Kitabı oku: «Sweetpea: The most unique and gripping thriller of 2017»

For my cousin, Emily Metcalf.

For the years I spent at your mansion while mine was being decorated.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Sunday, 31 December

Monday, 1 January

Wednesday, 3 January

Friday, 5 January

Sunday, 7 January

Thursday, 11 January

Friday, 12 January

Tuesday, 16 January

Sunday, 21 January

Friday, 26 January

Wednesday, 31 January

Thursday, 1 February

Friday, 2 February

Saturday, 3 February

Sunday, 4 February

Monday, 5 February

Tuesday, 6 February

Wednesday, 7 February

Monday, 12 February

Tuesday, 13 February

Wednesday, 14 February

Thursday, 15 February

Friday, 16 February

Monday, 19 February

Thursday, 22 February

Tuesday, 27 February

Friday, 1 March

Saturday, 2 March

Sunday, 3 March

Tuesday, 5 March

Thursday, 7 March

Friday, 8 March

Saturday, 9 March

Sunday, 10 March

Monday, 11 March

Thursday, 14 March

Friday, 15 March

Sunday, 17 March

Tuesday, 19 March

Thursday, 21 March

Saturday, 23 March

Monday, 25 March

Wednesday, 27 March

Friday, 29 March

Sunday, 31 March

Wednesday, 3 April

Friday, 5 April

Saturday, 6 April

Monday, 8 April

Wednesday, 10 April

Thursday, 11 April

Friday, 12 April

Saturday, 13 April

Sunday, 14 April

Monday, 15 April

Maundy Thursday, 18 April

Saturday, 20 April

Easter Sunday, 21 April

Thursday, 25 April

Friday, 26 April

Saturday, 27 April

Sunday, 28 April

Monday, 29 April

Wednesday, 1 May

Saturday, 4 May

Sunday, 5 May

Monday, 6 May

Tuesday, 7 May

Friday, 10 May

Sunday, 12 May

Monday, 13 May

Wednesday, 15 May

Thursday, 16 May

Friday, 17 May

Saturday, 18 May

Sunday, 19 May

Monday, 20 May

Thursday, 23 May

Friday, 24 May

Saturday, 25 May

Monday, 27 May

Tuesday, 28 May

Wednesday, 29 May

Thursday, 30 May

Saturday, 1 June

Monday, 3 June

Wednesday, 5 June

Thursday, 6 June

Friday, 14 June

Sunday, 16 June

Monday, 17 June

Tuesday, 18 June

Wednesday, 19 June

Friday, 21 June

Saturday, 22 June

Sunday, 23 June

Copyright

Sunday, 31 December

1. Mrs Whittaker – neighbour, elderly, kleptomaniac

2. ‘Dillon’ on the checkout in Lidl – acne, wallet chain, who bangs my apples and is NEVER happy to help

3. The suited man in the blue Qashqai who roars out of Sowerberry Road every morning – grey suit, aviator shades, Donald Trump tan

4. Everyone I work with at the Gazette apart from Jeff

5. Craig

Well, my New Year has certainly gone off with a bang, I don’t know about yours. I was in a foul mood to begin with, partly due to the usual Christmas-Is-Over-Shit-It’s-Almost-Back-To-Work-Soon malaise and partly due to the discovery of a text on Craig’s phone while he was in the shower that morning. The text said:

Hope you’re thinking of me when ur soaping your cock – L.

Kiss. Kiss. Smiley face tongue emoji.

Oh, I thought. It’s a fact then. He really is shagging her.

L. was Lana Rowntree – a kittenish 24-year-old sales rep in my office who wore tight skirts and chunky platforms and swished her hair like she was in a 24-hour L’Oréal advert. He’d met her at my works Christmas piss-up on 19 December – twelve days ago. The text confirmed the suspicions I’d had when I’d seen them together at the buffet: chatting, laughing, her fingering the serviette stack, him spooning out stuffing balls onto their plates, a hair swish here, a stubble scratch there. She was looking at him all night and he was just bathing in it.

Then came the increase in ‘little jobs’ he had to do in town: a paint job here, a hardwood floor there, a partition wall that ‘proved trickier’ than he’d estimated. Who has any of that done the week before Christmas? Then there were the out-of-character extended trips to the bathroom and two Christmas shopping trips (without me) that were just so damn productive he spent all afternoon maxing out his credit card. I’ve seen his statement – all my presents were purchased online.

So I’d been stewing about that all day and the last thing I needed that New Year’s night was enforced fun with a bunch of gussied-up pissheads. Unfortunately, that’s what I got.

My ‘friends’ or, more accurately, the‘PICSOs’ – People I Can’t Shake Off – had arranged to meet at the Cote de Sirène restaurant on the harbour-side, dressed in Next Sale finery. Our New Years’ meal-slash-club-crawl had been planned for months – initially to include husbands and partners, but, one by one, they had all mysteriously dropped out as it became a New Years’ meal-slash-baby-shower-slash-club crawl for Anni. Despite its snooty atmosphere, the restaurant is in the centre of town, so there’s always yellow streaks up the outside walls and a sick puddle on the doormat come Sunday morning. The theme inside is black and silver with an added soupçon of French – strings of garlic, frescos of Parisian walkways and waiters who glare at you like you’ve murdered their mothers.

The problem is, I need them. I need friends. I don’t want them; it’s not like they’re the Wilson to my skinny, toothless, homeward-bound Tom Hanks. But to keep up my façade of normality, they’re just necessary. To function properly in society, you have to have people around you. It’s annoying, like periods, but there is a point to it. Without friends, people start labelling you a ‘Loner’. They check your Internet history or start smelling bomb-making chemicals in your garage.

But the PICSOs and I have little in common, this is true. I’m an editorial assistant at a local snooze paper, Imelda’s an estate agent, Anaïs is a nurse (currently on maternity leave), Lucille works in a bank, her sister Cleo is a university-PE-teachercum-personal-trainer and Pidge is a secondary-school teacher. We don’t even have the same interests. Well, me and Anni will message each other about the most recent episode of Peaky Blinders but I’d hardly call us bezzies.

And it may look like I’m the quiet cuckoo in a nest of rowdy crows but I do perform some function within the group. Originally, when I first met them all in Sixth Form, I was a bit of a commodity. I’d been a bit famous as a child so I’d done the whole celebrity thing: met Richard and Judy; Jeremy Kyle gave me a Wendy house; been interviewed on one of those Countdown to Murder programmes. Nowadays, I’m just the Thoughtful Friend or the Designated Driver. Lately, I’m Chief Listener – I know all their secrets. People will tell you anything if you listen to them for long enough and pretend you’re interested.

Anni, our resident Preggo, is due to drop sometime in March. The Witches Four – Lucille, Cleo, Imelda and Pidge – had spared no expense on the nappy cake, cards, streamers, balloons and booties to decorate the table. I’d brought a fruit basket, filled with exotic fruits like lychees and mangoes, starfruit and ambarella, as a nod to Anni’s Mauritian heritage. It had gone down like a whore on a Home Secretary. At least I wasn’t driving, so I could quaff as much Prosecco as my liver could cope with and snuggle my brain into believing I was having a good time while they were all clucking on about the usual.

The PICSOs themselves like talking about five things above all others:

1. Their partners (usually to slag them off)

2. Their kids (conversations I can’t really join in with ’cos I don’t have any, so, unless, it’s cooing over school Nativity photos or laughing at Vines of them wiping poo up the walls, my contribution just isn’t called for)

3. IKEA (usually because they’ve just been or are just going)

4. Dieting – what works/what doesn’t, what’s filling/what isn’t, how many pounds they’ve lost/put on

5. Imelda’s wedding – she only announced it in September but I can’t actually remember a time when it wasn’t on our conversation rota.

In my head I’m usually thinking about five things above all others…

1. Sylvanian Families

2. My as-yet-unpublished novel, The Alibi Clock

3. My little dog, Tink

4. When I can go to the toilet and check my social-media feeds

5. Ways I can kill people I don’t like… without getting caught

Before too long a tray of drinks came over: Prosecco and a selection of slightly smudged glasses.

‘What’s this?’ Imelda asked.

‘Compliments of the gentlemen at the bar,’ said the waiter, and we looked over to see two types leaning against the counter, evidently looking to score with the nearest friendly vagina. The one wearing gold-hoop earrings and too much gel raised his pint in our direction – his other arm was in a sling. His friend in the Wales rugby shirt, and sporting tattooed forearms, a cut on his left eyebrow and a protruding beer gut, was unashamedly salivating over Lucille’s ridiculous breasts. She says she ‘doesn’t do it on purpose’. Yeah, and I don’t bleed from my crease every month.

‘How marvellous.’ She smiled, swooping into the bread basket. We each took a glass and ‘cheersed’ the men, before continuing our conversational merry-go-round – babies, boyfs, IKEA, and how draining it was just generally having tits.

Anni opened her presents, all of which she thought were either ‘amazing’ or ‘so cute’. Of all of them, I found Anni the least annoying of the PICSOs. She always had an anecdote to share about someone brought into A&E, with a Barbie doll shoved up their arse or a motorcyclist with his head hanging off. This was at least mildly entertaining. Of course her baby would come soon and then there would be nothing left for us to talk about other than Babies and What Fun They Are and How I Wish I Had One. That’s how these things usually went.

We all ordered steaks, in various sizes with various sauces, despite the rainbow of diets we are all on. Mel’s on the Dukan, or GI, I forget which one. Lucille’s on the 5:2, but today was a five day so she had three rolls and twenty breadsticks before her meal hit the tablecloth. Cleo ‘eats clean’, but she’s had Christmas and New Year off. I’m on the Eat Everything in Sight Until 1 January Then Starve Self to Death diet, so I ordered a 10oz sirloin in a béarnaise sauce with triple-cooked French fries – I asked for the meat to be so raw you didn’t know whether to eat it or feed it a carrot. The taste was unreal. I didn’t even care if the cow had suffered – his ass was delish.

‘I thought you were going veggie?’ said Lucille, tearing off another hunk of complimentary bread.

‘No,’ I said, ‘not any more.’ I couldn’t believe she remembered me saying that about eighty-five years ago. It was actually my GP who told me to give up red meat to help with my mood swings. But the supplements were doing their job so I didn’t see the point of going full McCartney for the sake of a few bitch fits. Besides, I always find earwigs in broccoli and sprouts are the Devil’s haemorrhoids.

‘Did you get anything nice for Christmas?’ Cleo asked me as the waiters brought out a selection of lethal-looking steak knives.

‘Thank you,’ I said to the guy. I always made a point to thank waiting staff – you never knew what they were stirring your sauce with. ‘Some books, perfume, Netflix voucher, Waterstones voucher, Beyoncé tickets for Birmingham…’ I left out Sylvanian stuff – the only people who understand how I feel about Sylvanians are Imelda’s five-year-old twins.

‘Ooh, we’re seeing Beyoncé in London in April,’ said Pidge. ‘Oh, I know what it was I wanted to tell you guys…’

Pidge started this inexorably long speech about how she’d gone to six different pet stores before she found the right something for her house rabbits – Beyoncé and Solange. Pidge’s conversation starters were always somewhere between Tedious and Prepare the Noose; almost as dull as Anni’s midwife appointments or Lucille’s Tales of the Killer Mortgage. I zoned out, mentally redesigning the furniture in my Sylvanians’ dining room. I think they need more space to entertain.

Despite the ongoing gnawing fury in the centre of my chest, courtesy of Le Boyf, the meal was nice and I managed to keep it down. I noticed there were fake flowers in the vases on all the tables – which won’t please the Tripadvisor fairy – but as restaurants go, I’m glad I went. It was almost worth the two hours I’d spent crowbarring myself out of the pyjamas I’d lived in since Christmas Eve and dolling myself up. Well, it was until the subject of Imelda’s wedding came up. Lucille was the culprit.

‘So, you got your hair sorted out yet for the Big Day?’

Now this was the rare occasion when Imelda did hear what Lucille said – because she had asked about Imelda or weddings or Imelda’s actual wedding.

‘No,’ she whined. ‘I want something up at the crown but not spiky. French plaits for the bridesmaids, keep it simple. Did I tell you about our photographers? We’re having two. Jack found this guy from London and him and his partner – his work partner that is (cue chorus of unexplained laughs) – are coming down to see the church in May. He’s going to be at the back so that he can take pictures of everyone’s faces as I come down the aisle, and his mate’s going to be at the altar.’

‘No chance of anything being missed then?’ I added.

