Sweetpea

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘Do you know what we are dressing up as, yet?’ I asked, thinking maybe they’d come up with something truly original. Perhaps we’d go as suffragettes, complete with ‘Votes for Women’ placards, or members of the Bloomsbury Group, or even nuns in full-length habits, Bible in hand, rosary beads round necks. Maybe I could use the beads to strangle myself with.

  I braced as Lucille smiled. ‘Our theme is – prostitutes.’

  ‘Prostitutes?’ I said. ‘Cool, Mafia-type gun-slinging prostitutes? Jack the Ripper-esque long-skirted, ripped-abdomen prostitutes?’

  ‘No,’ she chuckled, showing more teeth than a dentist’s waiting room. ‘Just prostitutes. Modern day ones. Slaggier the better.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘That sounds absolutely… magnificent.’

  ‘And the higher the heel and the lower the top, the better. When you’re out shopping for your outfit just think…’

  ‘. . . whore?’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Monday, 25 March

  Bollocky Bill walked in first thing and belched his poached haddock and eggs breakfast in my face when asking how my weekend was.

  ‘Get all your ironing done, did you?’ he laughed.

  ‘What ironing?’ I said. ‘I don’t iron.’

  ‘Women love ironing, don’t they? My wife did three loads this weekend. Kids were back from university.’

  ‘I’m thrilled for her.’

  ‘You one of them feminists then, are you? Hate men and make them do their own washing?’

  ‘I don’t hate men,’ I said. ‘I hate everyone.’

  He laughed himself back to his desk, mumbling about Germaine Greer. Prick.

  Saw another joke online today – Never break someone’s heart because they’ve only got one. They have 206 bones, break them instead. I doubt I could find Bill’s bones under fifty-seven years of his wife’s plum crumble.

  Linus told me a song came on the radio while he was having his protein granola and it made him think of me.

  ‘It was called “Rhiannon”,’ he said. ‘I didn’t catch the artist.’

  ‘Fleetwood Mac,’ I said. ‘My parents named me after it. It’s about a Welsh witch. And my family are Welsh so…’

  ‘Really?’ he said, his interest clearly wrapped in plastic.

  ‘Where did your parents get the name Linus from? The Snoopy cartoon?’

  I hadn’t said it as a joke but Claudia and AJ laughed like semiautomatic rifles. I have never heard of anyone being called Linus apart from the kid in the Snoopy cartoon who carries around a blue blanket and sucks his thumb. Still, Linus seemed to take offence to that and replied that his ‘father was Swedish and it was his grandfather’s name and probably his grandfather’s name too’.

  ‘Oh, did your grandfather like Snoopy, too?’ I said, again, not in jest and Claudia and AJ continued to giggle. Linus walked away at that point as Lana was standing by his desk with a pile of papers. I think his dick would have just dropped off if he hadn’t got to her and started flirting when he did.

  AJ winked at me today, apropos of nothing, he was just passing my desk. He said he’s got a ‘pretty awesome prank’ planned for Linus that is going to blow mine out of the water but he won’t tell me what it is. He’s teasing me, like a little dog. He’s also stopped wearing his ‘singlets’ as he called them and has now taken to wearing Diesel aftershave and a long-sleeve black V-neck which clings to his biceps and shows off his tanned clavicle. I keep wanting to lick it.

  Oh, yeah, and ULTRA big news, courtesy of Daisy Chan – the police have made an arrest in the Park Man murder; a known local junkie called Kenny Spillane, who lives in a bail hostel in the centre of town. He’s been their Person of Interest for a while now apparently, though he’s known to everyone else as the guy who sits in the doorway of Argos shouting abuse and throwing cider cans at pigeons. Yeah, he’ll do.

  There’s still radio silence from the public with regard to witnesses though, gawd bless ’em. Well, I say radio silence but one person has told police he saw ‘a woman in a hooded tracksuit walking a dog’. But who’s going to believe a woman had something to do with such a savage crime? Criminal justice system in this country is as fucked as the weather.

  They’re interviewing ‘a number of suspects in the murder of Julia Kidner’ and are saying it was ‘definitely sexually motivated’. So it looks like I could be in the clear there as well. Big yays all round today.

