So. That was it. Eighteen years of age and shacked up with the man of my dreams. Life did not get much better than that, even if I said so myself. I held my head up high now in public; there was a spring, summer and every season imaginable in my step these days. I’d got what I’d always wanted. Shirley Burke was livin’ the dream!
Of course, you couldn’t please all of the people all of the time.
Needless to say, Mam wasn’t exactly over the moon that a married man had left his wife and moved in with me. She came round to see me, so she could, in her words, ‘see it with my own eyes’.
‘I didn’t know you had it in you, Shirley.’
‘She’s had it in her for ages, Mam,’ said Josie, who was just leaving. Mam ignored her as her tone was smutty, to say the least. Even I had to agree with that, and I wasn’t a big fan of smut. Doug was. But not me. Anyway, I just kept schtum.
As the front door banged shut Mam came into my living room and, checking the coast was clear, started unbuttoning her coat and making herself cosy on the settee. I say cosy; she always perched there as if the slightest disagreeable thing could make her scarper for the doorway. And she never actually took her coat off anywhere other than in her own home or her own place of work. It always gave the impression that she wasn’t stopping long because you weren’t that interesting, and there were far more important things to be getting on with elsewhere. But she’d sensed Doug wasn’t here so could at least perch for five minutes without her younger daughter’s sexuality being forced in her face.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mam?’
She shook her head. ‘Me duodenal’s playing up. I can’t keep anything down.’
‘Right.’
The window in the bedroom was open and a gust of wind through it made one of the doors slam shut. Mam suddenly looked alarmed and clutched the arm of the settee as if she was about to be hurtled out of it.
‘What was that?!’
‘Bedroom door, I think.’
‘He’s not here, is he?!’
‘If you mean Doug . . .’
‘Well, I don’t know what his name is!’
‘Then no, he’s not. He’s at work. He’s got a very good job.’
‘And dubious morals. What is the world coming to? What is Oldham coming to?!’
‘I don’t know, Mam.’
‘Nobody knows. And yet there you are. One of the main perpetrators!’
‘Perpetrators of what?!’
She sighed. I don’t think she knew herself.
‘I knew kids were sent to test you, but you and our Josie, you’ve taken it to the max.’
I let that one settle, saying nowt. Just leaving her to her thoughts and words. It wasn’t like she was looking for any explanations or answers. She had just come here to be dramatic, and to make me suffer in some way.
‘To the max,’ she said again, shaking her head.
I still said nowt. Let her witter. Wittering’s what she did best. That’s what she’d obviously come here to do as well as all the other things.
‘Her having a baby out of wedlock. RUINING her chances on the beauty circuit. Unless they come up with Miss Pregnancy 1980, which I might add is highly unlikely.’
All right, Mam, we do know.
‘And now you. You who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Suddenly finds yourself box and cox with a married man! What’s his wife had to say about all this?’
I lied, of course. ‘She’s dead happy for us.’
That threw her. ‘Is she a simpleton?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Then I do believe you’re telling me porkies, young lady. I bet she’s livid. Her fella . . . leaving her . . . for someone who’s practically . . . a SCHOOL GIRL!’
‘I’m at secretarial college, Mother. I’m doing two days a week placement in a proper workplace. You’d know all this if you ever bothered to ask.’
She couldn’t look at me. ‘You’re a child. And he must be mucky.’
‘Well if you don’t like it, disown me. Like you disowned our Josie. See if I care.’
After that she didn’t have much to say to me.
I got up and made her a cup of tea anyway. Well, it’s just what you did at times like this, wasn’t it? It was as if somebody had died and it was a shock and nobody knew what to say. So you took to your displacement activities: tea making, bedroom tidying, hoovering. I handed her the cup of tea but she just continued staring at the carpet. I pulled up an occasional table and put it next to her.
‘Just in case you change your mind.’
‘His poor wife,’ she repeated. Then she jolted upright. ‘I don’t know her, do I?’
I shook my head. She looked relieved.