‘Exactly.’ Imelda smiled, seemingly ecstatic that I was taking an interest.

‘What you wearing for your night do? Did you decide?’ asked Anni, returning from a third toilet break.

‘Oh, the dress again, definitely.’

‘You’re going to have it on all day?’ said Cleo.

‘Yeah. It’s got to be something striking. It is my day and everyone will be coming to check me out so… and that way, the people who didn’t get invited to the day do will be able to see it then.’

‘Yeah, wouldn’t want them missing out on anything,’ I mumbled, checking my phone. And again she smiled, like I was right on her wavelength.

Anni nodded, biting her lower lip. ‘You’ll be stunning, Mel. It’s gonna be such a good bash. And I’ll be able to drink again by then, too!’

I cleaned off my steak knife with my napkin. There was an abundance of veins in my left wrist. I could have ended it all right then if I’d had the balls.

‘I won’t be stunning,’ said Imelda. ‘I’ll probably break both camera lenses!’

Lucille’s turn: ‘Babes, you’re gorgeous. You’ll be all princess-like and there’ll be flowers everywhere and with that amazing church… it’ll be like a proper fairy tale.’

‘Yeah,’ she scoffed. ‘If I can’t shift this bloody muffin top in the next six months it will be a fairy tale – Shrek!’

Cue the shrieks.

‘And June’s always sunny, so you’re bound to have the best weather for it,’ said Pidge, rubbing Imelda’s arm. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be wonderful.’

Enough?

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right.’

(Note: I have cribbed this endless ego massage here but please understand, Dear Diary, that Imelda’s wedding takes up at least 90 per cent of every social occasion.)

Then she brought up the very thing I’ve been dreading since it was first mooted last September – the Weekend That Must Not Be Named.

‘You’re all coming to my hen weekend, aren’t you? No buts. You’ve got six months’ notice after all.’

Fuck it. In a fairly large bucket.

‘Oh, yeah, what are we doing again?’ asked Anni, swigging her orange juice.

‘Not sure yet – possibly Bath for a spa day or Lego Windsor. But it’s deffo Friday to Sunday.’

‘Rawther!’ Lucille giggled. She was matron of honour.

Then it was onto Man Bash Central – Woman Bash Central in Cleo’s case – how Rashan/Alex/Jack/Tom/Amy had stayed out all night on a job/booze run to France/coach trip to Belgium/job/pub crawl/austerity protest. How Rashan/Alex/Jack/Tom/Amy had got so unadventurous in bed these days. How big Rashan/Alex/Jack’s dicks were (Cleo and Pidge always carefully avoided this subject) and finally how Rashan/Alex/Jack/Tom/Amy had given them a Rolex/flowers/Hotel Chocolat salted-caramel puddles/a holiday/a hug just to say sorry after a row that Anni/Lucille/Imelda/Pidge/Cleo had instigated.

The only thing Craig ever gave me that meant anything was bacterial vaginosis, but I kept that to myself.

‘What’s Craig up to these days, Rhiannon?’ asked Anni. She always brought me into the conversation. Imelda sometimes did this when vying for the gold medal at the Passive Aggressive Olympics. She’d ask, ‘Any news on your junior-reporter thing yet, Rhee?’ or ‘Any sign of Baby Wilkins in that womb of yours yet, Rhee?’, when she knew full well I’d have mentioned it if I had news of huge job change (please, God) and/or womb invader (please, God, no).

‘Uh, the same,’ I said, sipping my fifth glass of Prosecco. ‘He’s fitting out that shop in the High Street that used to be a hairdresser’s. It’s going to be a charity shop.’

‘Thought there might be something sparkly waiting under the Christmas tree this year,’ said Imelda, loudly to the entire restaurant. ‘What’s it been now, three years?’

‘Four,’ I said, ‘and, no, he’s not that thoughtful.’

‘Would you say yes if he did propose, Rhiannon?’ said Pidge, her face full of wonder, like she was thinking about Hogwarts. (She and Tom were planning to get married at the Harry Potter Experience in Orlando soon – I shit you not.)

I hesitated, the gnawing in my chest biting down harder. Then I lied: ‘Yeah, of course–’ I was about to qualify that with an If he could stop taking Lana Rowntree up her aisle for five minutes long enough to walk me down one, but Lucille cut me off before I had chance:

‘Talking of charity shops, I bought this great vase in the one opposite Debenhams; such a bargain…’ she began, launching into a new topic of conversation and leaving me behind on my Island of Unfinished Sentences.

Not that I wanted to talk about Craig or Craig’s dull job. Neither were interesting subjects to talk about. He built things, ate pasties, smoked the odd spliff, liked football, played video games and couldn’t pass a pub without eating enough pork scratchings to fill Trafalgar Square. That was Craig – Gordon Ramsay clap – done.

So they were all wanging on about The Weekend That Must Not Be Named when a random bloke with bad neck zits appeared at our table, clutching a glass of lager.

‘All right, girls?’ said Random Bloke with Neck Zits. He produced a couple of red-wine bottles, emboldened by a six-strong gaggle of blokes with neck and chin zits at the bar. Surprisingly, the corks were still in the bottles so there was no danger of us being Rohipped and dragged to the nearest Premier Inn for a semi-conscious rape-fest. Yeah, I think of these things, another reason I’m a useful friend.

These weren’t the same guys who’d bought us Prosecco, this was a different lot. Younger. Louder. Zittier.

‘Mind if we join you?’ Winks and knowing looks all round.

Cue giggles and shrieks.

I had intended to order the double chocolate brownie with clotted cream for pudding but we were at the part of the evening where we all had to hold our stomachs in so I resisted, wondering if I could get home for some leftover Christmas tiramisu ice cream before the bongs signalled the death knell of fun-eating habits.

Imelda, Lucille and Cleo made the usual ribald comments, clearly turned on by the attention. Pidge started joining in too, once a sufficient amount of wine had been imbibed. She was always too Christian to participate in either tittage or bants before alcohol allowed her to. I wasn’t nearly pissed enough for either.

So the evening dragged on like a corpse tied to a donkey cart as the Seven Dorks squeezed onto our table and allowed their eggy breaths and chubby fingers to fog our air and tweak our knicker elastic. We had Grunty, Zitty, Shorty, Sleazy, Fatso, Gropey and Mute.

Guess which one I got stuck talking to. Or rather, at.

And, one by one, the PICSOs all left me. They each did the ‘you’re only young once’ speech and hooked up with the Dorks to go on to a club for a New Year’s foam party – can’t remember which one as I had no intention of following them.

‘You coming, Rhee?’ asked Anni, weighed down with gifted baby detritus. ‘Me and Pidge are just gonna shove this lot in the car and meet them there.’

I don’t know why she was so excited to be tagging along to a nightclub. She was the size of a barge and was on orange juice and bi-hourly toilet breaks. Nightclubs weren’t known for facilitating either.

‘Yeah, I just need the loo,’ I said, sinking my wine.

I was testing them now. Testing to see who would actually wait for me. Who was the true friend? But, as I expected, nobody waited. I paid my part of the bill, stood on the doormat of Cote de Sirène and watched them all waddling and cackling up the street with the Dorks circling them like sharks around chum. Not a second thought did I get.

So there I was, alone, in the centre of town, preparing to hike the two miles back to my flat, on New Year’s Eve.

But this is where my fun began.

As it turned out, walking across town went without incident. I’m not counting the tramp with a tinsel halo, pissing in streams down both legs, using NatWest as a walking aide. Or the couple shagging behind the wheely bins at the back of Boots’ car park. And I’m not counting the fight that broke out inside Pizza Express then spilled onto the pavement, during which a bald man in a striped shirt yelled, ‘I’M GONNA RAPE YOUR FUCKING SKULL, MATE!’

None of that was particularly noteworthy.

Whereas, what happened down by the canal, was.

It must have been about 11.30 p.m. by the time I reached the playing fields and took the short cut along the cycle path and down to the canal towpath, a mere five hundred feet from our flat. It was here that I heard footsteps behind me. And my breath shortened. And my heart began to thump.

I shoved my hands into my duffle-coat pockets and turned around to see a guy I recognised. He was the one in the Wales rugby shirt with the tattooed forearms who’d bought us the first lot of Prosecco at the restaurant.

‘Where you going then, baby?’

‘Home.’

‘Aww, can I come?’

‘No.’

‘Please? We can make each other happy tonight. Still got a bit of time before the bongs, ain’t we? You look sad.’

He sidestepped in front of me. I stepped away. He stepped back. He laughed.

‘You followed me, didn’t you?’ I said.

He leered, eyeing me from head to toe with a lingering look at my crotch area, which I’ll admit did look inviting in my too-tight skirt. ‘Just seeing where you were going, that’s all. Don’t be like that. I bought you a drink.’

‘I said thank you at the time.’ Like, of course that would be enough.

He put his hands on me.

‘Could you take your hands off me, please?’

‘Come on. You were giving me the eye.’

‘Don’t think I was. Get off.’ I wasn’t raising my voice. I didn’t need to. His molestation attempts were pathetic. A hand on my boob. A motion to his belt buckle.

‘How about you get your laughing gear round my old boy then? Just for ‘Auld Lang Syne’, eh?’

He was strong; a prop four or something. As well as the cut on his left eyebrow, he had the beginnings of a cauliflower ear. He slathered all over my face and I let him. Nobody else was around. Even if I screamed, the nearest people over in the Manette Court complex would take five minutes to get to me. And that’s if they even bothered. He’d have come in me and gone by then and I’d be another statistic, getting vaginal swabs and drinking tepid tea in some police waiting room.

No. That might be my sister but that would not be me.

‘Come in here,’ he gasped in my ear, taking my freezing hand inside his hot clammy one and pulling me towards the bush. An upended Lidl shopping trolley lay on its back.

I stayed rooted. ‘There’s no room in there.’

‘Yeah, there is.’ He tugged harder on my hand.

‘Pull your jeans down,’ I said.

He smirked like his ship had just come in – a ship with a massive hard-on. ‘Oh, yes, baby girl. I knew I could thaw you out.’

Unsteady on his feet, he fumbled at his belt. Then his zip. His over-washed jeans collapsed in a heap at his ankles. So did his boxers. There were little Homer Simpsons all over them. His cock sprung out like a small Samurai, ready to do battle.

Ba-doing!

It had a bend in it. I wasn’t sure whether he was pleased to see me or giving me directions to the bus station.

He stroked it upwards. Well, upwards and towards the bus station. ‘All yours,’ he said.

‘Mmm,’ I said, ‘lucky old me.’

The temptation to laugh was so strong but I choked it down and made it look as though I was starting to wriggle out of my knickers under my skirt. All keen.

‘Can you get on all fours?’ he panted.

‘Like a dog?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos I wanna fuck you like a dog.’

I grew breathless. ‘But the ground’s hard.’

‘So’s my dick. Get down. Go on, don’t tease.’

‘I’ll suck you off but no more,’ I said.

‘That’s a start,’ he said, eyes lighting up. I crouched down and took his little warm Samurai in my grip.

‘Shall I finger myself as I’m sucking it?’ I asked, heart in my throat.

‘Fuck, yeah! Dirty bitch!’ he chuckled, growing harder and more veiny.

He waited for it – for my lips on his bell-end. I pulled on his dick as though about to milk it.

‘Knew you were a dirty bitch.’

I saw Craig’s face on his as I held the cock steady and, reaching into my pocket, I closed my fingers around the handle of the steak knife. Bringing it out slowly while stroking him into full submission, I waited until his eyes had closed and his chin tilted to the sky in ecstasy before I hacked down hard on it and started carving through the gristly meat. He screamed and swore and beat at my head with his fists but my grip was tight and I sawed at it through slipping, bloody fingers until I had yanked his penis from its roots and pushed him backwards into the murky green water. His forlorn manhood dropped to the cold canal towpath with a bloody slap.

The splash was loud and he was still screaming but, despite all the hullaballoo, no one was coming to either of our rescues.

‘Aaaaaaarrrgghhh! Aaaaarrrrrrgghh!’ he went, splashing around like a child at its first swimming class.

A little curl of steam rose up from the penis, lying dejectedly on the towpath. I found a spare dog poo bag in my coat and picked the severed member up, then ran towards the footbridge, my heart still banging like a bastard on a jail-cell wall. I lost my breath completely as I reached the top and looked down over the water.

‘Fucking… sick… bitch!’ he gargled, flopping about.

