by C. J. Skuse
‘You need to stop hating yourself so much. Leave it behind. Start anew. All this anger, it will only lead to no good.’
‘Maybe no good is where I belong,’ I huffed.
‘Don’t talk rot,’ she said, cupping my face. ‘You have to start letting her go, my darling. For your own sake.’
I watched the last of the petals floated to the ground with the others. I looked at my hands, covered with little bubbles of blood. I rubbed them all over my face, smudging it all over me. I still. Felt. Nothing. No pain at all.
Caro looked sternly at me but my stare was unwavering. Slowly, she reached inside her bag and pulled out what she’d taken, throwing them down one at a time, upon the dry earth.
‘What now?’ I sniffed.
‘We shall get some plasters for your hands and a cold flannel for your face… and we shall go home.’
Sunday, 6 January – Mallorca
People who still don’t know what to do with an apostrophe
The idiot savant in the nightly quiz who keeps winning. For fuck’s sake, get a girlfriend and give somebody else a chance to win a baseball cap.
The Jonas Wives
Football fans who act like Match of the Day pundits but haven’t kicked a ball since they were teenagers – e.g. Ken and Dennis
Adam Levine
I could see the newspapers now:
NIPPED IN THE BUD: Killer Turns Soft
FROM SWEETPEA TO PANSY: Murderer Admits Baby Dulled Killer Instinct
DEAD HEAD: Badass Bitch Gives Up Bloodlust For Bootees
Caro tried hard to snap me out of my malaise, inviting me up to the Diamond Deck for a dinner and jazz evening. It was a whole other world. Clean, quiet, beige. Each dining table had its own personal member of staff in attendance and there was a complete absence of noise and/or children. It was like a soundproof haven, separate from the rest of the ship.
Even so, I couldn’t lift myself out of my doom. Caro would have got more conversation out of her still-bleeding filet mignon.
‘Do your hands still hurt?’
She’d given me a pair of navy silk gloves to wear to repel queries about the scratches. They stung like hell but only when I was reminded. ‘No.’
‘More wine?’
‘No thanks.’
‘How’s your steak?’
‘Fine.’
‘What would you like to do tomorrow? I have a hair appointment first thing but we could take a taxi into Palma afterwards?’
‘I don’t need you to babysit me.’
‘There’s a good chiropodist in Palma actually. We could go and have pedicures together if you want to. How about that?’
‘I’d rather have a smear test done with rusty instruments.’
‘Whatever tickles your fancy.’
‘Don’t worry about me tomorrow. I’ll be all right on my own. You go and have your hair did and your feet felt.’
She carried on chewing her filet. ‘We don’t have to explore at all. We could stay on board. The pool on this deck is much less busy. No children, none of those silly pool noodles to keep tripping over.’
The reminder kicked me in the heart. ‘I think I’ll have an early night.’
‘Are you sleeping at the moment?’
‘No, but I can watch TV.’
She rooted around in her handbag for an age, eventually pulling out a small bottle of pills. ‘One will suffice.’
‘What is it?’
‘They’re prescribed, but they can knock you out. When you’ve had a good night’s rest you’ll be able to think more clearly.’ I reached out for the bottle but she held it away from me. ‘Oh no, I’ll administer, I think. Come along.’
She placed her scrunched-up napkin on the table and set about standing up. A waiter appeared beside her with her wheelchair, without even being asked but she flapped him away and reached for her stick instead.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To tuck you in, of course.’
‘What about the jazz?’
‘Nobody needs jazz at the best of times. I want to check you’re safe.’
Most people would have left me well alone after my botanical gardens meltdown, but for some reason Caro cared. And that made me want to care about her too. I let her escort me back to my cabin and wait for me to do my ablutions and change into my PJs, and tuck me into my bed.
‘Here you are.’ She handed me a pill and a tumbler of water. I knocked back the pill – it tasted like chalky ink – and the drink. She took the glass and turned off the TV. ‘I’ll call for you before my hair appointment.’
‘You don’t have to. I’ll be all right,’ I said.
‘Don’t turn that TV back on. Start counting sheep jumping over fences.’
