Sweetpea

by C. J. Skuse

  Thursday, 11 January

  1.Mrs Whittaker – neighbour, elderly, kleptomaniac

  2.‘Dillon’ on the checkout in Lidl – he overcharged me for Craig’s paper

  3.The suited man in the blue Qashqai who roars out of Sowerberry Road every morning – grey suit, aviator shades, Donald Trump tan

  4.Derek Scudd

  5.Wesley Parsons

  The camellias are flowing in the front garden at Mum and Dad’s house. They look gorgeous. My mum planted them. I saw them when I took some more stuff round before work. Julia did some more begging. She’d made another attempt to smash the window.

  ‘DON’T YOU DARE SMASH A WINDOW!’ I yelled at her, yanking her head back hard until she crumpled to the carpet. ‘You carry on like that I’ll cut your other thumb off.’

  I reminded her about ‘my friend who is watching her kids’. She shut up after that. I wanted to kill her today – it’s getting terribly tedious driving over there and feeding her and having to repeat the same threats over and over. It’s like looking after a very annoying horse. And I still can’t get the stains out of the carpet.

  But it’s not the right time. Once it’s done, it’s done and I want to make sure it’s done right.

  The police have released more information about Daniel Wells, the electrician whose life (and schlong) was brutally cut short by yours truly – he was indeed found with no attachment. The office was full of jokes about Dickless Dan all day. They’ve somehow ruled out terrorism. Apparently, he was involved in a bar fight on New Year’s Eve, so they’re following up that blind alley. That would explain the cut on his eyebrow, now I think of it.

  Another salad for lunch. God damn you, Cucumber.

  AJ has started flirting with Lana. He’s all ‘Hey, L, how you going?’ when he first gets in, and offers to make her peanut butter and banana on toast like he has in the morning. I’ve noticed, too, that he brings her chai latte before he brings over my cappuccino, and he chats to her longer. They both like swimming, both their dads ran out on their mums when they were kids and they both had cockatoos. Claudia’s clocked it and I do believe she is trying to keep him busy. She had him on filing duties upstairs for the best part of the afternoon.

  I wonder how Lana screams. I wonder if her death scream will be the same as her sex scream.

  Jeff and I had one of our debates over our 3 p.m. tea break. Today, it involved turning the historic almshouses in the town centre into a bail hostel. I said it was a good idea, owing to the amount of homeless in the town; Jeff said what about history? We didn’t reach an agreement but we clinked cups when we’d finished so I think we’re still friends.

  Tonight, a planned protest in the town centre about Council Tax rises turned into a full-blown riot that spilled over into the retail park at the end of our road. There was looting, home-made missiles and unleaded Molotovs causing spontaneous fires. I’ve just got back. Took some great pictures – one of them, I think, is going to knock their socks off tomorrow and, I don’t mind telling you, I think it has a good chance of being next week’s front page. Maybe I can impress Claudia and Linus with them tomorrow and finally get where I’m meant to be in life – on the front page. A front page with my name on it would make it all worthwhile.

  I didn’t run into any opportunistic rapists down any side streets on the way home. It’s always the same when you’re prepared for it. Like bloody buses.

  Did some writing in bed. It’s not going well. My stomach was rumbling throughout, owing to no tea (Craig had made full-fat lasagne and garlic bread), and once you’ve likened a hot guy’s teeth to ‘a graveyard of white surfboards in his mouth’ you know you’re in the shit. Had another rejection letter today, this time from one of the big guns: The Garside Agency. They said my work ‘lacked emotional depth’. Just like me, I suppose. Thirty-seven agents I’ve sent it too now. They can’t all be wrong. Think it’s time to dismantle The Alibi Clock. Who wants fiction anyway when you’ve got good old fact to have fun with?

  Friday, 12 January

  1.Woman with the two brown spaniels who always attack Tink and are never on leads – today, she was wearing Crocs

  2.Derek Scudd

  3.Wesley Parsons

  4.Jonah Hill

  5.People who cast Jonah Hill in films

  Some moron on Twitter is trying to galvanise the local community into a ‘Bring Your Own Broom’ party to clear up after the riot. Bloody millennials.

