Dead Donkey Vanity is about lesbians,Chanel lipstick, serial killers and how much university sucks when you go into it hoping to make a fresh start before you realize you're just an asshole like everyone around you. I guess the alternative title is: If You Hated School, You'll Despise Life but Really Fucking Love Cunnilingus which is a short story I think I will have to write now.
ONE.
It’s while Mrs Baxter is making tea that Nessa steals Margot’s ashes. The urn is sleek and silver, a perfect compliment to the decor of the Baxter’s home; minimalist white lines and a pristine alabaster leather sofa, Margot’s ashes match the stainless steel kitchen her mother potters about in, huge shining fridge freezer and stark modern kitchen units that look more expensive than they actually were. Margot’s final resting place has been picked out of the IKEA catalogue. The home and afterlife range.
Nessa has a margarine tub. It isn’t quite so glamorous. But the lid comes off easily, the metal cool to the touch and then there are ashes between Nessa’s fingers. There’s Margot between Nessa’s fingers where there hasn’t been in a long time. She tips the urn carefully, no desire to explain to Mrs Baxter why a particle of Margot’s finger, or earlobe is trodden into the fresh cream carpets. And into her plastic yellow container Margot Baxter goes.
If they had asked Nessa, not that anyone ever would, it wouldn’t have been like this. They wouldn’t have burnt Margot for a start. There would have been a grave, Nessa would have made great pilgrimages to it, through her youth and well into old age. The fresh garlands of heartsease, forget me nots and lilies that adorned that grave long after the years engraved on the stone slab had slipped into the archives of history would speak volumes of a bond that never died. It would be that little part of England that was all Margot’s own the way Rupert Brookes had written in the war poems Margot and Nessa read in history class, an unchanging and fixed point in time.
This urn condenses Margot down into a handheld clump, makes her a portable commodity. You have your ipod, your ipad, your mobile phone with its hands free Bluetooth headset. You have your dead daughter.
With a grave, at least Nessa wouldn’t have to endure Margot’s parents. At least there, out in the open she’d have as much right to Margot’s memory as the Baxters seem to think they do. Margot didn’t even like her bloody parents. Didn’t really like anything quite enough to stay alive for, in the grand scheme of things. People full of joie de vivre tend not to chase down their dinner with an entire bottle of bleach
In the end it’s the Baxters who brought this on themselves, didn’t give Nessa much choice- as Margot’s best friend in the whole world, she has rights, she is exercising those rights. Those rights are now in a margarine tub.
Nessa’s palm is still peppered with Margot when Mrs Baxter returns with a tray, cup of tea only half filled and complimented by solitary digestive biscuit, a half hearted gesture of hospitality hinting strongly at the possibility of a speedy exit. Nessa secrets away the margarine tub into her rucksack but keeps a hold on the urn, makes Mrs Baxter flinch when she fingers the engraving: Margot Baxter, November 1991- August 2009. There couldn’t have been more disgust on Mrs Baxter’s face if Nessa had been fingering Margot in front of her.
“So, Vanessa, it can’t be long until you leave for university now?” says Mrs Baxter, with a strained smile and a close look at the smudges left on the polished urn by Nessa’s no good dirty paws. She doesn’t know what they are dirty with though. Nessa guesses that what Margot’s mother is really saying, in her socially acceptable way, is ‘how long before you stop hanging around my house like a bad smell?’
Nessa’s smile is beatific and wide, safe in the knowledge that she has what she wants now. It serves to reassure Mrs Baxter that she will not miss her any more than Mrs Baxter will Nessa.
“This weekend, actually. Mum and Dad are taking me. ”
“It must all be very exciting. You’re off to—Surrey is it?”
“Yep, sure am- it’s in Guildford. Not far away”
She’d applied for better universities of course; grammar school educated, middle class and clever there were girls in her class who were going on to Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrew’s and such- Durham had been her first choice. She had looked at a map and travelled all the way up it. Her parents had been pleased; old brick university with a good reputation in a picturesque little town. Nessa just wanted to get away. Far, far away.
