In Bloom

by C. J. Skuse

  Something shiny happened in my chest. The funicular railway clanked to a halt behind us. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Of course.’ She checked her watch when she said it, which irked me.

  ‘Why don’t we take a trip on that?’ I suggested. ‘See the bay from the top of the cliffs?’

  She turned and looked at it and laughed. ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘Go on. It’s been going since Victorian times. It’s never broken down.’

  ‘No, I can’t, Rhiannon. I can barely look at the thing. I fell off a flying fox when I was nine. Been scared stiff of heights ever since.’

  ‘That means Raph’s going to have a morbid fear of heights too then. He’ll be the only one of his mates who’ll wimp out at Alton Towers. He’ll never get in a plane, go travelling—’

  ‘That won’t happen, I won’t let it.’

  ‘You won’t be able to do anything about it. He’ll see you’re afraid of heights and he’ll be afraid of them too. You’ll pass it on.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You will. Don’t think, do it. Don’t let it control you – you control it. Kill the fear stone dead.’

  ‘What are you afraid of, Rhiannon?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I lied.

  She smiled. ‘I’d love not to be afraid of anything. I’m such a wuss.’

  ‘Then don’t be.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, looking at the railway again as it began its slow ascent. She turned back and closed her eyes. ‘Not today though, okay?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Hey, I have a new question for you,’ she said, looking past me along the beach. ‘Why is that woman watching us?’

  There, on a bench overlooking the bay, about 200 yards away from us, sat DI Géricault, face turned in our direction. Not reading, not waving, just looking my way. And something heavy replaced the shiny in my chest, almost as though it had never been there.

  Thursday, 11th October – 22 weeks, 4 days

  Jim drove us up to Bristol today to visit Craig. We had to be there half an hour before the visit time, and we were shown to a separate building to check our credentials and have our bags searched. Some paunchy little barnacle in a uniform gave me evils as he pawed through my rucksack, which I had to leave in a locker. And I had to have my photo and fingerprints taken and my passport checked. Literally. I mean, the fuck?!

  Anyway, rigmarole over we made our way over to the main prison. Got another pat down and a metal detector thing swiped over me and then we had to go through an airport security doorway and all our accessories – phones, wallets, bags, coats – were sent through a conveyor belt camera thing. The doors were all biometric and solid metal. No escaping that bad boy.

  And there was nothing natural around at all. No flowers, nothing green. The corridors smelled like sweat and cigarettes. And tar – hot tar.

  Claustrophobia was on me like a cape as we sat at a table in the boiled cabbage-stinking main hall, waiting for the prisoners. In one corner of the room by the tuck shop was a kids’ play area with tiny plastic chairs, buckets of Lego and a large square play rug bearing the motif of a busy town. Six kids headed straight for it and started tipping out blocks and toy cars.

  Craig looked awful. He’d lost about two stone, his skin was the grey colour of the walls and he was wearing a cheap standard-issue grey tracksuit with no strings, and Velcro trainers, all of which looked too big for him.

  It was hella awkward. We didn’t hug and he wouldn’t even look at me for the first five minutes. He could have been a stranger, not the guy I’d lived with for the past four years. He occasionally glanced down at my stomach when Jim was doing the talking, but I might as well have not been there. Jim tried to get a conversation going about Elaine’s church rota, then the new town bypass. The Well House. What a whizz I was at computers.

  He still didn’t look at me.

  ‘I spoke to your brief,’ Jim said. ‘It’s looking like June for the trial.’

  Craig shook his head, mouth all thin. ‘I’m not staying in here ‘til then. I’ll top myself.’

  ‘Don’t you dare say that, Son,’ said Jim. ‘You’ve got responsibilities now.’ Jim pointed at my stomach. ‘Don’t you forget that or her for a second.’

  Craig glared at me. ‘They showed me photos in the last interview. Photos of what I’d “done”. That Julia woman… her fingers were cut off. Hair missing. Her neck was cut to the bone.’

