Sweetpea

by C. J. Skuse

  And the truth? I still don’t know. I had no idea at that moment where I was going or how tonight was going to end. All I knew was I had three people in the back of the van and I was driving them somewhere in the dark. I didn’t know where, I didn’t know why, I just knew I had to do something.

  And yeah, looking back now, in the early hours of the morning, I should have driven straight to the police station. I should have called the cops and been sensible about it and been the big hero. Been the real Woman of the Fucking Century.

  But that thought didn’t occur to me. Because I don’t have a normal brain, did you not REALISE this by now!? I don’t think like normal people. I think like me. So I drove to the only place I could think of at that moment in the dark, desperate time I was in – the quarry.

  The woman screams again – she sounds older. Posh. I put my foot down, hear something bang against the side of the van. One of them must have fallen over.

  The other one shouts, ‘They’re fucking robbing it!’

  And she won’t stop screaming. I speed up.

  One of them threatens her. ‘Shut up, bitch.’ Pretty standard dialogue for rapists. I think he whacks her because I hear another bang. He has an accent – London, south of the river. Or north, I can never remember. Sounds like Ray Winstone, anyway.

  The other accent I can’t place – Scottish, maybe Glasgow? Sounds like the guy Craig argues with on Sky Sports.

  The exhilaration is incredible. The window open, the night air chills me to my bones as I head towards the steeper back roads following signs for Chipchase Quarry. The country lanes grow narrower and steeper and I have no spatial awareness in the van because my car is so comparatively small. Whole branches are whacked off hedgerows, I splash through huge muddy puddles, gravel pinging off all four wheel arches. I’m making no secret of this journey – I’m just driving.

  I drive into the same car park as I had the night I killed Julia. I drive right to the edge of the big pit and stop the van, flicking the headlights off and grabbing my bag from the passenger seat. I’m amazed they haven’t ring-fenced this place by now, what with all the bodies me and Dad have thrown down it

  I pull off my face scarf and cut the rope, banging on the back doors.

  ‘Let the woman out.’

  I sound so female it’s excruciating. One of the few things I don’t like about being a woman is my inability to do a convincing man’s voice on command. I sound like a CBeebies presenter doing the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk.

  There is banging from inside again and whispered shouts.

  ‘I have weapons,’ I say. ‘Let the woman out.’ I try to pack it with more threat. ‘You’ve got five seconds. One… two…’

  The doors click. One of them opens, slowly. The light is on inside, a small dim little beam in the corner. There’s a mattress on the floor. The woman is scrunched up at the very back of the van, in the corner, underneath a little fire extinguisher fixed to the wall. She has curly brown hair and huge eyes. There’s velvet pink cushions encircling the mattress. Magazines. Strawberry-flavoured lube. Handles dangling from the ceiling. It’s a moving sex den. One of the blokes has on a balaclava. The other I can see clearly – he’s black and wearing red gloves. He’s the one who opened the door. He keeps one hand on it.

  He sees my two knives and backs up slightly.

  ‘Let her out,’ I say.

  Neither man moves. I spy a sliver of Red Gloves’ skin atop his red-gloved hand, still hanging off the door. I bring the knife down hard and fast against the sliver of skin. Blood spurts out at once.

  ‘Aaaaah fucking hell!’ he yells, grabbing it with his other hand.

  I point the knife at him again. ‘Let her out.’

  Balaclava Boy laughs – ACTUALLY LAUGHS – and grabs the woman’s arm and she whimpers as he pushes her forwards and out of the van. She falls to a crumpled heap on the gravel, then scampers off to the bushes, hair a bundle of brown wires, knickers on one ankle, yellow scarf trailing behind her on the ground.

  I focus back on them.

  ‘Shut the door.’

  Balaclava Boy laughs again. He thinks I’m the woman’s daughter – go figure – come to rescue her. He tells me he’ll rape me as well. Yawn.

  Red Gloves starts to protest but his wrist hurts too much. It’s bleeding everywhere. The knife has cut to the bone. Balaclava Boy makes to get out but I step closer to the van and hold the knife out again. ‘Shut. The. Door.’

