In Bloom. C.J. Skuse
your young man back? France, isn’t it?’
‘No, Holland. He’s gone to watch the football.’ I haven’t got time to go into details about Craig’s arrest and subsequent charge for the three murders that I actually committed so I leave it at ‘Yeah, he’s having a great time, seen some clogs and stuff.’
‘Bet the flat’s felt ever so empty without him. I know when my John died…’
She witters on for three minutes about how long it took to come to terms with her husband’s passing and I’m going ‘Mmm’ and ‘Aah’ in all the right places, but my mind is going in a hundred directions. When’s she going to leave? When are the police coming? Where am I going to cut him up?
As I’m standing there, a bubble emerges from my think tank.
She’s going out. Her apartment will be empty for hours.
If I can drag AJ’s body downstairs into her flat, it will leave my flat clear for the police. If this is my rescue boat it has some huge holes in it, but you can’t look a holey old boat in the mouth, can you? So I start rowing.
‘Okay I better be off to get my bus,’ she says.
‘Actually, I do want a couple of bits and bobs if you don’t mind,’ I say. ‘I’ll just grab the list. Come in.’ She can’t resist a root around my nick-knacks.
Parking her in the lounge, I retreat to the kitchen and locate the bottle of cooking oil under the sink. I break the seal and pour it down the plughole. She’s pootling about beyond the partition wall, commenting on how warm it is with our underfloor heating. Her block heels click towards the record player.
‘Yeah, here we go,’ I say, joining her in the lounge – the empty oil bottle trailing by my side. She’s nosing through Craig’s vinyl, lifting out Listen Without Prejudice and trying to pick off the HMV sticker that had been on there since Craig bought it. She doesn’t see what I’m doing.
‘It’s only this cooking oil actually. We’ve run out.’
‘Rapeseed oil.’ She frowns, putting George back in the stack and taking the bottle from me to squint at the label. ‘Where do you get that?’
‘With the other oils. If you can’t find it, don’t worry …’
‘Oh I’ll find it. I like a quest,’ she says, smiling so toothily I fear her falsies are gonna shoot out of her mouth. ‘I never cooked with this before.’
‘It’s so good for you,’ I say, surreptitiously parroting the label blurb. ‘I think it has the lowest amount of saturates of any other oil on the market and no artificial preservatives, and it’s kind to cows and stuff.’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ she smiles again as I guide her back towards the front door. ‘Might get some myself. It doesn’t make chips taste funny, does it?’
She walks on ahead of me, right into my oily trap…
WALLOP
She goes down like a perv priest on a preschooler, but to my chagrin doesn’t bang her head. I rush in and do it manually, grabbing her ears and yanking her skull back for hard contact to ensure disorientation.
‘Ooh! Ow! Ooh! Ooh, what’s happened? My head! Ahh, my arm! Where am I?’ she gabbles on, flailing about like an upturned tortoise.
‘Oh dear, it’s all right,’ I say, dialling 999. ‘You must have slipped. I’m going to put you in the recovery position now…’
‘Oh it hurts. Oof! Oww! Owwwww!’
‘That’s okay, pain is good. Pain means it’s getting better.’
With her settled as comfortably as she can be on her side in front of the afternoon film – Calamity Jane – I go to my room and wrap my secret love in the sheet he’s lying dead on. There’s a thump when he hits the rug.
‘What was that?’
‘I dropped something,’ I say to the back of her head as I drag AJ’s body across the lounge floor behind her. Doris Day dances about on a counter. Crazy bitch.
Whittaker keeps trying to look back at me. ‘I’m in so much pain, love.’
‘Ahh lie still, Mrs W. The ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be fine but you have to stay still. You could have a broken… primula.’
Could not think of the name of that bone. Damn baby brain.
It’s not my fault. You got yourself into this mess.
I’m sweating like a pork chop as I drag my human fajita through my door and downstairs to Mrs Whittaker’s flat, bundling it inside with seconds to spare. I hear the quick pad pad of shoes down the corridor and I look up to see Jonathan Jerrams careering towards me, arms out.
‘Rhiannon!’ he yells, barrelling into me at speed.
Old Mr and Mrs Jerrams bring up the rear, apologising in his wake.
Jonathan’s my self-appointed ‘best friend ever’ because of something I did for him over two years ago. I saved his life. Sort of. There used to be a guy of no fixed abode who’d hang about the concourse shouting abuse at residents, tipping over bins and stealing bikes. He wore a pig mask to frighten people – I nicknamed him The Notorious P.I.G. Anyway, he picked on Jonathan something chronic because Jonathan has Down’s syndrome and he could get money out of him easily. One day, The P.I.G. threw an apple core at Jonathan’s head as he was coming back from feeding the ducks – one of the few solo pursuits his parents afforded him – and I saw it happen.
It’s one of my rules – defend the defenceless. I had no choice.
So immediately after the apple-flinging, I strode up to the P.I.G., snapped the mask from his face and yelled ‘If you don’t disappear I will visit you in the dead of night and cut your real fucking face off.’ Got spit in his eye and everything. I eyeballed him until he looked away, got onto his bike and sped off, laughing like it didn’t matter. Clearly it did. We never saw him on the estate again.
For ages after, Jonathan left me presents outside my door, sent random cards and flowers, then Craig got jealous and asked him to stop. Now it’s tackle hugs and proclamations of love across the car park.
‘We’re going to the zoo, we are,’ says Jonathan, rocking to a tune only he could hear; trouser hems flapping in the breeze.
‘How lovely,’ I say, wiping facial sweat on my dressing gown sleeve.
‘I like animals, I do.’
‘Yeah, so do I. They’re great, aren’t they?’
The Jerramses laugh for no apparent reason.
Jonathan prods Whittaker’s door with his spoony digits. ‘What’s in there?’
‘I’m watering Mrs Whittaker’s house plants. She’s gone into hospital.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Mrs J. ‘What’s happened?’
‘She had a fall.’
The Jerramses accept this. Whittaker’s a proper Weeble, always falling over – usually in the stairwells. Most residents have had to carry her flabby arse up two flights before now. It’s like a rite of passage in this place.
‘Where’s your dog?’ Jonathan shouts, two feet away.
‘Tink’s staying with my parents-in-law,’ I tell him.
‘Do you like my t-shirt?’
He opens his jacket to reveal a Jaws t-shirt with a sizeable belly underneath and a bolognaise stain on the neck. Why do people who look after the disabled never dress them in good clothes? It’s always cheap Velcro shoes and washed-out charity shop threads that never fit. The shark glared