August came and brought the A’ level results with it to reveal that Ness had gone ahead and gotten three C’s instead of the two A’s and a B she’d needed. It was as good as failing her exams outright. Durham closed its doors and Surrey University picked up the spare. It’s barely an hour away from her parent’s house on the train.
What goes unsaid is that Margot should have been leaving for university too, though Nessa has allowed herself plenty of time to speculate about the where’s, the why’s and the other little details, as no doubt Mrs Baxter has done as well. Margot alive and well, long over that messy bout of manic depression decides to do Fashion, she liked that a lot and Nessa follows her to Kingston or one of the London Universities. Margot grows her hair long again, they spend all of their money on cigarettes and vodka and eat coleslaw from the tub for breakfast. They fuck in the ladies toilets at nightclubs and swap underwear, Margot sneaks her fingers into Nessa’s jeans under the tables in the communal dining room.
But that’s probably not what Mrs Baxter is imagining. The silence swells around them and Nessa slurps her tea idly. She has to wipe her hands on her jeans before she can touch the biscuit and hopes the ashy taste lingering on her tongue is all in her mind.
“The very best of luck to you, Nessa,”
“Thanks.”
“A fresh start,” she nods, “That’ll be lovely.”
Mrs Baxter would love a fresh start for Margot, and Nessa has another fleeting moment of survivor’s guilt. The old ‘why her and not you?’ expression is back on Mrs Baxter’s face, and really Nessa doesn’t blame her. Margot was a good liar, played the perfect little girl for a long time, kept her pleated skirt at a respectable length, got good grades and kept her effing and jeffing to a minimum. All Mrs Baxter saw was her pretty daughter, violin playing member of the netball team and then before she knows what’s happening the baby dyke is on the scene.
Nessa cut her hair short at fifteen and kept it that way, dyed ink black and rumpled, there’s thick coal coloured eye makeup lining very blue eyes, her features are harsh and all in all she makes a wide eyed adorable but damaged boy, but the kind of girl that everyone talks about when she’s not in the room. Sin of sins, Nessa has piercings and a tattoo, she reeks of cigarette smoke and gets crap grades at school. Margot didn’t fuck girls before Nessa, didn’t get drunk or high before Nessa, didn’t drink an entire bottle of bleach and die before Nessa.
Nessa’s the freak, not Margot. Nessa was the one who indoctrinated her classmates at an all girls grammar school into fingering, frottage and face sitting. She’s the one who lived up to the expectation that she would disappoint. If anyone was going to go and kill herself, it would have been Nessa- the moody one, the troubled one.
They assumed it was a suicide pact, that Nessa and Margot both wanted to go in white nighties- holding hands, like in a story book, like on the news- the lesbian Romeo and Juliet, ‘the world hates us because we munch on each other’s carpets’, that sort of dykey angst. But it wasn’t. Nessa knew as much as anyone else in the end.
God, she wishes that Margot had spoken to her about it, that squeezing away the hurt would have been enough. But it wasn’t in the end. Now Nessa smells bleach wherever she goes, can’t go into a public toilet without gagging at the thought of the stuff.
Here, in the sitting room, she tastes disinfectant lurking in the corners of her mouth. Is it Margot’s kiss, Nessa wonders, pictures a corpse cold finger slide under her chin and tip her head up- it’s all too real in that moment, suburbia meets purgatory and Margot Baxter is there, her red hair limp and damp, frothing mouth like a rabid dog, her insides whiter than white. It’s not unwelcome, not frightening. Nessa just pats her rucksack and smiles at Margot’s ghost. I’ve got you. Possessive, protective; she’s going to take care of her.
Yeah, thinks Nessa- she swills tea around her teeth looking thoughtfully at Margot’s urn, a fresh start is exactly what she needs. Margot deserves one too.
