40. Winnie

CHAPTER FORTY

WINNIE

Mum: Winnie, it’s not fair, I’ve been doing so well with my cleaning, but the council lady came again and she’s issued me with a notice that says they’re going to condemn the house if I don’t make it the way she wants it.

It’s cruel. They shouldn’t be able to come onto my property and dictate how I live! Can you believe the council lady held up the diorama you and I made for your third form English class of Shakespeare’s Globe, with all the little actors you drew so perfectly, and the little speaker we hid in it so we could play the sounds of the crowd and you reciting the lines? She actually called it rubbish. I’m disgusted. I’m making a complaint.

GRIMDALE SEXUAL HEALTH CLINIC: Winifred Preston, thank you for booking your appointment for a non-hormonal copper IUD. This contraception is 99% effective at preventing pregnancy and will work immediately. We look forward to helping you manage your sexual health.

N ow that we had our plan for the ball, all I had to do was convince the ladies in the Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven to help us. I’ve given them the broad strokes over the group chat, but I plan to lay on the Winnie Wins charm at the Midsummer Festival. I offered up Alaric and myself as volunteers and told them we’d treat them all to dinner at the pub afterwards. I’m hoping that if they spend some time with him (and he pays for all the drinks), they’ll like him as much as I do and agree to be vampire bait to help him.

For now, we need to make sure that the castle is ready for the ball. And that means breaking the back of our final room. After my appointment at Grimdale Sexual Health (not that I intend to sleep with Alaric, because I have rules. It’s just a precaution. Shut up.) I put on my Get Shit Done playlist and Alaric and I sort the last of his sculpting tools, throw out the broken ones, and stack the clay neatly in a room near the back of the castle that is going to become part of his new creative wing.

All that’s left to do now is find some use for the towering wall of ceramic pots.

“She agreed to that too easily,” Alaric says as he regards the mugs.

“Your mother? You’ve being a pessimist. She loves you in her own violent, terrifying way. I don’t believe she was really going to kill you?—”

My phone beeps. It’s my mother again:

Mum: I tried to apologise to Ken. I left a box of Reggae Reggae Sauce from Savemart on his front step, because I know it’s his favourite. But he tossed the carton over the fence. Can you believe it? The nerve of some people. I can’t believe I ever considered them friends.

I tap out a vaguely supportive message. There’s no point explaining to my mother that Ken probably saw a box of unsolicited BBQ sauce on his porch as a threat, not a peace offering.

“Someone’s messaging you a lot?” Alaric’s nostrils flare. “It’s not Patrick, is it?”

“Jealous, husband?”

“I am jealous of the sun, for it kisses your skin where I cannot. I am jealous of that coffee you’re drinking, for it touches your lips…”

“Okay, okay, I get the idea. It’s my mother.” I tap out another message dissuading her from writing WANKER in Reggae Reggae Sauce across his front window. “Difficult mothers aren’t just for vampires, you know.”

“Tell me about her.”

“I—” The words I can’t catch on my lips. Alaric spilled his heart to me beside the fire. He gave me everything, making sure that I knew all the darkest corners of his soul before I made my choice to stay. Even though I’m not getting involved emotionally with him (I’m not ), I trust him enough to give him this tiny piece of me. “She’s a hoarder.”

“Like me?” Alaric raises an eyebrow.

“Not quite like you. She’s not an artist like you. She’s a compulsive shopper. She goes to the shops and whatever she sees, whether it’s forty dented cans of mustard or a bright yellow umbrella, she tells herself that it will change her life. She gets such a thrill from finding a bargain or buying someone the perfect gift, but by the time she gets home the thrill has worn off so the bargain goes in one of her towering piles or the gift never makes it to the receiver. But the thing that makes her worse is that she hoards memories.”

“Memories?”