  ‘Fuck you, bitch,’ he says and makes to leave and his disbelief that I will call my own bluff is what lets him down. I stab him, right there in his chest (he’s only wearing a cheap blue polo shirt so it’s relatively easy) and he falls to the ground. I would keep stabbing him but I just need him docile so I slit his throat deeply just beneath his chin, then once through his Adam’s apple until he calms his tits.

  ‘Jesus F-F-Fuck!’ yells Red Gloves and jumps out of the van, making for the bushes. I manage to grab his arm and stab it through with my biggest knife. He shouts, but then he has me, grabs my shoulder with his good hand and pushes me to the gravelled ground, my knife still stuck in his arm. Then he’s on top of me, beating my face with the back of his hand – his other arm’s fucked. I take the fruit paring knife from my pocket and stick him in the ribs. Weakened but still stronger, he punches me hard, twice in the centre of my face and I lose myself for a few seconds. When I come round, he’s lying on the ground, crawling towards Balaclava Boy, who’s bleeding like a sacrificial cow, feet scuffing and gouging the ground in a vain attempt to cling to life.

  ‘If you’d just fucking done as I asked, I wouldn’t have had to do that,’ I pant, regaining focus and, with my knives in both hands, I walk across to him. I tear into his body like a loaf of freshly cooked bread. I pluck my fruit knife from his forearm and check both their pulses. Peeled and cored – Gordon Ramsay clap – done.

  Jesus H Christ. If I hadn’t been two stone overweight, they could have had me. If my dad hadn’t taught me how to fend off an attack it could be me raped in that van right now. Closest call EVER. And I’m dry-mouthed and shaking all over.

  I listen for sounds on the air. The crickets. The buzz of flies. A whispering in the grasses. Then I realise it’s not the grasses at all – it’s the woman with the yellow scarf, sniffling somewhere behind me.

  ‘Help me get them in the back,’ I say.

  No response.

  I turned around. ‘Did you hear me? I said help me get them both in the back of the van. Quickly.’

  Taking her sweet time, the woman stumbles out of the bushes and follows my lead, taking the men’s legs, and we bundle them like two very inept removal women, into the van. Red Gloves is much heavier than Balaclava Boy so it takes an age but eventually, when they are both inside, I close the doors.

  The woman looks at me. She sees my whole face. I remember my neck scarf and pull it up.

  ‘You’re bleeding.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘W-what are you doing n-now?’ she sniffles.

  ‘This,’ I say, kicking the back of the van and it rolls obligingly forwards and disappears over the edge of the quarry.

  The noise is unspeakably loud as it tumbles and thunders down over the incline and crashes down the quarry walls to the bottom. And, in the one piece of luck I have this evening, it then has the good grace to blow up. Some spark has hit petrol and WHOOSH! up it goes, illuminating the enormous pit in the darkness. It heats my face as I look down over.

  Of course I realise then that my car is fucking miles away. So I start walking.

  ‘Wait,’ says the woman. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home,’ I say. ‘Duh.’

  About ten minutes down the country lanes, I realise my face is fucking stinging all over like I’ve been stung by wasps. She is hurrying behind me, heels clacking.

  ‘You can’t leave me out here,’ she cries.

  ‘Do you have to make so much noi
se when you walk?’ I say, stopping briefly, causing her to collide into my back.

  ‘Are they really dead?’ she asks.

  ‘Do you want to go back and check?’

  ‘No.’

  We carry on walking. ‘This is so bad. We’re so going to be seen. I’ve left myself wide open this time. Broke all my rules. Stupid.’

  ‘What do you mean, this time?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Have you done this before?’

  I say nothing.

  ‘You saved my life,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah yeah.’

  ‘You did. You stopped me from…’

  ‘You shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘What?’

  I stopped walking. ‘Why were you driving alone? Haven’t you seen all the warnings in the paper?’

  ‘I had to work late.’ She must have been in her late forties I guessed. ‘My name’s Heather…’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ I say.

  ‘But what happens now?’

  ‘Just keep walking.’