Mrs Baxter is back to thinking why in the hell it had to be her daughter who downed all that toilet duck and not the psycho lesbian in her living room.
Nessa has a margarine tub. It isn’t quite so glamorous. But the lid comes off easily, the metal cool to the touch and then there are ashes between Nessa’s fingers. There’s Margot between Nessa’s fingers where there hasn’t been in a long time. She tips the urn carefully, no desire to explain to Mrs Baxter why a particle of Margot’s finger, or earlobe is trodden into the fresh cream carpets. And into her plastic yellow container Margot Baxter goes.
If they had asked Nessa, not that anyone ever would, it wouldn’t have been like this. They wouldn’t have burnt Margot for a start. There would have been a grave, Nessa would have made great pilgrimages to it, through her youth and well into old age. The fresh garlands of heartsease, forget me nots and lilies that adorned that grave long after the years engraved on the stone slab had slipped into the archives of history would speak volumes of a bond that never died. It would be that little part of England that was all Margot’s own the way Rupert Brookes had written in the war poems Margot and Nessa read in history class, an unchanging and fixed point in time.
This urn condenses Margot down into a handheld clump, makes her a portable commodity. You have your ipod, your ipad, your mobile phone with its hands free Bluetooth headset. You have your dead daughter.
With a grave, at least Nessa wouldn’t have to endure Margot’s parents. At least there, out in the open she’d have as much right to Margot’s memory as the Baxters seem to think they do. Margot didn’t even like her bloody parents. Didn’t really like anything quite enough to stay alive for, in the grand scheme of things. People full of joie de vivre tend not to chase down their dinner with an entire bottle of bleach
In the end it’s the Baxters who brought this on themselves, didn’t give Nessa much choice- as Margot’s best friend in the whole world, she has rights, she is exercising those rights. Those rights are now in a margarine tub.
Nessa’s palm is still peppered with Margot when Mrs Baxter returns with a tray, cup of tea only half filled and complimented by solitary digestive biscuit, a half hearted gesture of hospitality hinting strongly at the possibility of a speedy exit. Nessa secrets away the margarine tub into her rucksack but keeps a hold on the urn, makes Mrs Baxter flinch when she fingers the engraving: Margot Baxter, November 1991- August 2009. There couldn’t have been more disgust on Mrs Baxter’s face if Nessa had been fingering Margot in front of her.
“So, Vanessa, it can’t be long until you leave for university now?” says Mrs Baxter, with a strained smile and a close look at the smudges left on the polished urn by Nessa’s no good dirty paws. She doesn’t know what they are dirty with though. Nessa guesses that what Margot’s mother is really saying, in her socially acceptable way, is ‘how long before you stop hanging around my house like a bad smell?’
Nessa’s smile is beatific and wide, safe in the knowledge that she has what she wants now. It serves to reassure Mrs Baxter that she will not miss her any more than Mrs Baxter will Nessa.
“This weekend, actually. Mum and Dad are taking me. ”
“It must all be very exciting. You’re off to—Surrey is it?”
“Yep, sure am- it’s in Guildford. Not far away”
She’d applied for better universities of course; grammar school educated, middle class and clever there were girls in her class who were going on to Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrew’s and such- Durham had been her first choice. She had looked at a map and travelled all the way up it. Her parents had been pleased; old brick university with a good reputation in a picturesque little town. Nessa just wanted to get away. Far, far away.
August came and brought the A’ level results with it to reveal that Ness had gone ahead and gotten three C’s instead of the two A’s and a B she’d needed. It was as good as failing her exams outright. Durham closed its doors and Surrey University picked up the spare. It’s barely an hour away from her parent’s house on the train.
What goes unsaid is that Margot should have been leaving for university too, though Nessa has allowed herself plenty of time to speculate about the where’s, the why’s and the other little details, as no doubt Mrs Baxter has done as well. Margot alive and well, long over that messy bout of manic depression decides to do Fashion, she liked that a lot and Nessa follows her to Kingston or one of the London Universities. Margot grows her hair long again, they spend all of their money on cigarettes and vodka and eat coleslaw from the tub for breakfast. They fuck in the ladies toilets at nightclubs and swap underwear, Margot sneaks her fingers into Nessa’s jeans under the tables in the communal dining room.
