Читать книгу Sweetpea: The most unique and gripping thriller of 2017 - C.J. Skuse, C. J. Skuse, C.J. Skuse - Страница 8

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s back to my shitty job I go. Actually, there is a dwarf where I work – he’s upstairs in the Accounts department. He’s the reason we had all our light switches moved to three feet above the ground. Madness.

Today went as all days at the Gazette go – long, coffee-stained and dull. The first half was me telling anyone who asked what a good Christmas I had and some dull-as-ditch tasks of inputting local schools’ thank-you letters to Santa, updating the website and making coffee in the new £5,000 (yes, that’s £5,000!) coffee machine. There were four new mugs in the staffroom – Christmas presents no one wanted at home but which everyone wants at work because they’re clean. I nabbed one with dinosaurs on and the words TEA-REX. Hardy har.

The usual New Year signs have gone up everywhere, unstained and laminated. Signs telling professional adults helpful things like IF YOU’RE LAST OUT OF AN EVENING, PLEASE TURN OFF ALL THE LIGHTS and PLEASE WASH YOUR OWN CROCKERY. The toilets are full of them: PLEASE ONLY FLUSH TOILET TISSUE DOWN THE TOILET. PLEASE REPLACE TOILET PAPER IF YOU USE THE LAST PIECE. PLEASE TURN OFF THE TAPS AFTER USE. There’s even one as you leave, saying, PLEASE LEAVE THESE FACILITIES AS YOU FIND THEM – THANK YOU.

I’d like to suggest some new signs for the office, specifically for my benefit and/or amusement:

PLEASE REMEMBER TO WIPE YOUR ASS AFTERWARDS FOR THE GOOD OF YOUR GUSSET.

PLEASE CLOSE ALL DOORS QUIETLY, STAY HOME IF YOU ARE SICK, OR AT LEAST TRY TO DIMINISH YOUR SNEEZES – NOISE-SENSITIVE PSYCHOPATH IN THE BUILDING.

PLEASE DO NOT WEAR CROCS TO WORK – THEY ARE AN INSULT TO FOOTWEAR (MIKE HEATH –T HIS MEANS YOU).

DON’T DRINK SO MUCH OF THE OFFICE MILK – MIKE HEATH THE MILK THIEF THIS MEANS YOU TOO, WHAT WITH YOUR DAILY OVERFLOWING BOWLS OF CEREAL AND SIX CAPPUCCINOS.

PLEASE DON’T EAT CHEESY NACHOS OR FRIED BREAKFASTS AT YOUR DESK – THE SMELL MAKES US ALL WANT TO VOM.

PLEASE DON’T TELL RHIANNON LEWIS WHAT YOU DID AT THE WEEKEND – SHE WAS ONLY BEING POLITE.

The Gulp Monster – aka, Claudia Gulper, our desk editor – is responsible for the signs. She puts pass ag labels on her food in the staff-room fridge with the same marker. I stayed late tonight to help her with her article on the mismanagement of power-station funds, which she hopes is going to win her some big journalism prize (it won’t). I asked her to look at my unsolicited article about the rise of drug-related crime and we talked about my theory that the ladies’ dress shop Paint the Town Red was the hub of distribution. I thought it could earn me some extra Brownie points.

More fool I.

I’d liked Claudia for about five minutes when I’d first started at the Gazette as a receptionist but, nowadays, she treats me like some kind of home help. She insisted on giving me endless boring ‘News in Brief’ snippets to type up or deaf Golden Wedding couples to interview, and once shouted at me in front of everyone for missing three semi-colons in the Fun Run results – not to mention a billion other reasons for me to want to jump through the fucking window. I long ago decided she was just a pubic louse on the vaginal wall of the cunt witch from Hell. I’m glad her third round of IVF failed and her husband left her. No spawn deserves that for a mother.

