Fic: Monday you can fall part

[aquila1nz]

AO3 Link | monday you can fall apart (2322 words) by Aquila
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Riot Women
Rating: Teen and Up
Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Relationship: Gen
Characters: Beth Thornton
Additional Tags: so far preslash that it basically can’t be but we know, suicide, depression, dementia, dead dove don’t read, seriously you can just skip this one and say you read it if it’s going to make you feel bad, it’s just all build up to that first scene, beth needs someone to love, beth needs someone to see her, beth needs something to look forward to, character study


Summary:

"I’ve been so low lately.” The steps Beth takes as she prepares to kill herself.

This is a companion piece to 'monday you can hold your head'

• Annual check up

The first thing on Beth’s list for the new year was her annual check up. She’d booked well in advance so she’d be sure to get her regular GP, who she liked and trusted, but on the day it turned out Dr Gnanamuthu was unexpectedly away and she was ushered in to see a locum. He did a quick physical check up, proffered some advice about losing weight, then asked if there was anything else she wanted to ask about. There was a whole speech Beth had been planning to tell her regular doctor, who knew what she’d been going through with her mother for the last six years.

About Martin leaving last February, just as she’d finally moved her mother into the home. “I’d thought about whether we could retire a bit early, do some travelling. And then he was just gone.”

About how discouraged she felt at work, exacerbated by sleeplessness and irritability. “And then I’m short with someone and I end up feeling more terrible about it all.”

About the menopause symptoms that were still knocking her for six. “Between the hot flushes and the bursting into tears I don’t even recognise myself. I don’t think I used to be a boring person that people didn’t want to be around.”

About the depression, the mire of emptiness that she just kept plodding through with no escape in sight. “It terrifies me that I can’t seem to enjoy anything anymore, that there is nothing to look forward to.”

She starts trying to explain it all but he’s obviously not listening, so she stammers out some concrete facts about not sleeping and feeling low. He prescribes her some antidepressants and she’s back out in the practice’s car park in 15 minutes.

“Well that was all kinds of useless.” She contemplated getting the prescription filled, but three months to feel anything? Would there even be any point to that? For the last six months she’s had a half-baked plan in her mind and has been making cryptic lists of what she’d need, one word entries that only she would understand, just in case someone saw them. But nobody had, because really there was nobody to see — her colleagues had no interest in her day to day life where it didn’t intercept theirs, and the last person to step foot in her house was the radiator man. And so she takes the list — something she’s kept separate from her quotidian shopping lists and chores lists, school lists and mum lists — which looks a bit like:

• Mum solicitor


• Ring Tom


• Research


• Buy stuff


• Nick


• Tidy before

And creates a proper plan from it:

• Finalise financial details for Mum’s care

Her first priority is her mother. Her mother’s care had been the anvil on her back for so long but it had also become the only thing keeping her going: getting her mother safely set up in care, and also being sure she would be properly looked after until the very end. She doesn’t trust Nick to take over her power of attorney, or Tom, or the other grandsons. She’s safe in a really good care home now, getting the round the clock care she needs, but there’s still paperwork that will need to be done to make sure the care won’t run through the money from her house sale. Luckily the solicitor has been really good, and walked Beth through everything involved in the contract. It means no inheritance, but also no risk.

• Ring Tom

She leaves Tom a message, mentions she’s been using the Christmas gift he gave her, hopes he and Fearne had a lovely time away over the New Year. He doesn’t ring back.

• Plan a method

She felt nervous googling this. Probably definitely no one was tracing her internet history to come knocking on he door to say she could not do that if she did a search for “best suicide method”, but it just felt too obvious, too visible. And so she came at it sideways: looking up mortality statistics websites and seeing if they would let her drill down to most used suicide methods; searching on knotting websites and then clicking through to sections on historical knots.

• Ring Tom

She rings Tom to ask if they will come to Sunday lunch in February, leaves a message. He txts back that they won’t be able to fit it in.