But that’s probably not what Mrs Baxter is imagining. The silence swells around them and Nessa slurps her tea idly. She has to wipe her hands on her jeans before she can touch the biscuit and hopes the ashy taste lingering on her tongue is all in her mind.
“The very best of luck to you, Nessa,”
“Thanks.”
“A fresh start,” she nods, “That’ll be lovely.”
Mrs Baxter would love a fresh start for Margot, and Nessa has another fleeting moment of survivor’s guilt. The old ‘why her and not you?’ expression is back on Mrs Baxter’s face, and really Nessa doesn’t blame her. Margot was a good liar, played the perfect little girl for a long time, kept her pleated skirt at a respectable length, got good grades and kept her effing and jeffing to a minimum. All Mrs Baxter saw was her pretty daughter, violin playing member of the netball team and then before she knows what’s happening the baby dyke is on the scene.
Nessa cut her hair short at fifteen and kept it that way, dyed ink black and rumpled, there’s thick coal coloured eye makeup lining very blue eyes, her features are harsh and all in all she makes a wide eyed adorable but damaged boy, but the kind of girl that everyone talks about when she’s not in the room. Sin of sins, Nessa has piercings and a tattoo, she reeks of cigarette smoke and gets crap grades at school. Margot didn’t fuck girls before Nessa, didn’t get drunk or high before Nessa, didn’t drink an entire bottle of bleach and die before Nessa.
Nessa’s the freak, not Margot. Nessa was the one who indoctrinated her classmates at an all girls grammar school into fingering, frottage and face sitting. She’s the one who lived up to the expectation that she would disappoint. If anyone was going to go and kill herself, it would have been Nessa- the moody one, the troubled one.
They assumed it was a suicide pact, that Nessa and Margot both wanted to go in white nighties- holding hands, like in a story book, like on the news- the lesbian Romeo and Juliet, ‘the world hates us because we munch on each other’s carpets’, that sort of dykey angst. But it wasn’t. Nessa knew as much as anyone else in the end.
God, she wishes that Margot had spoken to her about it, that squeezing away the hurt would have been enough. But it wasn’t in the end. Now Nessa smells bleach wherever she goes, can’t go into a public toilet without gagging at the thought of the stuff.
Here, in the sitting room, she tastes disinfectant lurking in the corners of her mouth. Is it Margot’s kiss, Nessa wonders, pictures a corpse cold finger slide under her chin and tip her head up- it’s all too real in that moment, suburbia meets purgatory and Margot Baxter is there, her red hair limp and damp, frothing mouth like a rabid dog, her insides whiter than white. It’s not unwelcome, not frightening. Nessa just pats her rucksack and smiles at Margot’s ghost. I’ve got you. Possessive, protective; she’s going to take care of her.
Yeah, thinks Nessa- she swills tea around her teeth looking thoughtfully at Margot’s urn, a fresh start is exactly what she needs. Margot deserves one too.
Mrs Baxter is back to thinking why in the hell it had to be her daughter who downed all that toilet duck and not the psycho lesbian in her living room.
***
The car is Billy’s baby; a pillar box red, second hand Volkswagen golf she bought herself. There isn’t a scratch on it, the interior has been recently vacuumed spotless and underneath a thin layer of lingering cigarette smoke, a fresh pine scent wafts. Billy uses tenderness as she slides it into gear, but firmness as she grips the steering- it’s a child that needs to be guided around corners, onto the vast expanse of motorway but Billy does it with a caring hand.
There’s a cigarette in her mouth and a ‘the best of The Cure’ disc in the CD player as she turns onto the motorway. In a month’s time, Billy T will be ten years old.
