by C. J. Skuse
Her fridge was empty so I popped to the corner shop for her and bought her some essentials – milk, eggs, pizza. She’s cut herself again – there are ten lines on her right forearm now, where before there had been only three.
‘Dear oh dear,’ I said. ‘You have been in the wars, haven’t you? Where’s your First Aid kit?’
I am such a good friend. Even when I’m faking it, I’m better than most.
I’m still horny all the time though. I can get turned on at a hog roast or from watching Jim change the bin liner in the Brabantia. Anything long being shoved into anything narrow seems to do it for me. Even a slightly engorged carrot. It’s getting ridic. We were had watching Embarrassing Bodies the other night and the sight of bollocks the size of gala melons had me fizzing. Then Elaine got all twitchy and switched over to Diamonique on QVC. I could have punctured her eyeballs with her own knitting needles.
I’ve even found myself flirting with Jim. I’m laughing at his crap jokes, purposely going downstairs in my see-through t-shirt and no bra. It’s a major highlight of the day watching him squirm and not look. I wonder if he’s the same size as Craig.
We were watching this nature documentary about the animals of the Serengeti last night, me and Jim. We watch a lot of programmes together when Elaine’s dropped a Tram cos neither of us sleep well. Mostly gardening programmes or news bulletins with the sound down. He cares so much about stuff. World events especially. I watch his face as he’s making his little outraged comments about ISIS and tax hikes and ‘those poor, poor people in that bus crash’. I don’t get how to make the tears come when I’m watching stuff like that.
Sometimes I get angry, especially if it’s a piece on child exploitation or animal cruelty but anger is all there is. That’s all there ever is.
Anyway, we were watching this lioness rolling in the sand, inviting the male lion to mate her. I sat down next to him on the sofa with a view to cuddling in. I’d changed into my PJs and my tits were unbra’d. In the ad break, he got up to make himself a cup of tea and there was definite tenting action south of the border. When he returned he sat in the opposite chair.
The narrator on the documentary talked about the dangers of lions when they’re hungry or horny. Not just lions, my friend. Not just lions.
Apparently, The Horn is normal for preggos, so says one of the books, You and Your Antenatal Vagina:
You might experience an increase in libido. This is due to increased blood flow in your pelvic regions and raised hormone levels. Your breasts will feel more sensitive and your vagina will be more lubricated so grab your man and prepare for the best sex ever!
I miss having someone who can take care of that for me. Despite being a psychopath, I like cuddling. I miss that after sex. Craig was a cuddler. AJ not so much – he’d give the big spoon a go but more often than not he’d get hard again as his cock poked my butt crack. I wonder if that Plymouth Star guy might be up for some one-on-one. I could cuddle the shit out of him.
Leslee Mytesky’s husband Chad seems to be practically perfect in every preppy way, of course. This morning she was extolling his virtues yet again in between smoothie recipes. ‘Chad likes my body any shape but it’s so swell that I can still fit into my skinny jeans a week after giving birth.’
Yeah, put on three stone and see how much Chad loves you then, you self-righteous sow. Chad clearly prefers his women with tits and hips optional – why else is she working so hard? Who puts their own body through that kind of shit for themselves?
In today’s Instagram post, Chad is making a heart shape on her bump. I want to boil Chad in a vat of her ‘super healthy superfoods soup’.
*
It’s 3.12 a.m. I’ve had a full-blown, sweaty-backed, screaming-out-loud nightmare about AJ. We were in the woods, having sex, and then all of a sudden he disappeared and I was alone. It was raining hard. I heard noises and I started running and then I looked behind me and he was chasing after me, screaming. And every step he took, more of his limbs were falling off.
Help me, Rhiannon. Help me. Don’t take my baby away.
And his feet fell off and he was running on stumps. And his hands fell off and the blood gushed out. And his arms fell off and one of his legs and he stumbled to the ground and started crawling and I could only stand there and watch as his body slithered towards me like a snake. His head was the last thing to go and it fell into my hands. I was staring at his face and he was saying it over and over again.
‘Don’t take my baby away. Don’t take my baby away.’
