setting out the cutlery. ‘Bloody woman.’

  ‘Who, Elaine?’

  ‘No,’ he said on an angry breath. ‘Over there, third table on the right.’

  I swigged my Gaviscon again and counted along the tables.
Two women were eating croissants. The penny didn’t drop immediately.

  ‘Sandra Huggins,’ he said.

  The world around me stopped. A bomb could have gone off and I wouldn’t have noticed. Those two words were enough for me to forget everything. My heartburn merged into something else – for the first time in weeks I felt my own heart beating again, faster and faster the more I took in her face. It was like I’d been dead and she’d brought me back to life.

  I’ve never seen anyone I wanted to kill more.

  ‘I don’t know her,’ I lied, barely able to sit still.

  ‘You know her face, don’t you? She’s dyed her hair but it’s her all right,’ said Jim. ‘I expect she’s been given a new name, new home, all on the taxpayer’s ticket. I bet those kiddies never got as much.’

  ‘What kiddies?’

  He leant across the table. ‘Don’t you remember? She was the one taking pictures of these kiddies at that nursery. Sending them to these horrible men. Little boys. Babies. I think they’re still in jail. Pity she isn’t, rotting. I hope Elaine doesn’t notice she’s back round here.’

  ‘Oh god, that’s awful,’ I said, watching Huggins’s three chins as her mouth worked on her Danish. That one word circled my head like an eel: babies. Babies. Babies. She’d done it to babies.

  Huggins was still as pig-dog ugly as the selfie they’d printed in the paper months ago. Not one of her teeth was aligned and she had the most disgusting forearm tattoos (names in Arabic writing, the obligatory Harry Potter quote, etc). There was a green coat on the empty chair next to her and a red leather handbag, gaping open like a saggy mouth.

  ‘Vile woman,’ said Jim. ‘No, she’s not a woman, she’s a creature. I’ve got half a mind to go over there—’

  ‘Don’t Jim, think of your palpitations.’ Hypocritical of me I know, seeing as I was pretty tachycardic myself at the time, only for a whole other reason.

  He started his deep breathing exercises. ‘I’m all right, I’m all right. Just can’t believe that is allowed to walk around free. Should have thrown the key away. I don’t know if I want this scampi now.’

  ‘Come on, try to relax. It’s all right.’ The refrain of ‘Spice Up Your Life’ popped into my head and began reeling through it like ribbons.

  ‘If Elaine sees her she’ll go spare. One of the women at WOMBAT, her granddaughter used to go to that nursery. That Huggins creature had four kids of her own you know, all got put into care. Nasty.’

  It always amazes me how such a warthog manages to get laid so much. Then you’ll catch a glimpse of what’s been banging it – some eight-stone diarrhoea streak with three teeth and sovereigns on every finger. You know the type. There was no sign of a man today though – just a mousey woman in a paisley dress and questionable ankle boots.

  Sandra was so close I could smell her cigarette smoke.

  You need to nip this one in the bud, you cannot kill her. And stop sniffing that smoke. It’s not good for me.

  Mind you, I’d need an elephant gun to take her down.

  As Elaine was bringing over our scampi, Sandra moved her chair back, as did the Mousey Ankle Boots. Sandra scuffed towards the trolley parked next to ours at the café entrance and wheeled it away.

  ‘Sorry, need the loo again,’ I said, getting to my feet.

  I followed Huggins and Friend through the bedding plants towards an area of terracotta pots set out in towers on wooden pallets. The women were heading towards the herbs. The mousey one was clearly some kind of social worker – she had a lanyard around her neck and the tag read ‘NewLeaf’ – a quick Google confirmed my suspicions. NewLeaf was a rehab centre for ex-offenders. The closest branch was Plymouth. Obviously Sandra’s case worker.

  Mummy, what are you doing?

  Mousey Woman’s handbag was on her shoulder, but Sandra’s red leather one was in the trolley, next to two geraniums and a bag of compost. She was picking out her herbs. I ducked down. I had to wait an age before they moved away from the trolley and went to compare lavender plants around the corner. Because I only had seconds, I decided to live within my means – I took the first thing my hand fell upon inside the bag – a small brown envelope – then walked away slowly, blending into the celebration roses.

  Inside the envelope was more than I could have hoped for – a wage slip from Mel & Colly’s Farm Shop. Their logo was crossed carrots on a potato. The name on the payslip was Jane Richie – her new moniker perhaps. I knew where that shop was – out towards the motorway. I had her full new name, her National Insurance number, the total hours she’d worked that month.

  I even had her address.

  Monday, 23rd July – 11 weeks, 1 day

  Jim asked if there have been any Airbnb bookings for the Well House.

  ‘No, not yet,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure there will be, any day now.’ Of course there won’t be. Not now I’ve buried AJ in one of the flower beds up there.