  We finally reach her car about an hour later, having crossed through fields and in and out of ditches which I vaguely remembered from childhood trips up to the quarry to pick blackberries with Seren. My nose is bleeding and I just know I’m going to have bruises all over my face by morning. Gonna take a shit load of Boing to cover that breakout.

  ‘There,’ I say, still annoyed with myself and with her and with them for fucking up my plans. ‘G’night.’

  ‘B-b-but what do I do?’ Her voice is all wobbly. She’s wringing her torn scarf and fumbling with the lock on her driver’s door.

  ‘Get in and drive home.’ I find an old tissue in my jeans pocket and shove it under my nose. Both my hoody sleeves are covered in blood – at least it’s black (the hoody that is, not my blood).

  ‘I can’t! I can’t just go home and act like this hasn’t happened. I’ve got a family. Look…’ She holds up her hand. It’s trembling like a jelly.

  ‘You go home and you act like Meryl fucking Streep if you have to but don’t talk about this again. It’s the only way to keep your nose clean. I’ve got a headache now.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can say nothing.’ I turn to walk towards my car but Heather stops me, grabs my arm. ‘I can’t be on my own. Please stay with me. Just till I calm down. I can’t drive like this.’

  She fucking HUGS me. At the scene of the crime! The Act really went to fuck tonight.

  ‘I’ll go to the police. I’ll tell them what’s happened,’ she says, pulling away from me.

  ‘You can’t,’ I say.

  ‘I won’t mention you.’

  ‘If you don’t mention me, you’ll have to say you were at the quarry alone and then they’ll have you for a double murder.’

  ‘Oh. But…’

  ‘And if you do mention me, they’ll have me for a double murder.’ I tap my head. ‘Use your loaf.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Say nothing. Do nothing. You were never here. You do not know me.’

  ‘But my car’s been parked here all night. What if someone’s seen it? We’ve probably left evidence everywhere.’

  ‘Oh, God, don’t say that,’ I say. ‘Dammit.’

  She checks her phone. ‘I can’t think straight. I’ve got six missed calls from my husband.’

  ‘Text him back. You were driving home, you had car trouble. You went to get help but got lost. You tore your scarf. You… broke a heel, whatever. You got back to your car and the car started working again. Praise be – it’s a miracle. Just don’t mention the van or me.’ My nose was still pouring with blood.

  ‘What are you going to say about your face?’ Heather asks.

  ‘I tell lies for a living, don’t worry about me.’

  She starts sobbing against her car door. ‘I don’t know what to say to you. I need to thank you properly. You don’t know what you’ve done. Did I thank you?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re fine. The best way you can thank me is by forgetting you met me. G’night.’

  She nods.

  I don’t know if that nod meant OK, I won’t mention you or OK, but I’m driving to the cop shop with or without your blessing. Either way, what a fucking night. I don’t know what happened to her after she got in her car. All I know is that I need to keep my head down now for approximately twenty years.

  Thursday, 11 April

  1.Cold callers – I swear a circle of Dante’s Inferno is missing some inhabitants

  2.Those self-righteous people who brag about not throwing anything away for an entire year – how do you recycle fanny rags? Seriously?

  3.Whoever sits in my office chair when I’m not there and adjusts the height

  Everything hurts. I got back to the flat around 6 a.m. after a freezing cold shower at Mum and Dads’ house. In the mirror, I looked like I’d been beaten up. Well, I had, technically. But I couldn’t let anyone know that of course so I had to load a shit ton of make-up on. Luckily, thanks to a shitload of YouTube tutorials and some expensive concealer, I just looked ‘a bit puffy’ to Craig. I snuck into bed beside him. He seemed pleased enough to see me and utterly in the dark about where I’d been.

  Walked Tink before work. It was a drizzly old day and I kept my hood up, just in case. It was one of those days when all around you there are scrapes of wet dog shit on the pavement and your face hurts from being beaten up by an abusive dead rapist and there are blocked drains in every gutter and your chihuahua is barking and yapping at every single other canine she passes.

  Top story on the local news was the van fire in the quarry. Police are calling it suspicious because of ‘signs of a struggle’ at the top near the ridge. I have so much make-up on I look like I’ve face-planted a Clinique counter. And it’s all puffed up. Eric the handyman has already asked if I’m pregnant because I’m ‘all big and glowing’. Fucker.