He kept splashing, sinking under the murky water, then bobbing up again and spluttering. The last thing he must have seen in this world was my face, on the bridge, smiling in the moonlight.

Thanks to my cruel improvisation, I was feeling something I hadn’t felt for a long time. That same feeling you get when you’re a kid and you spy an adventure playground. Or when you poke your foot out of the bed on Christmas morning and feel your full stocking hanging there. It radiates out from a deeply exciting inner squiggle until your whole body feels electric all over. The best feeling in the world. It’s an exquisite privilege to watch someone die, knowing you caused it. Almost worth getting dolled up for.

Monday, 1 January

1. Teen boy and girl in the park who kicked their black Labrador that time

2. Derek Scudd

3. Wesley Parsons

4. The guy with Tourette’s who sits in the Paddy Power doorway, shouting about spacecrafts and the time he got fisted by a priest

5. Craig and Lana. To save on bullets, I’m putting them both together here – one shot, right through both skulls

6. The man in the blue Qashqai who pulled out of Marsh Road and beeped when I didn’t walk fast enough. 'Stupid slow bitch,' that’s what he’d said. All the way round the block I was picturing his suited body hanging by its neck – wriggling and twitching and me standing beneath him, just watching

Did a BuzzFeed quiz this morning – How Psychopathic Are You? Turns out – very. I scored 82 per cent. They even accompanied my results with a picture of Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List. Don’t know how I feel about that.

The quiz had been right about one thing, though.

Do you try to evade responsibility?

Well, yes, yes, I do. Remorse-wise, the canal incident has left little impression. I haven’t killed anyone for three years and I thought that when it happened again I’d feel bad, like an alcoholic taking a sip of whiskey. But, no, nothing. I had a blissful night’s sleep. Didn’t wake up at all and, for once, no bad dream either. This morning I feel balanced. Almost sane, for once.

*

Craig and I spent the first day of the New Year in front of the TV, eating pizza, the blue Quality Streets and watching ‘80s movies – Pretty in Pink, The Outsiders and that one where Demi Moore has a pink apartment and goes nuts at the end. He is an exceptional liar, I’ll give him that. I know he saw Lana today, under the pretence of ‘meeting Gary and Nigel down Wetherspoon’s’. He was vay convincing, to the untrained eye.

Sadly, my eye is hyper-trained – like an Olympic sprinter when it comes to rooting out bullshit.

We’d planned to do so much this week – stuff we never got round to do when we’re both at work: power-spraying the bird shit on the balcony, sorting out boxes for the mythical car-boot-sale-we’re-never-going-to-do, and Craig was going to clear out the mountain of rubbish and offcuts of wood from the back of his van and then paint the bathroom. We had one day left before we both went back to work and we’d done precious little. Craig had made a start on the wall above the toilet on Christmas Eve – a little surprise for me for when I got home from work, to keep me sweet before he mentioned he’d invited the boys around again to watch Boxing Day football on Sky. But when I’d seen the colour, I did not like the colour.

‘Mineral Mist, I said!’

‘I got Mineral Mist, see?’ He held up the tin. It said Morning Mist.

I took Tink for a walk at lunch as Craig was playing Streetfighter and making bacon sandwiches and the smell was making me dribble (I’m trying not to have bread because ass). I like looking in people’s gardens on our walks. I miss having a garden. There were all sorts of Christmas debris strewn about the pavements. Smashed baubles. Strings of tinsel. Half-chewed sweets. A carrier bag blew across the road out of somebody’s bin and Tink had a conniption, probably waking up half the country. Of all the things in this world my dog hated the most, sneezes, spaniels and rogue carrier bags flying at her as if from nowhere were definitely the Top Three.

Tried teaching her Shake a Paw again, the one trick she won’t do under any circumstances – still nothing.

Craig sorted out all his unwanted Blu-rays for the car-bootsale-we’re-never- going-to-do and pressure-washed the balcony with our new pressure washer, a Christmas gift from his mum and dad. I waxed my legs and drove over to my mum and dad’s house late afternoon. All quiet on the Western Front. Still can’t get the stains out of the bedroom carpet. Craig is still buying all my lies about ‘going to Cleo’s aerobics class’ and ‘working late; so I can go over there. It’s almost too easy.

Gave Tink a bath in the kitchen sink. She doesn’t like it but puts up with it because she always gets chicken bits afterwards. As I was trying to towel her off, she legged it round the flat like she had rabies. Craig laughed too, which broke the ice. Then he said he was ‘going over Homebase’ to get me the other paint. He said he needed some new wallpaper scissors for work as well.

I said, ‘Why don’t you just have my dad’s old wallpaper scissors from his toolkit? I was going over there tomorrow to sort out Mum’s filing cabinet. I can get them then.’

He said that meant a lot to him, like Dad was giving him his blessing from beyond the grave. The hallowed Tommy Lewis toolkit that Dad carried with him like an extra limb and Craig was never allowed to touch. I thought he was going to cry.

‘They’re just wallpaper scissors, Craig,’ I said. ‘It’s not an engagement ring.’

He nodded and left the room with a distinct clear of throat. I’m terrible with crying people. How do you make them stop? I deliberately caught the wrong bus once because a woman was blubbing in the bus shelter. Didn’t know what else to do.

Do I love him? I haven’t known what love is in a long time. He says he loves me but isn’t that just something that gets said? He told me on Christmas Eve that, coupled with the hand jobs and my excellent trifle, I’m almost the perfect girlfriend. I don’t nag him as much as his mates’ wives nag them either. I asked him what would make me perfect.

‘Anal,’ he said, no hesitation. ‘What would make me perfect?’ he asked.

Well, it’d be a start if you stopped shagging Lana Rowntree behind my back, I thought. Instead, I opted for the safer:

‘You can’t improve on perfection itself, can you, darling?’

He laughed and I flicked him a V sign behind the Radio Times.

Wednesday, 3 January

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s back to my shitty job I go. Actually, there is a dwarf where I work – he’s upstairs in the Accounts department. He’s the reason we had all our light switches moved to three feet above the ground. Madness.

Today went as all days at the Gazette go – long, coffee-stained and dull. The first half was me telling anyone who asked what a good Christmas I had and some dull-as-ditch tasks of inputting local schools’ thank-you letters to Santa, updating the website and making coffee in the new £5,000 (yes, that’s £5,000!) coffee machine. There were four new mugs in the staffroom – Christmas presents no one wanted at home but which everyone wants at work because they’re clean. I nabbed one with dinosaurs on and the words TEA-REX. Hardy har.

The usual New Year signs have gone up everywhere, unstained and laminated. Signs telling professional adults helpful things like IF YOU’RE LAST OUT OF AN EVENING, PLEASE TURN OFF ALL THE LIGHTS and PLEASE WASH YOUR OWN CROCKERY. The toilets are full of them: PLEASE ONLY FLUSH TOILET TISSUE DOWN THE TOILET. PLEASE REPLACE TOILET PAPER IF YOU USE THE LAST PIECE. PLEASE TURN OFF THE TAPS AFTER USE. There’s even one as you leave, saying, PLEASE LEAVE THESE FACILITIES AS YOU FIND THEM – THANK YOU.

I’d like to suggest some new signs for the office, specifically for my benefit and/or amusement:

PLEASE REMEMBER TO WIPE YOUR ASS AFTERWARDS FOR THE GOOD OF YOUR GUSSET.

PLEASE CLOSE ALL DOORS QUIETLY, STAY HOME IF YOU ARE SICK, OR AT LEAST TRY TO DIMINISH YOUR SNEEZES – NOISE-SENSITIVE PSYCHOPATH IN THE BUILDING.

PLEASE DO NOT WEAR CROCS TO WORK – THEY ARE AN INSULT TO FOOTWEAR (MIKE HEATH –T HIS MEANS YOU).

DON’T DRINK SO MUCH OF THE OFFICE MILK – MIKE HEATH THE MILK THIEF THIS MEANS YOU TOO, WHAT WITH YOUR DAILY OVERFLOWING BOWLS OF CEREAL AND SIX CAPPUCCINOS.

PLEASE DON’T EAT CHEESY NACHOS OR FRIED BREAKFASTS AT YOUR DESK – THE SMELL MAKES US ALL WANT TO VOM.

PLEASE DON’T TELL RHIANNON LEWIS WHAT YOU DID AT THE WEEKEND – SHE WAS ONLY BEING POLITE.

The Gulp Monster – aka, Claudia Gulper, our desk editor – is responsible for the signs. She puts pass ag labels on her food in the staff-room fridge with the same marker. I stayed late tonight to help her with her article on the mismanagement of power-station funds, which she hopes is going to win her some big journalism prize (it won’t). I asked her to look at my unsolicited article about the rise of drug-related crime and we talked about my theory that the ladies’ dress shop Paint the Town Red was the hub of distribution. I thought it could earn me some extra Brownie points.

More fool I.

I’d liked Claudia for about five minutes when I’d first started at the Gazette as a receptionist but, nowadays, she treats me like some kind of home help. She insisted on giving me endless boring ‘News in Brief’ snippets to type up or deaf Golden Wedding couples to interview, and once shouted at me in front of everyone for missing three semi-colons in the Fun Run results – not to mention a billion other reasons for me to want to jump through the fucking window. I long ago decided she was just a pubic louse on the vaginal wall of the cunt witch from Hell. I’m glad her third round of IVF failed and her husband left her. No spawn deserves that for a mother.

Craig was cooking when I got home (guilt food, obvs). Pasta from scratch with home-made pesto. Since I only had an apple and a black coffee for breakfast and just a salad for lunch, I allowed myself a troughing.

It’s safer to have than to have not, isn’t it? Even if the Have is crap. And if you’re not with someone, you get questions about it, All. The. Time. When you’re hooked up, that all stops. You feel embraced in the safety of having someone. And other people are contented because they don’t have to worry about setting you up on blind dates or going out in couples with a walking gooseberry bush.

What I should do is leave him. I should make him a dog-shit sandwich or cut all the crotches out of his Levis and hit the road. But it’s complicated. Craig worked for my dad and took over his building firm when he died. I like having that link. And it’s his flat and he pays most of the bills. And he puts up with all my kinks – my need to not have sudden, repetitive or loud noises, my need for quiet periods of time alone and for no one to touch my doll’s house. What other guy would put up with me?

Regarding the sex, there were ‘mixed reviews’.

When it’s good, it’s OK. No intense orgasms but nothing to complain about. And when it’s bad it’s brief. He comes, he goes to sleep. We’ve tried kinky stuff (he’s worn my knickers, gone down on me on a night bus, and I keep nakes of him in my phone) and sometimes if we’re at his mum and dad’s and they’re asleep in front of Antiques Roadshow, we’ll creep upstairs and do it on their bed. Then it’s not bad at all because there’s an element of risk, I suppose. But his general repertoire in the sack had become as predictable as EastEnders. I know where his tongue’s going next, when he wants me on top, how many thrusts it’s going to take. It’s all become a bit yadda yadda. I’ve tried introducing different positions to the event but, you try turning tricks like Simone Biles when you’ve only got an average of four minutes thirty-seven seconds to do it in.

I once mooted dogging as a possibility. He thought I was joking.

‘What are you, a pervert or something?’

Why’s everything so complex? Half the time, I admit, I crave normality, domesticity: a family, other heartbeats around, a comfy sofa of an evening and little pots of floral happiness growing silently on the balcony. The other half of the time, I want nothing more than to kill. To watch.

This sort of tallied with my BuzzFeed results.

Do you rarely connect on an emotional level with other people?

No, of course I don’t. I never meet anyone on my emotional level. A part of me wants to know what love feels like again. I know I must have felt it once. I wonder if it’s the same feeling I get when I take a life; when all your nerve endings feel like they’re reanimating. The thinking about it all the time at work. The craving to do it again and barely managing not to. I keep replaying the night of Canal Man in my head – the parting of the skin as the knife sliced through his penis. Him struggling beneath my hands. The trickling blood. Him beating at my head with his fists. Cutting through the layers – skin to flesh to muscle. Standing on the bridge, waiting for the water to calm and for his body to upend and float. The anxious gnawing in my chest has diminished.

Was that what love was? Did I ‘love’ to kill? I don’t know. All I do know is that I want to do it again. And, next time, I want it to last longer.

Our kleptomaniac neighbour Mrs Whittaker knocked on our door at 9.30 p.m., back from visiting her sister in Maidstone. She asked if we needed her to look after Tink tomorrow. Craig told her that he was only working a half-day so he could take her with him. I stayed on the sofa, pretending to be asleep but I saw her through a crack in the cushion, scanning the living room from the doorway, probably eager to get further inside and nick more of our decorative pebbles or an unguarded stapler. She’s in the first flush of Alzheimer’s so it’s not as though we can complain.

