Botany for Beginners
"It's as easy to learn as your ABC"
Murder — well, I guess that’s an option.
God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if he were dead. Just the thought makes me feel like a weight’s been lifted.
But how?
No face-to-face confrontation; I’d lose. He’s built like a bull. And knives make a mess. Too much clean-up.
Shame he doesn’t drive. A bit of fiddling with the brake lines and everyone would blame a stone marten.
Most women still resort to poison. I get that. There’s a built-in delay — you don’t have to be there for the dying itself and you don’t get your hands dirty. You don’t need strength, just smarts.
But where could I get cyanide or arsenic — and how would I get it down his throat?
Laburnum.
I'm looking at a photo of a young, glamorous Diana Rigg and I remember an older, malevolent Diana Rigg, who, as a child, murdered a classmate with homemade biscuits.
She’d swapped the nuts for laburnum seeds.
Extremely poisonous, apparently.
What an idea.
And laburnum’s everywhere.
I’m standing in the garden and wonder why I thought we had a laburnum there.
We don’t.
Plenty of other plants, though.
Sometimes you get a lucky break. The teachers can’t be bothered this semester and give us a ‘free assignment’. Do as you like — see you in a month.
I immediately know what I’m going to make.
A cookbook.
A very special cookbook.
I’ll have to do a lot of research, because I can’t cook and I know nothing about plants. But I’ve got a bike and a library card. I scoop a sandwich bag full of ten-cent coins out of the loose change jar for the photocopier.
I stick Synchronicity by The Police in my Walkman and cycle through the fields to the central library in town.
"Because it's murder by numbers, one, two, three
It's as easy to learn as your ABC"
I'm humming along with glee.
No one can hear me.
Everyone is capable of murder.
Yes — you too.
Everyone has a breaking point. And if someone keeps pushing, hard enough and long enough, you’ll do it. What stops most people is fear: of guilt, of punishment.
I’m not going to feel guilty. I’m miles past that. I’ll be relieved. I’ll dance on his grave.
Punishment, though — that’s a factor to reckon with.
The fact he’s wrecking my life is one thing — but if I end up in prison for his death, I’ll have wrecked the rest of it myself.
So I need something that won’t raise suspicion: heart failure, or a stroke.
I spend three weeks at the library.
Three blissfully peaceful weeks. I shuffle over the parquet floor in my socks, from card index to book shelf to reading table and back again.
I don’t need help and I don’t borrow any books.
No one pays me any attention.
I learn all about garden plants and their toxins: lily of the valley, foxglove, monkshood. I learn which parts are poisonous, how to prepare them, how they’ll taste.
— Botany for beginners.
"Because it's murder by numbers, Colchicine
It's as easy to learn as your Atropine"
It has to be a real book — I need a grade for the end-of-term show — so I book time in the computer lab. There I write tongue-in-cheek texts and lay out the pages, ready for print.
No one understands those computers, so I’m alone.
I want it printed in black with a spot colour on good paper, but that would mean using the school’s screen-printing studio or booking the offset press. Either way, I’d need help from a technician.
No.
I take my floppy disk and fancy paper and cycle into town on late-night shopping night, to ReproDuck. It’s packed with students — exam season’s coming. There’s one printer that can do black and red on posh paper.
The evening guy — Dennis, according to his badge — shows me how it works. He looks curious and clearly wouldn’t mind a chat, but people are tugging at him from all directions.
Thanks, Dennis.
Bye, Dennis.
The sections are stitched and glued, but before I can bind the cover, the book block needs trimming. There’s a massive machine in the print studio for that. It’s evening — the technician’s gone home.
I lock a fresh ream of copier paper tightly in place using the heavy iron wheel.
Just a quick test. I press the cast-iron lever down.
*Zwisssh*
Effortless. The stack’s neatly sliced in half.
That felt good. That sounded good. I want to do that again.
I picture his head beneath the blade.
"Because it's murder by numbers, one, two, three
It's as easy to use as a Guillotine"
At the show, I pass it off as a joke.
The men in black with their arty red shawls and trendy trainers snigger and snort. I get an eight for the layout and binding alone.
“Thanks! Biscuit? Homemade.”
“Haha! No thanks — not after this.”
Haha.
I snap the floppy in two, toss one half in the school's waste container and chuck the other half down a street drain. I put the book in my bag, get on my bike and switch on my Walkman.
"Once that you've decided on a killing
First, you make a stone of your heart
And if you find that your hands are still willing
Then you can turn a murder into ArtBecause it's murder by numbers, one, two, three
It's as easy to learn as your A B C D E"