• Update my will

It’d been easy to say to the solicitor that sorting out her mother’s affairs had brought home the importance of having hers in order. “Makes you realise where you could end up. Or maybe I’ll be lucky and go out quickly with a stroke.” Not that the solicitor really cared, the woman was obviously very busy, always professional, but just not interested beyond the legal details. She probably could have said “I’m making sure it’s all sorted for Tom because I’m planning to top myself next month.” And she’d have nodded and suggested a funeral account in Tom’s name so he wouldn’t have to wait for the money to be out of probate. But it’s all signed and witnessed in short order, and either way it was a good thing to have done.

• Ring Tom

She rings Tom to try and check that she’ll be seeing him for Mother’s Day, she’s pretty sure they will this year, because they went to Fearne’s parents last year, and she thinks the year before, and the year before that was when she and Martin had had Covid and then before that she’d been trying to keep her mother’s bubble as small as possible. He rings back to say they won’t be, but they can come another Sunday, can’t do the next Sunday, oh they are away the following one, how about a month later? And then he tells her he has contacted adoption services about finding out who his birth mother is. That throws her for a loop, she had wondered if he’d do it when it was first an option, once he’d turned 18, but the years had passed and he hadn’t. He doesn’t say why now, and she doesn’t think to ask until after he rings off. It’s really hard not to think of it as another rejection, another more interesting new parent to replace her, but she stops herself, and thinks of a mother who must have always wondered about what happened to her son, thinks about her own plans and that the more people Tom has in his corner the better, so maybe this is good timing. She can be glad for him, be glad for the unknown women who gave birth to him, and whatever other family there might be. Maybe he has siblings. She hopes it goes well.

• Clean the house

She’d spent a long time clearing out and cleaning her mother’s house, before and after she moved to the care home. Now she did her best to make sure hers was in order. The insomnia helped. Whenever she just couldn’t sleep, or woke up drenched with sweat from a hot flush, she got up and cleaned. Went through and threw out the instructions manuals for appliances they no longer owned, all her old notes from University, old seed packets she was never going to get round to planting. She left Tom’s stuff as it was, things with happy memories like the old board games and school trophys — let him decide what he wanted to do with those. She didn’t kid herself that there wouldn’t still be a lot to do for whoever cleared out the house, but at least it was mostly clean and tidy, and rationalised. Paperwork up to date in the filing cabinet, photo albums together on the shelf, far too many books everywhere but that was what it was. Her mother’s dementia had manifested in the strangest accumulations of things, important paperwork filed between layers of newspaper and christmas wrapping and DVD covers, she had had to go through every pile and bag and box just in case. Underneath the detritus had been all the well loved belongings from her mother’s life, from Beth’s childhood. She’d kept what she could; wall hangings by local artists, a poster from a film her mother had seen the year she was born, her mum’s favourite decorative plates, and disposed of so much more; Fearne at least had seemed grateful for the bits and pieces of jewellery and china she’d passed on. Now the things Beth had chosen to keep would probably go too.

• Ring Tom

She tried ringing Tom and got his voicemail, didn’t leave a message, but instead sent him a txt thanking him for the bunch of flowers he’d sent her for Mother’s Day, photo attached. Fearne was really good at choosing flower bouquets.

• Buy rope

The rope was on her list but while she’d been sorting out the shed she’d found a blue rope, bought at a hardware store for something at some point in the past but never used. It’s cheap, harsh nylon. If she’d bought something she’d have gotten something made from natural fibre, hemp or sisal with good grip, and that was beyond silly because it was a one use rope and it very much did not matter whether it was smooth or rough, as long as it held the knot she had looked up and been practising with the drawstring from an old duffel coat.

• Drop off box to Martin

Cleaning had inevitably uncovered yet more of Martin’s things she suspected he would want sometime, so she gathered up a box of them and dropped them on his doorstep at a time she knew he’d be at work. She received a thumbs up txt in response.

• Leave the English department set for handover

She knew she struggled to innovate at work. Knew her passion for her subject no longer shone through. Concentrated hard on what she could do: being there for her students, making sure they didn’t miss out on anything, that they got the most thorough grounding she could give them. She also knew losing a teacher a month before their exams would be hard on them. It was the one thing that had made her wonder if she should wait. As invisible as she felt at school, surely it couldn’t be a good example for teenagers, doing what she planned to do? She considered once again waiting until July. But the time between now and then stretched before her, empty, everlastingly wearying. She determinedly wrote up all the revision lesson plans, made sure they were labelled on her desk at work, anyone could run with them. Similarly she’d documented as far as she was able the schedules and evaluation due dates, curriculum review sign offs, behavioural assessment write ups, open day planning, all the day to day decision making and planning required of a head of department. She couldn’t predict everything that would typically cross her desk in the last two months of the year, they would just have to muddle through. Barnaby would probably take over her mentoring; she didn’t like the way he would come sniffing around new female teachers but there really wasn’t any behaviour she could point at and say “that’s actually dodgy” and he was conscientious.