Drove over to Mum and Dad’s house around 8 p.m., under the guise of ‘seeing the PICSOs for a drink’. Julia wasn’t happy to see me. I only left two of the three chocolate treats I’d intended to leave from my selection box – a Drifter and a Crunchie. The state the room was in, she definitely didn’t deserve the Revels.

I’m so looking forward to killing her.

Ventured a look at the scales before bed – I’ve put on five pounds over Christmas and today’s starvation has done nothing. I am so having a bagel for breakfast.

Friday, 5 January

1. Derek Scudd

2. Wesley Parsons

3. People who eat with their mouth open – e.g. Craig

4. The first Kardashian – maybe if I figure out how to go back in time I can kill him then we can stop all the rest

5. Septuagenarians who chat in clusters inside shop doorways

6. Celebrities who bang on and on about loving your body and being comfortable in your own skin, then lose a boatload of weight and release a fitness DVD. Just. Fuck. Off. You. Cunting. Hypocrites.

Had another Dad dream, the third since Bonfire Night. Woke up in a bath of sweat, even though the temperature was, like, -2 degrees. It’s always the same dream: that last day in hospital, his dry little face staring up at me from the pillow, eyes pleading with words his brain couldn’t send to his mouth.

Still, this week’s front page was more enjoyable:

LOCAL FAMILY MAN’S BODY FOUND IN GRISLY CANAL DREDGE

A MAN whose body was discovered in a local stretch of canal on New Year’s Day has been named.

A passer-by made the grim find at around 8.30 a.m. on New Year’s morning and police were called to the waterside at the roving bridge near the library. The body has been named as that of 32-year-old Daniel John Wells, an electrician who had been out socialising the night before.

Mr Wells worked as an electrician for Wells & Son Electricals and has two daughters from previous relationships, Tyffannee-Miley, 3 [I shit you not!] and Izabella-Mai, 18 months [similarly, the fuck?].

Police have yet to rule whether or not there are suspicious circumstances surrounding Mr Wells’s death and are appealing for witnesses.

Nothing was mentioned about his jeans being around his ankles. Or his drunken state. Or his tendencies to opportunistic rape. Or his missing appendage. I guess ‘socialising’ is the umbrella term to cover all that.

Work was dull. I swear that Chinese kid who was locked in a cage for twenty years wouldn’t swap for my life at the moment. We have a new kid in, called AJ – Claudia’s nephew from Australia. I say ‘kid’ but he’s actually eighteen and on a gap year and working as a ‘Part-time Hourly Paid’ assistant for the next six months. His top half dresses like he’s going to the beach; his bottom half has just come back from Glastonbury. I don’t know what the A or the J stand for but, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who goes about calling themselves by their initials is just begging for a slap.

He’s actually very good-looking, tall and tanned, covered in friendship bracelets, and he smiles all the time. I don’t normally get drawn towards cheerful people – the urge to hurt them becomes too strong – but I think he does allow for modest gusset dribble. Bit eager to impress Claudia. He’s staying with her. Maybe I can besmirch him somehow; that would get right up her bunghole. You know when people say a smile ‘can light up a room’? I know what they’re talking about now. AJ has a smile that does that.

Not my room, though, obviously.

I nodded off typing up seventeen letters pertaining to dredging on the Somerset Levels and the steep rise in recycling fees for garden waste. The miserable Home and Properties sub, ironically called Joy, commented on how much weight I’d put on over the holidays. Joy is censorious by her nature to all of us but today it pissed me off more than usual. She thinks she’s being helpful, pointing out our insecurities – my weight, Lana’s breakdown, Claudia’s moles, Jeff’s limp and, worst of all, Mike Heath’s impotence (she’d noticed a bag he brought back from the chemist one lunchtime). I think Joy once weighed about fifty stone but lost it all and had the NHS cut off the slack. Now she considers it her duty to verbally maim everyone.

The irritating thing is, we can’t say ANYTHING back to Joy because she has a ton of disabilities. She’s one of those rotund, deeply ugly Cromwellian-faced women you see around who’ve dyed their hair bright pink or blue in an attempt to make themselves more appealing, but all they’ve done is accentuate their ugliness. So I can’t comment about her big left leg or her stutter or the Bell’s palsy that has caused her mouth to start sliding off her face because then I’d get done for disablism. Crazy. Wouldn’t you rather have someone like me working with you? Someone who did the decent thing and bitched about you behind your back, rather than right to your face?

I don’t particularly want to go to the effort of killing Joy but I do sometimes like to imagine her, stuffed and glazed, prostrate on a silver platter, surrounded by tufts of parsley with a big green apple wedged between her jaws.

The mayor came in at lunch to see Ron. She’s pleasant enough and she’s got a foster-care past, a disabled kid, and her husband keeps having heart attacks, so she’s clearly had to swallow several shitty spoonfuls from the Bowl of Life. I try not to get too close to her, though – she smells like a Glade PlugIn on full-whack. She is also gluten intolerant, which makes buying lunch intolerable. I have to go to that smelly deli on the corner, where the guy with black fingernails and dreadlocks shuffles around in a hummus-covered apron, twiddling his nose ring.

Lana smiled as she sashayed past my desk at lunchtime, robin’s-egg-blue blouse straining against the pressure of her sizeable assets. I’m pretty sure half the time she doesn’t need to walk past my desk – she could go the other way round – but she does it to look at me. Like a killer going back to the site where she dumped a body, just to marvel at the rate of decomposition or to fuck the remains. I smiled back anyway, for the sake of The Act, and we had a short chat. I smiled again when we were done. Cue the hair swish. Cue the giggle. Cue me imagining her pinned to a snooker table and stabbing her in each hole. I can see why all the men fancy her. She’s bubbly, easy-going, has tits like water balloons. Her last two boyfriends dumped her – I heard it on the staffroom grapevine. She had a breakdown after the first one. And, apparently, after the second one left, she tried to take her own life. I don’t know the severity of the attempt – whether it was a proper go or just a token pills-and-finger-straight-downthe-throat job – but it did explain Craig’s predilection for her. He likes them broken.

A lesbian couple whose kid had choked on a grape in Pizza Hut came in to chat to Mike Heath in the conference room, along with the waitress who’d done kiddy Heimlich and saved his life. I wrote up a press release on a student’s Kilimanjaro climb for moon bears and helped Jeff input the match report from the finals of the County Bowls Championships. There was a Kinder Egg on my desk when I got back from lunch.

Jeff Thresher is the newspaper’s chief sports editor. I think he’d been put in with the foundations. He sits at his desk in the corner all day; holey red cardigan, fingerless gloves, three back supports on his chair. I like Jeff. He holds the door open for me and laughs at my jokes. He’s an expert gardener too and enters all the country shows with his massive courgettes. He’s taught me some of the Latin names of my favourite flowers – Bellis perennis (daisy), Centaurea cyanus (cornflower) and Amaranthus caudatus (Love Lies Bleeding). If the office were flooded with shit, I’d definitely throw Jeff the other life raft.

Drove over to the house in my lunch break. Julia is not a happy camper. She’s broken a window at the back. It’s only a small hole but it made me mad. So, of course, she had to be taught another lesson. Back into the cupboard with you, Little Chip.

Met Craig for a Nando’s after work and he brought the carinsurance documents along so we could Compare the Meerkat ’cos the renewal price was too high. My chicken was tough. I didn’t complain though. Didn’t have it in me tonight.

Thank God for porn. The moment Craig mooted the possibility of sex that evening, I took myself off to the bedroom under the guise of ‘working on my novel’ and chowed down on every old favourite I could find to lubricate the old pink matter. When I think back to being a kid and sneaking off to read the dirty bits in my mum’s Jackie Collins or rewinding Dad’s Basic Instinct tape about six bloody times, I wonder how I survived. Now, it’s everywhere and not so titillating.

Chat rooms can be another source of titillation. I know modesty forbids me to say I’m brilliant at dirty talk but I am brilliant at dirty talk. How it works is you snare them in the chat rooms, get them begging for a private text chat in WhatsApp or Kik and then haul them in. Once they’re in the app, they’re in my trap.

Hee hee hee.

Admittedly, sexting gets a little annoying when predictive text spoils the fun – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said I wanted to ‘duck his vock’ or asked a guy to ‘cum in my wasp’ or ‘lick my Pudsey’. One guy offered to ‘suck my bipolars’. Some of them get quite demanding. Skyping works better but it involves shaving and losing weight and I just can’t be bothered at the moment. Chatting to three or four at once, it’s like working in Argos during the Christmas rush. One wants an ass shot, another wants a tit shot, some guy in Australia’s going to bed soon and needs to watch me cum on camera and one guy in Toronto wants to chat about suicidal thoughts he’s had since his brother’s death. Oh, yeah. I get all sorts.

Last time, me and one of my regulars were on about meeting up at a London hotel – he wanted to tie me up. Another said he’d meet me in a dark alleyway and do exactly what I said: grab me and tear at my clothes, grasp my neck like a nettle and bite my ear as he whispered nasty things into it – just like I wanted him to.

I stop short at asking if I can kill them after; if I can lie underneath them, dressed in their blood, while they emit their dying breaths on top of me.

Baby steps and all that.

But the best – the absolute best thrill of all – is going fishing. And I don’t mean for carp or tench. I mean big fish. Big, horny fish who only come out at night to prowl the streets, looking for female office workers walking home alone or pissed-up damsels in distress stumbling back from the clubs. I like to play said damsel from time to time. I like to play the victim. It’s so damn easy when you’ve got an eight-inch chef’s knife in your coat pocket.

Sunday, 7 January

1. Derek Scudd

2. Derek Scudd’s lawyer

3. Wesley Parsons

4. Our local whack job, Creepy Ed Sheeran, who hangs around Lidl car park, tearing the leaves off the bushes, sniffing them and chuckling

5. Anyone who buys, sells or creates Star Wars merchandise. I can’t even buy a Snickers without seeing a token for a sodding light sabre

Dreamed about Dad again last night. I asked him who his favourite child was, and he smiled and told me, ‘You, of course.’

I could talk to my dad about anything. There’s no one now. Craig’s pathetic – he’s always got one eye on the TV and, even if it’s turned off, I figure he’s mentally rerunning an old episode of Game of Thrones. I can’t talk to Seren, of course. She hasn’t been back to England since Dad’s funeral and, every time we talk on the phone, I get the impression she can’t wait to hang up.

And as for the PICSOs, when I want derogatory comments about my lack of kids or non-selling novel or my low-grade job, maybe their opinions will matter.

I don’t know what Mum or Dad would tell me to do if they were still around.

I didn’t grieve for them like an ordinary person would. Seren said it was ‘very unsettling’ seeing the way I grieved about Dad. She said it was like ‘looking through a window when it’s raining’ – the rain trickling down it and cold as ice. I didn’t know how to feel. I was just numb. I googled it once – WebMD said ‘bereavement numbness for the first few days is very common as your brain tries to process what has happened’. I couldn’t find anything about numbness that went on for years. Apparently, that wasn’t a thing.

The two seniors, Claudia and Linus, came back from court at lunch, to say that the paedophile Derek Scudd, sixty-eight, had got off with a three-year suspended sentence, a two-month rehab order and a place on the Sex Offenders’ Register. We’ve all been following the case for over a year. Un-fucking-believable! The man needs to be skinned alive and fried while he was still screaming.

Thursday, 11 January

1. Mrs Whittaker – neighbour, elderly, kleptomaniac

2. ‘Dillon’ on the checkout in Lidl – he overcharged me for Craig’s paper

3. The suited man in the blue Qashqai who roars out of Sowerberry Road every morning – grey suit, aviator shades, Donald Trump tan

4. Derek Scudd

5. Wesley Parsons

The camellias are flowing in the front garden at Mum and Dad’s house. They look gorgeous. My mum planted them. I saw them when I took some more stuff round before work. Julia did some more begging. She’d made another attempt to smash the window.

‘DON’T YOU DARE SMASH A WINDOW!’ I yelled at her, yanking her head back hard until she crumpled to the carpet. ‘You carry on like that I’ll cut your other thumb off.’

I reminded her about ‘my friend who is watching her kids’. She shut up after that. I wanted to kill her today – it’s getting terribly tedious driving over there and feeding her and having to repeat the same threats over and over. It’s like looking after a very annoying horse. And I still can’t get the stains out of the carpet.