She knows this route like the back of her hand now, the two hours and nineteen minutes from Burnley to Durham, driving herself or sitting in the front seat of Auntie Cath’s car, back in the days when her feet swung off the chair and she’d watch the fields and trees and sheep go by, nose pressed up against the glass of the window.
It’s almost five hours from Surrey to Low Newton prison for female adults, juveniles and young offenders. Billy would be lying to herself if she said she didn’t find this prospect more than a little appealing.
She’s spent years coming up with the excuses not to make this trip, faked illness, deliberately made plans and lied her way through her teeth, enduring terse phone calls and all the guilt and self loathing that comes part and package with it. But all of it pales in comparison to enduring prison walls, furtive glances and awkward conversation. The two hours and nineteen minute’s drive to Low Newton is never quite long enough.
Visiting hours are busy and Billy could quite happily sit here and not have anyone call her name for the whole hour, the stark white visitor’s room has always reminded Billy of the waiting room at the dentist’s surgery when she was kid. Most children hate going to the dentist, but not Billy. And not just because of sterilised, immaculate equipment and secretaries tapping on computers with perfect manicured nails, ship shape and perfectly organised. She can remember waiting at the gates for Mum early from school; Mum dressed immaculately as usual, bright red chanel lipstick, dyed blonde hair never even showing the slightest hints of her roots. They’d have the afternoon all to themselves, no school, no work, no Rex or Simon. Now whenever Billy saw her mum, it was in a room full of other people, with specially trained prison guards acting as supervision.
“Veronica O’Connell,” calls the woman at the font desk. It’s not as bad as it used to be when that name was called out seven or eight years ago; ten years is a lifetime, mercifully, and there are those that are unfamiliar with the name unless shortened to ‘Ronnie’, suffixed by ‘and Rex’. Everyone knows Ronnie and Rex.
A few people whisper those two names together and there are sharp glances from the visitors of newer inmates as they try and unpick this mystery visitor of such an infamous prisoner, the kind of woman that needed to be locked up and isolated. Perhaps they note the similarities in appearance that grows more and more obvious each day. Billy is a natural blonde, pretty and leggy the way the press had remarked on about the other woman. She has none of the glamour of Veronica O’Connell, known for her immaculate white trouser suits at the trial, expensive, beautiful- more like a modern, up and coming politician’s wife or perhaps even an actress than a woman standing trial for six murders.
No, Billy is wearing skinny jeans and a shapeless knitted moss green jumper that looks old but is actually new- her hair is not coiffed and curled to perfection but hangs in the waves caused by ill grooming as opposed to hours in a salon, and her eyebrows remain defiantly thick, dark and unkempt, making her face look severe and far older than the ten years she feels and the nineteen years she is, like some hardnosed school mistress in the making. If someone was of an ill mood, those eyebrows might be described as primordial. They almost meet in the middle.
It’s the first thing Veronica remarks on, as it so happens, when Billy sits down on the chair in front of her. She doesn’t actually say anything, but Billy can feel Veronica’s eyes skating her brow before she lets out a disappointed sort of sigh.
“Hi,” says Billy stiffly.
She looks older with each visit, as though in prison the bitches all actually age in dog years. Her hair is dull brown with patches of grey running all the way through, Veronica’s skin is patchy too, blotched red and pock marked, there are dark circles under her eyes and her mouth is a ragged red gash of smudgy Chanel lipstick. But she still just looks like someone’s mum, not the glamorous young mum Billy remembers picking her up from school, making all the boys stare, flirting with her teachers at parent’s evening. Not her Mum. But not a monster either.
“Lo, Keeley.”
It’s Billy’s turn to flinch. Outside this prison, Keeley is just a relic of a time before Billy T, of a childhood that now belongs to the newspapers and the psychologists and the criminologists, handed over into custody, locked in an evidence room. Keeley belongs in a ditch of dead earth like all good ruins, like the kids they still can’t find. The pillar box red Volkswagen golf might be second hand but it’s all Billy’s. Keeley O’Connell, the Blackpool killings, Ronnie and Rex- these aren’t hers. It’s all before her time. Billy T will be ten in two months.
