TWO MURDERS

April has a horrible memory, one that must must keep locked away at any cost...

It had taken April a long time to forget the one thing she had thought she would never forget.

Then the beautiful Suzie came along and the first hints in memory of a past April would never have chosen for anyone came gradually back to her. She might have liked to condemn herself again, but those were different times and she had been driven by different forces. Now the hint of a window opening just a crack, a window that must never be opened at all, was disturbing her.

“I was a horrible teen,” she sighed as Suzie gently let her golden hair drift between two of her fingers. It felt good, that someone cared for her enough to touch her and she never wanted this new phase of her life to end. So she could let some of her past out to Suzie, but not much of it.

“Quite a lot of the brightest girls are,” smiled her friend, “there are norms in society that everyone must adhere to, and to some they simply stink!”

“Like boys and sex and babies,” sighed April, “it seemed that’s all my parents wanted. Me to find a nice boy and marry him and have babies so they could coo over their grandchildren. And I wanted none of that. I didn’t like the idea of being with a boy until he was an old man with smelly underpants, and I didn’t want to do the things a girl must do if she’s going to produce babies and I didn’t even want the babies!”

“I know,” sighed Suzie, “you and I, we’re two of a kind, you know.”

“That’s why I’m so deliriously happy to have met you,” April told her, gently scraping a sharp knife against the rough skin on her heel. “But I couldn’t tell my own mother what I wanted. She was so bristling with talk of Thomas across the road, and when he started going out with a pregnant Hilda she suddenly got enthusiastic about Craig from round the corner. Anyone would think she wanted to take him to bed herself! The way she went on about his handsome face, his keen eyes, his clean appearance, his choice of trousers… and I hated the very sight of him!”

“There was a Craig in my teens too, but he was called Barry,” agreed Suzie, “and did he want to get into my undies!”

April shuddered. “What a horrible thought,” she whispered.

“I know. We both had experiences we would be happier to have avoided,” sighed Suzie.

The window of memory was opening slowly further and April would have done anything to have been able to close it. She would have been happier if the subject of boys had never arisen, but somehow it had.

“It was when he decided to kiss me,” moaned April, “and put his tongue into my mouth. I almost vomited into his! And mum was wrong about his breath. It was rancid!”

“I kept as far away from them as I could,” sighed Suzie, “and as soon as I could I left home. I went to a teachers training college though I would have gone just about anywhere to get away from all the talk that seemed to be trying to push me into the arms of any lad who came our way!”

“I looked for somewhere to run to to escape from Craig and thr way my mum seemed to adore him, but I didn’t do so well with my A levels and colleges were out of the question. Instead, I had a friend called Tammy, a girl I thought was like me, and in a way she was. We even shared a flat for a while. And I found a job in Silver Save, the cheap supermarket nearby. It got me out of mum’s way and Tammy was really quite sweet until she announced she was going to marry a lad called something beginning with D. I forget what.”

“You poor soul,” murmured Suzie, “I was okay at college because it was a girls only place and most of the girls were happy with the few boys who went to what became the college pub by reputation. Me, I started to write my book and didn’t need too much distraction by socially avoiding the gross sex!!”

The window from her wretched past was creaking. But she must keep it from opening any further or Suzie would never be able to have anything to do with her again, and she liked Suzie. No, not liked: she loved the girl! Of course she did! And nothing from the past must trundle towards them to risk changing that!

It was Suzie who carried the agony forwards. “Did Craig still hang around?” she asked innocently enough.

He had. And oh, how he had!

“After the flat-share I returned home. And I went home after work on the supermarket checkout one afternoon and found him in bed with mum,” she said. “I went up the stairs to change into something decent after a day in the supermarket gear, and mum’s door was open almost wide, and I could see them. He was on top of her and she was making that squealing noise women think men like to hear them make. Like she was urging him on to doing even more, and his bare bum… well, I hate to remember it.”

“You poor soul,” exclaimed Suzie, “Having to bear the memories of something as rancid as that! What did you do next? I’d have run and run and run until I was gone forever!”

“I killed him.” There, it was out, the pain she had kept locked away for so many years.

In a flash she pictured herself sneaking into that bedroom of sin, that’s what it was, surely? And picking up that heavy clothes bruch off the dressing table, nd smashing it down onto Craig’s nasty head, a dozen times when, afterwards, the doctor had said that only once would have done because he had an unusually thin skull and might have died in any one of a dozen unusual ways just being alive and doing the things that most people do in their day to day lives.

“You killed him?” gasped Suzie, “Oh, this is marvellous! I mean, I’d have done that to every boy who tried it on with me if I dared! You actually… how did you do it?”

“On his head with a heavy brush,” sighed April. “It was the most horrible thing I ever did. Well, not quite the most horrible. Maybe just as horrible was letting my mum take the blame, but there is worse to come.”

“Your mum did that? How?”

April put the knife down next to her and blew away the dust she’d scraped from her heel.

“She said he sort of attacked her. She was in bed, she said, having an afternoon nap, and she heard him sneaking up the stairs and she thought it was me coming home from work, and called him in to her room by mistake. And she was naked at the time, it had been a hot day and she thought there was nothing wrong with a woman of her age stripping off and lying on her bed to cool down. And she said he must have mistaken what she said and thought it as an invitation for him to join her. And everyone believed her and nobody even suspected me.”

“And Craig was no more? You said you did an even worse thing than killing him. What could that have been, I wonder?”

“I haven’t done it yet, darling Suzie. But I vowed all those years ago that if anyone found out the truth about what happened to Craig then that person would have to join him in Hell.”

Suzie almost got it. But not quite. But the window into the past just had to be closed before things started festering like they had for so many years. Her mother had passed away, which was good because with her passing one window was not only closed for good but sort of bricked up.

“You see, Suzie, you know the truth now. I’m sorry and I do love you, but…”

And a tear found its way down her cheek as she picked up the knife still dusty with her skin, and plunged it deep as she could into the lovely Suzie’s chest, and found her heart.

© Peter Rogerson 12.05.23

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