But it’s not the right time. Once it’s done, it’s done and I want to make sure it’s done right.

The police have released more information about Daniel Wells, the electrician whose life (and schlong) was brutally cut short by yours truly – he was indeed found with no attachment. The office was full of jokes about Dickless Dan all day. They’ve somehow ruled out terrorism. Apparently, he was involved in a bar fight on New Year’s Eve, so they’re following up that blind alley. That would explain the cut on his eyebrow, now I think of it.

Another salad for lunch. God damn you, Cucumber.

AJ has started flirting with Lana. He’s all ‘Hey, L, how you going?’ when he first gets in, and offers to make her peanut butter and banana on toast like he has in the morning. I’ve noticed, too, that he brings her chai latte before he brings over my cappuccino, and he chats to her longer. They both like swimming, both their dads ran out on their mums when they were kids and they both had cockatoos. Claudia’s clocked it and I do believe she is trying to keep him busy. She had him on filing duties upstairs for the best part of the afternoon.

I wonder how Lana screams. I wonder if her death scream will be the same as her sex scream.

Jeff and I had one of our debates over our 3 p.m. tea break. Today, it involved turning the historic almshouses in the town centre into a bail hostel. I said it was a good idea, owing to the amount of homeless in the town; Jeff said what about history? We didn’t reach an agreement but we clinked cups when we’d finished so I think we’re still friends.

Tonight, a planned protest in the town centre about Council Tax rises turned into a full-blown riot that spilled over into the retail park at the end of our road. There was looting, home-made missiles and unleaded Molotovs causing spontaneous fires. I’ve just got back. Took some great pictures – one of them, I think, is going to knock their socks off tomorrow and, I don’t mind telling you, I think it has a good chance of being next week’s front page. Maybe I can impress Claudia and Linus with them tomorrow and finally get where I’m meant to be in life – on the front page. A front page with my name on it would make it all worthwhile.

I didn’t run into any opportunistic rapists down any side streets on the way home. It’s always the same when you’re prepared for it. Like bloody buses.

Did some writing in bed. It’s not going well. My stomach was rumbling throughout, owing to no tea (Craig had made full-fat lasagne and garlic bread), and once you’ve likened a hot guy’s teeth to ‘a graveyard of white surfboards in his mouth’ you know you’re in the shit. Had another rejection letter today, this time from one of the big guns: The Garside Agency. They said my work ‘lacked emotional depth’. Just like me, I suppose. Thirty-seven agents I’ve sent it too now. They can’t all be wrong. Think it’s time to dismantle The Alibi Clock. Who wants fiction anyway when you’ve got good old fact to have fun with?

Friday, 12 January

1. Woman with the two brown spaniels who always attack Tink and are never on leads – today, she was wearing Crocs

2. Derek Scudd

3. Wesley Parsons

4. Jonah Hill

5. People who cast Jonah Hill in films

Some moron on Twitter is trying to galvanise the local community into a ‘Bring Your Own Broom’ party to clear up after the riot. Bloody millennials.

My car wouldn’t start this morning so I had to bus it and run it to work. Two of the usual routes in were cordoned off while the police cleared away burnt-out cars and broken glass from last night. I don’t know why they’re calling it a riot. It had all been done and dusted by 10 o’clock. People are so lazy when it comes to public protest. It’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s throw a few bottles, scrawl on a few bits of old cardboard, swear at some police, then be home in time for Game of Thrones.’ Amateurs.

The office was bustling when I walked in, sweating like a priest at a pre-school pool party. Printers whirred. Steaming cups of coffee were being handed out. The subeditors were tapping away, ensconced behind their tessellated desks. Claudia was marching around, putting important A4 sheets of paper on in-trays and generally looking harassed. The new boy, AJ, was stapling papers beside her desk, on the floor, like the office puppy (who could also do stapling). Ron was in his office on a headset phone call. Linus Sixgill was at his desk, ending a call. There were three espresso cups around his monitor and on his screen in all his technicolour glory was a picture of Daniel Wells – aka Dan Dan, the Dickless Man.

‘Hi,’ I said, making my mealy-mouthed presence known. Neither of them looked up. ‘So I took a great picture last night in the riot.’

Linus turned round. ‘Did you, Reepicheep? And what were you doing out in a riot, pray tell?’

He never called me by my actual name – just versions of it. Lovely Rita, Meter Maid was an early favourite. Reepicheep was a regular, as was Rita Ora. Reet Petite, normally on a Friday afternoon. All I could do was stand there and giggle politely like the work-suck I was.

‘Ron said at the last Triple M [Monday Morning Meeting] that we should always be prepared for any eventuality. You know, if we see a story unfolding…’

‘Yeah, he meant the subs and the editors, darling, not the receptionist.’

‘I’m not the receptionist any more, I’m the editorial assistant,’ I mewed, wiping my brow on my jacket cuff. ‘Ron said…’

‘That’s Mr Pondicherry to you, Rhiannon,’ said Claudia, barely looking up from her screen.

‘Mr Pondicherry,’ I corrected, ‘said that becoming a Junior means researching more of my own stories. So I thought I’d take some initiative. You never know when something will go down, he said – a fight, a car crash, a child being kidnapped.’

AJ looked up from his pile of stapled pages and smiled at me, surfboard graveyard a gogo.

‘That’s not your job though, is it?’ Claudia returned with a vicious eye-bat. ‘Leave it to the professionals, hmm, sweetpea?’

That ‘hmm’ was supremely irritating. I’d like to rip out every hmmm in her throat. But I just smiled sweetly, like a sweetpea would.

‘Mr Pondicherry said that if I showed enough willing, he might put me forward for NCTJ funding. So I can get my diploma.’

‘Ahh, that’d be way cool,’ said AJ, mid-clickety clack. I acknowledged his support and turned to Linus, as though the endorsement of a cross-legged Australian boy was all I needed.

Linus opened his desk drawer and pulled out a small box of toothpicks. ‘Probably won’t ever come to anything, Reet Petite. He usually takes trainees straight from journalism school. Never sent a receptionist for training before.’

‘I’m one up from a receptionist though, aren’t I? Could you just take a look at the pictures? Please?’

‘Is he picking on you, Rhee?’ chipped in Lana Rowntree, mincing through on her way into Reception. She always called me Rhee, even though there had never been a conversation where I’d said she could. She stank of cheap scent and lack of ambition and spent her work days selling advertising space, shrieking fake laughter down the phone and rubbing buttockly past desks in pencil skirts as tight as fish skins. Linus had clearly smelled her coming as he’d popped in an Airwave.

‘Nah, it’s just a bit of fun, isn’t it?’ he said, leaning back in his chair and giving Lana the full legs-open-trouser-throb pose.

‘You wanna watch him,’ said Lana, nudging me like we were besties, despite the fact she didn’t actually care, she just wanted to trade sex air with Sixgill. Her nudge still stung my arm, even as the door closed behind her.

Linus watched her leave and sighed dreamily. ‘She might be batshit but she’s got one hell of a set of alloys on her, that girl.’

‘Don’t be disgusting, Linus,’ sneered Claudia over her telephone.

‘What do you mean?’ I said. But Linus and Claudia just threw each other a look and ignored me as usual.

I’d run through various scenarios in my mind about how I would eventually kill Linus Sixgill. I could anally violate him with his Mont Blanc, then there was the strapping-him-to-hisswivel-chair-and-deep-throating-his-cock-until-I-bit-it-off-atthe-hilt method. I could smash the glass on the Emergency Fire Axe and chop his head off, kicking it across the carpet into the recycling bin. Or I could just stick up my middle finger and yell, ‘TWAT!’ and run out of the room. None of these were ideal, I grant you, seeing as I, a) didn’t want to go to prison, b) did want promotion and c) Linus’s wife Kira is the editor-in-chief’s daughter.

And then there was the third and most sensible option – proving myself. Getting a stunning picture or writing a brilliantly insightful story, making front page news and being recommended for NCTJ funding and rising to the position of junior reporter. The title of ‘junior’ as opposed to ‘chief’ or ‘senior’ did still smack of nursery school – like I should be sitting in the middle of the office floor in my playpen, sucking on Linus’s moob – but it would open a doorway for me.

Claudia looked up. ‘What photos did you get then, Rhiannon? Anything we could use in the Friday round-ups?’ She said it with a sigh, like a mother asking her kid what drawings they had done, despite the fact they’d be going in the bin.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe you could use one of them for next week’s front page? You know, kind of like a “Riot Night Special”-type thing?’

Claudia looked at me with such utter contempt it was like her pupils were glued to her eyelids. ‘Derek Scudd’s our lead story for next week.’

They had a good picture for it too. We’d been shown it at the last Triple M. One of the photographers had caught him lighting a cigarette as he’d come out of court – a grizzly stare straight down the lense. The heading was to be EVIL BACK ON OUR STREETS. Derek Scudd’s evilness was the one thing Claudia and I actually agreed on, though I still wanted to ram the bitch’s head through the cross-shredder.

I handed her the disk from my camera and she shoved it into her hard drive – an action about as close to penetrative sex as she got now her husband had left her. Claudia didn’t like me and that was fine. The day I needed validation from a veiny-footed shrew with permanent coffee breath and a Napoleon complex was the day I watched Geordie Shore without breaking out in hives. But I still had to stay on her good side. I had to think of the end game – promotion. A diploma. A career. She could give me all that if she wanted to.

My slides flashed up – all one hundred and eight of them. A lot were dark with flashes in the middle. Fireworks. Shadows of police. A police dog snarling. A wash of mild interest cleaned her face.

AJ got up off the floor with his pile of pages and studied the screen too. ‘Wow, you’re a really good photographer, Rhiannon.’ He beamed. ‘Are you trained?’

‘No, not at all,’ I said, before remembering to add ‘Thank you though.’

The phone rang on Claudia’s desk.

‘Good evening, Newsdesk, Claudia Gulper speaking… Ooh, yes, one moment please.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Rhiannon, I need to take this, it’s about that warehouse fire. Show Linus, all right?’ There’s a good girl, she might as well added. Oh, you unutterable swampy bitch dog tramp licker from Hades.

She sent AJ on a new errand, then carried on with her phone call, laughing and hair-twizzling while the guy on the other end poured his heart out about the loss of his family’s sixty-year-old business. I ripped the disk from her hard drive.

‘Come on then, Rheepunzel, I’ll look at your happy snaps for you,’ said Linus, beckoning me over with his manicure. I gave him the disk and he put it in his machine instead. ‘Ooh. Nice one of the doggy. That’s… interesting,’ at my shot of a brick wall that had fallen down outside a playground. ‘Quality’s a bit muddy. What were you using for these, a Box Brownie?’

Outwardly, I shy-giggled like a twat. Inwardly, I was calling him a chinless fucktard and picturing him waking up in bed, screaming to the sight of his severed bollocks in a jar.

He scrolled past fireworks, shattered windows, a boy kicking at a front door.

Then he stopped talking. He was scrolling through more slowly now, checking each one. ‘Mmm, yes, some of these are quite picturesque, aren’t they? Violent delights. That’s a Shakespeare reference, by the way…’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘“These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume.” Romeo and Juliet.’

Linus said nothing. And then he stopped scrolling. He’d found the money shot – I’d taken several of the scene but only this one was in focus. The backdrop was of snarling dogs, pink smoke fireworks in mid-air bounce. Three police with riot shields tussling with bellicose protestors and behind them the flaming tree. In front of it all, lying on the ground in the middle of the melee, two teenagers: a boy and a girl, their hands on each other’s faces, as still and as perfect as a prayer.

‘Wow,’ he said, then eased back into his chair, just looking at the screen.

The riot lovers. They’d been there for seconds but I’d imprisoned them for ever with one click. ‘You like it?’

‘Yeah, I do. I do like it,’ said Linus, leaning back in his chair again. ‘Jeff? Come over a second, would you?’

Jeff limped over (old rugby injury) and pushed his half-moon glasses up his nose to stare at Linus’s screen.

‘Bloody hell. Is that from last night? Is that in town? Who took that?’

‘I did,’ I said, seeing as Linus wasn’t going to say anything. ‘I was lucky actually, they were only there for a few seconds. I saw the flames in the tree and then he grabbed her and pulled her away and then they were just lying there…’

‘That’s brilliant that is. I wonder who they are. Good framing, Rhiannon. Bit of a David Bailey we got on our hands, eh? Well, Davina Bailey.’