  I feigned morning sickness and said I needed to get up and move around a bit. Jim pulled my chair out for me and I went to the tuck shop. As I waited in the queue, I turned to look back at our table. Craig was looking at me for the first time over his dad’s shoulder. His eyes were all watery.

  He was pleading with his dad, voice lowered, leaning in. Jim kept shaking his head and looking away and doing these deep sighs.

  When I got back to the table, an officer approached and Jim stood up. ‘I’m going to the loo, love. I’ll take my time. He wants to talk to you privately.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, putting his uneaten KitKat and tea down between us.

  The officer led Jim back through the door we’d come through. Craig didn’t say anything for the longest time. His head was tilted and he was fiddling with the hem of his hoody against the table.

  ‘Did your dad show you the baby scan? It’s as big as a pear now. I don’t know what type of pear. One of those little yellow ones I suppose.’

  ‘Police have charged me with two more,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Them blokes in the quarry. Matched my boot print on a patch of mud. And they found blood on my black hoody.’ His leg went into jiggle overdrive under the table. He was like an engine running. Breathing heavy. Eyes down.

  ‘I know,’ I said again.

  And then he looked up at me. ‘They’ve got mobile phone records that say my tablet was at the scene, even though I know I wasn’t. I was home that night. You said you were at your mate’s for a sleepover.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘Keep your voice down, darling… ’

  ‘Don’t “darling” me. My footprints. My DNA. That… thing hidden in my van. There are only three people on this earth who could have done this: you, me or Lana.’

  I afforded him a double eyebrow raise. I thought he deserved it.

  ‘And Lana was with me the night that van went into the quarry. Know how I know? Because I was fucking her in our bed. So that leaves you.’

  I blinked. I breathed. I blinked again. And I shrugged.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ he shouted, fast blinking. He looked possessed.

  Two officers made for our table in a pincer movement. Craig held up his hands in a mock surrender and after a warning, they moved away.

  ‘Say something, Rhiannon.’ He said it through gritted teeth. His eye-water juddered. He looked like he was ready to pounce. Like every sinew in his body wanted to strangle me. ‘Four years I’ve lived with you. We were going to get married. We had a future.’

  The play area was getting rowdy – two little boys were arguing over a box of bricks. One had a Mohican and brand new Nikes, the other was wearing a Buzz Lightyear onesie and baby Dr Martens. They started screaming at each other and Buzz wrenched the bucket from The Last of the Mohicans’ hands and he fell to his arse with an earth-shattering shriek. Adults appeared and pulled them apart, then they started crying and kicking out and the adults were swearing and Buzz’s mum smacked his arse for embarrassing her.

  ‘Say. Something. To. Me. Rhiannon.’

  ‘You been raped yet?’

  He looked winded.

  ‘I guess being the alleged killer of sex offenders makes you a bit of a hero in this place, doesn’t it? Admit it – it’s been easier since they started calling you a vigilante rather than a perv.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘Lana’s reneged on her alibis, so that’s a problem, isn’t it? But let’s say for argument’s sake she’s fr
amed you. Be easier, wouldn’t it? Lana planted that guy’s penis in your van. And she killed that man in the park and put your semen on his coat. And Julia Kidner – she raped her post mortem with a dildo covered in your semen. And why? Because you dumped her. That’s all. Crime of passion. She already has more cuckoo than Switzerland so it’s an easy assumption to make, isn’t it?’

  He wouldn’t take his big eyes off me. His mouth opened to speak and though I waited, no sound emerged.

  ‘In fact, I’m pretty sure that if I go over to her flat right now, I’ll find jam jars of your semen in one of her cupboards. Let’s say a kitchen cupboard, under the sink. She borrowed your hoody. And wore your boots. And framed you for all of it. Because she’s obsessed with you, see?’

  He shook his head, eyes on mine.

  ‘And you almost destroyed her when you dumped her for me and the baby. She’s had multiple bad relationships and she thought you were The One. Everyone at work used to say she was a car crash. She’s tried to take her own life a few times. She has all those old scars on her arms. I mean if anyone was going to do something like this, it would be Lana, wouldn’t it?’

