In Bloom - C.J. Skuse

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– their friends, the Gazette, one of the PICSOs (my old ‘friends’, the people I couldn’t scrape off), some random school friends – and set them down on my nightstand so I can see them as I’m drifting back to sleep. Then Elaine will come in, take my temperature, set down a plate of chopped banana and dry crackers and take the flowers out because ‘plants sap all the oxygen out of the room’. I don’t know where they go after that.

      I managed one trip downstairs today to get a biscuit mid-afternoon. Saw a pile of business cards and scraps of paper on the dresser. Notes from reporters, asking for ‘my side of the story.’ My life with Craig Wilkins – the most vicious serial killer the West Country’s ever seen. We only want the truth.

      If only they knew the real truth. It should be my face on those front pages. My headlines. I did those things, not him. I want to stand on that doorstep and scream it: IT WAS ME. ME. ME. ME. FUCKING ME!

      But then another tsunami of nausea sweeps my way, crashing out every other thought in my head other than ‘Get to the toilet, quick.’

      Not today, Mummy. Back to bed.

      I’m throwing up water now. Elaine says it ‘must be something in the bottles’. She’s read how pregnant women drinking from plastic bottles can pass on abnormalities.

      ‘One baby in India came out with two heads and they said that was because of bottled water.’

      I don’t want to split my hoo-ha so I guess I’ll have to make the switch to filtered.

      Ugh.

      Double ugh. I opened the fridge to get some chilled water and screamed – on the bottom shelf was a dead baby tied up in a see-through bag. Turns out, Elaine had just bought a chicken for tea. Once seen, not forgotten.

      I crawled back upstairs and into bed like the girl out of The Grudge.

      My head is swimming and I can’t see the point of doing anything. Though one of the journalists on the doorstep did wink at me when I went out to bring the milk in. I must look like 180 pounds of shit in a ten-pound bag but still, it was a brief boost.

       1. Elaine – the way she loads the dishwasher is the stuff of nightmares. Okay so I’ve killed people but at least I don’t stack un-rinsed muesli bowls and leave them for days to dry out. It’s clean-dish SUICIDE.

       2. The woman in the Vauxhall Meriva who cut us up on the motorway.

       3. Yodel van drivers – they are out to kill us all.

      I feel a bit better today so I’ve decided to go back into work before they sack me. Jim says they can’t do that or there’ll ‘be hell to pay’. Elaine said it’s ‘far too early’ but I was adamant and she made me a packed lunch – a superfoods salad with fresh lettuce ‘not bagged because bagged salads have listeria in them.’ Jim drove me, even offering to linger in town all day before driving me home again. I don’t deserve them. And they don’t deserve me.

      As it turned out, Elaine was right. It was far too early. And I didn’t stay long. I made a huge, unplanned boo-boo.

      I’m dropped off outside the Gazette offices and there are two paps on the doorstep as I swipe my key card. They snap away like it’s about to fall off, asking questions about Priory Gardens and Craig. The new receptionist greets me on the front desk. She has an accent – Spanish or Geordie – and looks like the President’s wife – far too glam to be a greeter. I give her three months.

      I head into the main office. At first glance, everything’s the same. The same faces, same haircuts. Same plate of cakes on top of the filing cabinet. Same clink, tap, whir sounds and aromas of strong coffee and newsprint.

      Ugh, coffee. What used to be my heroin is now my abhorrence. Heil Foetus does not like coffee.

      I’m not a foetus yet. I’m still an embryo until next week. Mmm, doughnuts.

      That artless piss drip Linus is on the phone, leaning back in his chair, fingering his bald patch with his Mont Blanc. The subs are meerkatting at me over the tops of their monitors. Bollocky Bill’s eating a doorstep sandwich, the postman’s leaving with an empty sack, Johnny the photographer is getting his list of jobs from Paul. Claudia Gulper, AJ’s aunt, is on her phone, but affords me the briefest of glances.

       My daddy you mean. Auntie Claudia! Yoo hoo! She killed him, Auntie Claudie! You have to save me!

      Anyway, nothing has changed.

      Then I go to my desk.

      Some five-year-old bobble head in a short skirt and a blouse that looks like it’s been torn down from a care home window is sitting in my chair. My things have all vanished – my stapler with the sparkly Chihuahua stickers, my Sylvanian pencil case, the gonk on my monitor that AJ bought me, the coffee rings next to my Queen of Fucking Everything coaster. Even the coaster. The ‘Rhiannon’ label on my in-tray has been messily torn off and replaced with a clean one saying ‘Katie’.

      All eyes are on me but nobody says anything.

      The handle yanks down on Ron’s office door and out he struts –greasy-shiny, Cuban heels, trousers crotch-tight. ‘Sweetpea! How are you?’

      I don’t know how to answer. I’m struck dumb.

      ‘This is Katie Drucker, our new Editorial Manager. Katie’s been holding the fort while you’ve been away.’

      Katie stands up from my chair and smiles. I smell her breath before she opens her mouth. Marmite. Huge yellow teeth. In my mind, she is gaffer-taped to my chair and I’m pulling out those massive gnashers with the biggest pliers you’ve ever seen. ‘Hi, how are you?’

      ‘Fine thanks,’ I say.

      She glances at Ron who takes the proverbial ball and runs with it as fast as he can in his Cuban heels, specifically made for short-arses like him. ‘So how’s everything?’

      ‘Fine,’ I say again.

      ‘Did you get our flowers?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You poor thing, Rhiannon,’ says Katie Drucker, Patronising Fucker.

      ‘Do you want to pop in my office and have a quick chat?’ asks Ron.

      No, I’d like to pop into your office and see if your £500 shredder will accommodate more than five fingers at once.

      And don’t be fooled by the breezy tone and friendly-sounding ‘pop’ and ‘quick’. ‘Pop’ in particular is a caped crusader and ‘quick’ its evil Boy Wonder. This wasn’t going to be some brief, cosy chinwag – this was going to be a rip-your-head-off-and-shit-down-your-neck-conversation, beginning with ‘we have to boot your arse out the door’ but ‘how about a think piece on Craig before you do?’ as a drizzle of honey on the festering shit heap.

      Ron summons Claudia over because when you’re a boss who’s as powerful as a fart in a bag, you can’t face altercations on your own. She grabs a pad and sweeps over from her desk, affording me a bright smile on the way.

      ‘Hi Rhee, how are you, Sweetpea?’

      ‘I’m FINE,’ I say, louder, garnering two more meerkat subs to peer atop their monitors. And it’s then that time does a Matrixy thing. Katie’s phone pulses in her knock off Vuitton handbag beside my desk – old school

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