I didn’t know who David or Davina Bailey were but I guessed it was a compliment. It had to be. Me and Jeff were pals. Everyone else thought he was a bit out of touch. He spluttered like an old engine, constantly scratched and petted his ball sac like it was a golden retriever and never updated his software. I once heard him call Linus a wanker, then apologise because ‘Ladies were present.’

‘Is Ron still on his call with The Times?’ said Jeff.

We all looked across to his office. Through the window he looked to be deep in conference with a man’s face on his computer screen. ‘Photo like that’s too good to sit on for a week, that is. Too good to sit on. I’d get it on the website now.’

Linus erupted from his chair and marched across to Ron Pondicherry’s door and knocked loudly seven times. Then he just barged on in.

‘Well done, you,’ said Jeff as we both looked down at Linus’s computer screen as proud as if we were staring at a scan of our baby. ‘That’s smashing, Rhee.’

‘Thanks, Jeff,’ I said, blushing the colour of his cardigan, sans gravy stains.

‘Bet His Nibs was annoyed he didn’t take it himself, wasn’t he?’ he said, nodding in Linus’s direction.

I shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘Anything that sticks it up Lord Muck’s arse gets my vote.’ Jeff laughed and slapped me so hard on the back my ribs quaked. ‘Don’t let him take credit for that photo though.’

‘He wouldn’t, would he? I mean I know he will write the article but it’s my photo.’

Jeff sipped his coffee and did a non-committing shake of head.

‘He won’t pass it off as his photo, will he?’ I said, my heart turning blacker by the second.

He coughed. ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath, love. Wouldn’t hold your breath.’

Tuesday, 16 January

1. Man in blue Qashqai, who today I learned has a huge Dalmatian. No abuse this morning but I still hate him

2. Mrs Whittaker, who has definitely taken a book from my shelf. And/or a green Biro, we think

3. Derek Scudd

4. Wesley Parsons

5. People who say ‘advocado’, ‘marshmellow’ or pronounce ‘h’ as ‘haitch’

Do you feel superior to your friends?

Yes, I do. And I don’t know much about people but I think most of us do. And why shouldn’t I? I have a degree, I do a full-time job and don’t sponge off the state like they do with their nursery vouchers and working family tax relief credit shenanigans. And yeah, I do get bored easily in their company. And in Craig’s company. And at work. But you’d never guess that. I am brilliant at The Act. The late great Leonard Cohen once said, ‘Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.’ I’ve been doing this since my therapy sessions ended. They thought I was cured, when really I was just lying. One day perhaps it’ll become second nature.

Caring is hard though. I’ve picked up some tips to keep people onside:

1. Listen – People like being the centre of attention. Keeping your mouth shut is a lost art and people cherish it.

2. Ask them how they are – even if you’ve already asked, people don’t seem to notice.

3. Compliment them on their haircut/weight loss.

4. Gifts – ‘I saw this and thought of you’ often works wonders

5. Make gluten-free cakes – covers all bases but chuck in a shitload of sugar to take away the taste.

Some people would call it bribery. I call it survival.

Even when I’m at home, I’m acting a part. I never know which bits of me are real. I wonder what it’s like to truly feel, to truly ‘be.’ Exhausting, I’d imagine. It’s easier to comfort someone online, like when Lucille’s mother died and she wanted to chat on IM. It was just my fingers typing well-timed condolences – the rest of me was glued to The Apprentice and chowing down Aero Bubbles like they were going out of fashion.

If anything, I prefer hanging out with their kids. If I go round to one of their houses and they’re putting the kettle on, I’ll sit in their Wendy houses and they’ll bring me plastic plates with little roast chickens on or we’ll do colouring in. Imelda’s twins, Hope and Molly, have some Sylvanian stuff that I don’t have so we tend to play with that or look through the brochure to see what we want next.

BuzzFeed had that wrong about me. I could allow myself to feel for some members of the human race. Children, for instance. I don’t like cruelty or unfairness to kids because, of anyone, they don’t deserve it. None of us deserved what happened to us at Priory Gardens.

It was one of my rules when it came to murder…

1. Be prepared – assess thoroughly and only go in if you know you can win

2. Cover your tracks – leave no fluids

3. Maintain The Act on all fronts

4. No Velcro – it’s a forensic scientist’s best friend

5. Defend the defenceless – children, animals, women in danger

And now there’s the injustice of Derek Scudd and the two little girls. Once upon a time, ‘a high risk repeat offender’ called Derek Scudd took two ten-year-olds back to his flat to meet his cat’s kittens. But the kittens didn’t exist. And the girls were forced to do things that destroyed every happy thought in their heads. The End.

The thought of Derek Scudd walking about a free man eats at my last nerve. I need to see that man die. I need to be on top of him when he does. The judge at his trial should be fucking lynched too.

One of his victims’ mothers came into the office today to talk to Claudia and Linus in Ron’s office – Mary Tolmarsh. I took them in some lattes and custard creams and caught the briefest glimpse of her. Blonde bob. Joules jumper. Navy jeans. Flats. Nice enough clothes but her face ran a different headline – a rag doll left out in the rain.

I heard a brief snatch of conversation – she mentioned Windwhistle Court, a block of flats on the other side of the park, and she’d sounded angry when she said it, like that was where Scudd lived now. I also heard he’d been using a false name. Windwhistle Court was about twenty minutes from the office, and a ten-minute walk from our flats. I drove over after work and waited in the car. Watching. Poised. There was no sign of him though.

Took Tink out for her evening constitutional around 11 p.m. Craig was snoring and I couldn’t lose myself in sleep at all. I was all nervy and gnawed on the inside and my legs were jumpy. I needed to get out. I took the wallpaper scissors, just in case, but all the usual alleys and canal towpaths were quiet. Probably just as well. The way I was feeling, I’d have eviscerated the bastard.

Right, I’m starving so I’m going to go have some Quavers and the rest of the jaffa cakes. I read online that calories don’t count past midnight. Or is that just with Gremlins?

Sunday, 21 January

No sign of Scudd the Stud at Windwhistle Court again. I waited nearly an hour today. I’m beginning to think I misheard the address. Might try Winnipeg Court tomorrow. Or Winchester Road. Or there’s Williamson Terrace, too. It definitely begins with a ‘W’. He’s here somewhere, in this town, walking these streets, breathing my air.

Did our weekly shop. I prefer it now we’ve switched our day to Sunday with just a few top-up shops in between. Fewer people around to piss me off. Craig was about as useful as a trap door on a lifeboat. And, Jesus Christ, the over-seventies are annoying. Give me screaming kids running up the aisles face first into my trolley any day over the octogenarian statue who stands in front of the tinned fish, weighing up his options between no-drain tuna and potted crab for ten fucking minutes with no shred of awareness of people trying to get to the anchovies.

And while I’m on the subject of food shopping, how expensive are free-range chickens? Just gimme a hen that’s clucked, fucked and been plucked in woodland, and I’m happy. You don’t have to feed it diamonds or anything.

Also, the diet’s over. I inhaled two croissants when I got back, just to spite my fat ass. I’ll walk Tink a few miles after tea to work one of them off.

Friday, 26 January

1. I love everyone today

2. Just kidding – The World

Something rather exciting has happened in the life of Moi, Rhiannon Lewis. Breakfast-TV show Up at the Crack, they of the screamingly pink sofas, rictus grins and perma-tans, have included me on their shortlist of Women of the Century.

ME!

They want to do an interview on live TV at the end of the month. I met Imelda and Pidge at Costa as our lunch breaks coincided and regaled them with my marvellous news. Imelda was steaming.

‘WHAT? WHY?’ said Mel, more than a little put out that I was going to have a five-minute slot on national TV and talk about something other than her wedding.

Pidge threw her cousin a look.

‘Sorry. Priory Gardens, yeah?’

Everyone calls it Priory Gardens or The Priory Gardens Thing when they refer to what happened. It’s become that handy short cut people use – like Dunblane or Columbine. You don’t have to say any more – people just know.

‘I’m one of ten women they’re profiling over the next few weeks. I won’t win.’ I added that last statement for the modesty, though I knew it would take a damn icon to beat me.

‘What do you mean you won’t win?’ said Pidge. ‘Come on, be positive!’

‘Who else is on the shortlist?’

I could see it in Mel’s eyes: the desperate hope that the shortlist was so strong, I didn’t stand a kitten in a pizza oven’s chance of winning.

‘Well, there’s that housebound woman who lost sixty-four stone and became a PE teacher. And a human-rights lawyer who saved a load of Syrians…’

Her smile began to twitch.

‘. . . some politician with no arms or legs who walked across Canada. That diabetic transgender librarian who’s fostered over a thousand kids. And those two women who were locked in a basement for ten years. I think that’s it.’

Imelda laughed. Actually laughed. ‘Ooh dear. Stiff competition then. Maybe the judges will take pity on you cos you were a kid when it happened.’

‘Malala was a kid when she was shot though,’ said Pidge with a long slurp of her flat white. ‘Anyway, what you went through was still incredible, Rhee. You’re bound to get something. Is it a gold, silver, bronze thing?’

‘I don’t think so. Look, I was a national treasure for a few years, let’s not forget,’ I said, a little perturbed to find them hell-bent on believing I’d lose. We sweetpeas need our sunlight, lest we wither.

Pidge sucked the end of her French braid and threw Imelda look that landed on her face like a splat.

Imelda sighed, spooning another two sugars into her latte.

No, I thought, bugger it. I did have a brilliant chance of winning. That newsreel they used to play on interviews of my limp little body being carried out of 12 Priory Gardens always had people in tears. And mute little me sitting next to Dad on the This Morning sofa and the documentary the BBC made to celebrate my coming out of hospital. I was a bloody HERO, once upon a time. All right so it was twenty-odd years ago, but still. I was younger than Malala when it happened and I’d come through my trauma just as bloody well, if not better.

But before I could argue my case any further, our conversational ship set sail.

‘Listen, back to the wedding, my cake woman’s royally let me down – got a bad hygiene certificate. They found mice droppings in her proving drawer. Major drams. So could have the number of that woman who did Craig’s lemon drizzle, Rhee?’

Wednesday, 31 January

1. People who riot and make MasterChef get cancelled

Even the subeditors annoyed me today. They’re all so damn predictable, so happy. Bollocky Bill – who reminds us daily he’s a testicular-cancer survivor, even when the subject isn’t actually about cancer or bollocks – ALWAYS brings in a cheese roll and a packet of Quavers for lunch and says things like ‘all the best’ and ‘champion’ on the phone. Carol sings in a choir, doesn’t own a mobile and has the same two dresses on heavy rotation: one pink with a purple turtleneck; the other green with a red turtleneck. Then there’s Edmund, the office ‘hottie’, who is a bit exotic (born in Switzerland, private-schooled, painfully posh) and has the same haircut as my six-year-old nephew. He never swears – he uses exclamations like ‘zoinks’ and ‘golly’ and every day he opens a Diet Lilt at 11.32 a.m. On. The. Dot.

I spent the morning updating the website and our social-media pages – Claudia wants ‘more contact with our community’. The post-riot Bring a Broom Party was a rousing success and she wants to ‘sex up our Instagram page a bit for the readers’. How the hell do you ‘sex up’ tidying? Slut drop on a broomstick? Wide leg squats on a mop? How do you ‘sex up’ Morris dancing on the village green? Or a Women’s Institute talk about buttons? Our Instagram is all flower arrangements, Food Fair snapshots of fat blokes eating pulled pork and one of Eric the handyman lugging boxes. I’m not allowed to put anything vaguely interesting on there, like the dead junkie in the park or the woman who drove her mobility scooter into the river. My God, that was hilarious. First time I’ve ever nearly pissed myself in a public place, including my twenty-first birthday party.

Ron wasn’t in today. Pretty soon I have to ask for a pay rise or at least some idea of when they’re going to announce funding for the NCTJ Diploma. They appoint one new trainee every year in January and that person does their stint before they’re made up to a senior role. Linus began as a junior, so did Claudia and Mike Heath. Surely after all the stories I’ve done for them they’ll see it’s worth sending me to get properly qualified. There’s nobody else in the running. It has to be me.

