THE BLURB: Shell is a frustrated, pot-smoking, history teacher with a secret - she’s a kleptomaniac. She has managed to keep this from her family and colleagues most of her life but one day she meets Lea, the new caretaker, and a man she feels understands her. What begins as a simple desire to steal his hairband turns into an abduction, which threatens to destroy not just her life but everyone around her.
*
A NOTE ON THE TEXT: I wrote this novel back in 2021. The idea arrived in 2015 when I was co-directing a short film in Bristol called The Quiet Life (based on a story I had published in Erotic Review). I had written the script - a story about a sex addict - and planned for it to be the first in a trilogy, the second being about drug addiction and the third about kleptomania, an addiction to stealing. I remember feeling the idea was too big, that I had no idea how to do it, so I shelved the project and went on to write something else.
Then came 2021. I don’t remember what exactly projected me into writing the novel - I’m sure it was a plethora of many sources - but I felt prepared. I knew what I wanted: a story of a woman who goes too far, whose addiction threatens to destroy not just her life but many people around her. I described it to my partner as ‘Olive Kitteridge meets Breaking Bad.’
*
ON MOTIVE: The problem is, I have never been very interested in why people do things. One of my favourite films, Shame directed by the great Steve McQueen (about a sex addict, see the influence) flirts with the idea of ‘why’ but never tells you outright the reason this man is a sex addict. It’s the same with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, we get tales from the Joker as to his origins, none of which we know are exact or true. It reminds me of the fantastic quote from Scream, uttered by Billy Loomis, ‘did we ever find out why Hannibal Lecter liked to eat people? Don’t think so! See, it's a lot more scarier when there's no motive, Sid.’ (This was before the unforgivable Hannibal Rising book and film but we’ll forget about that.) Aberrations are scarier. Reasons - that being one reason somebody does something - felt too easy, too cheap, not realistic to me as a writer.
However, I am not arrogant enough to believe my way always works. I had a conversation with a very kind agent who told me I needed to be clearer why my main character does what she does. I was pissed off but then realised this agent was right. So, I went back into the book and settled on three reasons, all circling around a significant trauma. In fairness, as a result of this, the book felt more alive. I had an anchor to return to.
*
ON INFLUENCE: As I said, Olive Kitteridge meets Breaking Bad was and still is the pitch. I am drawn to complicated women. I often think of this Gillian Flynn quote (although I have tried to find the origin of this quote and have yet to locate it. I apologise to Gillian if I am misquoting):
‘I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.’
Shell is not evil but she is a black orchid. She is ruthless, petty and doesn’t understand the lines between care and harm. She lies, sabotages and kills to get her way. She is complicated, messed up and I love her. She rides on the coattails of some of the great, complicated - sometimes evil, sometimes bad - women such as Leda in The Lost Daughter, Lisa in The Kindergarten Teacher, Annie Wilkes in Misery, Barbara Covett in Notes on a Scandal.
I was also deeply inspired by Oyinkan Braithwaite’s sublime My Sister, The Serial Killer, a phenomenal book with heart and humour. That and I feel like - as my writing is concerned - the child of Richard Yates and AM Homes - especially the latter, who does the ridiculous, the hysterical, the wit of human beings with razor sharp skill. So, Shell finds herself in dangerous, sometimes ridiculous situations, such as when she is blackmailed into stealing her enemies’ mixing bowl from her ex-husband, an event that has drastic effects on those involved.
Fundamentally, though, this is the story of a woman. With all her bad and all her good. So, meet Shell.
SHELL
A Novel
By Thomas Stewart
*
MATCHES (20–)
There’s nothing to take in a cell. No hidden gem, no personal relic. Everything is glued down; I can’t even find a screw.
This is my new home, for a while anyway, until they decide what to do with me.
“That’s your decision,” she said.
She wants me to think we’re friends. She wants me to be her friend.
I play along. I’ve treated her like I’ve treated every other friend – I’ve taken something from her. Only something small. A box of matches, from her pocket, the moment I arrived. You can come to your own conclusions.
For now, it gives me something to do. It gives me a distraction from this new perpetual boredom I face ahead, and these long agonising nights I will spend away from my boy in the woods.
*
PART ONE
JACOB/GOLDFISH (1987)
Some would say, it started with Jacob.
I wouldn’t give him that much credit.
He was nice, though. And fun to play with. He was the first boy I remember understanding me. We didn’t bicker over the rules of games, in fact I found his additions rather thrilling. He seemed to build upon my ideas. He encouraged me to advance my own. Could you blame me for not wanting him to leave?
The day he came round to play, we hunched over the pond at the bottom of the garden. Suddenly, he shoved his hand deep within the murky water and out came a goldfish, flopping in his grip. It jumped but he caught it with both hands, cupping it to his breast. I found an old plant-pot we could keep the goldfish in. We took the goldfish to the woods that hunched at the back of the house and spread out to wild fields. The three of us stood within the cluster of elm and hawthorn and I sucked in the air on the edge of summer. He called it our goldfish and I imagined a life where we would joke about how this was our beginning.
