Bloody Women: Read the first chapter here

Polygon Books have provided The Skinny with the first chapter of Helen Fitzgerald's new book Bloody Women.

Planning a wedding but get distracted by sleeping with your exes who then start dropping dead? Excellent way to build trust with your husband to be....

Helen Fitzgerald: Bloody Women

'I just need you to say if this is him,' the man in the white coat said, lifting the sheet that covered the lump beneath. 

I looked down at the metal bench. 'Take your time,' the man said, which I was already doing. I looked long and hard, holding back the tears, moving my head left to right, closer, further away, and then said, 'Yes, that's Ahmed.' '

Are you sure?'

'Absolutely.'

'You're saying that this is your ex-boyfriend, Ahmed Singh?'

'It is. Yes. It had an unusually large slit at the top.'

The man in the white coat nodded and covered the small piece of flesh that was undoubtedly the circumcised penis of Ahmed Singh, the very appendage I had refused to lick because the slit had made me queasy. Poor Ahmed. Definitely not the best time to giggle. Up there with funerals and rectal examinations. I'd been prone to this kind of inappropriate outburst. At the most God-awful times, noises blurted from my mouth, or gestures took control of my hands that made me bury my head with embarrassment afterwards.

I'm sure my involuntary chortle at the sheet-covered knob was partly why they decided to arrest me two days later, why I was no longer viewed as the bereaved ex-lover of three men, but was accused of shagging, mutilating and murdering them, not necessarily in that order.

Jitters are a terrible thing. I had a bad case of them in the week before my wedding. Actually, not jitters, a tsunami, overwhelming me with the rubble of fears, tears, ideas. Reassuring Joe that he didn't need to abandon his surgery till the big day, I'd arrived in Edinburgh with a week to pack up and organise things myself. Almost immediately, the wall of water struck me. Who was I? What did I want? Was it a good idea to leave home forever? My mum? My flat? My friends? My language, culture, work, history? Square sausage?

Desperate to fit into a size eight vintage wedding dress, I embarked on a nonsensical diet of very little food and lots of alcohol. I went through boxes of clothes and toys and letters and essays. I started to forget what Joe looked like. I cried. I sought the counsel of my mother.

'You have the jitters,' she said.

'You need to tie up loose ends.'

Taking her advice, I raced around saying goodbye to old friends and colleagues, visiting favourite pubs, watching Braveheart, selling most of my belongings, listening to the Proclaimers, the Fratellis, Paolo Nutini, Franz Ferdinand and the bagpipes, going shopping, and getting rained on. But I was still tearful and worried.

'Your loosest ends are your exes,' my mother said.

I'd had four steady relationships, all of them fatally flawed, none of them neatly resolved. I arranged to have a drink with each of them. Johnny was Sunday, Rory Tuesday, Ahmed Wednesday and Stewart Thursday. I wanted to look at them, talk to them, make sure I was right to let them go, and give everything up for Joe. I didn't intend to sleep with them. That fuck-up of an idea came on the Sunday, when I was waiting for Johnny to arrive at the Hammer Bar in Glasgow and found myself dialling Joe's mobile number in Italy. He'd lived in Scotland till he was ten, so he spoke perfect Glaswegian.

'How's the shag-fest?' I was yelling.

Some girls were laughing loudly at the bar beside me and Michael Jackson was blaring.

'It's not a shag-fest!'

'Okay, the piss-up with your friends?'

'We're not drunk.'

'You're being all distant.'

'Mum can't make it to the wedding.'

I was silent.

'Cat? You're breaking up. Her DVT is too dangerous for her to fly.' 'Well, she can drive.'

'Same problem . . . sitting still for so long.'

'Let's get married in Lucca then.'

'No. It's all organised. We'll have a party here with Mum when we get back.'

'Who's that girl in the background?'

'Nobody, the waitress.'

'Put her on.'

'Why?'

'Put her on.'

I could hear laughter. A girl. Maybe two.

'You're being daft,' Joe said.

'Fuck you.'

I hung up. Forty minutes later I straddled Johnny in the passenger seat of his Golf with no pants on. It was very uncomfortable, but it settled things in my head. Johnny and I had nothing in common except that our fluids had merged in our late teens, and - twenty years later - the passenger seat of his beloved black Golf was prematurely stained with some of them. Johnny was no longer unfinished business. So, that night, after dialling Joe's number seven times, I decided to sleep with the others as well. It wouldn't harm anyone, I thought. It would tie everything up, make everything clear, and be jolly good fun into the bargain.

It wasn't a very good idea. Because of it, three men were now very loose ends indeed.

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If you want to find out how this ends the book is available to buy at: http://www.birlinn.co.uk/book/details/Bloody-Women-9781846971334/