Here’s just a soupçon of the extra – i.e. not in my job description – work I’ve done for them in the past three years…

1. Feature article on closing the old cinema

2. Feature article on Rillington Manor, wedding venue extraordinaire

3. Feature article on the closing of the town swimming pool plus an exclusive interview with the protestor who threw a used condom at the police chief

4. Test-driving new Audi, plus full report

5. Countless film reviews – if I have to sit through another Bond, Marvel or Keira Knightley movie I’m going to put a bomb under the photocopier

6. Interviewing a zillion Golden Wedding couples with unnervingly floccose faces in their piss-stinking lounges, sipping greasy tea from chipped cups and listening to interminable stories about Morris Minors

I could go on. And it is my diary so I will go on…

1. Pimping out Tink as the guinea pig for the new grooming parlour on Milford Street, even though she was traumatised and got a rash on her ear

2. Photos for the power-station feature

3. Photos for the riot feature

4. Photos for the Country Life section (toffs at the cricket club)

5. Food critiques for twelve restaurants under the pseudonym Gaston Enfoiré

6. Going to the courts every week to listen to dope heads get fined for insurance fraud, Burger King rage or for trying to fuck the pigeons

7. Learning shorthand

8. Learning legalese

9. Not reporting Linus for copious sexist and inappropriate comments, Mike Heath for stinking of cats or Claudia for just generally being a bitch

And that’s not even the half of it!

Some doughnuts did the rounds mid-afternoon and I ate one. Fuck you, waistline.

Passed by Windwhistle Court again on my way home. Still no sign of Our Mutual Fiend. Around the corner was a block of sheltered accommodation called Winchester Place. I parked up and watched people coming out. People going in. I scanned the entire road for some telling ‘peedo’ graffiti or old blokes in green duffle coats. Nothing. I don’t think it’s good for me, going round there. It just makes the hunger to kill grow even more. But not going round there is worse because it means there is nothing at all. Just life. And Craig.

MasterChef was cancelled tonight for a Panorama Special on the austerity cuts. Our riot was featured briefly – Ron was being interviewed about it with the mayor. I threw peanuts at the screen like I did when he was on The Chase. He got knocked out early anyway, thanks to Olly Murs.

Neither me nor Craig could be bothered to cook so we went out for a Nando’s. Sue me, Cellulite.

Thursday, 1 February

1. Linus Sixgill

2. Linus Sixgill’s family

3. Linus Sixgill’s friends

4. Linus Sixgill’s neighbours

5. Linus Sixgill’s dentist

6. Linus Sixgill’s neighbours’ dentists

7. Linus Sixgill’s neighbours’ dentist’s receptionists

This morning I saw the colour run-outs of tomorrow’s front page – and guess what? MY PHOTO IS ON THE FRONT PAGE!

Excited? Moi?

No, of course not, and you know why? Because that TWAT, that bovaristic PRICKSTICK of GARGANTUAN proportions Linus ‘The Vaginus’ Sixgill has spunked his filthy name all over it. He’s claiming ALL credit. He wrote the article, he took the photo, so it’s fuck you Rhiannon, goodnight. I’m amazed he didn’t claim to be one of the people in it. Jeff didn’t even speak up for me. He just said, ‘Well, I saw it coming.’

Yeah thanks, Jeff. If I had more middle fingers they’d all belong to you.

So he’s next. Lying-Ass Sixgill is next on the list, trumping all others. Just break the safety glass and pass me the fucking axe.

I don’t want to talk any more about today. I just want to overeat and shit myself and die. Or shit myself after I die. Apparently that happens. And when you give birth too. Ugh. What a world.

Friday, 2 February

So I asked for my new contract, it being the three-year anniversary of my joining the company – and the two-year anniversary of my last pay rise. And do you know what? Do you want to have a wild guess what Ron and Claudia said?

They. Said. No.

I did get my contract – I’m editorial assistant for another year, guaranteed – and apparently I’m ‘a reliable, helpful and cherished member of the company’ – just not cherished enough for a £1 pay rise. They’ve had to ‘tighten their belts lately’.

‘There’s just no extra money in the pot right now I’m afraid,’ Ron said. And I, like the underpaid dumbass I am, took it on the chin like a ball sac.

So despite the £500 potted palm tree they’ve just bought for Reception and the £5,000 coffee machine and the massive clip-frame Van Gogh on the first-floor landing, despite the new carpets and blinds, new filing cabinets, Ron’s and Claudia’s new computers, the five-star bonding weekend in Lytham St Anne’s and megabucks Christmas party at the golf club – champagne included – there’s no more money. In. The. Pot.

I imagined Ron and Claudia in a pot – one of those giant cauldron jobs of boiling hot oil, like in medieval times. Tied back to back, dangling over the bubbling mixture, screaming; toes touching the surface. Lowering them inch by excruciating inch into the burning liquid as their naked skin grew redder and redder and started peeling away from its flesh – Claudia’s face a picture of anguish; Ron sweating, crying, begging before his sweet release into death.

Yeah, that’d do it. God I am BURNING to kill again. Burning. I can almost feel it beneath my skin.

But at least I finally know what I mean to the team at the Gazette. Less than a coffee machine. Less than a clip frame. Less than a cock-sucking palm tree. The unfairness gnaws at me like a blade to a tin of corned beef.

And here’s the cherry on it – there’s absolutely no chance of funding for the NCTJ either. Apparently, they ‘have had someone in mind for this for a while now’. Claudia said I ‘shouldn’t have got my hopes up’. After all, I am just the ‘editorial assistant’.

So, yeah, I’m still just the Smegitorial Assface. And ever thus shall be.

W.A.N.K.E.R.S

It’s all wrong. It should be me with my own office, not Ron. It should be me treating other people like shit, not Claudia. I do most of the work. It should be my castle and each one of their fat heads should be on long spikes outside the front gates, so every morning I can look up at their slack-jawed faces and fucking laugh.

AJ played it cool with me today. I think Claudia’s given him some lecture about focusing on work not women if he wants a good reference – he does spend a lot of time lingering by desks, shooting the breeze with people, talking about life in Australia and how ‘Christmas is always hot’ and how he goes ‘surfing a lot with his mates Podz and Dobbo’.

I know how to play him. I know what’ll get him on my desk. I’m gonna play him like a didgeridoo.

Went round to Mum and Dad’s to check on Madam after work. She’s been better, put it that way. I took out my bad day on her, which I probably shouldn’t have done because she played no part in it, but still. I left her in a heap on the floor. The place still stinks so I shoved in another round of PlugIns.

I fancy some corned beef now I’ve mentioned it. Might nip over to Lidl.

Saturday, 3 February

1. Celebrities who have one baby then release a book about having babies, as though they’re suddenly an expert

2. Every agent in the UK who has rejected my novel The Alibi Clock

3. All my friends

Went over Mum and Dad’s again to make sure Julia was set up for two days – water, food, toilet access etc. She was giving me the silent treatment again but her body language was screaming guilt. Then I found it – a hole in the carpet. She’d started a tunnel under the bed. It was so sad it was almost funny – a tunnel to the second floor bathroom, which I kept locked on the outside. I said, again, that escape wasn’t an option and that I had someone watching her kids if she tried to leave or summon help. All she had to do was sit tight.

It’s a nice area where we used to live, when I had such a thing as a family. A THANKFUL VILLAGE, the road sign says. Neighbours are few, every note of birdsong can be heard, front gardens are mown on a Sunday and Harvest Home posters go up on telegraph poles mid-June. I like it. Well, I like the silence. Especially the garden. Mum was obsessed with it – she used to say gardening kept her sane. I’ve always associated the sights and smells of a healthy garden with happiness. When I was a kid it was packed with colour and smell. The aroma of a different herb greeted you with every new gust of wind. Rosemary and oregano. Mint and curry plant. Lemon thyme and sage. Pale yellow daffodils as blonde as my sister popping up in the beds in spring. Then cornflowers, as blue as Joe’s eyes. The lavender in late summer was the same I’d put in the little pomander that Mum kept in her handbag. The trees were like Dad – strong and tall. The beds are all empty now but the trees remain.

An odd anomaly was that even though the house was (ostensibly) uninhabited, the grass in both the front and back gardens was always neatly trimmed. This was courtesy of a neighbour, Henry Cripps, who had a ride-on mower and had come up to me at Dad’s funeral and said it was the ‘least he could do’.

Henry’s old-fashioned. He was still passing through the Stone Age when Emily Davison was throwing herself under that horse. His late wife Dorothy had been the quintessential 1950s housewife. Cooking, cleaning, child-bearing. The arranger of flowers. The beater of rugs. Henry used to time Dorothy when she went shopping. Fairly sure she only had a stroke to get away from him.

He could be nice. When I was a kid, he would let me climb over his fence to feed dandelions to his ancient tortoise, Timothy. And he’d keep newspapers back for mine and Seren’s rabbit and guinea pig ‘but not if they’re going to thump in their hutch all night’.

I made myself a black coffee and sat out on a deckchair in the garden playing ball up the lawn with Tink.

‘I say,’ came a voice. A grey head appeared over the fence. Tink went ballistic up the trellis.

‘Hi, Henry, how are you?’ I asked him, quickly remembering the rules of engagement and struggling out of the deckchair. I picked up Tink but she continued to growl and snarl, full on toothily, just as she did with rogue pigeons on the balcony.

‘Hello, there, Rhee-ann-non [he always accentuates every syllable], lovely to see you again!’

‘You too, Henry.’

Thankfully, Henry was the only neighbour around, but he was all the neighbour you needed. He’d lend you anything, knew all the local gossip and would water your plants or mow your lawn diligently when you were away. He also had the neatest garage ever. All the paint pots were labels out and alphabetically shelved, his tools hanging on the back wall with pencil lines drawn around them. His three classic cars were shone to perfection – one was kept in our garage as prearranged with Dad.

I also noticed every one of his daffodils faced the same way. I think that’s what happens to people who have nothing else to think about – their mind has time to dwell on shit it doesn’t need to, like paint pots and daffodils.

‘I hope you don’t mind, Rhee-ann-non, but I had some geraniums left over so I’ve put a couple of beds in over there, just to start them off…’

‘No, that’s fine,’ I said, looking back to where he pointed.

‘. . . and some runner beans as well, up the end there. Did you want the car moving out of the garage yet? Only last time you were here you mentioned an estate agent coming to look round.’

‘No, I’ve taken it off the market, just for the time being.’

‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Why’s that?’

Tink was pushing on my boob for attention like she had a right answer on Catchphrase so I put her on the ground where she chased after a woodlouse. ‘Just not the right agent. Thought we could get a better deal with someone else.’

Then I had to hear about his latest piano investment – he had four of them now, which took up two reception rooms in the ground floor of his house. He used to invite me and Seren round to listen to them. The pianos played themselves. It was unusual and interesting for about the first minutes. After a while, we were both looking round for the nearest gallows.

Still, I have to keep Henry sweet. Very sweet.

‘You came back last week, didn’t you? Thought I saw your car on the drive.’

‘Yeah, got to keep an eye on the you-know-what,’ I said, tapping my nose. He nodded. ‘And I’m just starting to clear a few things away for when it goes up for sale again.’ I chanced a desultory peep to the top of the house. It’s annoying when your body does that, isn’t it? Gives off little hints to the atrocities you’ve committed.

‘Ah, I thought I heard someone in there the other day.’

‘My assistant. Someone’s got to keep an eye on them when I can’t be here.’

‘Well as long as you’re all right. Just give me a shout if you need anything. I told your dad I’d keep an eye on you.’

‘Yep, I’m all right for everything, Henry, you don’t need to worry about me.’

He smiled, showing a line of neat yellow baby teeth, but was still standing there, as though waiting for something. Then I realised he was.

‘Oh, sorry, Henry, I completely forgot.’ I scurried over to my tote on the back of the deckchair and fished out the baggy of pot. I handed it to him over the fence.

‘Golly. This lot will keep me going for a few months!’ he chuckled, tucking it away inside his V-neck. ‘Much thanks.’

‘No problem, just let me know when you need more.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want paying for all this, Rhee-annnon? It seems like an awful lot. Terribly generous of you.’

‘No way. You were a good friend to my dad, Henry. It’s the least I can do. Got tonnes of the stuff growing up there. Mum’s the word though, OK?’

He tapped his nose and we left it at that. He practically skipped back down his symmetrical path, despite the rheumatoid arthritis in his joints.

Julia, on the other hand, didn’t seem quite so keen for me to leave this time.

‘But what if something happens to you in London and nobody knows I’m here? I could die of starvation.’

‘There are worse ways to lose weight, Julia. Try Davina’s Super Body Workout.’

‘I’m scared.’

‘Just ration your food and drink and you’ll be fine. I’ve brought you some more magazines and a Puzzler. No need to thank me.’