  I can’t stop thinking about that old sow Huggins. You’d think that dismembering a body in a bathtub would leave me sated for murder for a long time but it hasn’t. What if the ‘serial killer cycle’ is shorter when you’re preggers? What if the feeling of balance and completion doesn’t last so long when you’re killing for two? There’s nothing in the pregnancy books on it, of course, and Google is next to useless on the subject. Though my in utero Jiminy Cricket is putting the kybosh on all those sort of shenanigans via tiredness, heartburn and nausea, I want it so bad. I want her so damn bad.

  Plymouth Star guy is back on the doorstep but he hasn’t knocked. He’s just sitting there, looking all handsome and fed up. I wonder if he wants my body? The state it’s in right now, he can have it.

  I went downstairs and peeked through the net curtains – there was a bunch of flowers next to him on the step. I opened the door.

  ‘What’s this?’ I said, startling him into standing up.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, picking up the flowers – yellow and white roses – and handing them to me. ‘To apologise for hassling you.’

  ‘You’re apologising for hassling me by hassling me. Are they bugged?’

  He laughed, biting his lip.

  ‘They are, aren’t they?’

  ‘No no, they’re not bugged I assure you.’

  ‘Be a waste of time if they were bugged anyway. We don’t talk about the case at home.’

  ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

  I pretended to zip my mouth. ‘You’re not getting in that way either, Sneak. I know your game.’ I smelled the roses. They didn’t carry any scent at all – mass-cultivated supermarket crap. Ugh. I handed them back to him.

  ‘You’re going to have to try harder than that.’

  ‘What do you like then?’ he said as I was closing the door. ‘Tell me and I’ll get it for you. Anything.’

  ‘Not bribing me, are you?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Cos if you are, maybe try doughnuts. Krispy Kreme for preference.’

  *

  That evening, Elaine dragged me along to her monthly WOMBAT meeting. They’re a Christian women’s group who go on outings, raise money for various different charities, eat cake and pray. Tonight’s meeting featured their new ‘Kindness Circle’.

  Yes, it’s just as dull as it sounds.

  WOMBAT stands for the Women of Monks Bay and Temperley and Elaine says it’s ‘full of characters’. There’s Big-Headed Edna, Morbid Marge, Poll Potts, who dresses like a sister-wife, Pincushion-Face Grace, Erica the Overfriendly Troll, Bea Moore the Colossal Bore, Wheelchair Pat, Wheelchair Mary, Rita Who Sits By the Heater, Elephant Vadge Madge, Jean Coker the Strokey Smoker, whose palsy makes her look like she’s constantly trying to eat her own neck, Black Nancy and White Nancy. Black Nancy calls me ‘Bab’ and is covered in dog hairs. She’s knitting a cardigan for the baby, whether I want her to or not. I’ve only exchanged brief ‘Hellos’ with White Nancy but as far as I can tell she’s a twat.

  This is what I do now. This is what I have become. I meet up once
a month with a group of women I don’t want to know. We gossip, we pray and we eat cake. My life will return to normal when the baby’s out in the open, of that I am sure, but while he’s gestating, I’m stagnating. I’m a freak on a leash.

  It feels odd. Not wrong exactly, just nothing seems to fit. Everything’s too small. Too mundane. I’m a square peg and every damn hole is round. Yeah sure Baby Bear might be contented but Momma’s getting grizzly.

  Erica the WOMBAT secretary had the idea to incorporate Kindness Circle into the meetings and tonight’s is the first one. Spurred on by ISIS and our world leaders basically all being megalomaniacal shits, she thought people needed to ‘make time to be kind’. Everyone breaks off into groups like they’re in the damn Brownies and partakes of kind activities – organising collections for the food bank, creating cross-stitch patterns for underprivileged traffic wardens or sitting around talking about how lovely everything is.

  I heard the word ‘lovely’ precisely 126 times this evening. I want to hurt the word ‘lovely’. I want to beat lovely to within an inch of its life, tie lovely in a sack and fucking drown it.

  Erica, I should mention, is also responsible for the ‘lovely’ rhymes in the church hall kitchenette:

  Wash, wash, wash your plates

  Gently down the drain

  Rinse rinse, rinse them clean

  Then dry them up again

  And on the fridge door there’s

  Welcome welcome, one and all,

  To our communal milk and tea,

  But if you use the last of them,

  A refill’s nice to see!

  And don’t get me started on If you’re happy and you know it wash your hands…

  They’re so goddamn twee they make me want to gnaw concrete. Erica was all abuzz this evening having announced that the ‘church hall fund has agreed to splash out on hanging baskets for the smokers’ area’. You know, so people can admire the pansies while their tumours metastasize.