The Sculptress Read Online Free PDF Page A

Security in
Dawlington High Street. Yesterday was my birthday.
I am twenty-three years old. I have always
lived at home. My relationship with my mother
and sister has never been close. I get on well with
my father. I weigh eighteen and a half stone and my
mother and sister have always teased me about
it. Their nickname for me was Fattie-Hattie, after
Hattie Jacques, the actress. I am sensitive to being
laughed at for my size.
    Nothing was planned for my birthday and that
upset me. My mother said I wasn’t a child any
more and that I must organize my own treats. I
decided to show her I was capable of doing something
on my own. I arranged to have today off
work with the idea of taking the train to London
and spending the day sight-seeing. I did not organize
the treat for yesterday, my birthday, in case she
had planned a surprise for the evening which is
what she did for my sister’s twenty-first birthday in
July. She did not. We all spent the evening quietly
watching television. I went to bed feeling very
upset. My parents gave me a pale pink jumper for
my birthday present. It was very unflattering and
I didn’t like it. My sister gave me some new slippers
which I did like.
    I woke up feeling nervous about going to
London on my own. I asked Amber, my sister,
to phone in sick and come with me. She has been
working in Glitzy , a fashion boutique in Dawlington,
for about a month. My mother got very angry
about this and stopped her. We had an argument
over breakfast and my father left for work in the
middle of it. He is fifty-five and works three days
a week, as a book-keeper for a private haulage
company. For many years he owned his own
garage. He sold it in 1985 because he had no son
to take it over.
    The argument became very heated after he left,
with my mother blaming me for leading Amber
astray. She kept calling me Fattie and laughing at
me for being too wet to go to London alone. She
said I had been a disappointment to her from the
day I was born. Her shouting gave me a headache.
I was still very upset that she had done nothing for
my birthday and I was jealous because she had
given Amber a birthday party.
    I went to the drawer and took out the rolling
pin. I hit her with it to make her be quiet, then I
hit her again when she started screaming. I might
have stopped then but Amber started screaming
because of what I had done. I had to hit her too.
I have never liked noise.
    I made myself a cup of tea and waited. I
thought I had knocked them out. They were both lying on the floor. After an hour I wondered if they
were dead. They were very pale and hadn’t moved.
I know that if you hold a mirror to someone’s
mouth and there is no mist on it afterwards it
means they are dead. I used the mirror from my
handbag. I held it to their mouths for a long time
but there was no mist. Nothing.
    I became frightened and wondered how to hide
the bodies. At first, I thought of putting them
in the attic, but they were too heavy to carry
upstairs. Then I decided the sea would be the best
place as it’s only two miles from our house, but I
can’t drive and, anyway, my father had taken the
car. It seemed to me that if I could make them
smaller I could fit them into suitcases and carry
them that way. I have cut chickens into portions
many times. I thought it would be easy to do the
same thing with Amber and my mother. I used an
axe that we kept in the garage and a carving knife
from the kitchen drawer.
    It wasn’t at all like cutting up chickens. I was
tired by two o’clock and I had only managed to
take off the heads and the legs and three of the
arms. There was a lot of blood and my hands kept
slipping. I knew my father would be home soon
and that I could never finish by then as I still had
to carry the pieces to the sea. I realized it would
be better to ring the police and admit what I had done. I felt much happier once I had made this
decision.
    It never occurred