In Bloom. C.J. Skuse
Читать онлайн книгу.
save some of them of them for me before they went – Richard E. Grunt, a few rabbits, couple of the little books and the bathroom set. We sneaked out and buried them in the garden one night when Mum was asleep. The Man in the Moon was our only witness.’
‘Rhiannon, you don’t have to explain—’
‘That’s when I started saving up. Every bit of spare money I got, I’d spend on buying every last Sylvanian back. Piece by piece. I saved up all my pocket money, got a newspaper round, washed cars, mowed lawns. That’s the only thing I like about being a grown up. I can fight the battles I lost as a kid.’
‘I do understand,’ he said, stroking Tink’s silky apple head. ‘Our Craig used to say about your brain injury and how you liked things just so. I’ll have a word with Elaine, don’t worry.’
‘I miss Seren,’ I said, only then realising I had said it out loud. Jim seemed to be waiting for me to say more but I didn’t.
‘Of course you do. She’s your big sister.’
‘She’s half who I am,’ I said. ‘She taught me lots of stuff. Good stuff. French plaits and tying shoelaces and how to wrap presents so the corners were all tucked in. She’s practical like that. She’s a good mum.’
‘I expect she looked after you too when you were younger?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said, the night of Pete McMahon’s death flashing into my mind. His body on top of hers. Her drunken mumblings. The knife cutting through his ribs like a spoon through jelly. ‘Sometimes I looked after her.’
A silence fell between us. Without a word, we both got up and continued our walk. Tink trotted along between us. I placed my feet in footprints other people had left behind. It’s funny how you can’t walk in someone else’s footsteps, isn’t it? It doesn’t work. You end up taking too-long strides or placing your feet unnaturally to where you’d choose to put them.
We’d gone about ten minutes before Jim stopped and pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. ‘This came today.’
I knew what it was from the postmark – a letter from Craig. I’d been expecting it after Elaine intercepted the last one and set fire to it on the hob.
Jim rubbed his mouth. ‘Can’t ignore him forever. This is the fourth one.’
I scanned it through. His writing had got better. I’d only ever seen his scrawls on builder’s invoices or scrappily-written shopping lists. Clearly he’d taken some sort of calligraphy class while he’d been on remand. ‘I can’t see the point of visiting. It would only be more lies.’
He shook his head. ‘I know the evidence speaks for itself but it doesn’t answer everything. It doesn’t explain that on the night that woman’s body was dumped in the quarry, he was nowhere near. He’s on CCTV at Wembley, clear as day.’
‘What about the others?’ I said. ‘The man in the park? The semen all over that woman’s body? The… severed penis in his van?’
I refrained from saying ‘cock au van’. This wasn’t the time for that joke. It was never the time for that joke but it was still a good joke.
‘He’s still saying he’s being framed,’ said Jim. ‘That Lana sort he was seeing. He’s still my son, Rhiannon. I can’t give up on him.’
‘He’s Elaine’s son too. She’s given up on him.’
‘She’ll come round. We’re not going to leave him in there to rot, not when there’s a chance someone else is to blame.’
Tink nuzzled into the crook of Jim’s arm. Jim turned to look at me, his eyes filling with water. ‘I was the first person in this world to hold him. Before the doctors. Before Elaine. I won’t leave him when he needs me the most.’
Jim had brought back boxes of our stuff from the flat; his clothes, vinyl, the dehumidifier, all his old football programmes. The remnants of sawdust on his jeans. I cried when I opened the boxes. I found a bottle of his aftershave – Valentino Intense. I’d stitched the guy up like a quilt and now I’m crying about it. Pregnancy screws you right up, I’m telling you.
‘I’ll go with you,’ I said. ‘To see him. I’ll go. Not yet, but I’ll go.’
Jim put his arm around me, eyes all glassy. We watched Tink run after a Jack Russell, chasing it round in circles like a furry whirlwind. And we laughed. It was funny. But both laughs were too forced.
Friday, 20th July – 10 weeks, 5 days
1. Seagulls – this town is building-shaped croutons in a seagull-shit soup.
2. Man in the mobility scooter who tutted that I was taking up too much of his greeting cards aisle at the garden centre.
3. Sandra Huggins.
One of the side effects of being pregnant is vivid dreams. I often wake up in a cold sweat, my heart racing, having spent most of the night before screaming at my mother or watching my sister Seren get attacked by birds or wolves or some strange man in a hood – those dreams seem to be on a loop in my head. Last night there was a new showing – the fortune teller from the hen weekend. It was an almost exact re-run of what actually happened.
Me walking into her shop on the seafront. The red-haired woman with smoker’s mouth-creases and bad eyebrows. The crystal ball on its claw-footed stand. The Tarot cards spread out – The Hanged Man, Judgement, The Hermit, The Ace of Swords, The Devil himself.
You don’t work well with others, she said. You need to have no one.
Staring into the ball, her drawn-on eyebrows furrowing in the middle. Pulling her hand away from the ball. Her breaths getting faster.
I won’t be on my own, will I? I ask her. I’ll have the baby?
No, she says, tidying the cards.
Does my baby die? I ask her.
I saw a baby covered in blood.
I smash her face in with the crystal ball and she crouches behind the table, cowering, her hands over her head. Even when she’s unconscious I keep going. There’s no stopping me. I couldn’t kill a baby. I’m not capable. There is good in me somewhere.
But it’s buried so deep, she says. It’s the last thing she says.
*
This morning, once Jim’s morning farts had cleared from the big bathroom, I treated myself to a bubble bath and a hair wash with two shampoos and the posh antenatal conditioner Elaine bought. Thing is though, my hair is STILL greasy. What happens in a preggo’s body that makes her hair greasy? Why is my body giving my foetus all my shine and bounce?
Also – dry hands and feet – the fuh? I’m taking on water like the Titanic but every extremity is as dry as a nun’s gusset. This kid is leaching all my moisture and redirecting it to my scalp. I looked at myself in Elaine’s mirror and I cried. I cry at nothing nowadays. I cry at burnt toast and RSPCA adverts and when I got my dressing gown cord stuck in the front door and the UPS guy saw my foof. I suppose that’s down to Heil Foetus as well.
You wanted him to see it.
I thought Marnie would have called this weekend about going maternity clothes shopping but I guess she was full of it like everyone else in my life. Bullshit City, that’s where I hang my hat.
Instead I have been dragged outside the house today to ‘get a bit of fresh air in my lungs’ even though I’m perfectly happy with my existing lungal air. Elaine reckons I’m depressed but I’m not. I’ve just got the morbs. Even serial killers get the blues you know.
We’re currently sweltering our giblets out in motorway traffic en route to the garden centre.