‘Are you gonna disown me or what?’
And she didn’t reply. She stood quickly, buttoning her coat up again.
‘I only came out to get some scrag-end for your dad’s tea.’
‘Does he know about this?’
‘Does he heck as like! D’you want to drive him into an early grave with a heart attack or a . . . a cardiac arrest or . . . or a coronary? Or something similar? Coz that’s what’ll happen, lady. You mark my words. And when we’re standing at his graveside don’t be upset when I say, “I told you so”.’
‘Okay. I just wondered.’
‘Well, you know what wondering did.’
I didn’t, but I knew better than to ask.
‘Isn’t a cardiac arrest the same as a coronary?’
‘Don’t get clever with me, lady.’
There was a lull in the conversation. Well, to be more honest there was a lull in her moaning on, so I just let the silence hang there.
‘I brought this all on meself,’ she said, right quiet.
‘How d’you mean, Mam?’
‘I’ve been here before.’
She stood up and went over to the window.
‘How d’you mean?’
But she didn’t answer.
‘Mam? How d’you mean, you’ve been here before? To this flat? Your kids letting you down? What?’
‘These flats.’
‘Right.’
Well, she’d lived in the area most of her life, so I didn’t see what was so interesting about that. She took a swig of her tea, then I saw her rubbing her neck slowly with the hand that weren’t holding the cup.
‘January the twenty-eighth. Nineteen fifty-four.’
‘Were these flats built then? I fancied they were newer than that.’
‘Go and find Nelly in flat fourteen, they said. This was before I met your dad.’
The way she was speaking. It was so weird. She was speaking with a tone I’d never heard before. All quiet and on the one level. Like she was in some sort of trance.
‘Nelly’ll look after you, they said. She’ll know someone who can help.’
‘What you on about?’
‘Nelly said I had to take these pills. She got them for me. She said if I took them and they didn’t work, I’d to come back and she knew someone who’d be able to help me. So I went away and I took them. Only nothing happened. So a few days later I came back.’
‘Pills for what?’
‘Of course she didn’t really know anyone else who could help. It was her all the way.’
And somehow I knew. In that second. I knew.
She’d been pregnant.
She’d been having a baby.
And she’d come here to get rid of it.
‘Were you pregnant, Mam?’
‘She told me to get a household syringe from the ironmonger’s. She’d provide the rest.’
‘Mam?’
‘This wasn’t her flat, though, where we went. Number fourteen. She was keeping an eye on it for someone. Don’t know who. Didn’t care then, don’t care now. Coz of course she couldn’t take me to her real place. In case I told the police. I was so scared. Scared of my mam finding out. Work. I had nothing.’
‘Who was the dad?’
‘Well, he wasn’t yours, Shirley. Don’t go thinking that. She had antiseptic. Hot water. Big bar of soap. And she stuck the needle inside me. And it was like the whole world fell out of me. In the end I had to put bandages in my knickers and go home and call for Doctor Elgin. Who of course had to send me to hospital, so the world and his wife found out. Which is what I didn’t want. Thirty-six hours I was vomiting for, on and off. And the blood. Near killed me.’
‘But you’re glad you did it?’
Mam doesn’t say anything. Just takes a sip of her tea and watches something out in the street. I hear a car quietly revving up and driving off.
I was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of anger.
I almost felt sorry for her.
She had the brass neck to sit there and tell me something so sad and traumatic.
And yet what did she want our Josie to do?
Have a flaming abortion!
I was going to give her a piece of my mind.
I was going to give her what for.
I was going to berate her for her hypocrisy.
But in the end I couldn’t be arsed.
‘I’m going for a bath,’ I said.
She didn’t even look round.
And so I did. I went for a bath.
Few minutes later I heard her leaving.
I ended up drinking the rest of her tea, cold. I didn’t really mind cold tea.
Living with Doug was actually quite nice. I’d sometimes thought it was idealistic, unrealistic of me to think that living together would be swell. When the only time you got to see your beloved was a few hours each morning it was easy to think that full-time living together would be ideal, when actually the reality might be that you’d both end up hating each other. So I was quite prepared to grow tired of Doug when he moved in with me.