I remembered my mum saying the same thing to me once, even though she and Dad had been stupid enough to let me have a TV in my room. They let me have anything I wanted. Maybe that was my trouble.
‘How many sheep do I have to count?’
She hobbled towards the door with her stick. ‘As many as it takes. I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Nighty night,’ I called out.
The last thing I remembered was seeing the hind legs of Sheep Number 57 disappearing over the fence…
I awoke to my floating home shuddering – it was 9 a.m. We’d docked in Mallorca. I’d slept for twelve hours. The pill had been magic. I was still in the same boat, aimless, with stingy hands, a pile that wouldn’t quit, a knackered twat and no sign of any messages on the cracked iPhone but my overall mood was level again. A reset button had been pushed. Another day. A sunny day.
I washed and dressed in my new red maxi dress and baby pink Converse and put some flower slides in my hair for extra girly effect – in the mirror, I was Hilary. Inside, I was Rhiannon.
I headed for the gangway, the endless corridor stretching out before me. And the more I walked, the more I thought: I haven’t been given the right opportunity to test my theory. Liam, the libidinous scrote in Cartagena, hadn’t been the right test subject. He wasn’t a strong enough target, just an oversexed gusset monkey in head-to-toe Sports Direct. Any man’s meat.
What I needed, more than anything to be sure as sure could be that my basic instinct had indeed been replaced with vanilla ice cream, was a sex offender. A paedophile. A rapist. And the more I walked, the more I thought.
Hmmm – to be a Good Girl doing Good Deeds or a Bad Girl doing what Bad Girls Do? Cue the distracted boyfriend meme.
The sight of an abandoned dinner tray on the floor outside one of the cabins served as the perfect opportunity to make my decision. There was a steak knife on the tray, greasy blade, flecks of meat between the teeth, partially hidden beneath a folded white napkin and a dying anniversary rose. Nobody else was around.
I knew beyond all doubt, once the knife was in my hot little hand, that this was my chance. Killing again, the way I liked to kill, would bring me back to life.
And I did what any wrong-minded cruise passenger whose ship has docked in the party capital of the Balearics would do: I went down to the Business Centre and googled ‘Sex Offenders on Mallorca.’
As it turned out, Mallorca was a veritable Deliveroo of sex offenders. I had opportunistic rapists near the Drach Caves, migrant wolf packs near Valdemossa, paedophiles at Porto Cristo, flashers on golf courses, a guy in a blue parka upskirting women on the promenade at Cala Pi, and a British teacher in Paseo Maratimo, charged with hiding cameras in a school toilet.
Only problem was – I didn’t know where any of these men were. If there was a paedophile trailer park, like there is in Florida, I’d have forged a plan – ventured down there at midnight with a full petrol can and a match – but I only had nine and a half hours before the ship set sail again – there was no time to stalk or strategise. I had to go on instinct.
One of the links took me to a recent Twitter thread where opportunity knocked a little louder. A woman called Tracey had gone to Playa des Carbo with her family and a homeless guy f
lashed his penis at her young daughter. The man had a warning from the beach patrol but he was back a day later, in the dunes ‘moaning and groaning obscenities’ within earshot of playing kids.
But even I knew that the odds of the same guy turning up in the dunes on the exact day I happened to be there waiting for him were not in my favour, especially out of season. And I didn’t fancy the long bus ride to the beach to waste my time. Instead, I went through the checkpoint gates and got a taxi into Palma, where I sat in an outdoor café near the beach and ordered several herbal teas and coma-inducing salads. I watched the passers-by, looking for a target to lock onto.
But I couldn’t get a bite. It wasn’t exactly surprising, just disappointing.
It got to 1.00 p.m. and I was getting increasingly fed up and the steak knife grew ever-heavier in my bag. A bus operator opposite one of the cafés was giving 25 per cent off half-day excursions to Alcúdia, the monastery at Valdemossa and the Caves of Drach with pearl factory pit-stop, and I remembered something on one of the online threads about a sex pest near the Caves of Drach. It was worth a shot. I had to get something out of the day.
So I bought a ticket.
