Kimberly's Capital Punishment Read online

  The worst thing about being in a rock-steady relationship is the indifference you begin to feel towards your partner. If someone keeps telling you they’re going to stick by you for ever and ever, you feel less and less need to impress them, or dress well, or even do your hair in the morning. On the whole, there was nothing scary about coming home each day to a ready-made cup of tea and a pair of men’s lips; it’s just I stopped paying attention to what those lips had to say to me. Plus, the idea of slowly rotting and dying in the arms of an average-looking, stuttering lover made me want to lemon-squeeze my own head. After four years of going out with someone, you stop enjoying yourself in nightclubs, you stop showering every day, and you stop having ravenous rabbit sex. I think the scientific term is ‘overfamiliarity’.

  Understandably, Stevie loved me very much. I was outgoing, quick-witted, and I was famous for possessing the Guillotine: a platinum-blonde bob so straight and sharp it could roll heads. However, I was also a melodramatic hypochondriac (or so people reckon – in fact, I’m just a normal person who happens to get ill all the time), and there were certain things about Stevie that gave me irritable bowel syndrome. For example, the secret to Stevie’s sprinting success was this: to achieve that perfect, aggressive acceleration round the track, Stevie would imagine I’d just been raped, and he was chasing after my assailant. It made watching him compete somewhat disturbing. After enduring his first four sweaty, pink-faced victories, I decided to just stay at home and listen to him on local radio instead. My irritable bowels were soothed.

  Occasionally, at less important meets, he’d imagine a young hunk getting off with me in a nightclub, and charging after him to give him a good old pounding in the head. Meanwhile, back at the halal butcher’s, I’d sit around doing the puzzle book, imagining a young hunk getting off with me in a nightclub, and charging after him to give him a good old pounding in bed. My feelings for Stevie were faltering, like a ship’s compass veering off-course towards sunnier climes. I wanted to feel young and happy again. And this was how I managed it:

  I decided to be a horrible person.

  One of humanity’s favourite pastimes is destroying things. For example, the other day I was wandering past the Dutch Pub on the High Road, when I was greeted by a giant swastika someone had etched into the freshly squirted concrete. And next to the swastika: a pair of comedy breasts.

  Is everyone born nasty? I’ve often wondered why people like to slash brand-new bus seats; or badmouth you; or key your car; or break the legs off your Barbie dolls. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the original rebel without a clue, Oedipus – the Greek fellow who was destined from birth to kill his father and fuck his mother. Or perhaps it’s more to do with getting a boost up the food chain. Bully or be bullied.

  Around the time I turned fourteen, people at school began to comment on my ‘evil eyes’. Some people are blessed with beautiful, soft, symmetrical eyes (like Stevie), while others (me) are cursed with slightly upturned, cat-like, ‘evil’ eyes, set beneath Draculaesque, upside-down-V eyebrows. Once I discovered the delights of tweezers and make-up, I managed to exorcise my demonic peepers with certain eyeshadows, but I still think people act suspicious around me.

  Part of the reason I invested in the Guillotine was to detract people’s attention from my devil eyes. I must stress, though, I’m not actually evil. When I first decided to be horrible to my boyfriend, it was more of an experiment than a malicious attack on the person I robotically said ‘I love you’ to every night before lights out. It wasn’t revenge – Stevie hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just unnerving to think he loved me so intensely, so unconditionally, that the only escape route would involve me falsely reciprocating his love, or breaking his heart into millions of whimpering pieces. Stevie was soft and cuddly, but incredibly suffocating: a bit like a pillow, if you smother someone to death with it.

  Humans are famously never satisfied with anything. In fact, I think it’s my constant search for perfection in men that makes me a terrible lover. The other man’s grass is always greener, after all, and the other man’s cheekbones are always in slightly better accordance with da Vinci’s Golden Ratio, I find.

  On top of all that, if you put two grown-ups in a ‘serious’ relationship, for some unknown reason they sometimes start speaking to each other like toddlers. Instead of trying to entertain each other with wisdom and wisecracks, they give each other pet names, and just giggle and gurgle gobbledygook all day. At first it’s endearing. Four years down the line, it’s more like torturous regression.

