House of sticks, p.25
House of Sticks, page 25
Her sister was amused by her tantrum, ‘What have they done now?’
‘I gotta go on some fuckin’ course, aint I, all the way to fuckin’ Streatham.’
‘No, what’s that for?’
‘Some job search shit they do, if I don’t go, I don’t get no money. This is all down to you, you and that fuckin’ Kayleigh, you said she would sort me out a job.’
‘I thought you said they were OK with you at the Work Programme Centre.’
‘I hate the geezer at the place. I swear down, if he laughs at me again next week, I will deck him.’
‘Did you eat when you were out, did you get something?’
‘What with, shirt buttons? I’m fuckin’ skint aint I? Have to pay me own fuckin fares now as well.’
‘You’re hungry then, do you want me to…’
‘Starving. Don’t worry I’ll make myself some beans on toast.’
‘Beans again, Poppy, that’s the fourth time this week.’
‘What are you the fuckin’ food police? I like beans.’
‘Sit down, I will make it for you.’
‘Cheers, ears.’
‘We have a visitor today, remember, I told you.’
‘Oh yeah, that’s why you aint at work, your old girl was coming over from, em ehh…’
‘Finland, Poppy, I must have told you twenty times she lives in Finland.’
‘Yeah, that’s it, Finland. What happened did she blow you out?’
‘No, she’s here, that’s her bag on the side. I don’t think she’s very well. She is asleep. I put her on your bed, I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Nah, that’s alright, I am going out later anyway.’
‘I thought you didn’t have any money.’
‘Well, you can sub me a few quid, cant ya? I’ll pay yer back when I sort out the job shit money.’
‘Your personal banker as well as your personal skivvy, what next, do you want me to chauffeur you to the shops and back?’
‘For fucks sake, don’t get all shitty about it, I won’t ask ya for any dosh then.’
‘I didn’t say it was a problem, Poppy, I just don’t like being taken for granted. Of course, I will sort some money out for you.’
‘Cheers. I will pay yer back, once I’ve sorted things.’
Poppy opened the door to her bedroom to see that her sister was not spinning her another yarn, while her sister served up a generous helping of baked beans surrounded by triangles of toasted bread. She also bought her a large scoop of her favourite desert to help wash down the taste of the basic meal.
‘I will have to get some more of this ice cream, Poppy, that’s the second tub you have got through this week.’
Her sister said nothing, she was too busy woofing down the food her sibling had prepared. The whole plate was cleaned off in less than a minute.
‘Do you know, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but my mother really upset me today. She was saying really nasty things about you, Poppy.’
‘Like what?’
‘Very nasty, I don’t really think you want to hear them.’
‘Tell me, tell me what the bitch said!’
‘She, my mother, she told me that you probably deserved to be abused as a child. She thinks you probably encouraged the men who did it. She kept saying, ‘People like her’. Really nasty, she said you deserved everything you got.’
‘Fuckin’ bitch don’t wanna say that to may face, I’d lamp her, old woman or no old woman.’
Poppy was side-tracked with the mint chip ice-cream. She noticed that her sister looked a little perplexed. ‘What aint ya saying?’
‘It’s horrible, I shouldn’t tell you.’
‘Just spit it out for fucks sake.’
‘My mother said, Oh, God, this is really bad Poppy. She said your dad, probably, you know, used to do things to you when you were young. She said she thought he was a paedophile.’
‘You better get her out of here, girl, I will fuckin’ rip her apart!’
‘I think you should, Poppy.’
‘What!’
‘It would solve all our problems. I think you should finish her off.’
’Aye, what yer saying?’
‘I saw a documentary the other day. It’s easy, Poppy, you just put a pillow over her head and hold her throat, so she can’t breathe properly. She is fast asleep now, completely out of it. You would be too strong for her. It would all be over in a couple of minutes. She deserves it, for all the bad things she says about you. She deserves to die.’
‘Nah, don’t be a twat, I’d give her a slap for badmouthing me. I aint gonna do her in, am I?’