But actually we dovetailed quite nicely in the scheme of things. We stopped having sex in the mornings and started doing it at night-time instead. That was a novelty. And I enjoyed being a good old-fashioned housewife, making meals and cleaning round, making myself nice. He appreciated it and I appreciated his gratitude. It was win-win, really.
And Vera, amazingly, left him alone. I thought she’d be kicking the grate in every night or ringing in the early hours crying that she had a mouse in her kitchen or something. She struck me as that type. But no. She kept well away. I even grew a grudging respect for her, if I’m honest. I’d won and she’d conceded defeat. Fair play to her. Maybe she wasn’t as stupid as she looked.
The only downside for Doug, I could tell, was his separation from the kids. Any fool could see it was playing on his mind. But what could I do to put that right?
Oh, I knew! I knew all right.
‘Well, we’ll have a kid then,’ I said one night, as we were watching Blankety Blank together.
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘You can’t see your kids so you have another one to make up for it.’
‘Don’t see why not.’
‘Behave, Shirl.’
I sometimes didn’t like that. The way he affected superiority and made out he was brainier than me. Even though I was, in his eyes, just a girl, I knew I wasn’t stupid. And I knew a little kiddie would be just what the doctor ordered. I knew that he’d take one look at a wee baby and he’d melt. There and then. Into a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. He’d told me so many times about how overcome he was when each of his kiddies were born, about how he’d almost fainted with excitement at the maternity hospital. I knew. I just knew a baby would make him happy.
‘Don’t you be taking your cap out, now,’ he said, next time we had sex.
‘As if!’ I guffawed, the cheeky tyke!
But truth be told I’d not put it in for ages. I knew. I knew if we had a little baby together, everything would be perfect. And then Vera, conspicuous by her absence or not, would have no hold over what we had together now. The problem was I’d not got pregnant. Bar making Doug have his sexy ways with me while I was doing a handstand, I’d tried everything. But like the magazines said. It’d only be a matter of time.
And any road. I had the small matter of getting ready to be an aunty to busy myself with.
It was fair to say that our Josie didn’t take to pregnancy like a duck to water. She resented the fact that she couldn’t get bladdered any more and . . . well, that was it really: she resented the fact she couldn’t get bladdered any more. She missed going out and getting on it. She missed boogying the night away up Handbags on the Chadderton Road. She missed knocking the ale back and snogging blokes and swapping lipsticks in the ladies’, then getting chips on the way home and being sick in the gutter. She missed scrapping with other girls in the queue for the night bus. It was stuff like that that made her tick. Like a pigging clock. She felt, in her words, that she’d got . . . boring.
‘But you’ve got to get boring sooner or later, Josie, or t’baby’ll end up a bit . . .’
‘Mongified? I know.’
‘No. Well . . .’
I didn’t like words like that. There was a girl on our course whose sister had disabilities and the way she went on about them, it really made you think.
I looked around my small familiar kitchen and tried to change the subject and brighten the mood.
‘Have you thought of any names yet?’
‘Oh yeah,’ our Josie said, taking a swig of a glass of squash, ‘I’m gonna call it Parasite.’
‘Don’t say that, Josie.’
‘Why? That’s how it feels. Eating away at me, it is. And d’you know the worst thing?’
‘What?’
I wondered what it could be. I’d have said thinking your baby was a parasite that was eating away at you was a pretty lousy thing.
‘It’s made him fancy me even more.’
‘Bob Carolgees?’
‘Mm.’ She didn’t sound impressed. ‘He does me head in, Shirl. He can’t do enough for me. Opening doors, telling me how much he loves me. I can’t remember the last brew I made; he’s always getting to the kettle before me and going, “What would you like, my precious?” And I’m like, “Fucking hell, man. Tea. What d’you think? It’s not like I can neck an absinthe.” And he thinks I’m joking and goes, “Mood swings, hormones all over the place. Isn’t pregnancy great?” And I’m like, “Do one, Tonto.” God, he gets on me tits.’