“Well? Did you get it?” Veronica is like an addict grasping at her next hit. No how are yous, no pleasantries and frankly Billy doesn’t mind. But they have an hour to fill. At least the pleasantries eat up a few of the agonising, infinite seconds. The lipstick is in a sealed plastic bag, as per the prison requirements and has been passed through an X-ray, a metal detector and an Alsatian named Max. Two tubes of Chanel lipstick, as always, sleek black case £20 a piece, red as Billy’s car, blood red. The bottom of the tube calls the colour ‘Audace’ whatever that means.
“My angel,” gasps Veronica and furtively sneaks the lipstick into her palms like some illicit coke deal is taking place. Billy notices that her little hands are gnarled and yellowed like chicken’s talons, scabbed with tiny nicks, her fingernails cracked and her cuticles like charred earth. She has a desire to grasp her mother’s hand, hold it tight, clutching and childish, dig her nails in until she draws blood and makes Veronica squirm. Veronica doesn’t get to call anyone ‘angel’. She just doesn’t. She’s the devil for too many people.
The lipstick is skimmed around her mouth and she smacks her lips together with a smile, calling back to a time when she could have been Marylyn Monroe as opposed to a pig in makeup. The colour bleeds outside of her lips and when she speaks Billy notices some flecks of it on her teeth, browned with age and cigarette stains, like Veronica is some kind of vampire. “Can’t let standards slip,” she smiles, patting at her stringy grey hairs. It’s probably a mantra she repeats over and over and over. But Billy is done second guessing what goes on inside her skull. “I’ve been gagging for a fresh one of these, babe, let me tell you that.”
The unwanted thought then occurs to Billy, as it so often does, that Veronica is fucking someone in prison. Whether it’s some hard dyke with a shaved head charged with battery and assault who grasps Veronica’s hair and shoves her face into her cunt, ‘Audace’ Chanel lipstick catching onto her pubes and smearing onto her clit or some ruddy faced prison guard with wobbling fat tits who has to lift her gut to find her gash, who smashes a riot baton into Veronica’s sagging arse and then wanks her off with the shaft of it, there is no doubt in Billy’s mind that Veronica is somehow using her sexuality to get by, using that red pouting mouth to get a few perks in prison. It’s been this way since before Keeley was born, before Billy was created from the mess around Veronica, always flashing her knickers for sweeties as Nana used to say, there had been plenty of men before Rex. But Rex made sure he was the last.
“I just don’t know what I’m gonna do without you, my lamb,” continues Veronica baring those lipstick stained teeth. “You will keep coming to see me won’t you? You won’t forget about your old mum?”
If the entire country won’t forget about her, Billy can’t see how she possibly could. She says as much, but leaves out a few choice words and nods earnestly in all the right places. Veronica reaches over and takes Billy’s hand in her own, holds it loose and limp like a cold wet fish. For a minute, Billy gets the feeling she’s in a play, Veronica is acting opposite her but whose benefit the performance is for, Billy couldn’t say.
“These visits keep me sane, babe. Hearing about your life, all that wide future you’ve got, going off to Suffolk--”
“—Surrey.”
“Yes, that’s the one. I’m so proud of you sweetie. So, so proud.”
Billy suspects Veronica means for her to be touched by this, so she just smiles weakly as she is so prone to do around Veronica, fills in the blanks. It’s as though parts of Billy aren’t there, like someone has taken an eraser to her or tipp-ex correction fluid and now there are just messy white chunks of nothing where the affection towards her mother is supposed to be. She still smiles though. The O’Connell women are nothing if not excellent liars. Only Billy isn’t an O’Connell woman, she reminds herself. There is no part of Veronica O’Connell inside of Billy T.
There’s a cigarette in her mouth and a ‘the best of The Cure’ disc in the CD player as she turns onto the motorway. In a month’s time, Billy T will be ten years old.