The bus trip was a bumpy, drawn-out affair interspersed by the odd goat grazing on a rocky outcrop and complaints about the faulty air-conditioning. Our tour guide – Margaretha – was clearly on commission from the pearl factory where we stopped for a pee break because aside from Rafael Nadal, it was all she could talk about. Did you know Rafael Nadal’s home is over this hill? Did you know Rafael Nadal built a tennis school over there? Did you know you can all get 5 per cent discounts on earrings at the Majorica factory where it is rumoured Rafael Nadal buys all his pearls?
A blonde perm in a too-tight pink jacket and shorts constantly pecked at her husband in the row in front of me. Her pale legs were covered in purple blotches like two hunks of jamon after a street fight and her stilettos were so high she walked down the aisle like Mr Tumnus. Bardot, her name was (apparently) and his was definitely Gareth – I say definitely because of the myriad orders she barked at him – Have you got the antibac, Gareth? Could you get me a water, please, Gareth? Will you peel this apple for me, please, Gareth? Could you push me off the coach and roll me under the wheels, please, Gareth? Poor git.
Actually no, stupid git. He’s got what he paid for. I thought about stabbing her but I couldn’t summon the enthusiasm. Besides which, she seemed like a squealer.
Anyway, we got to the Drach Caves and filed off row by row and I kept the old antennae out for sex pests, nonces and unattended erect penii. Clearly Lady Luck was shining down on me because it didn’t take long for opportunity to knock. On one of the other buses that pulled up next to ours in the car park, I zoned in on three lads and their behaviour towards two skinny young girls. One of the lads, short and neck-beardy, kept twanging their vest straps in the queue for tickets. Another, in a basketball vest, kept leaning over and saying things which made the boys laugh – the girls had no reaction at all.
I forced myself into the line behind them.
They would not leave these girls alone, even as one of them turned around and said, ‘Would you stop doing that, please, And there came the inevitable ‘We’re only having a laugh, babe, chill out.’
I tapped the tall, curly one on the back to ask him if he had a cigarette.
‘Nah, sorry, love.’ The other lads turned around and dogged me up from my feet to my face. Clearly, they didn’t like what they saw. Too old. Too much belly. Not a fuckable enough mouth. They started again on the young girls.
‘Is it cold inside the caves, do you know?’ I asked them in my Hilary twang. ‘I forgot to bring a cardy.’
The curly one turned again. ‘Dunno, never been before. You here alone?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, spinning him a line about being dumped before me and my girlfriends came out here. ‘They didn’t want to come today. Too hungover.’ I giggled, the way a Hilary would giggle. ‘I’m Hilary, by the way.’
‘Conan,’ Curly Hair replied, looking more vegetarian than barbarian. He pointed out the other two who afforded me the merest of nods before returning to their phones. ‘These are Trav and Ethan.’
‘Nice to meet you all. What is it, Lads on Tour?’
‘Summing like that hur hur hur,’ Conan chuckled, keeping one eye on the girls in front who’d moved as far as they could forward in the line. I wasn’t quite sure where to go next in my line of questioning but, the boys were happy as long as one of the following was happening:
I laughed at their jokes;
I flirted back;
My tits were on show at all times;
I asked them questions about themselves and agreed with any and all opinions they offered and
I paid them compliments about their clothes, muscles, and/or hair.
And so I did. It was exhausting but I did. And by the time we reached the cave entrance, the lads were fully focused on me and not the young girls.
Conan was the one who bit hardest on my fishing line – Trav had a girlfriend, whom he was constantly texting, and Ethan was too much of a pig-ignorant funt to pick up on any of my hints.
The caves themselves stank of hot meat. Conan and I exchanged relationship stories – he told me about his ‘nagging bitch ex-girlfriend Claire,’ while I regaled him with tales of Craig and his inability to keep his yoghurt squirter out of Lana. Our conversation then took a sour turn.
He leaned in. ‘Well, not being funny, but it might have been the weight, love.’
‘The weight?’
‘Can I speak frank, right? We don’t like our women too heavy to handle, know what I mean? You’ve got a gorgeous face. And if you went down the gym, you could lose that tummy in no time. I can show you some exercises I do.’ He lifted his shirt to smack the scrawniest, whitest set of abs I’d ever seen. Like a fleshy pink cheese grater.