‘Well, at least he’s attentive.’
‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? That blokes’d go off women who had puffy ankles and bad backs and mood swings. But no. You’re spreading their genes, aren’t you? And I don’t mean Gloria Vanderbilts!’ She had a right laugh at that.
‘You what?’
‘Gloria Vanderbilts.’
‘I don’t know who she is.’
‘It’s a type of jeans.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘It’s dead funny. By rights you should be pissing yourself.’
‘Oh, right.’ And then I did a really loud, sarcastic laugh.
Which she was completely unimpressed by.
We carried on eating in silence, but there was one thought I couldn’t get out of my head. I’d had it before but it was becoming more tangible now. I could. I could reach out and touch it.
If I couldn’t have a baby. Maybe I could have hers. She really didn’t seem to want this Parasite. Whereas if I had this Parasite, maybe I could pass it off as mine and Doug’s.
I mean, Josie’d be in on the secret. She could tell Mam and Bob Carolgees, and anyone who wanted to listen, for that matter, that she’d lost the baby. And if I’d done enough preparation, I could then say I’d had an early labour and – HEY PRESTO! – look! A little baby boy or girl of my own.
Well, mine and Doug’s own.
But would Josie buy it?
There was only one way to find out.
Josie was still working up Barnes Wallis so I decided to head there one night after secretarial college. She’d taken up residency on a hardbacked chair near the Snacketeria and was prone to shouting out like a lazy lifeguard at a municipal pool, ‘OI! GET BACK ON YOUR OWN TRAMPOLINE, FATSO! I SAW THAT!’ And: ‘AN ORDERLY QUEUE AT THE SNACKETERIA, PLEASE! JESUS!’And then there was: ‘GLASSES OFF, FOUR EYES! CHRIST ON A BIKE!’
I could see she was in a grumpy mood, so thought I’d better butter her up, bit like the jacket potatoes on sale in the Snacketeria.
I knew the way to this woman’s heart was always going to be through her stomach. So I offered to take her to the Wimpy bar when she clocked off. She clocked off immediately, the greedy cow.
We both ordered hamburgers and tucked in with gusto. I could see her visibly relax. So I struck while my iron was hot.
‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘Oh aye?’
She knew I was fishing for something. I could tell.
‘You don’t really want this baby, do you?’
She shrugged.
‘And I’d love one.’
‘Would you?’ She looked and sounded surprised.
‘Yeah. So I got to thinking. And I know you’ll think I’m daft, so hear me out. But when you have the baby. You could . . . like . . . give it to me.’
‘You said this before once, but I thought you were joking.’
‘Well, I probably was. But I’m not now.’
‘Why the fuck would you want a baby, Shirl?’
‘Coz it’d round everything off dead nicely. Now that Doug’s with me and . . .’
‘You want a baby?’
‘Well, we’ve been trying. Well, I have. And it’s not really been working so . . .’
‘You want a pigging baby, Shirl?’
‘Yeah. I was just thinking of something that might suit us both, really.’
She stared at her hamburger. Then took another bite.
‘What d’you reckon?’ I said, floundering a bit now.
‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘Do you want this baby, Josie?’
She hesitated.
‘You should know.’
‘Sometimes I do. And . . . and sometimes I wonder if I’m just having it to spite Mam. Coz she’s so dead set against it. But mostly . . . mostly I think I do.’
‘Right.’
Well, that was news to me. First I’d heard of it and all that.
‘Well then, that’s good. That’s good that you know. I thought you didn’t, you see.’
‘You know I didn’t plan for it, Shirl. But when I’m lying there of a night, and I can’t sleep. And he’s . . . snoring away beside me. It’s just me and the baby. And it feels good, Shirl. It feels right. And I can’t get rid of that.’
‘No, of course. Forget I ever said anything.’
I was embarrassed now. Talk about making a show of yourself.