• Write note to Tom

She spent a lot of time drafting the note. The act of writing it made it feel realer than all her other preparations had, Tom was going to be more affected by her actions than anyone else. Just because he didn’t need her in his life anymore didn’t mean he didn’t love her, and she wanted to get the words right, so he wouldn’t blame himself, so he could go on and be happy.

• Visit Mum

She couldn’t bring herself to say much on her last Sunday visit to her mother. She held her hand, hummed some tunes, thanked her and told her she loved her, kissed her on the temple and walked back to her car. She’d done what she could. At least she wasn’t going to have to find out that she’d be here, or somewhere less salubrious, one day.

• Pick up more lemons and the good gin

If you’re going to do something you should do it right, and with style. Her Mum liked to say that, back when she could still give advice. So yes, she was probably going to need some Dutch courage, and she’d damn well make it with a really good bottle of gin, and nice fresh lemons.

• Ring and update Nick on Mum’s care

Fuck it just email him.

• Email Nick details of Mum’s care

She bundled up the contract, solicitor’s correspondence and other documents and emailed them to Nick.

• Measure rope, set up stool

How much would it slip with her weight on it? Did she need to do some sort of test? What if it didn’t work? How long might she hang there?

• Place note, make sure door is unlocked

She does one last check that everything is in place. Brings her drink through to the living room. Stands on the stool, stretches up on her tiptoes as she tries to get the rope around her neck. The phone rings. She hesitates, then removes it and stomps back through to the kitchen. It’s Nick, who hasn’t bothered himself with any of this for the last six years. She gives him a piece of her mind and hangs up. Takes some deep breaths, drinks half the gin and tonic. Gets on the stool again. Her knees are shaking, she’s feeling less and less sure about the only thing she has felt sure about for months. She gets the rope down to her chin and her mobile phone rings.

• F/a/r/e/w/e/l/l/ t/h/i/s/ m/o/r/t/a/l c/o/i/l/




• Visit the PMT music shop in Leeds

AO3 Link | monday you can hold your head (3033 words) by Aquila
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Riot Women
Rating: Teen and Up
Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Relationship: M/F
Characters: Kitty Eckersley
Additional Tags: so far preslash that it basically can’t be but we know, menopause, child sex abuse, pregancy scare, suicide, depression, dementia, assault, kitty needs to be safe, kitty needs someone to worry about her, kitty needs a home, character study

Summary:

“Just between you and me and the gatepost I’ve been having a bit of a shit day.” The events that lead up to drunk Kitty in a supermarket going for the pills, vodka and knives.

This is a companion piece to 'monday you can fall apart'

I had some bad news last Tuesday

The letter was in the box on Tuesday morning, when Kitty finally made it out of the flat. Gavin had come round the night before with a couple of his mates from the rugby club, which had meant she’d had to miss karaoke, and they’d watched the game and generally been rowdy and she’d drunk quite a bit to make them all more tolerable. A voice in the back of her head had been asking if she should be drinking at all if there was a chance and that was just stupid because it’s not like it would matter once the situation was taken care of, if she even was, but thoughts like that made her drink even more, which also made Gavin more tolerable once the game finished and he packed his mates off and had his way with her. After of course he’d sloped off back home to bloody Shelley, and she’d decided she was well rid and stretched out across the whole bed.

And so Kitty was pretty hungover, again, when she made the mistake of opening the letterbox and there was the envelope, doubly redirected, waiting like a well-travelled timebomb for her to find.

West Yorkshire Adoption Services was stamped across the top of the envelope, which meant there was really only one thing that could be, something she’d known might come at any time over the last 14 years, but had always done an excellent job of avoiding thinking about.

