In Bloom

by C. J. Skuse

  She should know. I want her to know.

  Don’t you dare…

  ‘Listen I have to go,’ I said. ‘I’ll get Craig to give Cody a call soon though yeah? Sounds like a great opportunity for him.’

  ‘Yeah, is everything okay between you two?’

  ‘Yep, everything’s cool. I’ve got to go, I’ve got a pot boiling over, sorry. Speak soon.’

  ‘Bye Rhi—’

  I hung up. Shit, that was shabby. I hadn’t prepared for that. That’s one of my rules – Be prepared – but stupid baby brain had made me forget all about that possibility. Seren never asks about Craig and I didn’t dream she’d ask us over there for Thanksgiving. What’s that about? And why now?

  Why do you always have to suspect the worst? Why can’t it just be a nice invitation to see your sister on Thanksgiving and mend a few tears?

  ‘Yeah, all right, Look Who’s Talking, I was actually being rhetorical.’

  Perhaps she’s feeling lonely because she’s leaving for the other side of the country where she’s spent all her adult life? Perhaps she just wants to see her sister?

  ‘Perhaps you should carry on foetusing and button your gills, hmmm?’

  I turned off my phone and put it back on my nightstand. She’d made her feelings about me quite clear when we were younger. I was a psychopath. A cancer. You can’t erase that with turkey and cranberry sauce. Not that I’d eat it anyway.

  ‘All the worry you caused them, Rhiannon. You’re a vicious little bitch. I wish you were dead, not Mum.’

  Yeah I went off the rails for a while but can you blame me? Most teenagers go off the rails at some point and few of them are beaten about the head with a lump hammer.

  Jesus, World War One was started by a teenager. I’m a frickin’ delight compared to that guy.

  My own mother could barely look at me in the weeks leading up to her death. Why did you do that to your sister? What’s the matter with you? Stop this, Rhiannon. Stop reading funeral catalogues in front of me, can’t you see how insensitive you’re being? You don’t even cry anymore.

  It’s one messed up world that lets someone like me even think about having a baby.

  *

  Marnie couldn’t meet me today – she and Tim are ‘taking Raph out for a day in the countryside, feeding the ducks, pub lunch, etc’. The kid is two months old but yeah, feed the ducks, I’m sure he’ll get a lot out of it. I haven’t seen her now for a week. He’s told her to stay away from me, that’s what it is. She’s disappeared from WhatsApp too, I’ve noticed.

  Or have I been blocked? Ooh, I have tasted my own medicine and it tastes BITTER!

  Lord Byron was the only person on the planet who seemed to care whether I was dead or alive today. I was in the kitchen at the Well House eating the greasiest chips in the world and trying to ignore the stink from Ground Zero that had permeated its way up through the whole house, despite drilling the Perspex tile back in place over the hole.

  Byron’s ding! came through on my phone.

  LordByron61: I can’t wait to see you tonight my angel. Could you give me your postcode now for my satnav?

  Sweetpea: Don’t drive. There’s a train from Weymouth at 6pm.

  LordByron61: Why my darling?

  Sweetpea: Because I said so. Do as I ask you please or I won’t play.

  LordByron61: Will you pull down my nappy and smack my bum?

  Sweetpea: Yes I will do that the moment you arrive. I’ll make it all red.

  LordByron61: My winky is getting all stiff thinking about that.

  Sweetpea: Oh dear. I didn’t tell Winky to do that, did I? I will have to smack you twice as hard now.

  LordByron61: Oh yes, Sweetpea, yes! I can’t wait to see you.

  I had it all planned out. No one would know where he was going. No CCTV of him getting on or off a train. A little extra in his drink on arrival. And bam, mine all mine.

  I didn’t hear the cauliflower’s voice until I was digging out my Sabatiers in the raised bed next to AJ’s.

  No, stop this right now. This is wrong. I won’t let you bring that man here.

  ‘It’s sex. Nothing more.’

  You’re going to kill him. That’s why you’re digging up the knives. No, Mummy, you can’t you can’t you can’t.