‘You’ll get pregnant, Shirley. You’ll have your own baby. You’ll just have to give it time.’
‘I guess so.’
‘I know so.’
And that, it would appear, was that. We quickly changed the conversation and enjoyed our burgers as if we were two normal sisters out for the evening. Not sisters where one had asked to have the other one’s baby. The more I thought about it as we ate and chatted, the more bizarre my request appeared to have been. What had I been thinking? No wonder she’d said no.
It was me going to Muriel’s funeral all over again. Bloody madness!
I’d have to find another way to round off our family nicely.
And I was sure I would.
One night I had a dream that I was in the square outside the flats and Vera turned up in her car. She didn’t see me as I was hiding behind a motorbike, observing. She went up to the door of the flats and rang the buzzer to mine. Only no-one came to see her. She stepped back and shouted up to the window.
‘Doug? Douglas?!’
She wanted him back. And I had to stop her.
She was wearing a gypsy skirt and a denim jacket. She’d dyed her hair bright orange as well, though it didn’t strike me as odd, this being a dream. And for some reason, instead of a handbag, she was clutching a bright green plastic watering can that dripped water every time she moved.
How was I going to stop her?
Stupidly, but handily for me, she had left the engine of her car running so I darted forwards and jumped into the driver’s seat. Despite in real life not being able to drive, I put my foot down and drove straight at her. I was so quick she didn’t even have time to turn round to see me approaching. I flattened her. It was most satisfying. I then reversed the car back and parked it before getting out and looking about. Nobody had seen. Vera lay dead in the path up to my entrance, but nobody had seen. Her gypsy skirt had skid marks all up it, and the watering can had exploded into a thousand tiny pieces, so that she was now lying not in a pool of blood but a pool of water.
Without giving it a second thought, the way you do in dreams, I opened the main door and then dragged her by the armpits up to my flat. She was surprisingly light and left only a few watery stains on the stairs. Once in the flat I decided the best place to hide her was under the bed. I stuck a Glade air freshener under there with her, in case she went off and started to smell. Like fish.
Doug came home and I made a nice smelly tea, to try to smell the flat out. It was a spicy curry, something I wasn’t that keen on and Doug was surprised I’d made it, but at least it covered up the smell of the rotting corpse. Next we knew his kids had turned up saying their mam hadn’t come back from the hairdresser’s. What a to-do and a hoo-ha! Next the police called round saying Vera hadn’t been seen for ages and rumour was she’d been murdered. They looked all over the flat. Just as they were about to delve under the bed . . .
I woke up.
The dream stayed with me all of the next day. I felt a flush of revulsion and shame every time I thought about it. But then the next day every time I thought about it, it actually made me chuckle a bit. The shame and revulsion were clearly wearing off, and what I was left with was a sense of intrigue. A string of . . . what ifs?
What if this actually happened?
What if I did actually kill her?
No. This was madness, surely. Utter tosh. Come on, Shirl, get a grip! You weren’t bonkers, lass. You just had an overactive imagination.
A lot of geniuses did!
I mean. I wasn’t going to. Of course I wasn’t going to.
I was no murderer.
This was a kind of game I was playing with myself. A game of dare, if you like. Dare to imagine the unimaginable. Dare to think the unthinkable.
What if I did actually kill Vera? What would happen then?
Well, you’d go to prison, I’d argue with myself.
Not if you didn’t get caught, I’d over-rule.
But you’d never get away with it, I told myself.
You might, if you were clever enough, I’d argue.
I really was in a daze thinking about it.
But d’you wanna know something? I liked this game.
The biggest problem was . . . and I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining this. But it was only make-believe, it was only pretend. The biggest problem was that if I murdered Vera, then them kiddies’d have to come and live with Doug. And did I really want that?
No, I flaming well did not.
Or worse. I’d have to go and live with Doug and the kids in the smart little street. And then Gwen next door would recognize me as the Pretty Lady and it’d all come out about how I’d written the poison-pen letters. And then one thing might lead to another and then folk’d be thinking that I’d bumped Vera off. And I had. Oh, it was all too ghastly for words, really.
