C.J. Skuse - In Bloom

‘Rhiannon?’ she said, eyes wide. Breathless. Hopeful? ‘Oh my gosh!’

‘No,’ I said feebly, switching direction from where I intended to go – the Cookie Cart – to the car park at the back of the big church and the relative safety of my car. She blocked my escape.

‘I’ve been hoping every day I might bump into you. Can we talk?’

I switched to the river path. She followed me, kept trying to converse.

‘I’ve been coming to the Gazette offices for weeks, hoping to catch you—’

‘I don’t work there anymore.’

‘I want to talk. Please, give me five minutes.’

‘No. I bloody knew I couldn’t trust you. Bugger off.’

She didn’t get the hint. Her foamy soles stalked me like the opening chords of ‘Billie Jean’. ‘Hear me out. I promise it won’t take long.’

I had visions of her mounting my bonnet, such was the fervour in her voice, so eventually we sat on a bench in the floral gardens, looking for all the world like two colleagues having a dainty, cross-footed lunch on a summer’s day. Rather than what we were – rape victim and her heroic serial killer liberator, reminiscing about the night one lost her shit and killed two men to protect the other’s sorry ass.

‘I’ve been thinking about you constantly since that night.’

‘You make it sound like we had an affair.’ I looked around to see if anyone was listening in. The water cascaded over the little weir. Two pigeons were pecking at a discarded sausage roll under the opposite bench.

‘My husband thought I had.’

I afforded her a raise of eyebrow.

‘I was all fidgety and checking my phone for news updates in the days after. I was terrified someone had seen my car or seen us walking back from the quarry.’

‘Keep. Your. Voice. Down.’

‘I was in chaos, Rhiannon. I’d have these night terrors and relive the whole thing, waking up in a cold sweat. It affected my work, it was awful. Anyway Ben – my husband – confronted me about it and I told him.’

‘Oh great—’

‘No no, he was so grateful. He’s not going near the police, I promise. Why would he? He doesn’t owe those men justice. As far as he’s concerned, they got it. Police think those men are responsible for seven rapes along that same road where they took me. That night could have ended differently for me if you hadn’t been there. What I don’t understand is why you were there at all. Why your car was parked up. And how even in the pitch dark you knew your way across those fields.’

‘I grew up around there.’

‘Were you waiting for them?’

‘Yes,’ I said, without the slightest intonation. ‘You got in the way.’

The chestnut tree in the centre of the park had been hacked away by the council. I used to sit underneath it eating my lunch sometimes. It would shelter you from a sudden downpour or the hot sun. Now it looked like a huge hand reaching up to the sky with all its fingers sliced back to stumps.

Heather eyeballed me. ‘You enjoyed it, didn’t you? Killing them?’

I stared at the pulse in her neck, thumping away.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Did you kill the others as well? The ones your boyfriend—’

‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ I said, standing up.

‘No please don’t go,’ she said, standing up as well. ‘I’m sorry. Those others – from what I read they were bad people.’

It was my turn to eyeball her. She was wearing a mauve BodyCon dress and while she wasn’t fat, it was still far too tight for her. I could see her belly button. I could see the mole in her belly button. That’s just ridic.

‘What do you want? Money? Tough shit.’

‘I don’t want anything.’

‘You want to threaten me?’

‘Rhiannon I’ve represented rape victims for twenty years. I’ve seen the full impact rape has on a human being, both women and men. And their families. It’s worse still when they have to relive it in court. That could have been me and it wasn’t, thanks to you.’

‘What do you mean, “represented” them?’

‘I’m a solicitor. Ben is too. We practice—’

‘Yeah yeah, I don’t want your life story, thanks.’

‘I wanted to give you this and to say again, thank you. Even if you didn’t mean to, even if you enjoyed it – thank you.’ She handed me a business card with W&A embossed on one side, and a phone number and a tiny etching of a golden gondola on the other.

‘Wherryman and Armfield,’ I said.

‘Armfield passed away some years back so it’s just us Wherrymans now. We’re based in Bristol and Ben and I live locally with our boys. Sorry, I know you don’t want my life story. Call me, if you need anything. Anything at all. If I can’t help I can probably find someone who can.’

She got up and started walking away from me without another glance. Then without warning she stopped and turned around to face me. ‘I knew you’d done this before. I knew it that night.’

She looked like she was about to say something else but her mouth kept closing like a fish’s – scared to bring the words forth. And then they came.

‘Patrick Edward Fenton.’

‘Who?’ I said.

She started walking away, her scarf fluttering up on the breeze. ‘Last I heard, he was working in Sportz Madness in Torquay.’

‘Why would I care about this?’

‘He’s my one that got away.’

When she’d gone, I stared at the card. Keeping it was a link – to her, to that night, to the two dead men. I was about to post it into the bin at the side of the bench when a thought struck. Gift horses and all that.

Saturday, 4th August – 12 weeks, 6 days

1. The person who tries to draw a swastika on the fence outside the hospital but keeps getting the prongs the wrong way up .

2. Quorn manufacturers. Stop kidding yourself. It tastes nothing like it .

3. Sandra Huggins .

Had one of my dreams again – this time about the baby. I’m in a garden and in the centre is a deep pit and the baby’s at the bottom, naked and kicking and crying. I climb down inside but when I get to the bottom it’s gone, though I can still hear it crying. And I look up and standing at the edge of the pit is a woman holding a bundle. I can’t get out. And the shaft of light above me gets smaller and smaller. And I can’t scream because my mouth won’t open. What in the name of cock does that mean?

Jim and Elaine were out early at the hospital for Jim’s checkup, leaving me to feed Tink, a loud sing-a-long to Nicki Minaj in the shower, and a damn good wank. There being no decent dicks on the horizon, this is about as good as my sex life gets these days. There are three remote possibilities – a bin man who bears a passing resemblance to Ryan Reynolds, the blond guy in the dry cleaners who wears Iron Man socks, and what Elaine calls ‘The Element’, who sits on the war memorial in piss-stained joggers, drinking Diamond White and telling passers-by how Frank Sinatra stole his medals.

But for now, to the Masturbation Chamber it is.

It’s so much better when the olds are out. You try fudding yourself off with a silent vibe when your bedroom wall is cracker-thin and your mother-in-law’s practising her descant for ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ in the next room. Now that my sickness seems to have subsided, my other symptoms have come screaming into view. Horniness is one of them. Another is mood swings. Yeah, I know, I’m a psychopath, mood swings come with the territory, but these are more frequent – like Quasimodo on a bell rope.

Any given day I’ll start off Angry (e.g. gameshows), then veer into Sad (e.g. woman on TV with kid born without eyes) then I’m awash with Guilt (e.g. shouting at old man crossing the road/anxiety dream about AJ) then euphorically Happy (e.g. being in the garden or watching documentaries with Tink and Jim). This rotation sometimes only takes about twenty minutes.