  My car wouldn’t start this morning so I had to bus it and run it to work. Two of the usual routes in were cordoned off while the police cleared away burnt-out cars and broken glass from last night. I don’t know why they’re calling it a riot. It had all been done and dusted by 10 o’clock. People are so lazy when it comes to public protest. It’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s throw a few bottles, scrawl on a few bits of old cardboard, swear at some police, then be home in time for Game of Thrones.’ Amateurs.

  The office was bustling when I walked in, sweating like a priest at a pre-school pool party. Printers whirred. Steaming cups of coffee were being handed out. The subeditors were tapping away, ensconced behind their tessellated desks. Claudia was marching around, putting important A4 sheets of paper on in-trays and generally looking harassed. The new boy, AJ, was stapling papers beside her desk, on the floor, like the office puppy (who could also do stapling). Ron was in his office on a headset phone call. Linus Sixgill was at his desk, ending a call. There were three espresso cups around his monitor and on his screen in all his technicolour glory was a picture of Daniel Wells – aka Dan Dan, the Dickless Man.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, making my mealy-mouthed presence known. Neither of them looked up. ‘So I took a great picture last night in the riot.’

  Linus turned round. ‘Did you, Reepicheep? And what were you doing out in a riot, pray tell?’

  He never called me by my actual name – just versions of it. Lovely Rita, Meter Maid was an early favourite. Reepicheep was a regular, as was Rita Ora. Reet Petite, normally on a Friday afternoon. All I could do was stand there and giggle politely like the work-suck I was.

  ‘Ron said at the last Triple M [Monday Morning Meeting] that we should always be prepared for any eventuality. You know, if we see a story unfolding…’

  ‘Yeah, he meant the subs and the editors, darling, not the receptionist.’

  ‘I’m not the receptionist any more, I’m the editorial assistant,’ I mewed, wiping my brow on my jacket cuff. ‘Ron said…’

  ‘That’s Mr Pondicherry to you, Rhiannon,’ said Claudia, barely looking up from her screen.

  ‘Mr Pondicherry,’ I corrected, ‘said that becoming a Junior means researching more of my own stories. So I thought I’d take some initiative. You never know when something will go down, he said – a fight, a car crash, a child being kidnapped.’

  AJ looked up from his pile of stapled pages and smiled at me, surfboard graveyard a gogo.

  ‘That’s not your job though, is it?’ Claudia returned with a vicious eye-bat. ‘Leave it to the professionals, hmm, sweetpea?’

  That ‘hmm’ was supremely irritating. I’d like to rip out every hmmm in her throat. But I just smiled sweetly, like a sweetpea would.

  ‘Mr Pondicherry said that if I showed enough willing, he might put me forward for NCTJ funding. So I can get my diploma.’

  ‘Ahh, that’d be way cool,’ said AJ, mid-clickety clack. I acknowledged his support and turned to Linus, as though the endorsement of a cross-legged Australian boy was all I needed.

  Linus opened his desk drawer and pulled out a small box of toothpicks. ‘Probably won’t ever come to anything, Reet Petite. He usually takes trainees straight from journalism school. Never sent a receptionist for training before.’

  ‘I’m one up from a receptionist though, aren’t I? Could you just take a look at the pictures? Please?’

  ‘Is he picking on you, Rhee?’ chipped in Lana Rowntree, mincing through on her way into Reception. She always called me Rhee, even though there had never been a
conversation where I’d said she could. She stank of cheap scent and lack of ambition and spent her work days selling advertising space, shrieking fake laughter down the phone and rubbing buttockly past desks in pencil skirts as tight as fish skins. Linus had clearly smelled her coming as he’d popped in an Airwave.

  ‘Nah, it’s just a bit of fun, isn’t it?’ he said, leaning back in his chair and giving Lana the full legs-open-trouser-throb pose.

  ‘You wanna watch him,’ said Lana, nudging me like we were besties, despite the fact she didn’t actually care, she just wanted to trade sex air with Sixgill. Her nudge still stung my arm, even as the door closed behind her.

  Linus watched her leave and sighed dreamily. ‘She might be batshit but she’s got one hell of a set of alloys on her, that girl.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting, Linus,’ sneered Claudia over her telephone.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. But Linus and Claudia just threw each other a look and ignored me as usual.