It was a beginning, for me anyway.
And that’s when, with the burnt bronze fall of the sun in the sky, Jacob announced that he was sick.
“Sick?” I said. “Like the flu?”
“Worse than the flu,” he replied.
I didn’t quite understand what was wrong with him, but I understood there was something wrong with him. Something that was going to hurt him, kill him, take him away from me. I remember it felt like somebody had reached into my stomach, grabbed ever organ, and squeezed. I was crumpled up, like a sheet of paper. Eviscerated.
Then I knew I had to take care of him. That I was the only one that would do it properly. That I would keep him truly safe.
I would do this, like I wasn’t able to before.
I would succeed where I had once failed.
And that’s when I surprised myself for the first time.
*
WATCH
(September, 2019)
It was the first day of a new term and I was less than excited. I taught History at St. Cuthbert’s High School, one of the local Catholic schools in Cardiff, although I hadn’t been to church in over three decades (besides funerals but that doesn’t count). I woke early, not out of any excitement but because I’m a creature of habit. I like to have enough time in the mornings to adjust. I made myself some toast and a cup of coffee and sat out in the garden.
This was my first house. The house I moved into with my husband (before the divorce). I rolled myself a joint and smoked it whilst finishing off the last of my coffee. The first day of term is usually a lot of name-calling (and I never remember their names so why even try?) and assemblies so I didn’t need my wits. Besides, I had been teaching for years, far too long, the routine had numbed me.
Cardiff is a small place when you’ve grown up here and when you didn’t leave, you age with the chipped paint and the crackling fences. Then there’s the other people who didn’t leave, too, the ones from school you bump into. And they hold you in this image they’ve always had of you, the one you can’t shake, the perpetual child full of mistakes and laughable actions. Children love to humiliate each other, and adults who never quite grew up, love it even more. That is what my life had become, in this lair I was made in, every time I attempted to crawl out, I’d get pulled back in. Because no-one wants you to leave. Because if you leave you show others that it’s an option.
This is how I would describe Cardiff: a sort of undefined, limitless place, somewhere trapped between nature’s grip and the scaffolding weighing it down. A city always trying to improve itself.
Grey battered terraced houses look out onto railways and bushy trees. The rooftops of homes are marked by the smack of acid rain, paint is chipped on windowsills, doors are cracked. Graffiti rolls across bridges, old warehouses are perpetually littered in dust, the slacked metal of their roofs blown away by the wind. Tall, obnoxious office buildings stand as part of the sky, beside the view of the odd church and hotel.
This is a city of workers, of growing up without money and holding onto what you’ve got. Here, people are poor and worry about how they will pay their bills, for funerals, for children’s lives. Here, people struggle. Hope is in a chokehold, merely spitting out at random intervals. Here, people crawl because life is so heavy and sad and repetitive. Here, people have drink and drug problems, wreck their families, destroy their children, poison their loved ones. Here, things are tough. Painful.
Cardiff is as much a home as it is a prison. If you run away you get Stockholm syndrome, if you stay here too long, you suffocate. This city has a grip, a tight one that chokes you, and only lets go when your face is purple.
A seagull screeched in what sounded like agony and discomfort above my head that morning.
There is no peace. Not even for birds.
I made my way to the school. The school I had taught in for over a decade. As soon as I walked through the double doors, I spotted Joyce, the pencil-thin headmistress whose ribs protruded through her black shirt. She always wore a pantsuit and often talked about diets. When I was in the room, she would direct the information at me, trying to be subtle. I have survived six headteachers and twelve deputy heads, Joyce has been in the position for only two years, and she glares at me like I’m the newcomer. She doesn’t like me; I think it’s because I don’t give myself over to her like the others do. The feeling is mutual. To me, she’s a stuck-up, homophobic twat. But we all have our crosses to bear.
“Good morning, Ms. Whelan how are you?” she said, forcing a smile.
I nodded. “Morning, fine, thank you, and yourself?”
“Good, good, did you have a good summer?”
Good. God. Small talk does exhaust me, though. What I was supposed to say was “yes, I had a good summer, thank you, how was yours?” but what I wanted to say was, “it was boring as hell, I sat around and smoked too much pot and read a few books but only one was good, I watched a lot of films – even that documentary with the dead cat – I gardened, I went to visit the graves, I even did some bloody yoga but it was all very boring. So, no, I guess I didn’t have a ‘good’ summer, I had a very tepid summer full of day-passing activities. I wasted time. Oh, and how am I? How am I? I’m wretched. I’m not going to ask you about your summer because I honestly don’t give a fuck. Every time you open your mouth I want to scream.”
But of course, I didn’t say that, I smiled back, answered the way I was supposed to – I asked her about her summer – all the while holding back the impulse to scream.
