I only know one person who meets that description.

Chapter 27

Siobhan

It was a really horrible thing to do. I know. I know. But she deserves it. Why should everything be plain sailing for her, when she’s fat and unattractive, when my own life is a total disaster? I’m aware that Alex, behaviourally, is borderline obsessive (and possibly even psychotic) but he’s actually a very good-looking guy, and for some mysterious reason he absolutely adores her! I don’t understand. He could have been mine. I keep hearing her whiny voice inside my head, saying ‘My boyfriend’, as if she’s licking her forefinger and drawing the number one in the air in front of her, ie. I’ve got one up on you, loser. Urghhhh, she’s so SMUG.

I didn’t plan it. It just happened, in a glorious collision of circumstance. I suppose after sending those magazines (if I was that overweight, I’d want a friendly hint from some kind well-wisher, of course I would. It’s like having BO or bad breath – you need your friends to tell you otherwise you’d never know) the idea of posting things was still fresh in my mind. And it just so happened that I’d had this great big jiffy bag lying around for ages waiting to be recycled. Can’t even remember what came in it – oh, yes, those pink glass cabinet knobs I bought on eBay..

Anyway, I’d just peeled off the label, and was vaguely thinking, shame I don’t have a manuscript to put in this and send off to Patricia, to be rapturously received and lauded to the heavens… when I heard Biggles banging and crashing against the cat-flap, like he’d suddenly gone blind and couldn’t see where the door was.

I got up to look.

‘What are you doing, you daft – ’ But the words stuck in my throat like a fishbone.

With one huge push, like childbirth, Biggles shoved his prize through the cat-flap and jumped in after it, beaming proudly at me.

It was a massive dead rat. One that had been dead for quite some time, by the look of it. For God’s sake, I thought cats wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t fresh, what was the matter with him?

I had to press my lips together to stop myself being sick. I couldn’t even open the back door because the – thing – was blocking it, so I ran over and flung the kitchen window as wide as it would go, burying my nose in the pot of droopy basil on the windowsill.

‘Oh Biggles, you idiot’, I moaned at him. ‘Take it away, please take it away.’

But of course he didn’t. In fact, by the way he was regarding it, I think even he was beginning to think he might have been a little hasty. I can cope with the odd dead sparrow, or even mouse – but this? It was like a horror movie on my very own kitchen floor.

‘I’m sorry Biggles, but I am never going to allow you lick me again,’ I said out loud. ‘Not now that I know where your mouth has been.’ Funny, actually. That’s something I was always quite tempted to say to Phil. But the thought of my sweet Biggles’s jaws clamped around that stinky matted rat fur really did make bile rise in my throat, and I retched. What the hell was I going to do with it?

So I put on rubber gloves, ripped a binliner off the roll, and stuck one hand inside it. Then, with Biggles hovering anxiously around me, and holding my nose with my free hand, I edged gingerly towards the corpse, arm outstretched. The rat had thin hooked claws and its tail was fat, hairless, and much longer than I would have imagined rat’s tails were. Its teeth were, of course, as yellow as my Marigolds. My stomach was roiling and jumping so badly that I had to shut my eyes.

When I felt my hand, through its black plastic and yellow rubber layers, close around the soft body, my teeth clenched, and the only thing stopping me vomiting was the knowledge that if I didn’t do this now, I’d have to do it later. I picked up the rat, and turned the bin liner inside out over it, letting go and feeling its weight thud heavily down to the bottom of the bag.

Then I threw up in the sink.

Now what, I wondered? There was no way I was going to go to the trouble of digging it a little ratty grave – some other predator would probably only excavate it for me later. I couldn’t put it in the outside bin because the bin men had only just been. My kitchen was still smelling really bad, so I wrapped the binliner around the body as many times as possible, and then, for extra protection, slid the whole thing into the empty jiffy bag.

I swear I only sealed it up to stop it smelling. I suppose it was lucky that I had a stapler in the kitchen drawer, and sellotape. But once the bag was closed, I could open the back door, put the thing outside, and air the place out. Because now there was the stench of sick to get rid of, as well as dead rat. My beautiful clean kitchen.

I chucked the rubber gloves into the bin, donned a fresh pair, upended the kitchen chairs onto the table, and mopped the entire floor with a solution of bleach, before throwing away the mop head. Next I poked all the regurgitated peas down the plughole of the sink – can’t remember having eaten peas at all, but there you go – and bleached the sink. Finally I got down on hands and knees and washed the floor a second time with pine Flash and a J-cloth.

Then I made myself an industrial strength gin and tonic, which I drank in the living room, my back aching from my exertions. The drink did relax me, but it also made me quite drunk and, if truth be told, somewhat maudlin. I shouldn’t drink gin during the day. But honestly, I’ve had a terrible time of it lately. Nothing’s gone right. I felt I deserved a little drink or two.

I’d just topped up the gin when the phone rang. Oh goody, I thought. Company. I hoped it might be Jess – she still hadn’t returned my calls from a couple of weeks ago. But it was an unfamiliar woman’s voice.

The exact details of our conversation elude me, but it turns out that the woman was a friend of Kathy’s. She – the friend – had been away for a year somewhere, and had only just heard about Kathy’s death, and couldn’t believe she’d fallen off a fire escape. Apparently Kathy had never done it before – although, I mean, surely one can only fall from the top of a fire escape once? I didn’t really understand what she was on about, if the truth be told, but it was nice to talk to somebody sympathetic.

We chatted for some time – enough time for me to have another gin – and it got me thinking even more about how crap my life is. I mean, Kathy and I were actually pretty good friends. We certainly could have been. I really liked her.

‘I really liked her,’ I found myself sobbing down the phone. ‘She was a really, really good friend to me. I miss her so much.’

I’m not sure, but I think the woman on the end of the line was crying too. ‘So do I,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.’

‘Nor did I,’ I said, the tears coming thick and fast, dripping into the melting ice-cubes in my glass. ‘It’s not fair, is it? Nothing’s bloody fair.’

Nothing was fair. I mean, look at me. No boyfriend, no book, no job, no friends – and all the time Alex and Emily rubbing my nose in it with their smugness, and him about to get a publishing deal, knowing my wretched luck; and her laughing behind my back and wanting to give me a piece of her fat mind. The woman was saying something else.

‘Wha’?’ I think I might have been slurring my words slightly.

‘I said, did you go to the funeral? I couldn’t even get back for the funeral.’

‘Yes, I went,’ I said, fresh tears coming at the memory of that sad, sad day.

‘Did you know any of Kathy’s friends?’

‘Nobody. I didn’t know anybody there at all – oh, except Alex Parkinson. He was there.’

‘Alex Parkinson from your writing class?’

That was odd. I didn’t realize this woman knew about my class. And how did she know who Alex was? In fact, why was she ringing?