“My mother sees a thousand connections between objects and thoughts and feelings and memories that I don’t. You’re like her in that way. Only she stores her memories and dreams in objects. So to her, if you throw away the object, you throw away all the happy things associated with it, or the future she imagines for herself. Each item she collects is part of an ideal world she’s creating for herself. Which makes your life difficult when you’re her daughter and you’re being crushed beneath piles of your own childhood drawings and school textbooks.”

Reginald appears silently at my side and hands me a mug of his famous chocolate, iced instead of hot, since the night is warm. I wrap my fingers around the mug, letting the spicy, sweet scent steady me against the bitter memories.

“She was always been messy, but it was just part of her personality. She’s so much fun. We never had a lot of money growing up, but she always tried to make everything special for me. She would spend hours doing crafts with me, or inventing wild games, or decorating cakes with pic n mix lollies into whatever animal or cartoon character I was obsessed with that year. Those early years, I remember Dad being beautifully, giddily in love with her. He called her his ‘wild spirit.’”

“To be that in love is a precious thing,” Alaric says somberly. His eyes are fractured obsidian shards.

“Precious things never last.” I force back a tear that itches the corner of my eye. “Dad was injured in his factory job before I was born, which meant he got a payout so we bought our small house, and he was on a benefit so he didn’t have to work. Mum worked part time at a shoe shop, so they were home with me a lot. I didn’t have a lot of friends but I was never lonely because I always had them to play with.

“I think the hoarding started when my dad decided he didn’t want to sit around home any longer. He got a job driving lorries. He was away from home a lot, and when he was home, he was tried and cranky. Everything about Mum seemed to annoy him. I think in the beginning, she started buying things to cheer herself up, but it became this vicious cycle she couldn’t snap out of. Dad would come home and there would be another pile of boxes in the hall or on the sofa, and they’d fight, and she’d go out and buy more boxes, and so on. But even then it was manageable. We could still use the kitchen and bathroom. She kept her clutter out of the bedrooms.

“I don’t remember a specific time when things got worse. My mum started to obsess about keeping mementos. Every time she bought me a chocolate bar and saw my face light up, she’d save the foil wrappers. ‘They’re for your art projects,’ she’d say. But I was too old for chocolate wrapper collages then. I remember once, my dad wanted to get rid of an old vacuum cleaner that no longer worked and Mum wouldn’t let him because they’d been given it as a wedding gift from my cousin, and throwing it out was like throwing away their entire marriage.

“In the end, that’s exactly what he did. I woke up one morning for school and he was gone and Mum was crying. And after that, the hoarding got worse. She filled the hallway, so we had to climb over boxes to get to our bedrooms. She stacked so many Savemart boxes in the kitchen and it became so riddled with cobwebs and maggots that we couldn’t get to the fridge or oven, so most of our meals were takeaways or crackers and cheese. I had to keep making excuses for why I couldn’t have friends over to the house so they didn’t see the way we lived. I could hear rodents moving through the stacks of papers while I slept. The winter before I left, the floor in her bedroom rotted through and her bed fell into the sitting room. I left the day I turned eighteen, but that house still has a chokehold on me. I worry about her constantly. She’s always sick and the neighbours complain and every time I try to clean she gets upset that I’m throwing away her things and that’s it! ”

“What’s it?”

I raise the mug to my lips as I stare at the rows and rows of perfect little ceramic pots. The idea forms in my head. Another brilliant Winnie Wins idea.

“I have figured out how you’re going to keep your end of our bargain.”

Alaric looks pained. “I’ve already agreed to attend this absurd pagan festival.”

“Yes, but attending is passive, and we need to disrupt your habits. So we’re going to participate. I don’t want to throw your ceramics away. They’re beautiful. But there are more here than we could hope to use in a lifetime. Even one of your lifetimes. But other people could use them?—”

“Stop thinking what you’re thinking this moment.”

“I am a genius . This will be a good lesson for you if you’re really serious about changing your ways.” I pick up my phone and dial. “Hey, Komal, it’s Winnie. Listen, do you have room for another stall at the Midsummer Festival…”