  ‘He’s not some innocent, he is a pervert. A sixty-one-year-old man who dresses up as a baby. He likes to be fondled and played with. He likes to breastfeed. He wears adult nappies and drinks from a bespoke sippy cup with his name on it. Don’t you find that all a tad disgusting?’

  He’s not hurting anyone. Plenty of people have weird kicks. You’ve got the weirdest one of all, remember?

  ‘I’m going to have my fun.’ I ran the dirty blades under the kitchen tap to wash them clean. I lay them out on a dry tea towel on the counter and smoothed away the droplets the steel. ‘If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends,’ I sang happily, holding the largest knife against my cheek like a cool caress.

  You’re not doing this.

  ‘You can’t stop me.’ I rooted in the drawers for a coil of rope I’d spotted.

  You want me to bleed out of you? Do you want to lose me?

  She started kicking me, proper big frogs this time. I sat down on the kitchen stool. ‘You’re bigger now, it’s safer. Your heart is stronger every night. And this isn’t going to be in public – he will come here. Safe, silent. I can take all night with him if I want to and no one is going to stop me.’

  You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to risk my life again.

  I banged in the drawer. ‘You SAID I could do it if it wasn’t in public.’

  You’re scared.

  ‘You wouldn’t let me kill the guy in York because you were scared someone would see. You won’t let me go and kill Sandra Huggins, even though I know all her movements now and I’ve thought of a way to get her back here.’

  You’re really scared.

  ‘And even though I’ve gone to great lengths to procure this guy and arrange for him to not tell anyone where he’s going, STILL you won’t let me.’

  You’re scared about giving me to Claudia. You’re scared about how much you’re going to love me.

  ‘NO I AM NOT, I’M NOT SCARED OF ANYTHING!’

  You are. You don’t want anyone to have me. You’d rather kill me than let me out into this dark dark world.

  And then I blew.

  Anything not nailed down went flying. Plates, glasses, pots, jars, bags, fruit bowl, fruit, sieves, spoons, spatulas, Sylvanians, and the chips I’d just bought. I sat back down on the stool and breathed deeply in and out, watching the grease stains on the cupboard doors shimmer in the light, the broken china still tinkling down the sink.

  But I wasn’t done.

  I picked up the knives. I went in the lounge and stabbed everything soft in my vision – carpets, curtains, the backs of the chairs. In in in in in in in in in in in in in in in, over and over and over and over and over until I sat down in the middle of the carpet, breathless, surrounded by feathers and white stuffing like a kid in the snow.

  The bump had tightened all over.

  Feel better now?

  ‘FUCK OFF.’

  My phone ding!ed again.

  LordByron61: Let me know your address my angel. I’m going to finish my conference early, pack my toys and come on over. I can’t wait to see you, you’re all I can think about!

  I’m going to tie my cord around my neck if you don’t put him off. This is your final warning.

  Sweetpea: Sorry guy. Voices in my head say I have to leave you alone. Enjoy your weird life masturbating into adult nappies. Oh and if you want a last piece of advice, buy the chunkiest rope you can find and string yourself up on one of your rich bitch eaves you pathetic piece of human shit.

  BLOCKED.

  I threw my phone at the sofa.

  Good. See, you’re a hero now, Mummy. You just saved a man’s life.

  ‘LEAVE ME ALONE.’

  You don’t mean
that.

  ‘I do mean that. Life was better before you. Before you stopped me doing EVERYTHING I like. You’re changing my body in ways I never thought imaginable – you’ve ruined my tits, turned my vagina blue, my hair greasy, split my arsehole. I’ve pissed and vomited out half my body weight, every day I grow out of some other clothes that normally fit like a glove and I have feet only fit for Crocs. I hate AJ for putting you in there. I hate him.’

  You don’t hate my daddy.

  ‘I do, I hate him. I’m glad I tore his head off his shoulders. You understand me now you little shit? I hate that you’re inside me and I can’t even cut you out!’

  It was only the sight of myself holding the knife reflected in the TV screen that stopped me. I had it pointed directly over my stomach. I threw it away from me and it disappeared into the drifts of upholstery stuffing. I tried to stand up, getting a head rush and having to sit back down again.

