Life Sucks

10

Life Sucks

Florence appears in the lab as soon as afternoon clinic is over. She’s changed her uniform and her hair is once again pulled back in a ponytail.

‘Sister wants to see you in her office.’

‘I’m sorry about what I called you earlier,’ I say, thinking about how she extricated me from a tricky situation, but more about her sweet white dumplings and the way her hips wriggled as she pulled her panties up. I have already booked her an appointment in tonight’s wet dream. ‘You’re very pretty. You deserve to marry a rich doctor and live a cushy life.’

‘What other reason is there for becoming a nurse?’

‘I suppose those really annoying things called patients can get in the way of ambition?’

‘Yes, they’re such a pain, but what can you do?’ She sits on my swivel chair and swivels. ‘You know that young girl from yesterday?’ I nod. ‘She wasn’t raped and she didn’t have a stepfather. She was just a teenage slapper from the estate, knocked up round the back of the Limelight after a night of binge drinking. She said you were a gullible little twat and it was fun winding you up. A right laugh, a good story to tell to her mates.’ Florence also looks amused.

For a moment, I was feeling something close to contentment. She had taken the time to sit down, have a swivel and talk to me, like friends do. But instead, she’s come to mock, to rub my nose in the dirt like everyone else.

As ever, I try to hide the pain with a joke. ‘What do Brundy girls use for safe sex?’

‘Their personalities. ’

I pause and frown, because her punch line is better than mine. ‘I was going to say a bus shelter.’

She goes all misty-eyed and mutters something about Tubshaw Road terminus.

I sigh. ‘Does auntie know about the girl?’

‘Yes, of course. We had a right laugh.’

At my expense. I look down and sniffle. ‘Thank you, it was very kind of you to tell me.’

Florence shakes her head in what I can see is contempt. I follow her to Auntie’s office.

Botcher John from Maintenance is putting the finishing touches to a new key cabinet. He stands back to ensure it is straight, closes the door and locks it. ‘Job’s done, Missus Sister, and a bloomin’ good un it is. Top notch, is that. Here are the keys.’

‘Thank you, John. You can go now.’

‘Sure thing, Missus Sister, and thanks for the brew.’ He gathers up his tools and pats me on the head on his way out.

I can’t let the opportunity pass. ‘Any chance of taking a look at the hatch in my room?’

He smirks. ‘It’s the first job on my list for tomorrow.’

Auntie closes the door behind him, slips one onto her keyring and places the others into a drawer.

I point to the cabinet. ‘That’s a mistake. If you leave it locked, the key will be lost within a week.’

‘The policeman was appalled at the lack of security.’

‘I bet they leave all their gun and tear gas cupboards unlocked.’

‘This is Brundy, not the Wild West. The only things our police have to lock away are their bicycle clips.’

‘I still think…’

‘Shut up. We know for a fact it wasn’t kids. Whoever it was used keys, not only to access the building and my office, but also the clinic.’

‘Why would anyone go to all that trouble to steal dressing gown cords? Why not drugs or equipment?’

‘The cords were found in a rubbish bin behind your lab this morning, hidden in a hospital bin liner.’

‘Which points to a prank or some disgruntled employee with a chip on their shoulder.’ (I immediately wish I hadn’t said that.) ‘Put them back and carry on as normal. No harm done.’

‘Doesn’t it worry you that some sick individual who almost certainly works here, and has access to only a handful of keys, and who is intimate with the layout of this section of the clinic, entered during the night wearing a cheap headtorch?’

‘They found a broken headtorch minus its batteries in the bin, too?’ (I immediately wish I hadn’t interrupted.)

‘Funnily enough, yes, and then performed an act of petty vandalism which could be construed by some to have darkly disturbing sexual undertones.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A theft which exposed a vulnerable sector of female society to the sin of voyeurism. An act of such gross indecency could only be committed by the vilest of perverts … or an extremely immature degenerate seeking a cheap thrill. Don’t you agree?’

‘Kids having a laugh, more like ... unless…’

‘Unless what?’

‘I’ve warned you before about leaving your keys hanging by the front door. Now, I’m not saying they should be locked away, you know how I feel about that, but if Nunky went sleepwalking again last night … Well … he has been found waiting for his babby outside the primary school on several occasions and standing on the forecourt of the petrol station in his pyjamas with a pump in his hand. Maybe he…’

Auntie slaps me across the face. ‘Don’t try blaming this on your uncle, you disgusting lump of stewed pig offal.’ She paces round the room. ‘Sneaking out of the house in the dead of night is becoming a regular habit with you, isn’t it? Don’t I feed you well enough?’

I am still rubbing my cheek. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I hear you were out on the town last night buying junk food. Is that true?’

We are interrupted by the new key cupboard falling off the wall. The door bursts open on impact and most of the keys slide across the lino.

‘Get out of my sight,’ Auntie yells. ‘Go home and stay in your room. No tea for you tonight. And no bedtime stories. You’re grounded, get out.’

*

As ordered, I stay in my room all evening, but don’t go without supper. I told Nunky when I got home how cruel the old witch had been to me, and sure enough he manages to sneak a slice of pork pie and some cake up to my room whilst she is outside watering her petunias.

I can see he is upset. ‘Nunky, what’s the matter?’

He stays in the hall, too afraid to enter. ‘She’s going to tie me to the bed.’

‘I didn’t think Auntie was into that sort of thing?’

‘To stop me sleepwalking.’ He frowns. ‘What’s sleepwalking, mi babby?’

‘It’s when you go outside in the middle of the night and pretend to be a petrol pump attendant without realizing you’re doing it.’

‘Because I am asleep?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do I get paid?’

‘It’s an illness, Nunky, not a job.’

‘I mean for selling petrol.’

‘No, you don’t get paid.’

He shakes his head in sorrow, or wonder, or whatever is going through his addled mind. He looks up with tears in his eyes. ‘Do you think it was me broke into the hospital and stole those things?’

‘Of course it wasn’t you, Nunky. Never in a million years.’

‘She will still tie me to the bed, I know she will.’

He wanders away with slumped shoulders.

I close the door and bury my head in my pillow to stifle the sound of my sobbing.

In an effort to hide my guilt, I first accused Nunky of breaking my glasses, and then of committing the crime in his sleep. Now he’s in trouble with Auntie and thinks he’s to blame. Worse still, Auntie knows I am the culprit. She has even guessed the motive, but because she can’t prove anything she is punishing Nunky out of spite, to hurt me. Crime doesn’t pay. Instead it bites you in the bottom. I should go to the police and confess, and ask them to lock me up.

I try to be good, I really do, but I invent things, I don’t tell the truth and I am deceitful. I have impure thoughts and wicked urges, which makes me evil. Despite all the medication I take, I have no control over any of these things and no power to change the way I am.

No one other than Nunky likes me, and look how I repay him. Is it because I’m an orphan? Did losing Mummy and Daddy turn me bad? Am I so wrapped in my own misery I can’t see what I am? What I’ve become?

I am pretty sure that Brundy or even Macarbrough doesn’t have the death penalty for stealing and lying and being a bad person, so confessing to my crime would not result in the punishment I deserve. I deserve to die. The world would be a better place without me. Ending my existence would be a benefit to mankind, not that mankind would give a damn. Who but a senile old man would miss me?

I empty my emergency first aid kit out onto the bed. Would a combination of indigestion tablets and four headache pills dissolved in acne cream prove lethal? I think not.

I resolve to leave it until tomorrow and make my morning tea with potassium cyanide. The thing with the tea caddy wasn’t an accident, a mistake or malice aforethought; it was an omen of impending doom.