‘You’ve killed before.’
‘Nah, that was different, ya know it was.’
‘You have to do it, Poppy, you have to do it right now. If not for you then for me. You owe me, remember, you owe me. I found him for you, I found Houghton. Now you owe me, just this one thing and we are all square.’
‘Give yer fuckin’ head a wobble, girl. It aint gonna happen.’
‘Now, Poppy! Now! You have to do it right now!’
‘You are fuckin’ cuckoo, girl, aint ya? I aint banging yer mum, not now or never.’ Poppy said, giving her sister a stare of disbelief. She sprung her legs up on to the sofa and found herself an alternative source of amusement for the afternoon. Switching on the television, she turned up the volume to maximum, completely insensitive to the sleeping guest. Bree did nothing. She sat in stony silence and folded her arms, just like a petulant child that had lost all her privileges. The angry woman never moved an inch for the best part of an hour. Her beady eyes never left her sister, that burning hatred never left her gaze.
Krista was struggling to find peace in her slumber as she laid on top of Poppy’s duvet. Weird echoes and strange thoughts raced through her brain, and she could hear muffled laughter. Her head began to sway gently from side to side as she sought some respite from a chorus of sinister noises. Her mind was awash with blurry images and tiny whispers. As she slept, a large shadow seemed to block out the light as though a sudden darkness had fallen within the room. She felt a sudden hefty weight on her legs, it moved slowly upwards and rested on her chest. It was not a comfortable feeling, it felt very heavy on her small frame. She was desperate to see what was causing her body such pain, but she found her eyes would or could not open. She thought she heard a familiar voice above her head. it confused her, it seemed to be a friendly voice, but it was using poisonous words of pure hatred.
A sudden clasp on one side of her neck was joined by a much tighter grip on the other side. It was uncomfortable, painful, she tried to raise her hands to free herself, but her arms could not leave her sides. She suddenly found herself in a vice-like grip, she needed air, her chest was aching, her heart pounding heavily, faster and faster. She wanted to scream but could not prize open her mouth. The pressure grew as that grip around her neck tightened harder and harder. She tried to struggle, she wanted to kick out, she could feel the life draining from her body. And then, that voice became more familiar, telling her she was hated, that she had always been hated. Krista stopped struggling, she stopped moving, and then a small tear slithered down her cheek, as she realised in those final seconds who had been saying those angry words.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
‘Wake up!’
Poppy heard a familiar voice above her shoulder and felt a sharp nudge in the side of her ribs, her head was beginning to spin. The voice spoke again and told her to open her eyes, but her brain needed rest and told her to keep them closed. The voice grew louder and became more persistent. ‘Wake up! They will be here soon. Wake up, you need to know why.’
A sickly taste in her mouth made Poppy want to gag, she spat out a dark shade of saliva and her eyes peeled open. She found herself sitting on the floor, her head resting on the corner of the sofa. The lights from the lamp above her head were blinding, heavy weights seemed to be dragging down on her eyelids. A humming sound started up inside her skull and reverberated all around her brain. She forced her eyes closed for some respite.
Her sister was persistent. ’You need to know why, Poppy, why it had to be this way.’
‘Just let me sleep,’ came a croaky voice from the floor. ‘Tell me later, I’m knackered, just let me sleep.’
‘No! You need to know, before they come, you need to understand why I had to do this.’
Poppy was rapidly changing her mood from agitated to extremely angry. She looked up at her sibling, perched above her on the sofa, a strange expression of self-satisfaction on her face. She pushed down on the floor to get to her feet but found herself stumbling and ended up flat on her back. Bree gave her one of ‘those looks,’ the ones she saved for Poppy when she was displeased with her.
True to form Brianna Nylund had chosen to keep her darkest secrets close to her chest and wait for that rainy day to unleash the downpour of misgivings she had been hiding. Well, those heavens had now opened. A monstrous monsoon was about to be unleashed.