  A single tear trickled down his left cheek. ‘Why?’

  ‘Anger, I suppose. It’s so destructive. You can only control an urge for so long. And then one day, something’ll happen – a bereavement, a redundancy, finding out your beloved is eating some other girl like ass-pie – and the urge comes rushing back. Like fucking Backstreet.’

  ‘Jesus…’ He seemed to be hyperventilating.

  ‘So, here it is: this was all Lana; that broken woman with the scars up her arms and strange little jars in her flat. She flipped. Once she’s in the frame, all you have to do is bide your time. Let your defence team switch their investigation from “I didn’t do it, Sarge, honest!” to “I didn’t do it but I know the woman who did.” And hey presto. Some compelling new evidence comes to light and you’re off the hook. Free to look through windows without bars again. Free to dance on grass barefoot. Free to watch your child grow up.’

  ‘I can’t do that to her.’

  ‘Yes you can. And you will.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh my god. Why are you doing all this? I slept with her, that’s all. Most women would cut up my clothes or stab me and get over it.’

  ‘Well in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not most women.’

  ‘I won’t let you do this. You’re a psycho. A fucking—bunny-boiler.’

  I gasped. ‘How dare you. I would never boil a bunny. But if that’s the way you want to play it then fine. Your. Loss.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It means, Craig – I’m living with your parents.’

  He swallowed.

  ‘And I’m carrying your baby.’

  A tear rolled down his other cheek and his head dipped completely. The defiant stare had vanished, replaced with a grey wash of nothingness. He sat back in his chair, unable to catch his breath. The last time I’d seen his face that shade of grey Hodor had snuffed it on Game of Thrones.

  I looked down at my stomach for extra effect. ‘I’m capable of everything, Craig. You should have realised that by now.’

  Another tear fell. He looked back up at me. ‘You must want me dead.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t. Sometimes it’s more fun to watch them squirm.’

  Jim was coming back over.

  ‘Lana—’ Craig mewed.

  ‘Yes?’ I cupped my ear for extra effect.

  ‘—killed them.’

  Jim reached the table and frowned when he saw Craig’s face. Craig was looking at him, as though pleading with his dad to read his mind.

  ‘He got a bit upset, about the baby,’ I told him. ‘But I told him everything was fine on the last scan. Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes.’

  Two tears now, four tears, quick succession.

  ‘He’ll be out in no time,’ I said. ‘Won’t he, Jim?’

  Jim sighed. ‘The police aren’t looking for anyone else, Son.’

  ‘They will,’ I said. ‘We have to hope.’ I looked at Craig who looked to be on the verge of another bitch fit. I stroked my belly. ‘You need to get your defence team onto it, Craig. For your child’s sake, if not yours.’ I leant across the table and kissed his cheek. ‘Lana’s your Obi Wan.’

  It seemed to take a while for him to get his shit together but eventually, and miraculously, he did. And he said the words ‘Lana did it.’

  Excellent. Cue *Mr Burns hands*.

  Tuesday, 16th October – 23 weeks, 2 days

  1.Woman who barged past me in Marks & Spencer in a too-tight blouse.

  2.People who pick up their dog’s shit in a bag – then leave the bag.

  3.My own appetite – I’m so starving all the time, Elaine has begun leaving ready-chopped fruit out overnight, wrapped in cling film, so I can attack them first thing in the morning like some kind of ravenous Santa.

  I had another nightmare – this one set exclusively in the bath tub at Mrs Whittaker’s flat. I woke up, sweat running off me in rivers. This time, it wasn’t AJ I was cutting up – it was the baby. I was chopping up the baby.

  It was on my mind all morning. Jim got me to help him ‘bed down the garden for winter’ and though it took my mind off it for snatches of a while, it was my background music throughout. We cleared the gutters – Jim did all the ladder work while I held the bucket – scrubbed out the water, packed away the garden furniture, raked the leaves, and Jim had me going around collecting the seed heads of the poppies, agapanthus and teasels – he said we can sow them again next year or spray them gold for Christmas decorations.