She knows this route like the back of her hand now, the two hours and nineteen minutes from Burnley to Durham, driving herself or sitting in the front seat of Auntie Cath’s car, back in the days when her feet swung off the chair and she’d watch the fields and trees and sheep go by, nose pressed up against the glass of the window.
It’s almost five hours from Surrey to Low Newton prison for female adults, juveniles and young offenders. Billy would be lying to herself if she said she didn’t find this prospect more than a little appealing.
She’s spent years coming up with the excuses not to make this trip, faked illness, deliberately made plans and lied her way through her teeth, enduring terse phone calls and all the guilt and self loathing that comes part and package with it. But all of it pales in comparison to enduring prison walls, furtive glances and awkward conversation. The two hours and nineteen minute’s drive to Low Newton is never quite long enough.
Visiting hours are busy and Billy could quite happily sit here and not have anyone call her name for the whole hour, the stark white visitor’s room has always reminded Billy of the waiting room at the dentist’s surgery when she was kid. Most children hate going to the dentist, but not Billy. And not just because of sterilised, immaculate equipment and secretaries tapping on computers with perfect manicured nails, ship shape and perfectly organised. She can remember waiting at the gates for Mum early from school; Mum dressed immaculately as usual, bright red chanel lipstick, dyed blonde hair never even showing the slightest hints of her roots. They’d have the afternoon all to themselves, no school, no work, no Rex or Simon. Now whenever Billy saw her mum, it was in a room full of other people, with specially trained prison guards acting as supervision.
“Veronica O’Connell,” calls the woman at the font desk. It’s not as bad as it used to be when that name was called out seven or eight years ago; ten years is a lifetime, mercifully, and there are those that are unfamiliar with the name unless shortened to ‘Ronnie’, suffixed by ‘and Rex’. Everyone knows Ronnie and Rex.
A few people whisper those two names together and there are sharp glances from the visitors of newer inmates as they try and unpick this mystery visitor of such an infamous prisoner, the kind of woman that needed to be locked up and isolated. Perhaps they note the similarities in appearance that grows more and more obvious each day. Billy is a natural blonde, pretty and leggy the way the press had remarked on about the other woman. She has none of the glamour of Veronica O’Connell, known for her immaculate white trouser suits at the trial, expensive, beautiful- more like a modern, up and coming politician’s wife or perhaps even an actress than a woman standing trial for six murders.
No, Billy is wearing skinny jeans and a shapeless knitted moss green jumper that looks old but is actually new- her hair is not coiffed and curled to perfection but hangs in the waves caused by ill grooming as opposed to hours in a salon, and her eyebrows remain defiantly thick, dark and unkempt, making her face look severe and far older than the ten years she feels and the nineteen years she is, like some hardnosed school mistress in the making. If someone was of an ill mood, those eyebrows might be described as primordial. They almost meet in the middle.
It’s the first thing Veronica remarks on, as it so happens, when Billy sits down on the chair in front of her. She doesn’t actually say anything, but Billy can feel Veronica’s eyes skating her brow before she lets out a disappointed sort of sigh.
“Hi,” says Billy stiffly.
She looks older with each visit, as though in prison the bitches all actually age in dog years. Her hair is dull brown with patches of grey running all the way through, Veronica’s skin is patchy too, blotched red and pock marked, there are dark circles under her eyes and her mouth is a ragged red gash of smudgy Chanel lipstick. But she still just looks like someone’s mum, not the glamorous young mum Billy remembers picking her up from school, making all the boys stare, flirting with her teachers at parent’s evening. Not her Mum. But not a monster either.
“Lo, Keeley.”
It’s Billy’s turn to flinch. Outside this prison, Keeley is just a relic of a time before Billy T, of a childhood that now belongs to the newspapers and the psychologists and the criminologists, handed over into custody, locked in an evidence room. Keeley belongs in a ditch of dead earth like all good ruins, like the kids they still can’t find. The pillar box red Volkswagen golf might be second hand but it’s all Billy’s. Keeley O’Connell, the Blackpool killings, Ronnie and Rex- these aren’t hers. It’s all before her time. Billy T will be ten in two months.