Now I can’t get my heart rate back down and there’s something odd happening in my bump – bubbles popping. I’m either gearing up to break wind or the baby’s in distress. I’ve unpacked the Doppler. It’s quite neat – a little white electronic box with a small stick attached, like a chunky white crayon on a string. I squeezed the gel on my tummy then ran the crayon over it. For a good ten minutes, I couldn’t hear anything. I tried it with earphones in to amplify the sound and eventually got it – the sound of everything being all right.
Thump thump thump. 146 BPM. 152 BPM. 140 BPM.
I was still restless though. The dream was so damn real. What did it mean, don’t take my baby away? Take it where? I kept being drawn back towards Elaine telling me we were going to decorate the nursery this weekend – the room she had in mind was the one adjoining mine, what is currently my ‘dressing room’. It’s got all my Sylvanians in it. Where are my Sylvanians meant to go if the baby has their room? I can’t kick them out.
While I waited for the Doppler to reveal its noises, I messed about with my phone – my memory was full so I had to delete some files, mostly Tink on the beach or Jim’s garden. I found a video file of AJ that I’d forgotten I had – taken in the woods one lunchtime. Where we’d gone to have sex. On top of where Dad and Dad’s friend had buried Pete McMahon. And I had stood there under the Man in the Moon, holding the torch.
In the video, he’s got his top off and the sun is glinting off his chest through the trees. He’s dancing as I film him from the ground, then he comes over to me, bends down and looks right into the camera singing ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’. There’s thirty-two seconds of it.
And as I played it, the beats came through on the Doppler.
I turned the video off and gradually, the beats returned to normal. I played it again – up they went. Unmistakeable. So hard. I played that song twenty times. I looked on AJ’s Facebook to see if there were any more videos of him and found one of him playing a guitar and singing – ‘Never Tear Us Apart’. His audition tape for Australia’s Got Talent.
The Doppler beats grew louder again. It was unmistakeable. And as AJ sang, my tears rushed at me, all at once, before I could hold them back.
‘You love your daddy, don’t you?’ I said into the darkness of my bedroom.
No voice came back. It didn’t need to. I played the singing again and again and listened to the beats multiply each time. ‘I’m glad you loved him. It means you’re not like me.’
Friday, 5th October – 21 weeks, 5 days
1. Detective Inspector Nnedi Géricault.
I’ve pooed! It was humungous and painful and looked a bit like Harvey Weinstein but it’s out now, running wild and free. I feel like I’ve achieved something this morning. I almost announced it when I came downstairs, I was so proud of myself, but I was stopped in my tracks by the sound of Jim’s serious voice talking to someone in the lounge.
I pushed the door open and at once my heartburn ignited.
‘Rhiannon, this is DI… ’
‘Géricault,’ I said. ‘We’ve met. Hello again.’ Tink had been on her lap and on opening the door she scampered over to me. Tink, not DI Géricault.
Looks like she’s got Tink onside then…
The woman stood and offered her hand. I shook it. She was halfway through a cup of tea and a ginger nut.
‘Where’s Elaine?’ I asked Jim, knowing her struggles with the police.
‘She’s h
aving a lie down, love,’ he said. Translation: she’s upstairs necking Tramadol like Smarties and listening at the bedroom door. ‘DI Géricault wanted a quick word.’
He didn’t say who he wanted a quick word with exactly, but judging by the way Géricault was staring at me, I guessed.
‘If that’s all right?’ she added.
‘Yes of course,’ I said. I looked at Jim, hoping he would get the hint to take Tink out and leave us to it, but Jim being Jim wouldn’t get a hint if I stapled one to his ball sack, so I had to ask him. I took his warm place on the sofa, facing her. ‘Sorry about the pyjamas. I didn’t realise how late it was. Can’t seem to get enough sleep at the moment.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said, flicking over the pages of her pocket book. ‘How is everything with the baby?’
I puffed out and held both sides of my belly for maximum fed-up effect. ‘Oh you know, getting there. I’m half way at least but, yeah, so tired all the time.’ I almost told her about the poo but I guessed it wasn’t the time. Or the person. Or the subject. Who can you tell something like that? Who’d be interested? A doctor? It was rather enormous.