  I’d run through various scenarios in my mind about how I would eventually kill Linus Sixgill. I could anally violate him with his Mont Blanc, then there was the strapping-him-to-hisswivel-chair-and-deep-throating-his-cock-until-I-bit-it-off-atthe-hilt method. I could smash the glass on the Emergency Fire Axe and chop his head off, kicking it across the carpet into the recycling bin. Or I could just stick up my middle finger and yell, ‘TWAT!’ and run out of the room. None of these were ideal, I grant you, seeing as I, a) didn’t want to go to prison, b) did want promotion and c) Linus’s wife Kira is the editor-in-chief’s daughter.

  And then there was the third and most sensible option – proving myself. Getting a stunning picture or writing a brilliantly insightful story, making front page news and being recommended for NCTJ funding and rising to the position of junior reporter. The title of ‘junior’ as opposed to ‘chief’ or ‘senior’ did still smack of nursery school – like I should be sitting in the middle of the office floor in my playpen, sucking on Linus’s moob – but it would open a doorway for me.

  Claudia looked up. ‘What photos did you get then, Rhiannon? Anything we could use in the Friday round-ups?’ She said it with a sigh, like a mother asking her kid what drawings they had done, despite the fact they’d be going in the bin.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe you could use one of them for next week’s front page? You know, kind of like a “Riot Night Special”-type thing?’

  Claudia looked at me with such utter contempt it was like her pupils were glued to her eyelids. ‘Derek Scudd’s our lead story for next week.’

  They had a good picture for it too. We’d been shown it at the last Triple M. One of the photographers had caught him lighting a cigarette as he’d come out of court – a grizzly stare straight down the lense. The heading was to be EVIL BACK ON OUR STREETS. Derek Scudd’s evilness was the one thing Claudia and I actually agreed on, though I still wanted to ram the bitch’s head through the cross-shredder.

  I handed her the disk from my camera and she shoved it into her hard drive – an action about as close to penetrative sex as she got now her husband had left her. Claudia didn’t like me and that was fine. The day I needed validation from a veiny-footed shrew with permanent coffee breath and a Napoleon complex was the day I watched Geordie Shore without breaking out in hives. But I still had to stay on her good side. I had to think of the end game – promotion. A diploma. A career. She could give me all that if she wanted to.

  My slides flashed up – all one hundred and eight of them. A lot were dark with flashes in the middle. Fireworks. Shadows of police. A police dog snarling. A wash of mild interest cleaned her face.

  AJ got up off the floor with his pile of pages and studied the screen too. ‘Wow, you’re a really good photographer, Rhiannon.’ He beamed. ‘Are you trained?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I said, before remembering to add ‘Thank you though.’

  The phone rang on Claudia’s desk.

  ‘Good evening, Newsdesk, Claudia Gulper speaking… Ooh, yes, one moment please.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Rhiannon, I need to take this, it’s about that warehouse fire. Show Linus, all right?’ There’s a good girl, she might as well added. Oh, you unutterable swampy bitch dog tramp licker from Hades.

  She sent AJ on a new errand, then carried on with her phone call, laughing and hair-twizzling while the guy on the other end poured his heart out about the loss of his family’s sixty-year-old business. I ripped the disk from her hard drive.

  ‘Come on then, Rheepunzel, I’ll look at your happy snaps for you,’ said Linus, beckoning me over with his manicure. I gave him the disk and he put it in his machine instead. ‘Ooh. Nice one of the doggy. That’s… interesting,’ at my shot of a brick wall that had fallen down outside a playground. ‘Quality’s a bit muddy. What were you using for these, a Box Brownie?’

  Outwardly, I shy-giggled like a twat. Inwardly, I was calling him a chinless fucktard and picturing him waking up in bed, screaming to the sight of his severed bollocks in a jar.

  He scrolled past fireworks, shattered windows, a boy kicking at a front door.

  Then he stopped talking. He was scrolling through more slowly now, checking each one. ‘Mmm, yes, some of these are quite picturesque, aren’t they? Violent delights. That’s a Shakespeare reference, by the way…’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘“These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume.” Romeo and Juliet.’