  I didn’t want to be a helpless toddler any more. I missed the single life, where you don’t have to do someone else’s washing; be a victim to someone’s crap sexual fantasies; or sit in silence with a man screaming at twenty-two millionaires doing their Saturday jobs. I hated sport. During those long, tiresome evenings, pretending to be interested in televised kabaddi, I’d whisk myself off in my head to a fruity, forbidden land of discos, handsome strangers, swapped phone numbers and swapped bodily fluids. It was a Tuesday night – I was being hypnotised by Tottenham Hot Sperm vs Arsenumb on the box – when I first pondered how I’d get rid of Stevie. Stupidly, I’d been nice to him and agreed to go down the Dutch Pub to watch the football, but that was all going to change. Sipping a pint of flat Coke, I concocted a list of subtle – yet sinister – schemes to wean Stevie off poor, lifeless Kimberly. It started with an accidental kick under the table to Stevie’s left shin. It ended with him strangled to death by four pairs of shoelaces. And what follows are all the intermediary bits.

  Kimberly Clark in … the Attack of the Red Mittens!

  For someone who went running every day and regularly drank Lucozade, Stevie was lazy. I think, in a way, he prided himself on being on the brink of Olympic-sized fame, and expected some sort of special treatment from me. While Stevie did cook our tea every night (the fun part), I was made to do all the washing-up (the dull part), and it was also my job to do the laundry, make the bed, and rearrange the living space after we’d had a ‘party’ (me and Stevie drinking booze in front of the telly, rather than eating tuna and cucumber sandwiches in front of the telly).

  I love cleanliness, but I hate doing the actual cleaning. I have an intense fear of touching germs, dust and old food stains, which makes it difficult for me to be happy on buses, or in doctors’ waiting rooms, or down on the Subterranean Ghost Train. Once, I bought an ex-library copy of Hamlet off a tramp, but I could only bear to read it after disinfecting each page with a mild Dettol wipe.

  Oh, summer. August is not only the time of year when the sun’s at its fullest – and bugs and bacteria are at their happiest – but it also heralds the arrival of the annual Amateur Athletics Association Championships. Last year, Stevie spent every day in the lead-up to the event revolving round the track at his club close to White Hart Lane, while I stayed at home doing the chores and being bored. I’d just been up the hill to get some shopping, and I was soaking wet with sweat as I sat there chomping on my Somerfield’s Worst™ Lasagne-for-One.

  When the last of the pasta had gone down the chute, I chucked the tub to one side and sighed. To spite Stevie, I’d started leaving dirty dishes all around the flat. However, since he’d been out training so much, he was yet to recognise it as a malicious act of bad will. He probably just thought I was forgetful, or ill again.

  After two weeks of rampant mould growth, it was me who became aggravated by the plates. I felt sick, being stared out by all the shigella and salmonella bugs as I wandered from room to room. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I put on Marigolds and a nose-peg and gave the flat a summer-clean, cursing myself. It was lonely up there above the butcher’s, and so far my wicked scheme to turn Stevie against me was proving fruitless. I made a mental note: dirty plates annoy me far more than they do my boyfriend.

  With all the washing-up done and all the dust dusted, I felt on a bit of a roll with the cleaning, as you do. Stevie’s first heat for the AAAs was in a couple of days, and he prided himself on ha
ving the brightest, whitest, nicest athletics kit on the running track. He reckoned his kit could blind the other competitors, and help him on his way to victory. Sorting through the snowy mountain of dirty whites in the bedroom, I picked out Stevie’s best sprinting vest, shorts, socks and boxers; a couple of my white dog-eared knickers; a white dressing gown I wasn’t keen on; and last Chrimbo’s red mittens, with the holly motif. My heart pounded childishly as I stuffed everything into the washing machine’s tummy, then set it on forty degrees and went back through to watch some telly. I had to bite my tongue to stop the neighbours thinking I was laughing at Loose Women.

  Two days later I was wobbling with excitement on a fold-down seat in a grandiose sports arena in Birmingham. The sun was at its peak, like the star on a huge invisible Christmas tree, and I peered through insectoid sunglasses as the runners jogged confidently out of the tunnel.