I got back to my typing.
But then my mind would creep back.
If I was going to kill her, how would I do it? What was the foolproof way of bumping someone off and not being caught? How did you actually get away with murder?
These fantasies made me feel all warm inside.
But that’s all they were. Fantasies.
Running her over was good. But I’d be seen or heard by someone, surely.
Mind you, I could steal someone else’s car and wear some sort of disguise. All it would take would be for me to follow her for a week or two, work out her regular movements. Take it from there. See if there was anywhere she went regularly that was particularly remote, somewhere where the harsh squeal of brakes as I accelerated towards her wouldn’t be heard.
And then I remembered that I couldn’t drive.
Maybe I could take lessons. Pass my test.
I’d only need a few lessons. Under a false name. I just had to master the basics; I didn’t need to know how to do reverse parking or a three-point turn if all I had to do was plough into a Barbara from The Good Life lookalike.
Having these fantasies stopped me feeling scared about losing Doug. So there was no harm in them, eh?
Maybe I could go to her house, again in disguise, and present myself as a Pretty Lady.
But that wasn’t going to work. No way. She’d recognize me instantly and never let me over the threshold. Also, she might’ve got gobby on the doorstep, shouting the odds again, and the last thing I needed if I was going to bump her off was for people to know I’d been to her house, been seen with her. That wouldn’t do at all.
Well, at least I knew I had to – publicly, at least – keep my distance.
See? Thinking like this stopped me fretting about him.
But it was hard to be distant when you were trying to kill someone, I told myself. I would have to get up close and personal with her if I was to end her life. And thereby lay the conundrum. I had to make sure I was never ever linked to her, so that no-one would say, ‘Oh I bet she did it. That Shirley. I saw her with her not so long ago.’ Et cetera.
Was it possible to commit murder remotely?
Maybe, if I could work out how to make a letter bomb.
But then she might not pick up the post. She might’ve got one of the kids to do it and I didn’t want to off any of them, I just wanted to get Vera.
Blimey. Did I really hate her that much?
I realized I was getting a bit carried away with this.
I didn’t really want to kill her.
Did I?
And yet the fantasies were more and more comforting. I found them compelling and challenging in a good way, whereas you’d think I’d be unnerved by them, shocked at myself.
No way, José.
I needed some inspiration. I needed advice from someone who’d never ever blab. I needed to feel less alone with my madness.
I took myself to the library. Not my library. I wore my disguise and told them I was a budding crime writer and did they have anything that could tell me how to commit the perfect murder and get away with it. Ooh those librarians, they loved a challenge. After a bit of heave ho-ing and fingering through various shelves, one of them returned and smiled.
‘Miss Dubois! You’re in luck. I’ve found just the thing.’
She guided me to a little table in the corner of the library where she’d found a book called So! You Wanna Be a Crime Writer?! by Jessamy Brookes.
What a glamorous name that was. Jessamy Brookes.
And within its pages were untold treasures about what to think about when penning a novel that would hit the shelves and the bestsellers lists and make you into the next . . . well . . . whoever the big crime writers were.
Chapter five was called ‘How to Get Away with Murder’.
I took a notepad from my bag and got scribbling. Scribbling would continue the game, stop me angsting over Douglas.
Gosh, there was so much advice. The library building was like a sixties glass cube and I kept expecting passers-by on the street outside to stop and peer in and just KNOW what I was up to.
I made notes such as Clear up after yourself. Oxygenated bleach is best.
As if a murderer would leave the place filthy.
Another bit of advice was Pick someone at random.
Well, I didn’t write that down. I already had my victim, thank you very much. Though I liked the word random. I needed, I felt, to make the killing look random.
There was a section called ‘Proximity’. It told me: Don’t be on the road for hours as you might get tired and unfocused.
I wrote that down. Not sure why.
Commit the crime in another town.
