Alizarin Crimson

Mum would have been the best mum in the world had it not been for the bodies. She had one of those permanently laughing faces: white freckled skin with healthy, happy, rosy cheeks, vacant yet twinkling blue eyes that laughed when her mouth got too tired from the muscular strain of smiling. But she didn’t just look benevolent. She put up with shit no other parent could ever have dealt with so patiently. Constantly failed exams were just the starter course, closely pursued by less than typical teenage pranks.

She was an active woman: I don’t remember ever seeing her sitting down at home. The smell of cookies and oil paints impregnated the air in every room, every minute of every day. Even that time I had gastroenteritis, after crapping my arse raw, the bathroom still smelled of chocolate, cinnamon and alizarin crimson.

Between batches of cookies, she painted poppy fields. Standing up, of course. Her wide eyes guzzling up colours and spraying them on the canvas, swiftly followed by the brush. Bright red standing out like bloodstains on green and blue.

Until the police came. She let them in with a smile, offered them tea and put a dozen freshly baked cookies on one of her hand-painted plates. They refused all. Read her her rights. Cuffed her. Marched her out into the street. Roughly pushed her into the car parked outside. They weren’t smiling. They looked relieved and angry at the same time.

I can see her in my mind, in the interrogation room, where good cop stares at her, unbelieving. Bad cop scowls, frowns and growls at her, laying out close-up photographs in groups according to name of victim. “This,” the detective shudders as he lays out 5 pictures, “was J. K. S.” Another group of 6 pictures are placed on the table as part of the A. D. G. jigsaw. And so on, until the pictures of 11 dismembered bodies lie on the table. She smiles as she looks at each and every one, sliding the odd one to a different group of pictures, reorganizing them, beaming pitifully at the one asking the questions. “Doesn’t this foot goes with that other leg?”

They called it an “open and shut case”.

Another body turned up a few days ago and the newspapers have gone ballistic.

Today, Mother’s day, I thought I would send her a pressed poppy.