She carried it inside and dropped it, unread, on the countertop, and went looking for the good vodka in the freezer. Only to find that Wanko and Dildo had polished it off the previous night. Fucking hell, why did Gavin have to hang out with those greedy losers? Right she needed to replace all the beer they’d swilled as well — and get some food in. She scooped up her bag, pulled her coat on over her denim jacket and headed off up the road.

Before midday meant Farmfoods was full of grannies and young mothers pushing pushchairs, she made a wide berth around them and was in and out in good time, then across the road to the off license. She was opening the bottle of vodka as she exited the offie, sadly not the top shelf brand, and manoeuvring the trolley over the carpark bumps and back up the road to the flat. As she neared it she came up alongside her neighbour, Carly.

Kitty liked Carly, who had a nice smile — when it emerged — and worked from home juggling a 5 year old daughter and a new baby and looked perpetually tired. She should probably ask about the baby. She didn’t ask about the baby, just made a lame joke about the weather and hauled her grocery bags out of the trolley and up the steps into the flat.

The letter still sat on the table, unopened. Kitty took the vodka and the good headphones and keyed up the playlist she’d simply named LOUD and retreated to the bedroom.

She txted Gavin about when they could go away for the weekend he’d promised and got back a reply that avoided the question. She looked up the local doctor’s office for what would be involved in making an appointment for a test, and was completely put off by the hoops they wanted her to jump through to sign up as a patient. Maybe she’d try for a walk in at the clinic instead. She listened to some more music.

The letter when she did finally get up the gumption to open it, had said exactly what she’d expected it to say. Which meant she’d need to ring them. Or maybe she could leave the country and they’d think she’d never got it. It might be better than waiting around for Gavin to actually leave his damn wife. She could go somewhere interesting, better than Spain. The US. Morocco. Singapore. Somewhere tropical with pretty people and live music. The boy would be better off never meeting her, right? She couldn’t be what he’d expect. He shouldn’t have to hear her story.

Some more excrement on top of that on Friday

It still hadn’t come on Friday morning. She’d gone back and marked the previous one when this one didn’t appear. Seven weeks and counting. They’d never been that regular, but last month’s had been a doozy and now, nothing. And the downside of getting drunk so often is she wasn’t sure that she couldn’t be. So if it was the worst case scenario best to get it sorted while it could be sorted. Plus her emotions were all over the show. It felt like something was different. Time to suck it up and go get a test. She dug out a blazer, tidied her hair and was down at the Sowerby Bridge Community Clinic shortly after it opened, pretty much sober. Piss sample, blood sample, answer the usual questions about symptoms and her cycle and her history which mostly proved they didn’t have all her records and she’s more glad of that than not. The nurse tested the urine for her on the spot and it came back negative, so that was excellent, but she could have done that herself at home. She wants the blood test result as well, because she’d read a home test wrong when she was 17 and had a terrible lurch of deja vu and never again. The blood test would come through on Monday and the nurse said she’d include something called an FSH level in case that explained the symptoms, and was she getting enough iron?

Still no txt back from Gavin. She starts running a mental pro and con list, should she stick around, give Gavin a chance to shape up, or should she cut her losses and go? Take a bit of his cash while she can and find somewhere to stay, look for a job, hit Spongebob up for some extra gear to move.

She’s counting down until she can go to karaoke on Monday night; sing her guts out, clear her head and work everything out after that. Meanwhile she slobs out in front of the TV, watches the Wham! documentary again.

Gavin shows up around 3pm. Must be nice to do the kind of job where they you can do that. The kinds of entry level jobs Kitty has intermittently held have treated leaving at 3pm as leaving for good. He’s in a good mood, says they can go out later because bloody Shelley’s taking the kids away to visit her mother. She asks again about when they can go away, when he’s going to be ready to move on. She’s feeling on edge, frazzled, like her emotions aren’t her own, maybe because of that letter she hasn’t answered hanging over her. She almost wants to pick a fight with Gavin but he’s being all full of cheer, oozing away from her questions and blowing off her complaints as the first hit of the coke he just took from her stash buoys him up. She considers taking some too for once, get on the same wavelength as him, but decides not to.