I liked this idea. If Vera was somewhere else for a while I could have killed her there and then not be linked to her. If she was murdered in Blackpool, what links had I there?
But then I read the next piece of advice.
Get yourself an alibi.
Now there was a problem. I would need Doug to be my alibi. But if I was out murdering his wife, he’d know I wasn’t there.
Unless I decided to do it late at night and he was sleeping.
But sometimes he was such a light sleeper.
Oh yes.
Oh yes.
I would drug him.
But what with?
I had no drugs.
I might get some.
I’d have to get some.
I could go and visit my doctor and say I was having trouble sleeping and could I have some sleeping pills. I’d never take them and then crush them into his late-night snack so that he was out like a light and wouldn’t hear me leaving the flat.
Now that was a genius idea. Even if I said so myself.
So there was my alibi. Excellent.
Don’t be in the area when the police investigations begin.
Hmm. Difficult one. Because if I killed her at home I would sort of be in the area as she only lived three miles away.
Maybe Jessamy meant just not to be in the immediate area. Like, hanging round Vera’s front garden watching the police get to work. That would look suspicious.
Then there was a list of ‘Types of Murder’.
All the obvious ones were there: shooting, strangulation, stabbing, poison.
But then she’d put another on the list.
Crucifixion.
CRUCIFIXION!
I couldn’t quite get my head round this. I pictured myself constructing a crucifix in Vera’s back garden, then trying to coax her onto it. I couldn’t see that happening for some reason.
But still. Blimey. Crucifixion. You certainly couldn’t accuse this Jessamy of not trying to cover all bases.
Under the header ‘Don’t Get Caught’ was a list of really obvious things like – yet again – Clean up after yourself and Don’t leave any evidence.
Actually, this Jessamy was starting to get on my nerves. I could have written this bloody book, so much of it was so obvious.
But then maybe not every reader had murdering tendencies like me.
I looked at the photo of her on the back cover flap. All soft focus, not unlike a hazier version of the wife in Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em.
Jessamy Brookes is the internationally renowned bestselling author of eighteen crime novels as part of her Lucy Lovering Investigates series, famously adapted for TV, starring Joan Van Ark. A graduate of Harvard, Jessamy now lives in Minnesota with her five cats and twins Jesteban and Jester, on a farm where, she says, ‘You could bury one helluva lot of bodies!’
What an annoying cow. I flicked back to the inside of the book and a section called ‘Timing Is All’, which told me to commit the murder in the early hours and not to look out of place wherever I was doing it. This was accompanied by a cartoon of a clown walking through an empty street. I was beginning to feel ever so slightly patronized now. Jessamy added: Most people are asleep in the early hours of the morning.
You don’t say, Jess!
Maybe I’d picked the wrong victim. Maybe I needed to be boarding a Freddie Laker and getting over to Minnesota with my strangling mitts on.
No. That wasn’t part of the game.
Then, in a section called ‘Top Tips’, there was some better advice. To pay for any tools for the job with cash so you couldn’t be traced, to destroy any receipts or plastic bags used in the purchase of said tools. To always wear rubber gloves, and to plan and purchase everything a good month in advance of the killing.
Getting better, Jessamy love. Think you just saved yourself from the noose, honey!
The final piece of advice, after several pages of flicking, was to avoid watching TV or reading the papers for a good month after the killing. Jessamy reckoned the police used this time and the media to psych the killer out. This too made complete sense. One should go about one’s daily business as if nothing had happened, act normally, not be wound up by inaccuracies or stuff put out there to wind you up.
Fair enough, Jess. You can rest easy in your bed now.
As I scribbled the last of my notes down I heard some wheels passing me and looked up to see a young mam pushing a baby round in a big old pram. The mam was about my age and quite shabbily dressed. She had a love bite on her neck and as well as clutching the handlebar of the pram she was also clutching twenty Lambert & Butlers. Her hair was lank, though she’d clearly put a brush through it. All signs, possibly, that the baby would be malnourished, or a second thought. But when I looked in the pram the little thing was overdressed to within an inch of its life. Big frilly woollen hat, big frilly woollen coat, and she looked as if she was laughing. Gurgling away as if having a conversation with herself. And in that second I got an actual stab in the chest of jealousy. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to be pushing that pram and having that gurgling child, and I didn’t.