  You’ve no idea how much I wanted to look forward to that. But I couldn’t. All I could think was that by Christmas, I’d be two months away from being a mother. And life would never be the same again.

  At lunchtime, a new distraction reared its head – Freddie-by-the-way was on the doorstep and he looked incredibly pissed off with me. I could tell because he said ‘Rhiannon – I’m so pissed off with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Three appointments you’ve made with me,’ he said, face darkening, ‘you haven’t showed at any of them. I waited for two hours at The Porthole Café yesterday and yet again, no show. Now I’m a big boy, Rhiannon. Tell me to go away if you want, but don’t keep making empty promises.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Are you just flaky or what? I don’t get it.’

  ‘I’m playing with you. I like to play, it’s fun. Don’t you like to play?’

  ‘What, make appointments and not turn up? How is that fun?’

  ‘It’s fun for me.’

  He shook his head, raking his hand through his hair, and clapped his hands by his sides. I sensed this denoted frustration and/or Look at my sleek hair and super-toned thighs. I appreciated both.

  ‘Well I’m done, officially,’ he said. ‘I won’t be doorstepping you again, don’t worry. I don’t want your story that badly. You win. I’m out.’ He started back along the path towards the gate.

  ‘Lana Rowntree,’ I said. He turned back. ‘There’s your story.’

  ‘Who’s Lana Rowntree?’

  ‘You want to get the #CraigWilkinsIsOverParty trending on Twitter – Lana’s your gal. Craig’s been seeing her for the past year. Police say he couldn’t have done at least one of the murders. She has no alibi.’

  His eyes searched around for a second. ‘Are you dicking with me again?’

  I shook my head. ‘I can give you her address. You show up there with a camera and ask her yourself. Craig’s defence team are switching their case to focus on her now – so there’s your exclusive. If he’s innocent, Lana’s the next suspect. The least you’ll get is a wasted journey if she’s not in.’

  ‘And if she is in?’

  ‘You’ll come face to face with a suspected murderer.’

  Friday, 19th October – 23 weeks, 5 days

  We’ve been gett
ing funny phone calls over the past couple of weeks – three so far. Each time they hang up. Withheld number. The latest was this morning.

  ‘It’s probably a journalist,’ Jim says. ‘Don’t you answer it, Rhiannon. You leave them to me.’

  Lana called the house today, too, out of the blue. She didn’t hang up – she actually asked me if I’d go down and see her. She sounded, as far as I could make out, quite distressed. I wondered if Freddie had paid her a visit. I hadn’t seen him since his proclamation of my dickery in the front garden.

  To be fair, I was a dick.

  I took her some homemade cakes and fresh flowers – sweet peas, of course. She was already crying when she opened the door and looked even more horrendous than she did last time. Baggy pyjama bottoms half a foot up from her ankles, greasy hair, socks like spaniels’ ears – she was the full Get the Look centre spread for manic depression. It was a hot day and I didn’t have a coat on and she was getting the bump in all its glory. The purple storm clouds on her face had vanished completely – no evidence of me on her at all.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t stop crying.’ I rubbed her back.

  ‘You’re crushing the cakes. Come on, it’s all right. Tell me all about it.’

  It was about Freddie. He’d gone straight there on Tuesday when I’d given him the nod. He’d stayed all afternoon and had pitched up again the following morning. Lana had given him way more than she should have, namely about the affair. Things they’d done. Things they’d said. How Craig dumped her when he found out about the baby.

  ‘What did you tell him about all that for?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it. He was so charming and friendly but now he won’t leave me alone.’

  I checked through her lounge window. ‘Well he’s not here today.’

  ‘The story goes to print today. He says the nationals will be down here tomorrow. What the hell am I going to do?’ Along came the tears.

  I took the cling film off my cakes and offered her the plate. She took one and started eating. Something in her had mewed and shrivelled, just as something in me had woken and begun to roar.