Reader, I murdered her!

I’ve committed a murder. And I’m not going to plead my innocence, and I’m not going to say that it was self-defence (because it wasn’t) and I’m not going to say I had a lousy childhood (because I didn’t, even though I could wish to this day that Mum had checked the dress code at Melanie Beamont’s ninth birthday party and not sent me in a frilly pink frock when everyone else was in jeans!).   I wasn’t being threatened by my victim, unless you count feeling someone grate on your nerves every minute you’re with them or listening to them as cruel and unnatural punishment.

     It’s not the most original phrase, but this is the lull before the storm. Oh, and that storm is going to break pretty soon. For all I know it may already have started online. People will say that hanging would be too good for me, even if it were reinstated. The serried ranks of keyboard warriors may be venting their spleen right now, and I can see the headlines. Heartless Slayer of Well-Loved Schoolteacher. It’s a fact that people who are murdered aalways, if you believe the hype, well-loved, and either bubbly or kept themselves to themselves, which may probably often translate as either driving everyone mad with their incessant chit chat and high-pitched laughter at jokes that aren’t funny, especially their own, or with a borderline social phobia that makes the unreformed Scrooge look positively like Mr or Ms Sunshine in comparison. 

     I have killed Lorna McIntyre. And no, I can’t say it was a crime of passion, or the madness of a moment. It was premeditated. I had been planning it for months and fantasising about it for years. Lorna McIntyre. The head teacher of Dingle Hill Mixed Infants, who was always, as she told people, strict but fair, who could see the best in the most troubled and truculent child. Miss McIntyre (she had no time for what she called this new-fangled Ms Business though she made a point of respecting the wishes of any parent, especially a single Mum, who chose to use it). Miss McIntyre with her trusty bike that could have come out of a politician’s speech on old-fashioned values, and her collection of cardigans that I happened to know (I know more about Lorna than most people do!) were NOT hand-knitted, but most people thought were. 

     The thing is, at one point I liked Lorna as much as anyone else did. Or possibly even more At least at first. She was the kind of schoolteacher I always wished I’d had. From that clear, low voice, with just the hint of a Scottish accent that carried perfectly without ever needing to shout to that “more in sorrow than anger” look that worked wonders on recalcitrant pupils (not to mention their parents!). There was something so intensely reassuring – or at least, there used to be – about the way she said, “Don’t fret, dear, we can work things out,” in any crisis, to everyone from the most nervous child in Reception Class to David Briers, the owner of the Big House. Dingle Hill is the kind of village where there’s still a Big House, though David likes to call himself a jobbing gardener. Fair enough, he does get his hands dirty occasionally. In organic soil, of course.

     Let me tell you this – Lorna isn’t as saintly as you might think. I know that I’m adding to my sins in so doing, but fact is fact. Yes, she founded the village Food Bank, and had such lovely cosy, caring chats with the people using it. But I still heard her remarking, “Say what you like, but at least some of them only have themselves to blame. Maybe not entirely their own fault, but my Mother brought me up to make a meal out of nothing!” I don’t suppose she literally meant of nothing, like those so-called “Breatharians”, but the implication was that a handful of oats and a few potatoes were enough for Mrs McIntyre to feed, if not the five thousand, then certainly the five! And I’ve also heard that soft Scots voice of hers referring to one of her “project pupils” as a nauseous little brat she’d like to give a good skelping. 

     Now I’m not being holier than thou about this. I’m not even saying that I entirely disagreed with her, but I still had to bite my tongue when everyone sang her praises. 

     These things popped into my mind. I couldn’t help it. 

     Still, if we bumped people off for hypocrisy, it’d more than solve the problems of over-population. 

     I know I let little things get to me, but oh, did I get heartily sick of the sight of that hairstyle of hers – that bun at the nape of her neck, ever so slightly off-centre, as if to prove a point, and with plain hair grips, the kind she still called Kirby Grips helping hold it in place. I loathed the smell of her cold cream and the greasy look it gave her face, though it’s a fact she had a good complexion for her age. I loathed her belief in the fact that sensible shoes might at least partially solve the world’s dilemmas, and sometimes I made a point of wearing shoes that were either too flat or had high heels that gave me more than one sprained ankle, not to mention the blisters, just to rebel against the Lorna McIntyre doctrine of sensible shoes. 

     But yes, you might say, these are fair enough reasons to duck into a shop door when you see someone coming, or to think (or even say!) boring old biddy!. And I wouldn’t disagree with you. I’ve not locked myself into some cage of guilt that’s going to ruin my life (I have a horrible feeling others are going to do that for me) but I’m not blithe and jaunty about it, either. Lorna and I go back a long way. I owe her a great deal, though it’s mutual! 

     Do I wish I hadn’t done it? I won’t say I don’t. But it’s too late to do a thing about it.

     Poor Lorna. And I don’t say that wholly sarcastically. I’m not some kind of monster, though I don’t doubt that word will be used. 

     One thing is sure, things are about to change. Did I know, deep down, when I landed what I still regard as my dream job, for all its problems, that there would have to be times like this, that they couldn’t be helped, that sometimes, at the risk of sounding like a Princess of Psychobabble, it was necessary to destroy to rebuild?

     But oh that makes it sound like some kind of moral crusade, and even at my most defensive, I would never claim it was that.

     You could argue that I’m not the only one who’s guilty. Oh, folk won’t see it that way. I don’t expect them to. I daresay I wouldn’t myself.

     But though I’m the chief scriptwriter on the gentle feelgood drama (as it tends to be called) Dingle Hill, things still have to be given the OK by the “aboves”. 

     And now that Rubicon (which always sounds to me like the name of an upmarket soft drink – probably because, come to think of it, it is!) has been passed. I have bumped off Lorna McIntyre. The leaks will already be putting out their tendrils – which is a pretty bizarre mixed metaphor but the kind I can’t get out of my head once it’s there! And the episode goes out next week. She will pass away peacefully in her armchair and be found my the parent of one of her more vulnerable pupils. I thought about it being the pupil himself, but decided that was pushing my luck given that we go out well pre-watershed. Mind you, the pupil himself, though in real life he’s very fond of Aileen, the actress who plays her, has confided in me that Miss McIntyre gets up his nose. 

     Let’s hope that never gets out.

     She’ll have a lovely send-off!