  It was time for the 200m dash. My belly gurgled as the competitors lined up in their pristine whites and slightly off-whites, with numbers Sellotaped across their chests. I spotted Stevie straight away and gave him a big daft wave. He just ignored me, though. For some reason, he looked a bit sheepish, hopping about on the spot in his pretty bubblegum-pink sprinting outfit. I laughed hysterically behind very serious, shut lips.

  When the man with the golden moustache fired the starting pistol, all the bright white runners – and the silly one in pink – galloped full-pelt towards the finishing line. Everyone was cheering and jeering. I could hardly watch. By the look on Stevie’s face, I don’t think he was imagining me being raped this time. He was probably imagining me being murdered. But, whatever was going through the boy’s head, unfortunately Stevie didn’t manage to qualify for the finals of the AAAs.

  Kimberly Clark in … the Mystery of the Three Periods

  I have a special talent: I can have three periods in one month, if I want.

  After the racing-whites incident, things between me and Stevie began to go beautifully downhill. It’s strange – I’d spent the first years of our relationship trying to suss out what made him smile, and what made his cock fire white javelins, only to find what I really wanted was for him to frown, and for his cock to do the Fosbury Flop. There’s no easier way to frustrate a man than to deprive him of sex.

  Men are ravenous, horny beasts, but women can be beastly too. Even after four years of the same old sex-by-numbers, me and Stevie still managed to have it away three or four times a week, discounting the week I got the painters in, of course. We were very particular about not having bright red sex.

  For a whole two days after Stevie’s upset on the running track, he lazed about the flat grumbling to himself, making a lot of pink noise. I saw much more of him than usual, but talked to him much less. Since I was the humble owner of an inferiority complex, I was usually the first to apologise after an argument but, by this time, it was too much of a thrill to watch our relationship fall apart, so I kept my mouth shut.

  However, I must stress, I didn’t want to kill the lad. Yes, true love requires you to occasionally want to kill your partner, but that doesn’t mean you actually want them to die permanently. I didn’t want Stevie to hate me, just dislike me intensely for a few weeks and realise I’m not quite as perfect as he thought I was. It was always my hope for us to stay friends after all the cruelty – I imagined going to more of his meets, once he’d started imagining a different girlfriend getting raped. In fact, I was looking forward to Stevie having a new bird, and perhaps going for cocktails with her, and chattering about all his bad points. I imagined I’d get on well with her – as long as she wasn’t better looking than me.

  After the full two days of not talking to each other, I decided to break the silence by having loud foghorn sex with Stevie in the other room. It was to be our final shag. Even while I was bouncing up and down on his pelvis, bracing myself for the soggy bit, I knew I was being too nice to him. So I decided to bite him. But that only spurred him on more – suddenly, Stevie was grinning wildly, his legs vibrating like a huge, fleshy tuning-fork. I was enjoying it too, but only enjoying it in the way you enjoy watching your favourite film over and over again: you know all the action and dialogue off by heart, and I felt like fast-forwarding to the bit where Stevie and Kimberly topple off each other with wiped organs and go back to sleep. Fin.

  I slept till eleven the next morning. I didn’t have a job back then – Stevie was the sole breadwinner, what with his flashy sponsorship deals and full Lottery funding. After the cock-up at the AAAs, Stevie began to fret about money – he kept saying his career was going down the toilet. I mentioned to him a career is actually an abstract concept and can’t physically fit down any drainage system (especially not in our tiny Victorian flat), and he started grumbling again. I smiled at his back, glad to be an annoying cow.

  Soon, Stevie realised the only pleasure I was capable of giving him was through the ancient art of coitus. Over the following weeks, Stevie stayed at home while his fit friends jetted off to Osaka to train with the national sprinting team, and he spent at least ten minutes every hour trying to stroke me, kiss me and fish-hook me into his bed. I just yawned, though, or actually said the words, ‘Naw, naw, I’m too tired.’ Or I’d make out I was coming down with the flu, or hay fever, or food poisoning, or meningitis, or myxomatosis. ‘Th-th-there’s nothing even wr-wr-wr-wrong with y-you,’ Stevie would plead. So I’d go into the bathroom and stick my fingers down my throat, then bring him in and show him the frothy sick in the toilet. And I’d forget to flush, or brush my teeth.

