by C. J. Skuse
He did arrive, more fool him, an hour later. He wore long navy shorts and trainers, and a T-shirt with the fucking Smurf thing on from that film I hate but Craig loved – Avatar. He didn’t wait long to start kissing me, one hand venturing down towards the holy triangle.
‘Babes, I’m so glad you came!’ I lied, with my sparkliest Hilary smile.
‘You too. And you’re right, you do look like a fat Cheryl Cole!’
His tongue was like a tiny cold worm and it took all my concentration not to gag as slipped it in my mouth. ‘Do you want a drink?’ I said as I pulled away.
‘Yeah, I’m just so hot for you,’ he laughed. ‘Had a semi on all day thinking about this!’
‘Ah, that’s really lovely. Well, let’s cool off for a second, yeah?’
Luckily, the worm took my bait and downed a can of the super-strength Spanish lager I’d brought, emitting a belch, and slinging the can behind him.
‘Now, where were we?’ He leaned over.
I reared back. ‘Nah-uh, not yet,’ I grinned, removing his hand.
‘You gone frigid on me?’
‘I’m not as horny as you yet. Be patient, little grasshopper.’
‘Grass-what?’ he laughed, removing his shirt. ‘Come on, babe, I’ve got a fucking rod on here.’
‘Not yet,’ I chuckled, pushing him back again.
‘Oh, come on.’
‘No, I said,’ the sparkle fading from my Hilary beam.
‘Pleeeeeease? Shove your hand down here.’
‘No, honey.’
‘Go on… a little bit… right there…’
‘Will you fucking woo me first, BITCH!’ Rhiannon smashed through Hilary’s glass façade and almost shattered everything.
He leaned back. ‘Whoa. What the hell was that?’
I exhaled, long and slow. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t take you in dry. You’ll hurt me. I need warming up first, baybee. OK?’ I fluttered my eyelashes.
‘So lemme put me hand down there. That’ll warm you up.’
He came back on me, body pressed against mine, supplexing me into the grass, fingers creeping down the waistband of my shorts. He reached knicker elastic. Creep, creep, creep, went the digits, down, down, down, almost hitting pube, almost on maternity pad…
‘I need a drink,’ I said, pushing him off. ‘Do you want another one, hun?’
‘Yeah, go on,’ he said, defeated.
‘You can start undressing, if you like, while you’re waiting.’
This placated him as he finally stopped fucking with me and undid his laces – giving me long enough to slide a couple of pills into his open can. Quite a few pills, actually. A whole blister pack, if you must know. I’d had them ready and rattling in my shorts pocket most of the day.
‘Fancy a dip?’ I said, handing him the can.
‘Nah, s’full of salt, innit?’ He necked the lager.
‘Oh yeah,’ I said, pretending to sip my own.
Liam stood and made his way over to the shore, plunging his foot straight in. ‘‘S’fucking freezing ’n’all!’ he laughed.
I looked around for signs of Chrys the rep or the old man with the snort or That Prick Swayze who’d pulled my hair on the bus, but everyone was hidden by the long grasses. There were orgasms coming from the east.
He sank the dregs of his second can, tossing it into the scrub. He lay down on my towel and turned to me. ‘Get yer knickers off then.’
I stroked his chest. ‘You have to take this slowly. Make love to me.’
His breathing deepened. ‘Shit, that’s hot.’ His face moved towards my mouth and I held his head away, turning my lips towards his ear. I nibbled. ‘Mmm, say more stuff like that, baybeeee…’
I stroked his chest, all the way down his happy trail and into his shorts. My face inadvertently winced as I wondered what breed of crab I was going to catch if those pills didn’t kick in soon.
His breathing deepened as the cold wet worm licked my neck. ‘Mmmmmmmm,’ I feigned.
I clamped my thighs together and reached inside his shorts, taking hold of his springy little knob, already moist with precum. Bloody DNA.
‘It’s gonna go off in a min…’ he breathed as I kissed him and that stupid worm invaded my mouth again. ‘Give it a tug. Or nosh it off if you like.’
And they say romance is dead, eh? It soon would be.
