Sweetpea: The most unique and gripping thriller of 2017. C.J. Skuse

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СКАЧАТЬ the surface. Lowering them inch by excruciating inch into the burning liquid as their naked skin grew redder and redder and started peeling away from its flesh – Claudia’s face a picture of anguish; Ron sweating, crying, begging before his sweet release into death.

      Yeah, that’d do it. God I am BURNING to kill again. Burning. I can almost feel it beneath my skin.

      But at least I finally know what I mean to the team at the Gazette. Less than a coffee machine. Less than a clip frame. Less than a cock-sucking palm tree. The unfairness gnaws at me like a blade to a tin of corned beef.

      And here’s the cherry on it – there’s absolutely no chance of funding for the NCTJ either. Apparently, they ‘have had someone in mind for this for a while now’. Claudia said I ‘shouldn’t have got my hopes up’. After all, I am just the ‘editorial assistant’.

      So, yeah, I’m still just the Smegitorial Assface. And ever thus shall be.

      W.A.N.K.E.R.S

      It’s all wrong. It should be me with my own office, not Ron. It should be me treating other people like shit, not Claudia. I do most of the work. It should be my castle and each one of their fat heads should be on long spikes outside the front gates, so every morning I can look up at their slack-jawed faces and fucking laugh.

      AJ played it cool with me today. I think Claudia’s given him some lecture about focusing on work not women if he wants a good reference – he does spend a lot of time lingering by desks, shooting the breeze with people, talking about life in Australia and how ‘Christmas is always hot’ and how he goes ‘surfing a lot with his mates Podz and Dobbo’.

      I know how to play him. I know what’ll get him on my desk. I’m gonna play him like a didgeridoo.

      Went round to Mum and Dad’s to check on Madam after work. She’s been better, put it that way. I took out my bad day on her, which I probably shouldn’t have done because she played no part in it, but still. I left her in a heap on the floor. The place still stinks so I shoved in another round of PlugIns.

      I fancy some corned beef now I’ve mentioned it. Might nip over to Lidl.

Saturday, 3 February

       1. Celebrities who have one baby then release a book about having babies, as though they’re suddenly an expert

       2. Every agent in the UK who has rejected my novel The Alibi Clock

       3. All my friends

      Went over Mum and Dad’s again to make sure Julia was set up for two days – water, food, toilet access etc. She was giving me the silent treatment again but her body language was screaming guilt. Then I found it – a hole in the carpet. She’d started a tunnel under the bed. It was so sad it was almost funny – a tunnel to the second floor bathroom, which I kept locked on the outside. I said, again, that escape wasn’t an option and that I had someone watching her kids if she tried to leave or summon help. All she had to do was sit tight.

      It’s a nice area where we used to live, when I had such a thing as a family. A THANKFUL VILLAGE, the road sign says. Neighbours are few, every note of birdsong can be heard, front gardens are mown on a Sunday and Harvest Home posters go up on telegraph poles mid-June. I like it. Well, I like the silence. Especially the garden. Mum was obsessed with it – she used to say gardening kept her sane. I’ve always associated the sights and smells of a healthy garden with happiness. When I was a kid it was packed with colour and smell. The aroma of a different herb greeted you with every new gust of wind. Rosemary and oregano. Mint and curry plant. Lemon thyme and sage. Pale yellow daffodils as blonde as my sister popping up in the beds in spring. Then cornflowers, as blue as Joe’s eyes. The lavender in late summer was the same I’d put in the little pomander that Mum kept in her handbag. The trees were like Dad – strong and tall. The beds are all empty now but the trees remain.

      An odd anomaly was that even though the house was (ostensibly) uninhabited, the grass in both the front and back gardens was always neatly trimmed. This was courtesy of a neighbour, Henry Cripps, who had a ride-on mower and had come up to me at Dad’s funeral and said it was the ‘least he could do’.

      Henry’s old-fashioned. He was still passing through the Stone Age when Emily Davison was throwing herself under that horse. His late wife Dorothy had been the quintessential 1950s housewife. Cooking, cleaning, child-bearing. The arranger of flowers. The beater of rugs. Henry used to time Dorothy when she went shopping. Fairly sure she only had a stroke to get away from him.

      He could be nice. When I was a kid, he would let me climb over his fence to feed dandelions to his ancient tortoise, Timothy. And he’d keep newspapers back for mine and Seren’s rabbit and guinea pig ‘but not if they’re going to thump in their hutch all night’.

      I made myself a black coffee and sat out on a deckchair in the garden playing ball up the lawn with Tink.

      ‘I say,’ came a voice. A grey head appeared over the fence. Tink went ballistic up the trellis.

      ‘Hi, Henry, how are you?’ I asked him, quickly remembering the rules of engagement and struggling out of the deckchair. I picked up Tink but she continued to growl and snarl, full on toothily, just as she did with rogue pigeons on the balcony.

      ‘Hello, there, Rhee-ann-non [he always accentuates every syllable], lovely to see you again!’

      ‘You too, Henry.’

      Thankfully, Henry was the only neighbour around, but he was all the neighbour you needed. He’d lend you anything, knew all the local gossip and would water your plants or mow your lawn diligently when you were away. He also had the neatest garage ever. All the paint pots were labels out and alphabetically shelved, his tools hanging on the back wall with pencil lines drawn around them. His three classic cars were shone to perfection – one was kept in our garage as prearranged with Dad.

      I also noticed every one of his daffodils faced the same way. I think that’s what happens to people who have nothing else to think about – their mind has time to dwell on shit it doesn’t need to, like paint pots and daffodils.

      ‘I hope you don’t mind, Rhee-ann-non, but I had some geraniums left over so I’ve put a couple of beds in over there, just to start them off…’

      ‘No, that’s fine,’ I said, looking back to where he pointed.

      ‘. . . and some runner beans as well, up the end there. Did you want the car moving out of the garage yet? Only last time you were here you mentioned an estate agent coming to look round.’

      ‘No, I’ve taken it off the market, just for the time being.’

      ‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Why’s that?’

      Tink was pushing on my boob for attention like she had a right answer on Catchphrase so I put her on the ground where she chased after a woodlouse. ‘Just not the right agent. Thought we could get a better deal with someone else.’

      Then I had to hear about his latest piano investment – he had four of them now, which took up two reception rooms in the ground floor of his house. He used to invite me and Seren round to listen to them. The pianos played themselves. It was unusual and interesting for about the first minutes. After a while, we were both looking СКАЧАТЬ