  I literally can’t think of a single other thing to write but I’m pretending to because, as I speak, Claudia is looking across at me like I’m making bad smells. She knows I’m up to something. I can see it in her eyes. Ugh. The woman is a mouldering codpiece on the diseased cock of a Shakespearean leper. La de dah de dah.

  Hmmm, what can I say? Ummmm… the weather’s that pleasant sort of jacket-needed-but-no-layers-type that pleases me so much.

  She’s still looking.

  And my Sylvanian doll’s house is looking pretty up together now too. Craig picked me up a brand-new telephone and bookcase set from the toy shop on his lunch break yesterday, another guilt spree just for me, so I’ve got that in situ now underneath my little Van Gogh—

  Right, she’s stopped looking at me now cos her phone is ringing. She must be aware that I’ve caught up on all my work so I’m just fiddle-faddling round the Internet and doing jobs that nobody ever has time for, like filing or helping Bogdan with the obituaries.

  She doesn’t have many friends here. I think Ron only gave her the job on Reception cos he felt sorry for her. Can’t bloody get rid of her now.

  Hmmm. How to get Claudia onside. That one’s a poser. She doesn’t like me, that much is true, but what if she has no choice but to like me? Like, if I saved her life or something? I wonder how I can engineer that. Maybe if she choked and I ran over and administered the Heimlich? AJ likes me, so why doesn’t she? Maybe it’s because AJ likes me. Aha, I see. Tricky.

  Just had a text from Cleo – Anni had a baby boy called Samuel at 3.19 this morning. Nine pounds something and no drugs. Her vagina must look like a lasagne dropped from a department store roof.

  *

  Just back from seeing Anni at the hospital – she has her own room in the private building at the back of the NHS bit. Jesus, it’s like another world. She’s got a widescreen TV, smoked salmon lunches, the nurses aren’t rude and nothing stinks of piss. The other PICSOs were there, taking it in turns to cuddle Sam who looks like a shrunken, slightly annoyed version of Rashan, who was there too, stroking Anni’s head and nipping out to get us all coffees and biscuits (all free!). Even though he’d been up all night he was still buzzing.

  Anni didn’t look too happy but then she had just pushed a human watermelon from her stitched-to-fuck foof so I made my excuses after an hour and left. I’d done my bit by turning up with a card and a hastily bought blue teddy bear with musical notes on his bib. The Act is intact. I am once again the Thoughtful Friend.

  *

  Drove along Old Road again tonight, looking for signs of the Rapemobile. There were a few big vans around – none of them black or blue – pulling in to the lay-bys, making calls, men checking clipboards by the light of their phones – so close but no goldfish. I’d have waited there all night if Craig hadn’t promised me a stir-fry.

  Wednesday, 27 March

  1.Every single living creature at the Gazette. Even the mouse in the staffroom who keeps nicking the rice cakes

  2.Tony Tompkinson – get this he’s been SACKED from Up At the Crack for shagging a fifteen-year-old school friend of his daughter! Major scandal all round. Wife’s left him, career’s in tatters. Knew he was the sort

  3.The tramp at the graveyard – who has said hello to me twice this week alone. Getting far too friendly for my liking

  They’ve done it this time – I’m now doing the one job, besides actual toilet cleaning, that all lowly editorial assistants at small-town newspapers dread…

  The farmer’s market report.

  Imagine a two-pa
ge spread in your average tabloid-sized local newspaper. And that entire two pages are filled with text. Just. Text. Text that some poor cow (aka Me) has had to painstakingly input on a very old, very slow computer that crashes whenever you press Shift. You might find a small stock image of an Aberdeen Angus cow or Gloucester Old Spot pig in among the wall of writing, but for the most part, that’s all it is. Writing. And nobody – and I do mean nobody – other than farmers actually reads it. And now it’s become one of my jobs.

  Courtesy of Claudia. Just because she can.

  ‘AJ hasn’t got the attention to detail yet for this sort of task, so I’m assigning it to you, Rhiannon. Thanks, Sweetpea.’

  Hmmm.

  So there I was, for the best part of the day, putting in this endless copy about Holsteins and grazing cows and Charolais heifers and ‘excellent entries of billy kids and fat pigs’ and sows and boars and longhorns and FUCK MY LIFE.