‘All I wanted,’ Bree said calmly, ‘was for me and you to be like proper sisters. Was that too much to ask, Poppy, really was that too much to ask?’
It took all her strength, but Poppy managed to sit herself upright. She felt weak, she was confused, strange thoughts were racing through her head. She could feel her heart beating fast, but she had no energy, she could hardly summon the strength to talk. She felt disabled, she felt like an invalid.
Her sister seemed to have a well-rehearsed speech prepared ‘That’s all, Poppy, just me and you, like real sisters, nobody else. Look at all the things I have done for you, I got you out of that hell-hole of a prison, I gave you a nice place to live, bought you a new phone, new clothes, everything you wanted…’
‘I never asked you to,’ came a small, muffled sound from beneath her. Poppy had cleared her throat and finally found a voice, albeit, not much more than a whisper.
‘But you never said no, did you, my ungrateful sister. You never said no.’
‘Get me some aspirin, I feel like shit.’
Bree laughed loudly. ‘Oh, you are going to need more than aspirin to deal with this headache, trust me.’
‘I feel fucked, like really fucked, get me some pills.’
‘I don’t think so, Poppy. You see you will be going soon, you are going to have a new home, not as nice as this one, one with lots of bars and scabby women.’
‘What the fuck you chattin’ about?’
‘You see, my beautiful, but so selfish sister, all I asked you to do was one thing and you couldn’t even do that for me.’
‘You asked me to top your mum, you crazy fuck!’
‘One thing, just one thing, for all the things I have done for you. You would never been able to find Houghton without me. You would never have buried the ghost of what that man did to you without me.’
‘You are seriously sick in the fuckin’ head, girl.’
‘Maybe, maybe I am, so I had to do it myself.’
‘What?’
‘She won’t be plaguing my life anymore. She has finally got what she deserved. I suffocated the bitch, she is lying on your bed, finally at peace with herself. Disappointing really, she didn’t even put up much of a struggle.’
Poppy tried again to push herself to her feet, but she was still drowsy, her brain was sending signals, but her body wasn’t answering. Her head had started throbbing and she was fighting a losing battle to keep her eyelids open. She needed to move but still couldn’t. ‘You aint got the bottle, missy, people like you are all talk.’
‘Wrong, my simple sister, so wrong. It was easy for me. I just pressed down hard on her neck until she stopped breathing. You see, she couldn’t fight back, she had some…’ Bree laughed to herself. ‘Well, she had some of your ‘special’ chocolate sprinkles, you know the ones you like in your ice-cream.’
‘What yer fuckin’ chattin about?’
‘Peclosaperidone. It’s a long word, much too long for you to spell, Poppy. Mind you, ‘disloyal’ and ‘betrayal’ are probably difficult for you to spell.’
‘Aye, what yer saying, I don’t get it.’
‘Never wondered why you slept so well, without alcohol? Have you never wondered why you had all those headaches?’ Bree mimicked her sibling’s morning tantrums. ‘Oh, get me the pills, missy, my head hurts. Maybe I have got a brain tumour. No, Poppy, no brain tumour, you need to have brain to have a brain tumour.’
Poppy looked around the room, everything seemed to be out of focus, her eyes spotted the empty ice cream bowl beneath the sofa. She suddenly realised why her body had stopped listening to her brain. She could barely move a muscle. In that split second, she felt a burst of rage rip through her torso, she tried to lash out at her sister, but her arm had no strength, she just felt weak, very weak. ‘Why?’ she asked her gloating sibling. ‘Why the fuck?’
‘You see I found those pills when I was at my lowest point, when I couldn’t sleep, no matter what I did. I didn’t mind the headaches. They were worth it just to be with him again.’
‘Who?’
‘Jamie, of course, Jamie. Every night he would be in my dreams, every night. I could be back with him whenever I wanted.’
Poppy sighed and shook her head slightly. ‘Mad as a fuckin’ hatter, girl, you’re just fuckin’ bonkers.’