“Well? Did you get it?” Veronica is like an addict grasping at her next hit. No how are yous, no pleasantries and frankly Billy doesn’t mind. But they have an hour to fill. At least the pleasantries eat up a few of the agonising, infinite seconds. The lipstick is in a sealed plastic bag, as per the prison requirements and has been passed through an X-ray, a metal detector and an Alsatian named Max. Two tubes of Chanel lipstick, as always, sleek black case £20 a piece, red as Billy’s car, blood red. The bottom of the tube calls the colour ‘Audace’ whatever that means.
“My angel,” gasps Veronica and furtively sneaks the lipstick into her palms like some illicit coke deal is taking place. Billy notices that her little hands are gnarled and yellowed like chicken’s talons, scabbed with tiny nicks, her fingernails cracked and her cuticles like charred earth. She has a desire to grasp her mother’s hand, hold it tight, clutching and childish, dig her nails in until she draws blood and makes Veronica squirm. Veronica doesn’t get to call anyone ‘angel’. She just doesn’t. She’s the devil for too many people.
The lipstick is skimmed around her mouth and she smacks her lips together with a smile, calling back to a time when she could have been Marylyn Monroe as opposed to a pig in makeup. The colour bleeds outside of her lips and when she speaks Billy notices some flecks of it on her teeth, browned with age and cigarette stains, like Veronica is some kind of vampire. “Can’t let standards slip,” she smiles, patting at her stringy grey hairs. It’s probably a mantra she repeats over and over and over. But Billy is done second guessing what goes on inside her skull. “I’ve been gagging for a fresh one of these, babe, let me tell you that.”
The unwanted thought then occurs to Billy, as it so often does, that Veronica is fucking someone in prison. Whether it’s some hard dyke with a shaved head charged with battery and assault who grasps Veronica’s hair and shoves her face into her cunt, ‘Audace’ Chanel lipstick catching onto her pubes and smearing onto her clit or some ruddy faced prison guard with wobbling fat tits who has to lift her gut to find her gash, who smashes a riot baton into Veronica’s sagging arse and then wanks her off with the shaft of it, there is no doubt in Billy’s mind that Veronica is somehow using her sexuality to get by, using that red pouting mouth to get a few perks in prison. It’s been this way since before Keeley was born, before Billy was created from the mess around Veronica, always flashing her knickers for sweeties as Nana used to say, there had been plenty of men before Rex. But Rex made sure he was the last.
“I just don’t know what I’m gonna do without you, my lamb,” continues Veronica baring those lipstick stained teeth. “You will keep coming to see me won’t you? You won’t forget about your old mum?”
If the entire country won’t forget about her, Billy can’t see how she possibly could. She says as much, but leaves out a few choice words and nods earnestly in all the right places. Veronica reaches over and takes Billy’s hand in her own, holds it loose and limp like a cold wet fish. For a minute, Billy gets the feeling she’s in a play, Veronica is acting opposite her but whose benefit the performance is for, Billy couldn’t say.
“These visits keep me sane, babe. Hearing about your life, all that wide future you’ve got, going off to Suffolk--”
“—Surrey.”
“Yes, that’s the one. I’m so proud of you sweetie. So, so proud.”
Billy suspects Veronica means for her to be touched by this, so she just smiles weakly as she is so prone to do around Veronica, fills in the blanks. It’s as though parts of Billy aren’t there, like someone has taken an eraser to her or tipp-ex correction fluid and now there are just messy white chunks of nothing where the affection towards her mother is supposed to be. She still smiles though. The O’Connell women are nothing if not excellent liars. Only Billy isn’t an O’Connell woman, she reminds herself. There is no part of Veronica O’Connell inside of Billy T.
***
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