  ‘I can’t take much fucking more of this.’

  All right all right, keep your mucus plug in.

  ‘STOP. TALKING. TO. ME!’

  It was then I noticed the blood. I’d cut myself. I didn’t know where the blood was coming from but it was all over my hands. I went out to the hallway and looked in the mirror.

  The bump. It was coming from the bump.

  I’d nicked it, only slightly at the top, but the knife was so sharp and so long and it had penetrated both my T-shirt and my skin. I watched as a single trickle snaked its way down over the mound in a perfect red arc.

  ‘You don’t work well with others. You need to have… no one.’

  ‘But I won’t be on my own. Will I? I’ll have the baby.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you saying? Is my baby safe? What happens to it? You said I was going to be on my own. Please, I need to know.’

  ‘… I saw a baby… covered in blood.’

  ‘Please say this was all she saw in that crystal ball before I stove her head in with it. Please tell me this is it. This is as far as it goes.’

  I don’t know how long I’d been standing there in the hallway mirror, dabbing my stomach nick with tissues, when there came a loud knock at the front door behind me. I froze, sinking down to the carpet, heart thumping.

  ‘Not the police, not the police, not the police… ’

  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. ‘Hello?’ A man’s voice.

  I waited. Two more knocks. A clearing of a throat. The throat clearer eventually moved around to the back garden. I heard footsteps on the path. The creak of the gate.

  Did I lock the back door? Did I cover up the hole when I got the knives out? I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t breathe.

  Another throat clear and a tap at the back window. And then my name. And then I stopped breathing altogether.

  ‘Rhiannon? Are you there?’

  Friday, 2nd November – 25 weeks, 5 days

  1.Chocolate and cake makers at this time of year – why can’t I buy anything that doesn’t have green slime oozing out of it or a fucking ghost motif on top?

  2.People who tell me I’m blooming when I feel like I’ve been dragged through a sewer pipe with my mouth open.

  3.That modelling family The Hadids.

  Managed to survive Halloween with just a handful of Trick or Treaters. Elaine had thoughtfully bought a bucket of lollies for me to hand out even though she didn’t ‘agree with it as a festival.’ A Dracula kid with psoriasis grazed my wrist as I gave him the bucket. Haven’t felt clean since.

  One of the mummy bloggers this morning – ‘Baby Bliss’ – was eulogizing about her experience of Lotus birth and what an enriching experience it was. She buried her placenta underneath a tree in the garden *voms*. Her best friend – called Calendula, yeah – threw a party where she served her placenta up to guests in a frigging stroganoff. Another woman – can’t remember her name but there was a picture of her in a hairy cardigan and she clearly doesn’t use shampoo – still breastfeeds her ten-year-old.

  I know I’m one to talk but do some women really lose their shit when they become mothers or what? I can’t have that much more shit to lose.

  I’m getting daily texts from Claudia – how am I? Do I need her to come down and help with anything yet? Am I eating enough blueberries?

  I’m going to look like Violet Beauregard if I eat any more blueberries.

  Craig appeared at Bristol Crown Court today – pleading Not Guilty to five counts of murder. I followed the updates on the Evening Post website. Photographers swarmed the Reliance van when it swung through the black gates, climbing over each other to get the blurry money shot of Craig through the tiny window. It came on the main news at lunch too.

  I took off his ring today – my eighteen-carat white-gold solitaire with ‘Forever’ engraved inside. My fingers have swelled and it was hurting. Saw The Element outside the arcades still mumbling on about Frank Sinatra and swigging his Diamond White. We ate our lunch together. His Eau de Urine cologne doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. I gave the ring to him – I said he could pawn it.

  We’d only just scrunched up our Greggs bags when Marnie walked past on the seafront with her pram. She was wearing a long black trench coat and aviator sunglasses and had a takeaway Costa in the cup holder. I crossed the road and stood right in front of her, blocking her path.

  ‘Hello stranger,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, hi.’ Her smile disappeared after one second.

  ‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ I said, walking beside her. She didn’t slow down so I was constantly running to catch up.

  ‘No, we’ve been so busy, honestly. October is crazy for some reason.’

  ‘It’s November now.’

  She stopped and looked at me, then carried on walking.

  ‘The baby’s taking up all of my time. I can’t even think straight at the moment, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. How are you getting on? Have you started your antenatal classes?’

  ‘No. So what’s the real reason you haven’t been in touch? Never mind the bullshit. Oh lemme guess—’

  ‘If you call Tim a Nazi again I swear I will carry on walking and I won’t say another word to you, EVER again.’

  We were both stopped now, face to face. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything at all. Your words there, Marn.’

  ‘Stop it.’ She pushed her sunglasses up to rest them on her hair. Dark circles. ‘Stop needling me.’

  ‘Needling you? All I said was hello and I haven’t seen you in a while. You’re the one with a pine cone up your arse.’

  ‘I’m tired. And that’s not bullshit. Raphy had a bad night and I don’t know my own mind this morning. I needed some air. A new perspective rather than my bedroom wall or the lounge or the kitchen.’

  We both looked up at that moment to see the funicular railway coming to a halt at the bottom of the hill. ‘Well if it’s a different perspective you’re after, you can’t get more different than that. Fancy a ride?’

  She puffed. ‘No. I don’t do heights.’

  ‘Raph will be scared of heights if you are. Saw my mum jump onto a chair from a spider when I was four. I’ve hated them ever since.’

  She rubbed her forehead. ‘I don’t want to pass it onto him.’

  ‘Well come on then. Rouse, rouse.’

  *

  We paid our money and Marnie almost turned back when we realised the pram wouldn’t go through the turnstile. Fortunately, the man in the ticket office said we could leave the pram with him until we came back down.

  ‘Sorted,’ I said.

  ‘Is it safe in the rain?’ she asked, as I helped her with the papoose.

  ‘Oh quite safe,’ said the man. ‘The Victorians went up in all weathers.’

  She smiled weakly as we took our seats on opposing benches inside our green car. The wood was scrawled all over with graffiti – nothing particularly original, the usual hearts and cocks and I Love Minge daubings. Underneath my seat there was a flattened Capri Sun and a brown apple core that was stinking out the whol
e compartment despite the open window.

  For the longest time, Marnie refused to look outside. She sat biting her lip, knee jiggling, stroking Raph’s head, silent.

  The bell rang and she noticeably tensed, squeezing the baby tighter. He started wailing and she pushed her smallest knuckle into his gob. The cart cranked and moved, lifting us gently up the incline.

  ‘Oh god oh god oh god.’

  ‘So what’s going on then? I asked, feet up on her seat. She shook her head, eyes closed, both hands clutching the walls of the car. ‘You’re not answering texts, you’re ignoring my calls—’

  ‘I’m not ignoring you.’

  The smell of damp rock and rain rushed through the window and I inhaled it deeply. ‘Then why aren’t you answering me?’

  She stood up, then sat straight back down again when the car juddered. ‘Why did I let you talk me into this? I shouldn’t be here. They have to stop it.’

  ‘Are you not coming to Cardiff on Saturday then?’

  ‘What?’ She opened her eyes.

  ‘The coach trip with WOMBAT. Remember? Shopping and a show? Overnight stay?’

  ‘Oh, no no no, no I can’t.’ The car jolted and she shrieked, still holding the sides. ‘Is it nearly over?’

  ‘No, it’s only just begun.’

  ‘I don’t like this. I need to get out.’

  ‘Why didn’t you let me know about Cardiff? Why leave me hanging?’

  ‘Don’t talk about hanging, please,’ she breathed. ‘I told you, I’ve been busy, I haven’t had time. And my phone’s been playing up—’

  ‘Oh and a bit more bullshit left in the tank, is there? And there’s me thinking we were all out.’

  She looked directly at me, heaving for breath. A sheen of sweat had popped out over her forehead. Raph was still wailing and she wedged her knuckle in again. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you the truth. When I’m out with you, I’m too happy. And Happy is not good for me.’