‘But those dreams started getting nasty. Jamie, he started getting nasty. The trouble was, darling sister, I never knew when the nightmares started and when they ended. That’s why I had to stop. But I knew the power of those pills, I knew how to keep you under control.’
Reality began to dawn on Poppy, she suddenly realised what had been causing her to have so many hallucinations and why those nightmares had all seemed so real. Her head was starting to spin, and she found she had no feeling in her toes, but it didn’t stop her trying to get herself up off of the floor. ‘I swear down, I am gonna fuckin’ kill you! I aint messin’ this time, you are dead girl!’
Bree shrugged off her sisters’ threats. ‘God, you were tough to manage, Poppy, you were becoming immune to small doses. I had to cut up two, sometimes three tablets at a time to keep you in line. You see, at first, I just wanted to stop you going back to that awful place to see all your junkie friends. But then, well, then I just decided that you could be my little puppet. I could have some fun with you. And then I realised you were the answer to all my prayers. But you and your nasty temper, you nearly messed things up. You know, with that Shark fella. I got some good photos of that little mishap. But I couldn’t have you going back to prison, I had to keep you safe, until you had done my little deed.’
‘Killing your mum, fuck, all this can’t just be about that.’
‘No, of course it wasn’t, but let’s face it my beautiful but deranged sister, this was never going to work, was it? You and I, it was never going to be.’
‘Bitch!’
‘No, Poppy, you are the bitch. You could have made this easy, I just wanted her gone, you knew that you knew how much she hated you. You’ve killed before, it wouldn’t have bothered you. With all that violent shit in your head you were bound to be going back to prison again at some point. Why, why couldn’t you just do what I asked.’
Poppy suddenly found enough energy to force a grin and she taunted her sister. ‘She aint dead. You aint got the bottle. It’s just more of your bullshit, more of your fuckin’ lies, Your mother aint dead.’
But Bree was determined to have the last laugh, that monstrous rainstorm had finally reached its crescendo, a veritable tsunami had now arrived. ‘No, my beautiful, but so fucked up sister, my mother is dead. But yours isn’t, she is alive, Poppy, your mother is still alive.’
Poppy tried her best to swing a punch at her sibling, but her arm barely left her side. Her face was filled with rage ‘Don’t talk about my mother, you aint got no right…’
‘She is alive and well, Poppy. I say well, she had a hip operation last summer, but she gets around OK.’
‘Liar, more shit outta that lying gob of yours, fuckin’ liar!’
‘She is a dinner lady at a primary school, she lives in a lovely little place called Chichester, its right by the coast.’
‘Bullshit, just more fuckin bullshit!’
Bree moved swiftly and collected her mobile phone from the dining table, scrolling down her photo gallery she found what she was looking for. ‘Hannah Samuels, that’s what she calls herself nowadays, Hannah Samuels. She lives with the caretaker of the school’. Bree turned the phone around to show her sister a picture of a middle-aged couple posing close together in a school playground. ‘That’s her with Gary, he is her, well, her new man, I suppose. Very cosy, don’t you think?’
‘Nah, that’s just crap, you do things with photos, you muck about with ‘em to make things look different, I’ve seen ya do it. That aint her, she’s dead, I know my mother’s fuckin’ dead, don’t say no more about her.’
Bree studied her montage of pictures more closely. ‘They knew, of course, they both knew, Kayleigh and Matt, they have known for ages. It was Kayleigh that found her for me, I told you she had some good contacts in social services.’
‘You are just fuckin’ nasty, girl, when I get up, I swear down I am gonna go sick on you, I am gonna plaster you all over the floor.’
Poppy tried to push herself up, but her body was still too weak, unwilling to respond to her urges. Her sister pushed her back down. ‘Sit there until I am finished with you. The police will be here soon, this might be the last chance for me to tell you some home truths. Bree’s face lit up when she found what she was looking for amongst the photographs on her mobile. ‘Oh look, here it is. a close-up of your mother. Look just there, Poppy, see that little kink on her nose. Remember you told me our wonderful father broke it that time? Recognise her now?’