  The worst part about it all is that the yellow-scarf woman – Heather – saw my face. I have a pretty recognisable face, because of the national treasure years after Priory Gardens. She didn’t say that she recognised me but that doesn’t mean she didn’t. What if she saw Up At the Crack? What if she happens to see an old episode of This Morning or Ellen on catch-up? And then there’s my Gazette column – Lews Reviews – my fucking picture is on the top of it! It’s a very tiny, very grainy picture, granted, but it’s still there. If she lives locally, she’ll see it. She could come to the Gazette offices and ask for me. Oh fuck, I can’t think straight now cos I’m panicking. I need thinking cake.

  *

  Bought an iced bun on the way to lunch but it turned out to be a depressingly bad iced bun. You would think that there’s no such thing – it’s just bun and icing, right?

  WRONG.

  For a start it was stale and there was a live fruit fly stuck to one end. And if that wasn’t enough, half my icing was stuck on the bun next to it in the window and the bitch with the tongs never even scraped it off and put it back on mine! So rude.

  I saw a sign in the church window on the way back to the office. The sign read, WHAT MAY SEEM LIKE A DISAPPOINTMENT COULD BE GOD SETTING YOU UP FOR A RESCUE. TRUST HIS PLAN EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE PATH.

  I don’t think that applies to my bun cos I still ate it. Food for thought though. Sometimes religion can be quietly meaningful when it’s not spouting homophobic insults from a lemonade crate in the High Street. Didn’t make me stop worrying about the yellow scarf woman though. I keep coming back to the same thought: it’s just a matter of time.

  Wrote up some old woman’s 105th Birthday announcement this afternoon. The accompanying picture was of this gnarled little dear clutching her card from the monarch and two care home nurses either side of her, basically holding her up. None of my family have made old bones. I wonder how many more lives I will take in the time I have left. How will I die? Et in arcadia ego, after all.

  My face aches and throbs like it’s been rubbed against the cheese grater. I’m chowing down painkill
ers like they’re Haribo.

  Friday, 12 April

  1.Picky eaters – seriously, Edmund, pick some more salad ingredients out of your sandwich, I dare you

  2.People who can’t spell, can’t apostrophise and who don’t know the difference between ‘they’re’ and ‘their.’ GO TO FUCKING SCHOOL

  3.Sick people at work – GO FUCKING HOME

  4.Sick people on Twitter – I don’t care about your chronic pain, arthritis and/or depression and, Newsflash, neither does anyone else

  5.Women’s clothing outlets that NEVER have anything in a size 14/16. Only ever size 6 or size 26

  6.Bouncy Rowena at last night’s aerobics who had to do everything at twice the speed and power of everyone else, just to show off how damn fit she is. If we’d been back at school, I’d have wiped my ass on her face towel

  I ache all over today. My bruises have come out like purple flowers in my face. Craig saw before I’d done my make-up. I had to tell I fell over in the lift and he wants to bollock the landlord about the carpet tiles and the cheap glue he’s used. I couldn’t even be bothered to argue.

  Typed up some press releases: the local church fete, the Brownies’ ‘wool bombing’ of the High Street and one about diabetes affecting over six thousand people in the district.

  UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH!

  I’m sooooooooooo booooooooooooored.

  God, I want to kill again. It’s like this terrible itch inside me all the time. The unfinished orgasm. The unsatisfied appetite. The bucket listing I have yet to tick off. The Blue Van Rapists have done little to quell it. Like a McDonald’s quarter-pounder – you slather for it, then when it’s swallowed you think, God, I really wish I’d got some chips with that.

  Or some McNuggets at the very least.

  It just wasn’t enough. And I didn’t have long enough to get my knickers wet because I was too angsty and totally out of my comfort zone. The plan went out of the window. I was panicking too much about getting it done and putting as much distance between me and the quarry and the yellow scarf woman as possible. I spent half the night dodging cowpats and fucking mud. It’s made me more ragey, if anything. And the pain in my face isn’t helping.