*
Morning staff meeting. The thing of nightmares. My colleagues crammed in and picked seats next to their friends. Then I had to listen to the everyday bitching – “I wish my husband would find a nanny to fuck, I’m so bored of the way he crawls on top of me”, “it was so hot in Portugal I burnt straightaway and it more or less ruined the holiday”, “I can’t help but imagine smothering my children while they sleep”, that sort of thing – and we waited for Joyce to gather herself and break into song (or I wish it were song, it might make it a bit more interesting). These sorts of meetings could last ten minutes if it weren’t for Olive’s incessant need to ask question after question or Mojgan, who loved throwing in a comment designed to make people laugh which caused time, my time, time I could be doing something – anything – else. During these meetings I often fantasised about the sound of Mojgan’s neck if I snapped it out of place and the shock this would cause her body to go into and the loud yelp that would escape her lips. As I imagined this, something caught my sight – Olive was wearing an old watch, it had a black leather strap that was tattered and ragged with age. I’m particularly drawn to the tattered cherished item and on this dreary September morning in the stuffy room that smelt of Lynx and stale coffee, Olive’s watch – something she didn’t have last year – was calling out.
I was suddenly aware of all eyes being on me.
“Yes?” I said.
“I was asking you about the History department and your plans for the year ahead,” Joyce said.
“Oh,” I replied, noticing Olive was trying to push her finger under the watch to scratch an unreachable place. “Oh, um, well my main plan was to make sure the students pass their grades. Get them through, that’s what I always say.”
The rest of the department – Mojgan Greene and Rachel Lornford – looked less than impressed. They’d been bugging me for years to widen the curriculum, to bring in guest speakers, take the kids on trips to Rome, it all sounded like too much hassle for not enough fulfilment if you ask me. Who wants to go to Rome with a bunch of kids? I couldn’t see Rome the way I wanted to see it. I was trapped behind a child’s gaze. Mojgan had been gunning for my job for years and I was pretty sure she would eventually succeed in usurping me, she deserved the job. But I am not a queen who abdicates.
“Very Barbara Covett,” Joyce said.
We all caught the reference. When Notes on a Scandal was made into a movie, the book flew around the staff room. People started referring to me as ‘Barb’ which I quickly shut down, as best I could. I would like to point out – a bus conductor’s hand accidentally brushing my hand does not send a jolt of longing to my vagina, it sends a shivery stomp down my spine and makes me want to peel off my skin. I don’t keep a journal like Barbara, either, and I hate cats.
“I prefer Jean Brodie,” I replied.
Joyce rolled her eyes.
“Elizabeth…” Joyce said.
Elizabeth began talking about the English department. Elizabeth, the old crone. Her voice sounded like the flapping of crows. I wanted to shout but held back and eyed Olive’s watch. The hands of the little clock reaching out toward me.
*
I’ve never really been a watch person. A boyfriend bought me one for my eighteenth birthday – a cheap knock-off that broke after a week – but apart from that, my life hasn’t needed a watch to dictate time. And yet, I couldn’t get Olive’s out of my mind. I assumed she had gotten it from an old grandfather or some other dead relative, someone who died years ago, and she’d only recently fished it out because she felt sad. I tried to follow Olive as much as possible that first day back at school. I sat nearby in the staff room at lunch time, trying my best to unhook the clasp so it might roll off and drop on the floor. The whole day was a complete cock-tease, so I went to her classroom at the end of the day. This is something I normally don’t do. I’m usually first out of the door, the quicker I can get away from the sound of sighs reverberating from the exhausted teachers in the empty classrooms, the better. But on the first day back, with the watch fresh in my mind, I went to her messy Art room at the top of the school and tried to be friendly.
“How are you, Olive?” I asked.
“Oh, hi, Shell, hi, oh, I’m good, the kids really seem to be…open to experimentation.”
“I can see.” The classroom was a bombshell.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, fine, fine, Tudors and Stuarts, Nazis and Queens, the usual. How are the boys?”
Olive had two sons, I taught them both, didn’t show much potential for history.
“Oh, they’re fine. Arthur is travelling around Italy and Ian’s come home for a bit.”
Didn’t surprise me, he always seemed to be a troubled boy. I only realised we’d been standing in silence for a long time when she said, “Was there something you needed, Shell?”
I was eyeing the watch or rather the watch was eyeing me.
“What?” I said. “No, just wanted to check in.”
So withered and old, it smelt of cobwebs.
“I couldn’t help but admire your watch,” I said and the moment I did I regretted it. If it went missing, I’d be suspect number one.
“Oh, this? It belonged to my father. He died last year.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You may be one of the few people to understand. You lost your mother recently, no?”
“Yes, Mum died four years back now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be, it’s fine.”
“Did she die in the hospital?” Olive asked.
“In a nursing home. It got so bad I couldn’t look after her anymore. What did your father die of?”
“Cancer,” she replied.
“What kind?”
“Prostate. Yours?”
“Lung.”
“Nasty,” she said, and we stood there in silence together.
Orphans.
I felt a stab of guilt. Of course, I did, I was about to rob a woman of her dead father’s watch.
*
A PENULTIMATE NOTE: Shell’s story also comes with a playlist, one that evokes her character in addition to particular scenes.
A FINAL NOTE: If you want to see the next chapter/how Shell goes about stealing said watch, leave a comment below.
I have always wanted to read this novel since you told me about it. Delighted to finally get to.