  The only enjoyable part of this whole shitty-arsed task is that some other poor bastard has to check it for typos. And the only someone with enough patience to do that is Jeff.

  ‘You’ve got a couple of semi-colons in the wrong places there, Rhiannon. And that farmer’s name’s wrong too, look. But for the most part, it looks fine.’

  Jeff doesn’t talk to me as much as he used to. He didn’t even joke with me that I’d accidentally called one of the farmers Mr Cunt from Howbridge, rather than Mr Hunt from Cowbridge. I think he’s been nobbled by The Gulp Monster. Jesus Christ, high school never ends, does it?

  ‘Let’s not talk to her today because she’s not our friend. Let’s play Off Ground Tig but without Rhiannon.’

  Wankers.

  Ooh, and a funny thing happened mid-morning – a bumper box of adult nappies arrived addressed to Linus and he went absolutely puce in the face when Bogdan brought it in to him. He had to qualify it all day long.

  ‘They’re not bloody mine, how many more times?! It’s a mistake! I didn’t order them!’

  And as if to ram home the point after the twelfth barbed comment about incontinence, he marched out of the office, across the road and threw them in the wheely bin at the back of the church. Inept said it was ‘a terrible waste’ when so many old people were shitting themselves at the NHS’s expense. Me and AJ had a sneaky fist bump when nobody was looking. He looked fine today. I think I like him in his tight blue jeans the best – they’re deliciously tight around his splendid arse. Whenever he walks past I just want to ram his head between my legs.

  Daisy Chan was allowed the morning off PAID because she has to wait in for a new fireplace to be installed. Like, HELLO?! If I pulled that one, they’d have me out of here quicker than Lana when Craig texts to say he’s got an erection.

  Oh, yeah, they’re still seeing each other. Despite all the sex he’s getting from me to ‘make our little Criannon’ (cue the vom) he’s still having his vanilla cupcake and eating her out. I read a text thread on his phone the other night, when he was in the shower:

  CRAIG: I’m trying to make things work with R. We’re trying for a baby.

  L: You can’t drop me like this. It’s not fair. I haven’t done anything wrong. You said you loved me.

  CRAIG: Lana, it’s just too difficult at the moment. I still have feelings for you, course I do, but you’ve always known how it is with me and R. I love her.

  L: Please just come over. Let’s tlk. No pressure. I just want to see you.

  CRAIG: Babe, I want to see U2.

  L: Come round later. Just for an hour. I’ll cook. I get that you don’t want to leave her but we can make it work. Please, baby. I love you.

  Craig was ‘working late tonight’ so, once I’d taken Tink for her early evening walkies, I was back on Old Road looking for signs of the black van. A palm-sweaty, window-steaming urgency had come over me tonight and my temper was short.

  ‘I want you,’ I said to the empty night. ‘I want both of you. Come and find me.’

  But for a fox sprinting across my headlights and an owl hooting somewhere in a high branch, there was only silence. I wonder if I need to make myself more obvious. I mean I’m a woman alone, sitting inside an unlocked car on a deserted country road at night with the light on. I may as well have a neon sign outside saying ‘All You Can Eat’. It’s so frustrating! Am I fundamentally un-rapeable? I’m not that fat.

  My void for risky business had to be filled so when I got back, I ventured into the chat rooms. I hadn’t hit them in a good long while but it was like I’d never been away. Joberg was all over me like a rash. I’ve learned something new about him too. He’s a banker in the City. London, that is. Well, he says he is. I told him I’m a librarian. Tonight, after a two-hour discussion about the usual, he said he wants to meet me:

  Joberg: Hey Sweetpea, wanna do this for realz?

  Sweetpea: Why? Wifey got a training course coming up, has she?

  Joberg: How did you guess?!?! Actually she’s going on a hen weekend to Blackpool. We could meet up and have some fun.

  Sweetpea: Can’t. I won’t have a good enough excuse for the BF.

  Joberg: I need you, baby. Nobody on here gets me as hot as you do.

  Joberg: Babe? You still there???

  Joberg: Baby, just the thought of you and me is getting me hard again. Joberg: Babe???

  Sweetpea: Where do you want to meet?

  Joberg: Hotel?