  It was a constant juggling act, dunking Stevie deeper and deeper into depression, then quickly hoisting him back out before he realised I was being sadistic on purpose. The cruelty had to appear natural if the plan was going to work.

  One day in mid-September, me and Stevie decided to go for a stroll round our local recreation ground, Downhills Park, where all the winding tarmac paths go magically downhill, like in an M. C. Escher drawing.

  Me and Stevie got all the way down down down to the BMX circuit without saying a word to each other, before my boyfriend finally bit the bullet and piped up with this premeditated, serious speech:

  ‘Eh, K-Kim, I was g-g-going to ask, er, like, do do do you think we’re going d-downhill?’

  ‘Er, yeah,’ I answered, though I wasn’t sure if he was referring to our relationship, or just the park. Stevie huff-huffed, skidding down a steep bit, and carried on:

  ‘N-naw, but but but seriously, I feel like you’re g-going off me. I mean, I st-st-still love you and all that, it’s s-sound, we’re not not splitting up, I think it’s j-j-j-j-just the s-sex and that. It’s like you k-keep making up excuses. I dunno, I I I I know you get d-dead ill all the time, but but but I j-just want things back to how it was. I p-proper love you.’

  So, I agreed to have more sex with Stevie, just to sh-shut him up, and we walked on down down down towards the pond with slightly jauntier footsteps. But, of course, I had another trick up my sleeve. Or rather, up my fallopian tubes. I looked up at the bright blue food-dye sky and smiled, thinking about menstruation.

  When I was eleven, I was the only girl in my class who cried when we found out we had to bloody our knickers once a month, for nothing. I’ve always been afraid of haemoglobin, and I thought I was going to pass out. I blame not having any sisters – I was clueless. Those insolent bints Stacey Garrick and Marie O’Shea had apparently conjured up six periods between them already, but I bet it was just too much beetroot in their diets.

  With such an initial fear of the old ‘Japanese flag’, it’s strange to think twelve years later I’d gladly wave three of those flags in one month. Once I’d been going out with Stevie half a year (and had him thoroughly checked out at the doc’s), I started taking the Pill; the contraceptive one. Straight away it cleared up the latex rash I seemed to be harbouring in my pants but, on the flipside, it gave me bad skin and bad dreams. One involved a skeleton with syphilitic bumps on its skull, gyrating and thrusting its pelvis in a battleship-grey
apartment. I think the dream meant I didn’t fancy an STD. As soon as Stevie came back from the doctor’s with a clean bill of sexual health, the bad dreams softened.

  Aside from the nightmares, the Pill made my periods less messy, made my boobs bigger, and made my overall temperament slightly grumpier. It’s a clever old thing. The Pill also turns your reproductive system into a kind of cuckoo clock except, instead of a cuckoo, it pings a stinking period out of your womb every twenty-eight days, on the dot. After munching one pill a day for twenty-one days, you stop taking it for a week (the ‘placebo week’, where you get dead moody and listen to Placebo), during which you have your ‘withdrawal bleed’ (or ‘phantom period’, as I like to call it), then, seven days later, you start munching on a new pack of pills again. This process goes on as long as you keep taking your prescription, like your ovaries have turned themselves into very slow egg-timers, except it just so happens they don’t release any eggs.

  Like any medication, the Pill can be exploited to sinister effect. If, for example, your boyfriend doesn’t like having sex with you when you’re on your period, and you want to have as many periods as possible in one month, so he’ll become frustrated and ultimately not love you any more, here’s my advice: After your latest ‘phantom period’, start taking the pills in a new packet, as normal. Say, if you take your first Pill on a Monday, keep taking it on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, then stop. This makes your womb frown and scratch its chin, fooling it into thinking it’s the ‘placebo week’ again, and it spits out whatever menstrual tissue you’ve got left up there. It should certainly be browny-red and sludgy enough to keep your boyfriend’s bits away from you for another week. Then, repeat as required.