‘Wow, you’re stacking some muscles there, aren’t ya?’ I said, stepping down into the second chamber and stopping to look at yet more badly lit dripping calcium deposits.
I could hear our guide Margaretha distantly banging on about karstic precipitates and paleoclimatic variations and pointing to some rock up ahead that looked a bit like Dumbledore riding a pig. Talking of which…
‘I went out with an overweight girl once,’ said Conan, pushing in front of me to get a look at Piggy Dumbledore. ‘She was funny but they always are, aren’t they? They overcompensate. No, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, like. But you can always tell with fat girls where their priorities lie – the fridge!’
I laughed like a drain – blackly and emptily. ‘You’re so right!’ I giggled, scanning his body for the right sinewy parking space for a blade.
But there was something even more amiss about Conan – something beyond being a habitual douche-canoe. No, he was wired, for want of a better word – and through the absence of any scent of alcohol on his too-close breath I deduced it was drugs. Uppers, ecstasy or speed. He constantly touched his nose and had this swinging jaw habit going on.
He held up his bicep to show me the fruits of his efforts. I could barely see it. ‘Feel that. Go on.’ So I did. He flexed. It was like a plum on a twig.
‘Wow. So hard.’
‘That’s since November. And I can bench nearly 40k.’ He lifted his shirt to show me another flash of cheese-grater abs.
Please stop. My penis can only get so erect. ‘That’s dead impressive.’
We shuffled forwards and I wasn’t so much blood-lusty by this point as utterly bored. I sort of wanted to kill him but in a way that wouldn’t take that much effort. I thought about pushing him into one of the deep pools surrounding the walkway but there were too many people around who’d help.
‘Men don’t make passes at gals with fat asses,’ he announced, laughing like he’d invented it. Negating his point, he pinched my arse cheek.
I chuckled, forcing a smile. ‘You’re so clever.’
Now normally, although people like this gra
b hold of my ire and twist it round like a fucking dishcloth, I don’t kill them for it. Let’s face it – if I killed every single person who pissed me off I’d have been in jail since I was six. Conan happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.
He also happened to feel up one of the 14-year-olds’ butts in the darkness of the caves when I happened to be looking his way.
And the girl stood there, looking at the sights beyond – more calcium deposits and a stalagmite that looked like Danny DeVito – not exactly letting Conan touch her but not stopping him either. Until she moved along towards what I can only assume was her mother and Conan started on her friend who, pleasingly, threw him a glare until he backed off.
Giving up on the girls, Conan leaned in to me. ‘Where you staying?’
‘In town. Why?’
There came the lusty whisper. ‘Do you wanna go back to your hotel?’
‘No forget that,’ I said. ‘There’s a little cove we passed on the way here, up the road, through some woods.’ I unfolded the map I’d been handed on the bus. I showed him the general direction of where it was. Plenty of secluded areas, it said. ‘We can go there.’
‘Our bus leaves in two hours,’ he sniffed.
‘Won’t take long, will it?’ I gave him an obligatory hair twiddle and wink. ‘We can be back before the buses leave.’
He didn’t need long to think about it – he was already pitching a tent for me. Boys do get hard-ons for girls who like lardons.
‘Yeah, all right.’ His breath went ragged. ‘Come on, dirty girl.’
I was so honoured that the majesty of Conan the Vegetarian saw it fit to grace my fat fuck of a foof with his majestic cock but that’s exactly what he wanted to do. What a privilege for a chonker like me, eh? Shame I hadn’t shaved – it had been months since my last sweep round with the No No. I usually have a rule – no No No, No Noo Noo. But on this occasion, I had absolutely no intention of letting Conan cum into my mentions.
We sneaked out of a side entrance and up the winding lanes from the cave complex and he found it hilarious that I was out of breath and sweating by the time we arrived at the woods. I ventured to brush my hand against his in the hope that he would hold it. And he did. And even as he walked and I was perspiring because it was a hot day and all hills, he still kept on about my lack of fitness.