He picked at the spaghetti straps of my vest and pulled one down to reveal my boob. ‘Wow, your tits are huge!’
‘Mmmm,’ I said, struggling to summon the will to go on living and biting back the pain as he squeezed each breast in turn. Oh Christ, I thought, what if they leaked? How would I explain that? But Lady Luck for once was on my side that day as without warning he fell back on my beach towel, laughing.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said, looking down to the tittage to see if they’d betrayed me. They hadn’t.
‘Fuck, I’m wasted, man. You’ll have to get on me.’
I didn’t move. I posted my boob back inside my vest and lay on my side, watching. Waiting for something else to happen. ‘Do what?’
‘Reverse cowgirl. Hop on. I’m ready.’
Voices wafted over from the scrub. Couples, frolicking. Phony Braxxton swinging a vuvuzela. A woman in an orange bikini running to the lake and filling up a bottle, sprinting back into the grass, presumably to chuck it over someone. Liam’s arm was over his face and his breathing grew laboured.
‘Are you all right?’ I whispered.
‘I dunno.’ He tried to sit up but collapsed back down. ‘Fuck.’
He got to his knees before stumbling forwards onto his face before twisting around violently, eyes rolling back to the whites, fitting fully and bodily, like I’d plugged him in to a socket.
‘Gnnnnnnnnnnnn,’ he went, on and on, like a washing machine on spin.
‘Oh shut up,’ I seethed, climbing on top, pinning him down, legs to legs, arms to arms, face to face, as he shook rigidly beneath me, foam seeping from his mouth, eyes wide, pupils at full stop. I held myself hard against him and willed that rush into my bones – the surge. The magnificence. He was dying. He was dying and I was on top of him, all powerful. Taking his life.
‘Gnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn,’ he growled.
‘Die against me, you pig, fucking die against me,’ I muttered.
His death rattle spluttered out as his last breaths released into my hair. And his whole body stilled, one limb at a time. And his heart ceased to thump. And his eyes stayed wide.
But I didn’t get it – the surge. That expectant cliff edge before the almighty orgasm. I strained and I shuddered and I willed that delicious surge of adrenaline to come until sweat beaded on my forehead. But it was not there. I did not fall. I did not cum. ‘Ugh.’
I got to my feet, yanking out my towel from under him. ‘You can’t even fucking die properly,’ I hissed, tucking the towel beneath my arm. I checked around for detritus, submerged Liam’s phone along with the lager cans in the lake, and walked to the bus, shaking. Like a normal person.
Who the hell was I? This wasn’t Hilary and it definitely wasn’t the old Rhiannon. I was stuck in some hellish limbo where nothing felt good. I’d never felt this way before, even when I was pregnant and stymied by Ivy’s little do-gooder voice – I’d still wanted to kill. I’d been desperate to. Now, I didn’t even want to kill. I didn’t know what I wanted. It was all Ivy’s fault. She’d done this, trying to make me a good person. Now I was neither one thing nor the other.
Serena Williams was never the same after she had a kid. Jess Ennis stopped winning gold medals. Amy Schumer stopped being funny. Now it had happened to me. What a waste of time and effort. Liam had been my US Open, except there was no umpire to rant at. There was nobody at all.
Saturday, 5 January – Valencia
Celebrities who endorse weight loss products
Celebrities on cruise ships who still think they’re the big I Am
Flip-flops, the people who wear them, make them and who will one day, e
ventually, die in them if I get my way
Ken, Gloria, Dennis, Lynette, Shona and Eddie – aka The Gammons. They’ve dubbed themselves ‘The Crazy Gang’. The ‘craziest’ thing they’ve done is order a shared pudding with a sparkler in it. And the sparkler had gone out by the time the waiter brought it over.
Talking of gammon, Jon Hamm
I googled some true crime podcasts when I got back on the ship that evening, taking out another mortgage for twenty-four hours of WiFi. Everyone listened to podcasts these days, I didn’t think that would signal a red flag to authorities. On one podcast the discussion was Do serial killers ever simply stop killing?
