C.J. Skuse - In Bloom

Jim and Elaine walk along the seafront every morning – it’s their ritual. And they’ve allowed me and Tink to join in too. We sit on a bench with a hot drink and a bun – iced for them, brown seeded for me – and we sip and chomp in silence. Everything is small here. Small and safe. From across the estuary at Temperley, Monks Bay looks like a bucket of tiny houses tipped down a hillside by a giant child. There’s no design to it at all – it’s a higgledy-piggledy mess of streets too narrow to drive a Fiesta down without cracking your wing mirrors, a funicular railway, a church and quaint little B+Bs and cottages called names like The Sloop and The Brigantine.

For me, killing has been what makes life worth living. So at the moment, I’m not living, I’m merely existing. I’m like that polar bear I saw once at Bristol Zoo. Wandering back and forth, back and forth across his concrete. Safe, fed and secure but slowly going ever further out of my mind.

‘Go on, love, eat your roll,’ said Elaine. ‘You’ve got to keep your energy up. You didn’t eat your Protein Puffs this morning either.’

I took one bite. Tink leapt off my lap. She knew it was coming before I did. I vomited on the sea wall. A seagull promptly ate it while it was hot.

Monday, 9th July – 9 weeks, 1 day

1. Owner of the bulldog-with-the-ridiculous-bollocks walking along the seafront who laughed at Tink’s diamante collar and called her a ‘poof’ .

2. Dentists – but hey it’s FREE now I’m up the duff so screw you, Rapey Eyes Mike. That’ll be £300’s worth of porcelain fillings and be quick about it .

3. The editor of Take a Break magazine .

Living with Jim and Elaine has its downsides – Jim’s adenoidal symphony in the dead of night is one. Elaine’s obsessive dusting is another. Other things they do irritate me for no apparent reason, like the both-getting-out-of-the-car-to-put-petrol-in thing. I just don’t get it.

But the best thing about living with them is their garden. Me and Jim have bonded over our mutual love of all things green and wild. All I had at the flat were window boxes and container herbs, all of which have since died – but here there are large raised beds and espalier apple trees along the fencing, Japanese maple, flowering dogwood, large white roses that look like ladies’ blouses and smell like heaven, ice cream tulips, tiny bleeding hearts. I try to name as many as I can – dahlias, camellias, blood red rhododendrons, alliums, yuccas, nasturtiums, silvery catmint, Michaelmas daisies, deep blue larkspur. The little herb bed with lemon thyme and rosemary and soft sage leaves I can’t stop rubbing along my lips —

Dammit, didn’t Ophelia do that in Hamlet , list all these flowers? Told you I was going out of my mind.

For Jim the garden isn’t ever finished – he’s always deadheading or pruning or stroking a leaf like he’s injecting himself with medicine. He says he could never live anywhere but England because of our climate and our flowers, though he has expressed an interest in going somewhere called the ‘Carrizo Plain’ in California. He read about it in the Daily Mail .

‘The Superbloom,’ he said, his eyes all twinkly. ‘I’d love to see that. The desert comes alive with wildflowers – purples, pinks, yellows – only for a month or so and then it disappears. It comes when the desert’s experienced a lot of rain and it’s extraordinary. Oh the colours, Rhiannon!’

Jim’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who encourages weeds too. He allows the back of the garden to grow wild for the butterflies and his shed is covered in ivy. Jim says other gardeners hate ivy because they think it throttles growth but Jim says it’s terrific and ‘does so much good for the ecosystem, the birds and the insects’.

He loves all plants, good or bad, pretty or ugly. Even ones that stink or the spiky ones that catch flies.

‘Ivy’s a tenacious little thing too,’ he says. ‘No matter what you do, she grows back, climbs up, there’s no stopping her. There’s an old wives’ tale that if ivy’s grown on a house it can protect you from witches.’

Gonna need a shit load more ivy then, Jim.

*

Went to the dentist’s after lunch. There was an article about Craig in the Take a Break magazine – a centre page all about his fetish for gay chatrooms and gimp masks. None of it’s true but since when has that mattered? I got quite the jolt when I saw him, smiling on a beach in Cyprus. We’d had sex after we took that, as the sun was going down. I’d been cut out of the picture – his Facebook avatar – it was a joint selfie originally.

Jim says we shouldn’t talk to the press, despite the wedges they’ve offered. The Gazette had wanted an exclusive, being my old employers and all, but Jim said no. No interviews, no news coverage, nothing.

‘You’re not up to it, Rhiannon. I’m putting my foot down. We can’t have you stressed so early on in your pregnancy. Think of the baby.’

I am thinking of the baby but I can’t help thinking I’m missing out. This could be my moment. It could be Miracle of Priory Gardens: Reloaded . I could be on Up at the Crack again, eating croissants, sitting between that homeless cat who wrote a bestseller and the kid who got all those retweets for chicken nuggets. But instead I’m here. Doing nothing. Playing Best Supporting Actress – an award where nobody ever remembers the winners.

I did do one useful thing today though – updated AJ’s Facebook status. It’s the one of the few times Facebook’s good for something – when you’re stealing people’s holiday photos to create the illusion that someone is absolutely not dead and in several cling filmed pieces in the boot of my car. There have already been some comments underneath the post, one from Claudia.

Glad you’re having a great time. Bulgaria looks as beautiful as you said it would. Wouldn’t hurt to ring your aunty once in a while! Love you, C XX

Need to find somewhere to bury him soon.

Jim’s been in – the police are finished with their investigations at the flat so I can go and pick up the rest of my stuff. He says he will drive me – later, I said. Gonna sleep now.

Friday, 13th July – 9 weeks, 5 days

Elaine saw this flyer in the library for The Pudding Club – a weekly social where ‘new, expectant and seasoned mummies get together for a natter and a cuppa and cake in mum-friendly spaces’. She suggested I go along.

The words ‘natter’ and ‘cuppa’ make me want to tear off my eyelids.

I knew it would be a load of old clit but I went along for said ‘natter’ and ‘cuppa’ because according to Elaine ‘it isn’t healthy to be staying in all the time on your own’. She practically pushed me out of the door.

I met the group in a lilac and white tea shop off the seafront called Violet’s – the place to go in Monks Bay if you’re a) cake-oriented b) a mum and c) have several screaming children clinging to each limb.

The scene in the café was like a Muppet Babies homage to the Somme.

It was a wall of noise. Screaming. Squealing. Cupcake missiles. Tiny sandwich grenades. Mini roll IEDs. Babies wailing in adults’ arms or banging yoghurty spoons on high chair trays. One blonde toddler was full-body tantrumming on the carpet like she was in pain. I wanted to leave immediately.

The Pudding Club mummies were ensconced in a somewhat-quiet booth at the back. The leader of the gang was obviously Pinelopi or ‘Pin’ as she preferred – forty-eight, Greek and expecting her fifth. She’s got a PhD, drives a Jeep and is married to a guy called Clive who works in finance. Pin claims to have once shagged Prince Andrew but she says ‘it was years ago so he probably wouldn’t recall’. She presumably added this last bit in case one of us rang him to check.