  Sweetpea: What would you want to do to me?

  Joberg: I wanna tie you up. And then wok you all night long. I’m gonna ruin you for all other men. You’ve seen how big I am.

  Sweetpea: Wok?

  Joberg: Sorry, *fuck

  Sweetpea: Can’t wait. But can’t I tie you up as well?

  Joberg: No. I’m the master, remember? Little bitches have to play nice or they don’t get doggy treats.

  Sweetpea: What if I wanna play master for a change?

  Joberg: Maybe, I’ll see how you behave for your daddy.

  We named the hotel – a posh one in Canary Wharf, used mostly for business meetings and stopovers by bankers and celebrities filming in the area. We named the time: 8 p.m. on Friday, 5 April, the nearest date when we were both free and his wife had a hen weekend and the kids were at his mum’s house.

  The BuzzFeed quiz says people like me Need to take risks just to feel alive. I have to admit they’re right about that. This is becoming clearer to me with each passing day:

  Joberg: I’m rock hard.

  Sweetpea: Mmm, I’m throbbing just thinking about it.

  I was giggling and shaking and my fingers had gone cold from all the typing.

  Joberg: Meet you in the bar first, yeah? I’ll check in for the both of us. How will I recognise you? Can you send me another pic of your face? I’ve seen everything else, might as well I sent him a picture of Craig I had taken when he was cooking the other night.

  Sweetpea: I’ll be sitting at the bar. I’ll be wearing a red T-shirt and jeans.

  Joberg: Baby, you’re gorgeous. Next week is gonna go so slowly without you. I can’t wait to get my lips on you and my dick in your ass. I’m gonna duck you so hard, boy.

  Sweetpea: Can’t wait for all the ducking. See you soon xxx

  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

  Friday, 29 March

  1.Wesley Parsons

  2.Derek Scudd

  3.Man in North Face coat in the newsagent’s who stepped on Tink’s paw and said, ‘Get a bigger dog and I might see it.’

  4.The guy with Tourette’s who sits in the Paddy Power doorway, shouting – today he was trying to pull his own tongue out

  5.Craig

  I still have the newspaper cutting from when my best friend Joseph Leech died. He’d gone to my school and lived just down the road from us in Bristol. Joe had been one of the few kids who hadn’t used me as an Instabrag in the months after Priory Gardens. He’d come round and read to me and make up stories about the posters on my bedroom walls. He’d make me Nutella sandwiches and push my wheelcha
ir down Park Street to the museum, talking me through all the exhibits like a guide. I’d point to paintings and he’d read the descriptions. We liked the ‘Dead Zoo’ the best – the prowling tiger in the wild grass, the enormous cloudy-eyed giraffe, the greying gorilla they called Alfred.

  Wesley Parsons had smashed into Joe at 36 miles per hour. There was a rumour that Joe’s brain was coming out the back of his head when the police got there. The newspaper cutting’s gone all yellow now. I keep it in the back of his George’s Marvellous Medicine that his mum gave me.

  No one’s claimed the Dan Wells reward money yet. No more information’s come out. And still no revelations about the missing penis. Looks like I’m on my way out of this particular little arboreal labyrinth. Also, rather worryingly, they’ve identified the murder weapon – a serrated steak knife, lightweight, possibly stainless steel. Luckily, any restaurant in any town or city in England worth its salt will have this type of knife in stock so I’ve just got to hope that the police don’t DNA test the ones at Cote de Sirène.

  Regarding Park Man, Gavin White, there’s been no more of the mysterious ‘woman in a hooded tracksuit walking a dog’. Seemingly, she has just disappeared.

  Was given the ‘honour’ of doing next week’s Puzzle Corner page today, for two reasons: 1) Mike Heath is ill (nobody knows why); and 2) nobody else wanted to do it.

  Baked some gluten free ginger and raisin cookies and took them to the hospital for Anni (she’s still in, really milking her private healthcare for all it’s worth). She asked if I wanted to hold the baby and because of The Act, I had no argument set up against it.

  So I sat in the chair beside her bed and the nurse placed Sam in my arms. He wriggled into place and I watched his little breaths. And held his little fingers. And blew softly on his tiny head of soft black hairs. He’s a decent enough chap.