One criminologist concluded that it may be possible for some killers to find alternative outlets and killing becomes less of a necessity. They may indeed become dormant. See The Golden State Killer, The Green River Killer and BTK…
Interesting but I had no other outlets, aside from the odd line dancing lesson, film marathon and scenic tour with septuagenarians. She continued:
The killer may have found a worthwhile occupation or started a family and the sources of stress that once were may have disappeared…
I had no worthwhile occupation and though I had started a family, I’d abandoned it. The sources of stress – my friends, my boyfriend, my in-laws, my job – had all gone, along with my dog. I had nothing and nobody left. So this was what it was going to take to make me stop killing? An empty life?
Some serial killers diminish their fury when they form happy human bonds, as in the case of The Green River Killer when he got married…
I sat at the computer in the Business Centre, watching the clock ticking down. Craig took my ‘happy human bonds’ and blew them up Lana Rowntree’s fart box. He had been my chance of a normal, happy life but the second he’d got with her, everything collapsed. It was her fault. His fault too.
Who was I kidding? It was all my fault.
On the way back to my cabin, I passed the gym – a place I should have been frequenting as Hilary, having bought myself a new baby pink Adidas tracksuit that made me look like a pig in armour. I lingered by the door. There was no one in there – the ship had left dock, bound for Valencia, and most passengers were at dinner. Sky News flickered on the end TV.
There was a picture of my face on the screen. And on the tickertape:
HUNT FOR FARM SHOP KILLER: LEWIS HAS LEFT THE COUNTRY
I clicked the door open and went inside, stepping up on a treadmill.
Cue grainy CCTV shot of me striding across the farm shop car park with Sandra Huggins’ blood dripping from my hands. They’d made the connection. I was officially a wanted woman. Cue serious-faced newsreader with severe eyebrows and ladybird brooch. I checked no one was around and turned up the volume on the middle TV.
‘Avon and Somerset police are still hunting for 28-year-old Rhiannon Lewis, the prime suspect in the murder of Jane Richie before New Year. The force today released new CCTV images of Lewis calmly leaving the farm shop on the A30 near Monk’s Bay after murdering the 48-year-old shop assistant. It is now believed Lewis had given birth earlier that day, and it is feared the baby has come to harm as well.
Detective Inspector Nnedi Géricault from the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol believes Lewis has left the country…’
I clicked on my treadmill. I started walking.
‘Someone out there knows Rhiannon Lewis’s whereabouts and we believe she did have connections in the criminal underworld through her late father Tommy Lewis, a known villain in the South-West in the 1990s. Early indications suggest that she has left the country. We are following every possible lead.’
Liar. She knew who Jane Richie was – the alter ego of Sandra Huggins, paedo nursery nurse extraordinaire. She knew exactly why I’d done it. I pushed up the speedometer and walked faster.
‘Does this twist in the investigation mean a possible exoneration for Craig Wilkins, who is on remand charged with five murders?’
‘We aren’t ruling anything out.’
‘Given the possibility that Lewis herself carried out Wilkins’ crimes, and that three victims were sexual deviants, was there a similar motive in Jane Richie’s murder? And can you tell us anything about Lewis’s baby yet?’
Suddenly I was running.
‘Someone has been murdered. We need to focus on finding the culprit before she can hurt anyone else. That is our priority. Regarding the baby, we believe that the child was born before Lewis left the UK and we remain concerned for the child’s safety. That’s all I can say about that at this time.’
‘DI Géricault, thank you for your time.’
Géricault scratched her chin briefly with her three-fingered hand. I was running hard by this point, pumping my arms, losing my breath, 8.7 speed, almost full pelt as another picture of me flashed up on the BBC News 24 channel – an old one from a PICSO evening out where I’m sitting in a booth in the China Palace, grinning in an enforced group photo. I’m cheersing and my eyes are all thin and, arguably, a bit evil. I could see why they’d used it.
I pushed my legs as hard as they would go until I had no more breaths to keep up with them and slowed the numbers to a brisk walk, propelled by the thumping of a hip hop track on another TV.