Craig was cooking when I got home (guilt food, obvs). Pasta from scratch with home-made pesto. Since I only had an apple and a black coffee for breakfast and just a salad for lunch, I allowed myself a troughing.

It’s safer to have than to have not, isn’t it? Even if the Have is crap. And if you’re not with someone, you get questions about it, All. The. Time. When you’re hooked up, that all stops. You feel embraced in the safety of having someone. And other people are contented because they don’t have to worry about setting you up on blind dates or going out in couples with a walking gooseberry bush.

What I should do is leave him. I should make him a dog-shit sandwich or cut all the crotches out of his Levis and hit the road. But it’s complicated. Craig worked for my dad and took over his building firm when he died. I like having that link. And it’s his flat and he pays most of the bills. And he puts up with all my kinks – my need to not have sudden, repetitive or loud noises, my need for quiet periods of time alone and for no one to touch my doll’s house. What other guy would put up with me?

Regarding the sex, there were ‘mixed reviews’.

When it’s good, it’s OK. No intense orgasms but nothing to complain about. And when it’s bad it’s brief. He comes, he goes to sleep. We’ve tried kinky stuff (he’s worn my knickers, gone down on me on a night bus, and I keep nakes of him in my phone) and sometimes if we’re at his mum and dad’s and they’re asleep in front of Antiques Roadshow, we’ll creep upstairs and do it on their bed. Then it’s not bad at all because there’s an element of risk, I suppose. But his general repertoire in the sack had become as predictable as EastEnders. I know where his tongue’s going next, when he wants me on top, how many thrusts it’s going to take. It’s all become a bit yadda yadda. I’ve tried introducing different positions to the event but, you try turning tricks like Simone Biles when you’ve only got an average of four minutes thirty-seven seconds to do it in.

I once mooted dogging as a possibility. He thought I was joking.

‘What are you, a pervert or something?’

Why’s everything so complex? Half the time, I admit, I crave normality, domesticity: a family, other heartbeats around, a comfy sofa of an evening and little pots of floral happiness growing silently on the balcony. The other half of the time, I want nothing more than to kill. To watch.

This sort of tallied with my BuzzFeed results.

Do you rarely connect on an emotional level with other people?

No, of course I don’t. I never meet anyone on my emotional level. A part of me wants to know what love feels like again. I know I must have felt it once. I wonder if it’s the same feeling I get when I take a life; when all your nerve endings feel like they’re reanimating. The thinking about it all the time at work. The craving to do it again and barely managing not to. I keep replaying the night of Canal Man in my head – the parting of the skin as the knife sliced through his penis. Him struggling beneath my hands. The trickling blood. Him beating at my head with his fists. Cutting through the layers – skin to flesh to muscle. Standing on the bridge, waiting for the water to calm and for his body to upend and float. The anxious gnawing in my chest has diminished.

Was that what love was? Did I ‘love’ to kill? I don’t know. All I do know is that I want to do it again. And, next time, I want it to last longer.

Our kleptomaniac neighbour Mrs Whittaker knocked on our door at 9.30 p.m., back from visiting her sister in Maidstone. She asked if we needed her to look after Tink tomorrow. Craig told her that he was only working a half-day so he could take her with him. I stayed on the sofa, pretending to be asleep but I saw her through a crack in the cushion, scanning the living room from the doorway, probably eager to get further inside and nick more of our decorative pebbles or an unguarded stapler. She’s in the first flush of Alzheimer’s so it’s not as though we can complain.

Drove over to Mum and Dad’s house around 8 p.m., under the guise of ‘seeing the PICSOs for a drink’. Julia wasn’t happy to see me. I only left two of the three chocolate treats I’d intended to leave from my selection box – a Drifter and a Crunchie. The state the room was in, she definitely didn’t deserve the Revels.

I’m so looking forward to killing her.

Ventured a look at the scales before bed – I’ve put on five pounds over Christmas and today’s starvation has done nothing. I am so having a bagel for breakfast.