When they get to the bar Dumbo and Gonzo are there, and a couple more faces she recognises. Gonzo seems to have a girlfriend with him, a blonde named Alana who starts chatting to Kitty. Gavin catches her eye, but she knows the rules, don’t introduce herself as Gavin’s girlfriend, don’t make it obvious they arrive or leave together and she can get away with hanging around near him for the evening. His mates know of course, but if their wives or girlfriends clue in it might get back to bloody Shelley.

She excuses herself to the loo, and when she gets there she realises she’s finally bleeding — excellent (she tries to ignore the little thread of disappointment along with the relief) and also terrible, because it’s ridiculously heavy again and she hasn’t brought anything with her for it. She’s wadding up great folds of bog roll when she hears another woman enter; Alana to the rescue, it turns out she’s carrying tampons in her tiny clutch. Kitty buys her a drink when they’re back out at the bar (well puts it on Gavin’s tab) and they chat/shout over the music some more. Alana is absolutely enthusiastic about her new puppy and pulls out her phone to show Kitty photos, which Kitty is enough drinks in to be enthusiastic back about — at least they aren’t baby photos. From there she starts talking about a band she’d seen recently which does interest Kitty and they compare musical tastes for the rest of the evening.

Gavin is obviously unimpressed by Kitty talking to Alana, even though she’d just have been cooling her heels waiting for him to finish playing pool. Gavin doesn’t like Kitty playing pool because she tends to beat his mates, she’s a little too good at hustling guys at pool for money.

Later she’s sitting in bed waiting for Gavin, scrolling instagram. What was the group Alana had mentioned, maybe she could convince Gavin to go see them tomorrow night? She looks for Alana’s instagram to check, and the algorithm hands her bloody Shelley’s feed. Specifically Shelley announcing her big family holiday to Antigua next month — well that explains why Gavin has been so cagey about when he’d be free for pretty much anything — a family holiday at which they will be renewing their wedding vows! Fucking hell! Kitty leaps out of bed and pulls some layers back on. The bloody bastard! He's been promising her he's about to leave Shelly for months. This is quite the opposite. When Gavin comes out of the shower Kitty is waiting, waving the post in his face and insisting he be straight with her.

He tries to lie, then claims it means nothing, it’s just something Shelley has organised, none of his doing. She says so when is he leaving her? He prevaricates, says he just needs to wait until the boys are a bit older. She screams in his face and he storms out.

The back and forth with Gavin continues all weekend. Sometimes he is apologetic, calling her his best girl, making excuses, saying he just needs to keep bloody Shelley quiet. Other times he gets angry, demands to know what else she expected, calls her whore and bitch and lazy. She gives back as good as she gets, refusing to be cowed by his switching moods and by Sunday afternoon he has gone sullen, no longer answering her calls or txts.

She knows she does a crap job of “pretending to be a work colleague” when bloody Shelley picks up Gavin’s phone on Sunday evening. She doesn’t really care. He shouldn’t have hung up on her earlier.

And just some other stuff occurred this afternoon

He rings her back Monday morning, suddenly all conciliatory and she tries to work out what his angle is now. There’s something he’s not telling her. It’s hard to think about over the ache in her innards. Is her uterus determined to turn inside out?

She’s barely off the phone with him when the clinic rings back “We can confirm you aren’t pregnant…”

Yes, she knows that, she’s bleeding like a stuck pig!

“…but there are some other findings that we need to talk to you about, can you come for an appointment around 1pm?”

That sounds concerning, what sort of thing would they want to talk to her in person for? Cancer? Something like ovarian cancer could give you symptoms like she has been having couldn’t it? Kitty is very inclined to duck the appointment. But she’s not a coward, so instead she has a liquid lunch, puts on her gold trousers and leopardskin coat as if it were armour, and heads back to the clinic. After a 40 minute wait a nurse ushers her into a cubicle and she waits another 20 minutes.

When the doctor arrives she goes straight into explaining that the blood test showed her FSH levels were high. “How old are you, love?” The doctor glances down at Kitty’s notes. “OK, a little older than you look. Right, well we’d call it premature ovarian insufficency if you’re under 40, but for you it’s just called early menopause. That can mean you get a few really heavy periods as your body starts winding them down. I’m going to give you a prescription for iron, based on your blood test results, and its important you keep up your calcium which includes making sure you get enough vitamin D…”

Kitty lets her talk on through possible symptoms while she gets her head around that. Menopause? Really? That had not been on her radar.