Adrenaline. The thrill of seeing my face up there on the screen. The thrill of knowing this hadn’t been in vain. That even though the police wanted me, they didn’t have a clue where I was. I was still in the driving seat.
And I felt better; the sweat beading on my face felt like it had pushed something out of me. My lungs had been blown up to their full sizes and all my toxins had been squeezed out into the air-conditioned room. I stopped the belt and stared at the four TV screens ahead. My face on two of them. My name on the tickertape. I’d finally made it. I was famous.
But a sinister new thought owl was incoming – an evil black bird with a sharp, pointed beak, slicing through the horizon with razor-sharp wings: why did Géricault say they ‘remain concerned for the child’s safety’? They must have known about the adoption. Claudia must have given a statement. Why hadn’t someone come forward to refute that at least? Heather? Claudia? They knew I hadn’t hurt Ivy – that was why I left her. Why would Géricault say that? And where the hell was my confession?
That bird got blacker and louder in my head as the night went on.
The next morning, I was in no mood for the bustle of the main dining room at breakfast so I ventured up to the quieter Diamond Deck instead, sneaking into an area called Park Avenue; a glass-covered walkthrough filled with trees and plants, interspersed with quiet cafés. I wanted to stew and sulk some more about what Géricault had said about the baby and the presence of green things and floral smells immediately cooled my jets. I ordered a flat white and sat at a table next to a huge ornate bush, allowing a bird of paradise flower to graze my cheek. It was a tiny pocket of calm amid a cluttered brain.
Raised voices filtered through my peace.
‘Your children race up and down that dining room every morning and it’s got to stop. Nobody else will say anything but I’ve got nothing to lose.’
‘They’re kids, what do you expect?’ a man in a Homer Simpson ‘Big Daddy’ T-shirt laughed. His belly moved independently of the rest of him.
‘I expect you to behave like a responsible parent and exact some discipline for the sake of the other 2,499 passengers on this vessel.’
‘They’re on holiday, love. Why don’t you lighten up and have one?’
‘Apart from anything else, there are hot drinks being carried around—’
‘—oh, so now you’re worried about them being scalded? Look, I’ve been polite up to now but if you push me any further Mrs—’
‘—what will you do, hit me? Go ahead, make my century.’
The man bent down, placing his hands on the arms of Caro’s chair, gurning his face right next to hers. ‘Don’t come near my kids again.’
She frowned. ‘Why protect them now? The damage is clearly done.’
; ‘You OK, Caro?’ I asked as Homer retracted his fist.
She threw me a glare obviously meant for Homer. ‘Yes, thank you. This gentleman was just leaving. He hasn’t eaten in a while. Must be feeling faint.’
Homer looked daggers at me but walked away, still pissing and whining, calling Caro all the names under the disco ball, including ‘dry old snatch’.
I sat on the edge of a planter with my coffee. Caro returned to her cocktail and flipped over the book she was reading, a different one to the other day but with the same big print.
‘You didn’t need to save me.’
‘I know.’ I kicked my heels against the metal planter.
‘Do you mind not making that noise?’
I stopped kicking. ‘I read your book when you were asleep the other day. Lesbo Downton.’
‘Oh? And what did you think?’
‘It was good. It sort of… turned me on a bit.’ Her eye twinkled, despite itself, but she didn’t look up. ‘Are you going into Valencia today?’
‘No. There’s nothing to do there. You?’
‘I might. We could go together. I could keep you company.’
She looked up. ‘Why would I want you to do that?’
‘Someone to talk to?’
‘You’re hardly the Peter Ustinov of raconteurs,’ she sniffed. ‘And I thought you were Australian?’
‘I am,’ I said, trying to affect my most Kylie Minogue lilt. I’d become so comfortable around the salty lil witch that I’d forgotten who I was supposed to be and carried on being who I was. ‘I am Australian. Fair dinkum.’
She afforded me a slight eyebrow. ‘Your accent’s somewhat muddled.’
I deadass didn’t know how to respond so I said ‘Mmm’ and took a deeper interest in the flowers. I decided to phase out my Bindi Irwin act with Caro. With her at least, I could risk being halfway more myself.
‘Strange girl.’ She went back to her book.