I had expected Géricault to enter into a conversation about how she felt when she was pregnant but she didn’t. She didn’t mention having kids at all. She smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and flicked her notepad over. ‘So I was telling Mr Wilkins that there’s been a new development. We have, as of yesterday morning, charged Craig with two more murders.’
My mouth dropped and my hand immediately went to it as though to catch whatever was going to fall out. ‘Oh my god. Are you serious?’
She reached across to an iPad on her armrest, flicked it on and swiped. Then she turned it around to face me. Pictures of two men – mugshots – one gaunt and unshaven, the other black with gold stud earrings and pockmarks on his forehead. I recognised them – Red Gloves and Balaclava Boy, aka The Blue Van Men, who’d tried to kidnap and rape Heather Wherryman.
‘Who are they?’ I asked, Confusion Face plastered on like mud pack.
‘Kevin Fraser and Martin Horton-Wicks. Burglars, petty criminals and, we believe, multiple rapists. On April tenth they were—’
‘Oh god I remember,’ I butted in. ‘I was working at the Gazette at the time. Their van went over the quarry.’
‘Yes that’s right.’
‘And you think Craig did it?’
‘We’re fairly sure it’s linked to this case, yes. We need to know from you where Craig was that night.’
‘April tenth,’ I said, searching in my mind. ‘He was probably at home.’
‘Probably?’
‘April tenth, April tenth,’ I said again. ‘Can I check my phone? It’ll be in there, whatever we were doing.’
‘Sure.’
I got my phone out of my dressing gown pocket and hit Calendar. Pidge’s Birthday Sleepover, I’d written. ‘I was at my friend’s house. Pidge – Alice Peale. It was her birthday sleepover.’
‘You were having a sleepover?’ she smiled.
‘Yes. Well, Netflix and Ben and Jerry’s. Makeovers, girly stuff, you know.’
‘And Craig was there too?’
‘He would have been back at the flat I guess.’
‘So he definitely wasn’t with you?’
‘No. Have you asked Lana Rowntree? If he knew I was going to be out for the whole night… ’
Géricault sipped her tea. ‘We’ve already spoken to Miss Rowntree. She says she wasn’t with Craig.’
Oh deary, deary me.
‘Looks like he doesn’t have an alibi then,’ I said, before realising that sounded too chipper. I brought out the big guns – the middle-distance stare and tears, silent and pure. ‘Shit. Five people. He killed five people?’
‘In fact, Miss Rowntree has reneged on both her alibis for him.’
I concentrated on frowning. ‘She wasn’t with him on New Year’s?’
‘Apparently not.’ Her stare was unwavering. ‘Are you in touch with Lana Rowntree at all, Rhiannon?’
‘No, why would I be? Can’t stand the woman.’
‘You haven’t spoken to her at all recently?’
‘Not since I went into the office a few weeks after Craig was arrested. Suffice to say I haven’t been back since.’ She was waiting for more. ‘There was an incident. I hit her. Quite hard. A few times.’
Géricault’s eyes went all catlike and thin. ‘She didn’t report it?’
‘She didn’t press charges, no. Oh, come to think of it I did drop some flowers round a couple of weeks ago as an apology. Sorry, baby brain.’
The lounge door creaked open and Tink scurried in. She jumped up on Géricault’s lap and started licking her cheek manically. She was bloody warning her about me, I know she was. Don’t. Lick. Trust. Lick. Her. Lick. She. Lick. Kills. Lick. People. Géricault didn’t lose her cool once – she just plonked her back down on the carpet.
‘She likes you,’ I giggled.
The detective scribbled a note in her book.
‘I guess you think I’m pretty stupid, huh?’ I said, wiping my cheek. ‘Missing all this. Not seeing what he was like.’
She flicked her head up. ‘Let’s keep an open mind for now. Tell me about Julia Kidner.’
Cue White Guy blinking gif. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘The woman found in the quarry. You were at the same school together.’