“Do you know what age your mother was when she reached menopause?”

Kitty tunes back in, takes a breath. “She didn’t.” She left that there for the doctor to decipher, offered no further explanation.

To her credit the woman didn’t flinch, just continued on. “Okay, well it’s not particularly indicative anyway. Hormone replacement therapy is probably a good idea given that you’re levels are dropping early, you can sort that out with your GP.” She checked her paperwork again “Do you have a GP, love? No? Well you should really get set up with one, there are annual checks you haven’t been getting, we can give you a referral to a local practice.”

Kitty listens while the doctor lists off what to expect and tries to focus on the positive — at least she wasn’t pregnant and it didn’t look like she ever would be now, and that was a relief.

She knew what to do with the urge to weep that was also running through her — turn it into rage. A crying woman was vulnerable and Kitty knew better than to be vulnerable. There was no one in the clinic who deserved her anger, but she’d hold it inside her, take it to karaoke tonight and sing it out of herself.

It didn’t occur to her until after she’d left — with a salute to the nurse who’d done a pain free blood draw for her on Friday — that she should have asked about getting something for the period cramps that were still gripping her. Well she might still have some nurofen at the flat.

All gone downhill from there

When she gets home she goes straight to the fridge and pours herself a drink. Apparently she’s officially old. She realises she still hasn’t rung the number from the letter and she’s not going to do it right now, in this state of mind. Will the kid think she’s old? Too old for leopard print and karaoke? What will he see when he looks at her? A stupid woman living off a man who is never going to leave his wife? What can she show the kid, she’s never accomplished anything. He’ll ask about his father and she does not even want to think about that. She checks her phone. Nothing from Gavin.

She’s pouring another drink when the doorbell rings, not Gavin then. It turns out to be Drongo and Flunko standing awkwardly on the doorstep.

“Hiya fellas, Gavin not with you?”

Drongo pushes forward through the door. “He asked us to come round.”

Kitty belatedly thinks this is not a good visit, but they are already inside, she can’t shut them out.

Flunko looms over her. “Gavin says he’s had enough of your fussing. He wants you gone.”

Kitty tries to mollify them. “We can talk about that, let me get you a beer.” She moves towards the fridge, but Flunko grabs her hair, spins her towards him, grips her upper arms tightly in his hands. She struggles but he just tightens his grip, put his face right up against hers.

“He sent you a message. Says you’re a slut and you’re to get out of his place.” Flunko leans in and shoves his lips against hers, she bites his lip and he rears back, throwing her away from him. Drongo reaches for her and she ducks, get a whack in the side of the head and then another in the back as she turns away, and then they’ve both grabbed her and she feels a slap and then a hit to her side that doubles her over and they hustle her out the front door and throw her onto the ground. She yells at them once she’s hauled herself upright, demands they wait for Gavin, tells them to at least give her her things — her bag is sitting on the island inside the flat she's now locked out of, she’s got basically nothing. So much for the rage she had had balled up inside her being any help. She should have planned for this.

She’s sore and ashamed and crampy and furious and hazy and all alone. She checks her pockets. She’s got no phone, no earbuds, that must have been in her bag, so no music, now way to ring a mate looking for somewhere to crash. She does have a full hip flask in her coat pocket. And so she walks, tears hot on her face. Exercise is supposed to be good for cramps, right? And she drinks.

By the time she has about walked her legs all the way off and the hip flask is empty she finds herself outside a Morrison’s — it’s the one with the ridiculous sign outside, giant letters saying KINDNESS, like a pint sized northern Hollywood. Kitty’s pretty sure there’s no such thing as kindness, just people who take what they want. She can do that. She balls up her rage and hurt again and heads inside. She wants painkillers, and she wants a big knife, and shit she needs pads again because the walking has exacerbated all that and they’ll have booze, she definitely needs some more booze, that’ll make it easier to get those worthless pills down…

---

24 hours later, once Kitty gets her phone back, she takes a photo of her bruises and sends them to Alana with a ‘be careful’ note.