  Linus said nothing. And then he stopped scrolling. He’d found the money shot – I’d taken several of the scene but only this one was in focus. The backdrop was of snarling dogs, pink smoke fireworks in mid-air bounce. Three police with riot shields tussling with bellicose protestors and behind them the flaming tree. In front of it all, lying on the ground in the middle of the melee, two teenagers: a boy and a girl, their hands on each other’s faces, as still and as perfect as a prayer.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, then eased back into his chair, just looking at the screen.

  The riot lovers. They’d been there for seconds but I’d imprisoned them for ever with one click. ‘You like it?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. I do like it,’ said Linus, leaning back in his chair again. ‘Jeff? Come over a second, would you?’

  Jeff limped over (old rugby injury) and pushed his half-moon glasses up his nose to stare at Linus’s screen.

  ‘Bloody hell. Is that from last night? Is that in town? Who took that?’

  ‘I did,’ I said, seeing as Linus wasn’t going to say anything. ‘I was lucky actually, they were only there for a few seconds. I saw the flames in the tree and then he grabbed her and pulled her away and then they were just lying there…’

  ‘That’s brilliant that is. I wonder who they are. Good framing, Rhiannon. Bit of a David Bailey we got on our hands, eh? Well, Davina Bailey.’

  I didn’t know who David or Davina Bailey were but I guessed it was a compliment. It had to be. Me and Jeff were pals. Everyone else thought he was a bit out of touch. He spluttered like an old engine, constantly scratched and petted his ball sac like it was a golden retriever and never updated his software. I once heard him call Linus a wanker, then apologise because ‘Ladies were present.’

  ‘Is Ron still on his call with The Times?’ said Jeff.

  We all looked across to his office. Through the window he looked to be deep in conference with a man’s face on his computer screen. ‘Photo like that’s too good to sit on for a week, that is. Too good to sit on. I’d get it on the website now.’

  Linus erupted from his chair and marched across to Ron Pondicherry’s door and knocked loudly seven times. Then he just barged on in.

  ‘Well done, you,’ said Jeff as we both looked down at Linus’s computer screen as proud as if we were staring at a scan of our baby. ‘That’s smashing, Rhee.’

  ‘Thanks, Jeff,’ I said, blushing the colour of his cardigan, sans gravy stains.

  ‘Bet His Nibs was annoyed he didn’t t
ake it himself, wasn’t he?’ he said, nodding in Linus’s direction.

  I shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘Anything that sticks it up Lord Muck’s arse gets my vote.’ Jeff laughed and slapped me so hard on the back my ribs quaked. ‘Don’t let him take credit for that photo though.’

  ‘He wouldn’t, would he? I mean I know he will write the article but it’s my photo.’

  Jeff sipped his coffee and did a non-committing shake of head.

  ‘He won’t pass it off as his photo, will he?’ I said, my heart turning blacker by the second.

  He coughed. ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath, love. Wouldn’t hold your breath.’

  Tuesday, 16 January

  1.Man in blue Qashqai, who today I learned has a huge Dalmatian. No abuse this morning but I still hate him

  2.Mrs Whittaker, who has definitely taken a book from my shelf. And/or a green Biro, we think

  3.Derek Scudd

  4.Wesley Parsons

  5.People who say ‘advocado’, ‘marshmellow’ or pronounce ‘h’ as ‘haitch’

  Do you feel superior to your friends?

  Yes, I do. And I don’t know much about people but I think most of us do. And why shouldn’t I? I have a degree, I do a full-time job and don’t sponge off the state like they do with their nursery vouchers and working family tax relief credit shenanigans. And yeah, I do get bored easily in their company. And in Craig’s company. And at work. But you’d never guess that. I am brilliant at The Act. The late great Leonard Cohen once said, ‘Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.’ I’ve been doing this since my therapy sessions ended. They thought I was cured, when really I was just lying. One day perhaps it’ll become second nature.

  Caring is hard though. I’ve picked up some tips to keep people onside:

  1.Listen – People like being the centre of attention. Keeping your mouth shut is a lost art and people cherish it.

  2.Ask them how they are – even if you’ve already asked, people don’t seem to notice.