Busted.
‘She went to the same school as me but I wouldn’t say I knew her, no. We weren’t friends.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us this information earlier? When her body had been identified? When you knew Craig had been linked to her death?’
‘I didn’t think it was important. She was only at my school for a year. It was a big school. Our paths barely crossed. What are you getting at?’
‘Rather a coincidence that your boyfriend is accused of murdering one of your school friends, isn’t it?’
‘No. She wasn’t my friend’.
‘Craig’s DNA all over the scene, all over her body. And yet Craig, we know for a fact, was nowhere near that quarry on the night she died.’
‘And?’
‘He was at a football match in London.’
‘So?’
‘It points to him having an accomplice. Or maybe, he didn’t kill Julia Kidner at all – someone else is making it look like he did.’
I was aware of the muscles around my mouth. ‘Framing him, you mean?’
‘We’re looking at all possibilities.’
Hmm. Did she smell my porky pies? Was she waiting for a confession?
‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ I stared down at her hand of missing fingers. She saw me looking. ‘How did you lose them?’
She didn’t wait a second. ‘Where were you on the night Julia was murdered, Rhiannon?’
I sat back, doing my best impression of shocked and appalled. ‘Am I under suspicion now too? Do I need a lawyer?’
‘No, we just need to get everything straight. Where everyone was. Where everyone says they were. You didn’t go to Wembley with Craig?’
‘I hate football. I was at home for most of the evening.’
‘You know that for sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Most of the evening?’
I sighed. ‘I took the bins out, walked Tink and went down to see my neighbour, Mrs Whittaker. She lives in one of the flats downstairs. At least she used to, she’s moved now. I used to go round and watch Midsomer Murders with her sometimes, to keep her company. She can vouch for that.’
‘We’ve already spoken to all your neighbours,’ she said, all soft-voiced like she was ordering cocktails. She scrolled back through her notes. ‘Mrs Whittaker didn’t mention you popping over that night.’
‘She has Alzheimer’s. She forgets things easily.’
Géricault looked at me for the longest time. I could not read her at all. She had no smell about her, no emotional giveaways. She was like a book with a blank cover and no writing in. The
human equivalent of a closed door. I’ve never met anyone so emotionally closed off. Apart from myself, I suppose.
‘Where does Lana say she was that night then? Have you asked her?’
‘She was at her flat. Alone,’ said Géricault with a sniff.
‘There you are then.’
‘Yes. There I am then.’
I wondered if she had something else on me or if she was boxing clever. The only thing linking me to Julia that night is Henry Cripps’ car, which I’d used to transport her body in. But how would Géricault know that? She wouldn’t. She doesn’t know anything for sure but that’s what they teach you in the police isn’t it – Assume Nothing, Believe Nobody, Challenge Everything.
Don’t say another word.
So I didn’t. For several minutes. She scribbled in the pad. I got up and stared out of the bay window.
Finally, the detective started packing away her iPad and notebook and stood up. ‘I think that’s all for today.’ My heart was thumping and my body washed over with relief. ‘Thanks for your time.’ We shook hands again. ‘Will you thank your father-in-law for the tea?’
‘He’s not my father-in-law. Craig and I aren’t married.’
‘Oh sorry, of course you’re not,’ she said, scratching her temple with one of the few fingers she had on her left hand. ‘It’s good of them to put you up though, isn’t it? Let you into their lives like they have.’
‘I don’t have anyone else,’ I said, guiding her out to the front door and turning the latch. ‘They’re good people. And I am carrying their grandchild.’
‘Yes,’ she said, stepping outside, before turning to me on the doorstep. ‘Oh, we tried to get you on your mobile. The one starting oh-seven-one-eight.’
‘Shit, sorry, yeah I had to get a new one.’
‘Could we have it for our records?’
‘Sure.’ She gave me her number and I sent her a blank text to test it.
‘Great, thanks for your help. I’ll be in touch. Bye now.’
I closed the door behind her and put my forehead on the hallway wall to cool it down. I was shaking. ‘What the hell was that?’
She’s onto you.