In Bloom. C.J. Skuse

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 Britney. The main door opens and in strides that malodorous slunt Lana Rowntree. Tight grey skirt, chunky platforms but less of a swish to her blonde hair than usual. The woman who shagged my man and sent me off down this road in the first place. A human satnav of hideous betrayal. Her head is down. My throat aches.

      It’s all. Her. Fault.

      That’s my only thought as I watch her dish out papers and glide through the office towards the sales department, like nothing happened. Like her life hasn’t changed one bit. She doesn’t notice me.

      Doesn’t see me coming.

      The ache in my throat burns as I move closer to her, closer, closer –

      I’m.

      Not.

      That.

      Innocent.

      I’m reaching out, grabbing a fistful of blonde, pulling it backwards. A waft of Herbal Essences flies past my face as she goes down. I don’t hear what I say. I don’t know who pulls me off her. I’m pounding her face. Over and over.

      Oops, I did it again.

      And the next thing I know, Jim is buckling my seatbelt and the engine’s running and his and Ron’s voices carry through the crack in the passenger window. Hormones. Just needs some time. Knew it was too soon. Cameras click. Someone calls my name. Look up for me, Sweetpea.

      And I’m sitting there, picking flakes of her blood from my knuckles.

Friday, 6th July – 8 weeks, 5 days

       1. People who tap dance – more unnecessary noise.

       2. People who present any TV programme before 6 p.m.

       3. Any of those design programmes about people who take a nice little abandoned barn and turn it into a soulless, four-storey gym with diamond encrusted swimming pool and a remote-control garden etc. Ugh.

      Jim’s on the phone to Ron now – Lana isn’t pressing charges. I listened through the bannisters. He’ll come up in a minute and tell me what was said, he’s that kinda guy. I’ve already heard what I needed, I’m that kinda gal.

      *

      I made the front page! Gripper Killer Girlfriend in Office Brawl. Jim has been trying to keep me away from the news but we walked into town earlier and stopped outside the newsagent so Elaine could go in and get her Woman’s Own. There was a stand of papers outside.

      ‘Come on,’ said Jim, taking my arm, leading me towards the seafront.

      I’m actually better at handling the attention than either of them gives me credit for, but of course I have to pretend it affects me deeply. It blew up the week I moved in. The angle then was PRIORY GARDENS SURVIVOR IS SICK KILLER’S GIRL. Elaine has banned all news bulletins from the house – she doesn’t want to know. Jim craves news so he has to buy his daily paper and read it in a café on the seafront to get his fix. I saw him once. The headline on his paper was THROW AWAY THE KEY: WILKINS’ SICK AND DEPRAVED ACTS SHOCK NATION and there was a picture of Craig being led from a police van, grey blanket over his head.

      I preferred that one to

      GRIPPER’S GIRL IS CRECHE ATTACK SURVIVOR… and she’s UP THE DUFF! One paper is calling him this year’s ‘Hot Felon’.

      Photographers were outside the house most mornings, snapping away like a pack of North Face-clad alligators.

      ‘Oi, Priory Gardens!’

      ‘Oi, love, gissa quote, gissa smile!’

      ‘Hey Rhiannon, have you seen Craig Wilkins yet?’

      ‘Where are the other bodies, Rhiannon? Did he tell you?’

      ‘How’s he doing in prison?’

      ‘Did you know, Rhiannon?’

      ‘Did you help him?’

      ‘Wossit like living with a monster, Rhi Rhi?’

      That winky journalist is usually there in the throng and I noticed this morning his lanyard says the Plymouth Star. He has black hair, a square jaw and his smile is knicker-wettingly blinding. If I met him in a bar he’d be paying me child support.

      Some fucker should.

      ‘How are you, Rhiannon?’ he asked me.

      ‘I just want to get on with my life, thanks,’ I say, opening and closing the door once I’ve brought the milk in, flashing him some unsolicited leg through the dressing gown, as is my wont.

      ‘Is it true you and Craig were engaged?’ I hear as I flick the chain on.

      On the days, I’m feeling up to it, I don my Victoria Beckham sunglasses, sweep my hair to one side, prepare my downcast face (not difficult – I look like a ghost most days thanks to the vom) and sashay through the melee throwing out breadcrumbs like ‘I’m fine thanks’ and ‘I knew nothing’.

      I’m just giving them what they want – they see what they want to see. Not looking past what’s already been decreed – that Craig Wilkins, my boyfriend, did knowingly and wilfully murder three people in cold blood and masturbate over their corpses. That moi – Rhiannon Lewis – she of that terrible crèche massacre at Priory Gardens all those years ago, is just the naive girlfriend. Remember when they brought her out of that house, wrapped in blood-soaked Peter Rabbit blankets? How can one girl get so unlucky twice in one lifetime? It’s too tragic.

      When they can’t get a comment from you, they shove notes through the letterbox instead. Business cards, scrawled scraps of paper, all asking for me