I smiled at the child but she was too young to clock me really, and her mam swung the pram round and they disappeared down the children’s aisle. Well, whatever people might have said about a young mam, she was definitely taking care of that healthy looking baby, even going so far as to be getting books out of the library for her.
And what was I doing?
Sitting on my ownsome, reading a book about how to get away with murder, taking notes. Which one of us had their life more on track, me or her?
Her. Definitely her.
The librarian was walking towards me. Even she probably had her life more on track than me.
‘Is that the sort of thing you were after?’
‘Sorry?’
Was she asking me about the baby?
‘The book. For your crime writing.’
‘Oh. Yes. Perfect. Thank you so much.’
‘We aim to please. Would you like to take out membership?’
‘No, thanks. I’m only visiting. I’ve made some notes.’
I stood, looked about, like I was leaving a date that hadn’t gone that well.
‘It’s a . . . lovely place you have here,’ I said, motioning towards the room with my hand. I sounded posher now. I was good at voices.
‘Thank you. We like it.’
I made my excuses and left.
I’d maybe had enough of this game.
Time to pack it in, Shirley.
On one of the buses home I wondered why I suddenly felt so desolate. On paper I had everything I’d ever hoped for. Shacked up with a bloke who loved me, who’d chosen me over his beautiful wife. I was mostly enjoying my time at secretarial college. The few day placements I had each week were going well, and all was on track for me to pass with flying colours. A good job beckoned, hopefully up the hospital, where my spelling and typing skills would come into their own. But something was leaving me feeling incomplete. Was it the lack of a baby? I’d never really craved one before. I didn’t really have myself down as the maternal type. I wanted a career first, family later.
Maybe it was that constant niggle that somewhere else Doug had a better offer. Or if not a better offer, then at least an alternative. The wife and the kids and the semi and the garden. Maybe I’d be better suited to a bloke who just had eyes and thoughts for me. Where there was no competition, even if this time I was the winner. Something about the situation didn’t sit right with me.
When I got in the flat was empty. I called out for Doug but he wasn’t there. I looked at the clock in the kitchen. Funny. He’d usually be home from work by now. I pottered for a bit and had a look in the freezer. I pulled out two chicken Kievs and bobbed them in the oven. Maybe he’d be back by the time they were done. I took a packet of Smash out of one of the cupboards and went about turning the lumpy powder into mashed potato. I was just stirring it into a thick paste when the phone rang.
We had a nice phone. Wall-mounted. When I was on it I liked to pretend I was in some American sitcom on the telly. They had wall-mounted phones with huge cables that meant you could walk the length and breadth of your flat with the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Shirley?’
It was Doug.
‘Shirley, I won’t be coming back tonight.’
‘Oh, right. Why?’
‘Well . . . thing is . . . I’ve got back with Vera.’
The receiver shook in my hand. I didn’t say owt.
‘Oh. And I think it might be time to move on.’
‘Move on?’
‘Find another flat. Your own flat. I can’t keep bankrolling you no more.’
‘I’ve got to go, Doug. My chicken Kiev’s burning.’
I hung up before he could say anything else.
The chicken Kiev was burning. But I ignored it.
I just sat at the kitchen table and remembered one of the words I’d scribbled down.
Crucifixion.
Oh, this would not do. I had to have a word with myself.
I was a normal teenage girl with dreams. I did not want to kill anyone or spend any time behind bars. I had to box cleverer than that. I had to come up with a better plan to keep my man.
I had to be more ambitious for myself. Keep him. Make things on this side of the street the sunnier side. Keep her in the shadows.
I just had to work out how to flaming well do it.
Shirley Burke? Get your thinking cap on. And get it on quick.