She did the banshee impression again so I tied her back up and shut the door on her.

‘Jeez, chill out, woman I’ll bring the Sudoku next time.’

I decided against cutting off another finger to punish her for the tunnel attempt. I didn’t feel the need and I didn’t have any of Tink’s poo bags on me anyway.

Julia was only at my secondary school for a year, but in that year she’d done her level best to ruin what Priory Gardens had left of me. The morning I saw her in the precinct before Christmas, taking her kids to school as I walked towards work, I froze. I got that same feeling I had as an eleven-year-old every morning, when she’d walk into assembly and make a beeline for the chair next to me – the chair I HAD to save. I followed her home. I saw her junkyard of a front garden. Smelled her cigarette smoke wafting over her fence. Heard her shouting down the phone to someone.

One morning, I followed her again, this time prepared. I did the old ‘Hey, is that you, Julia? It’s me, Rhiannon!’ routine. I drove her out to the house and we’d had a nice chat over some tea and a Lyons Victoria Sponge. She worked as a hairdresser; her partner, Terry, was a removals man.

Then I beat her unconscious and tied her up using climbing ropes from Mountain Warehouse and some strong steel eyes from Dad’s toolbox, screwed and bolted into the back bedroom wall.

I only saw Dad do it once, get rid of a body. I hope it’s not too difficult when the time comes. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman. Or because she has kids – fairly ugly kids as kids go, but still kids and, therefore, innocents. They all have their mother’s genes though – her freckles, her twisted teeth. They’re better off without her. She’s holding them back. Like she once held me back. Julia the Puppet Master.

Julia the Sly who’d pinch me when the teacher wasn’t looking because I hadn’t answered her question ‘Am I your best friend?’

Julia the Scribbler who’d written ‘Rhiannon Fatty Fat Face’ in the front of my Bible and scrawled ‘Mary Sucks Cocks’ over eight pages of my New Testament.

Julia the Beater who’d failed her English test and taken out her frustration on me – a selective mute with brain damage.

Julia the Firestarter who’d burnt a hole in my tunic with the Bunsen burner.

Julia the Killer who’d stamped on the frog I’d befriended beside the pond because I hadn’t said, ‘You’re my best friend.’

Julia the Demanding who would stare at me with her evil eyes and stab my hand with her fountain pen in French if I didn’t help her with her verbs.

Julia the Cutter who would sneak scissors from the Art cupboard and cut off pieces of my hair.

Julia the Rapist who’d pinned me down behind the school science lab and tried to rape me with a stick because I hadn’t said, ‘You’re my best friend.’

I prayed for her death every night. But every morning, my heart would sink as the big fat-footed girl with the ginger hair, wonky parting and the trash-can breath appeared in the doorway of the assembly hall.

I used to dream about life without Julia – a full night’s sleep, no more racing heartbeat, sitting beside whoever I wanted in class, playing with who I wanted at break-time. Getting better grades and delivering more than just a piss-poor performance as Wing Attack to impress the teachers. No more bruises. When she left, it got better. My grades went up, my voice came back stronger. I even made some friends for a while. But the hate inside me had already started to multiply. Priory Gardens had turned on the tap but Julia kept it running.

No one ever helped me. To the other kids, Rhiannon and Julia were BFFs and no one was going to come between them, as much as I would silently scream for them to do so. I was a prisoner in Julia’s fist and it was reducing me to dust.

So yeah, BuzzFeed, I was always in trouble at school and I was a bully do not apply to this psychopath. In fact, I was a model pupil – silent, studious, obliging. Allowing any bitch to slap me or spit in my face cos she thought it was funny.

But now that bitch was my prisoner. My dust.

Sunday, 4 February

1. Woman sitting next to me on the train who has no concept of personal space (cue elbow digs), coughs without putting her hand over her mouth and has just eaten an egg-andmayonnaise sandwich. If I’d had a gun, I’d have shot that fucking sandwich right out of her hands

2. Plug hogs on trains. Woman next to me is also one of these

3. Pass ag ticket inspector who huffed when I showed him my seat reservation instead of my ticket, then lingered, making small talk with the nineteen-year-old blonde student nurse behind me

4. Man in Lycra shorts who barged past me to the last seat on the Tube

5. Everyone who lives or works in London

Had my usual Dad dream. Woke up with the shakes. I told Craig I was just cold. Am on the train now, travelling to London for tomorrow’s Up At the Crack interview. The OK! magazine I bought at the station is a veritable cavalcade of fake-titted reality stars and women too fat or too thin, according to what’s in fashion, so I’ve given up. I’m now enjoying watching the people who get on board whenever the train stops at a station. I like how they look around when they alight, sizing up the competition.

Hmm, who is the least threatening person to sit next to, they think.

Will it be the group of young men sitting around the table covered with empty beer bottles at 9.29 a.m.? No, definitely not.

How about the oily old gent with the carrier bag on his lap who looks like Robin Williams in One Hour Photo? Not, not him either.

How about the four ginger kids whose tablets are all on full volume? Or the two old women incessantly nattering – one who looks like Helen Mirren, the other like Helen Mirren’s less successful brunette sister who works in Aldi?

No. They all make a beeline for me, of course. Because I’m the woman alone. Sweet and unthreatening. Friendly faced. Quiet.

Craig had suggested a B&B for me a couple of streets away from the TV studios, one he’d stayed in when him and Stuart went up to watch QPR play Middlesbrough and his train home was cancelled. He said the fry-up was ‘beyond the beyond’.

A man rubbed up against me on the Tube out of Paddington. He must have been thirty-something. Bit of a quiff going on, highly polished shoes, iPhone clutched in one hand, latte in the other, cock against my arse. The train wasn’t that packed. He could have moved away but he chose not to. I don’t mean just brushed against me either – this isn’t me getting all hoity-toity-Calm-Down-Dear about it. He was dry-humping me. I was in a good mood so I handled it as calmly as I could. I turned to him, so we were cock to front on and I said veeeery quietly in a voice only he could hear

‘You carry on doing that, I will slit your fucking throat.’

And I gave him a flash of my knife. And it stopped. Instantly. And the next time the train reached a station, he got off.

I got off and pootled around Covent Garden for a bit to waste some time before I could check in. I got some more money out of Julia’s bank account and bought some warm cookies in a little French bakery just off the main square. Found a kitchen shop which had the most astonishing array of Sabatier knives in the window, the display created to look like a starburst of weapons. I stared at them for ages, imagining which handle would look best with my fingers around it. They were all better than my crappy little steak knife. Might go back there tomorrow. We need a new tin opener as well. Mrs Whittaker has nicked ours.

I couldn’t live in London but I like to inject myself with it every now and then. It’s quite nice when it’s not raining or being bombed.

*

Just logged back in to report that the B&B is a shithole and my mattress is covered in piss patches. I’m sleeping on my bath towel tonight.

In other news, I’m getting bored of the chat rooms. Took me ages to cum tonight, though I do generally find it hard to climax when I’m on a mattress that was around during the Renaissance.

Monday, 5 February

1. People who design hotels – why in God’s name can’t you put the mother-loving plug sockets by the bed?

The fry-up at the B&B was beyond disgusting, but I kind of knew it would be because a) Craig recommended it and b) I never have luck with hotels. There’s always a pube, always a stain, and always a shag-a-thon or a troupe of horses doing dressage in the next room at 3 a.m.

Up at the Crack’s runner Jemimah Double-Barrelled met me at the back entrance of TV Central. She was wearing trainers with neon laces, which irked me beyond socially acceptable levels, and her hands appeared glued to the edges of an iPad. In the lift upstairs, she told me I was to be on air between a segment about a botched hysterectomy and a recipe for a three-cheese quiche.

‘So we’ll take you in to make-up and get you all sorted and do your hair and then you can have a quick meet with the presenters.’ Her fingertips went back to the mole cluster on her neck and picked at it like she was selecting the thickest Malteser.

‘Who, John and Carolyn?’ I said, sending a tiny bubble of hope into the universe that the Biggest Wanger in Town, Tony Tompkinson, was ill or on holiday or something, so I wouldn’t have to spend the whole interview staring down at the massive bulge in his trousers.

‘No, it’s Tony and Carolyn on today. John does it with Carolyn every other day and then it’s Melinda and Tristan on Fridays.’

Tristan was the black presenter they chucked in on a Friday with the gay weather girl to even things up a bit, diversity-wise. The weekend sister show Chatterday they gave to the blonde in the wheelchair.

The hair and make-up women went to town on my face, and by town I mean Slutsville. Whilst doing me, I overheard them bitching about Carolyn’s demands for a dressing room of her own, some boy-bander’s request for no-carb toast and Tony Tompkinson’s latest bust-up with his agent.

Apparently, he was shagging her.

Apparently, Tony is shagging everyone.

Well, when you’ve got that much hot dog it’s silly to put it in just the one roll.

The woman in the make-up chair to my right was an actress in some crime thing. To my left was a bloke whose pug had just got through to the semi-finals of Pets Who Can Sing and Dance. I didn’t feel like conversating with either to be honest but I tried my best. Well, my head was nodding and my mouth was all ‘How interesting’ but really I was thinking about bleeding Julia out over the bathtub at Mum and Dad’s.

Then Tony and Carolyn swept in for a pre-show ‘touch up’ before they went live. It looked to me like they’d been touched up quite a bit already.

‘Tony, Carolyn, this is Rhiannon Lewis, today’s Woman of the Century shortlister.’ Jemimah had reappeared behind me, sans iPad, avec protein ball.

‘Well, no need to introduce you, Rhiannon, your reputation goes before you,’ Tony chuckled. ‘How you doing?’ Cue unauthorised body contact #1 – shoulder rub.

‘Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.’

‘It’s so lovely to meet you, Rhiannon,’ said Carolyn, smiling like a grand piano. Her face was caked in foundation but there were bumps all over it. ‘What do you prefer to be called?’

‘Rhiannon’s fine,’ I said. Rhiannon was what I always wanted to be called but most people insisted on saying Rhee to save time. Linus once called me Rheetard and I nearly yanked his head back and spat in his mouth.

‘We’ll be gentle with you, we promise!’ Tony heh-heh-hehed. My eyes were fixed so concretely on his face so as not to look down to What Lies Beneath, they were almost watering. I think they took it as nervousness, causing Tony to commit unauthorised body contact #2 – supportive forearm grab and accidental boob stroke. Ugh.

‘So our womb lady’s stuck on the bridge in Cardiff, which means her item’s been shifted to tomorrow. You’re on after the quiche but before the boy band, OK?’

They ran through the in-depth questions they would ask me in the three-and-a-half-minute slot – there’s no time for tragedy when there’s a three-cheese quiche in the oven, after all – and I was parked in the Green Room, to sign release forms, have my microphone clipped on and await my fate. After a fidgety age, Jemimah Double-Barrelled came and got me and we walked down a purgatory of white corridors to the studio.

The set looked more of a headachy pink and yellow colour in real life than it did in HD, like someone had puked Rainbow Skittles over it. The edges of the floor were covered with long snaking black wires and large portable cameras wheeled around back in the shadows and forth in a strange robotic dance. Carolyn and Tony were in situ and I was ushered to sit down opposite on the famous fuchsia-pink banquette. All I could smell was burnt cheese.

‘OK, Rhiannon,’ said Tony, ‘so we’ll run the competition trailer and then come to you, all right? Try not to fidget, stammer or sneeze and if you feel a cough coming on, there’s a carafe of water there and yours will be poured out. All right? And don’t swear or else we get shot by them upstairs.’ Heh heh heh.

‘Don’t say “fuck” or “bugger”,’ I mimicked.

They looked at me like I’d doused them both with petrol and was about to strike a match.

‘Sorry. It’s OK, I won’t swear.’

Before I knew what was happening, the lights were brighter, a chubby brunette with drawn-on eyebrows had run on to sweep my forehead with a fuzzy brush, the end of the competition whinnied away and a camera wheeled forward.

‘Welcome back,’ said Carolyn. ‘This month we’ve been meeting our contenders for Woman of the Century and, in the last instalment, we are profiling Rhiannon Lewis, the young survivor of the Priory Gardens attack. This year marks the twenty-first anniversary of the tragedy when a man entered childminder Allison Kingwell’s house in a small Bristol suburb and brutally murdered her, along with five of the children she was looking after.’

Tony took over. ‘When police arrived at the house in Bradley Stoke, what they found was a scene of absolute horror. Not only did they find Ms Kingwell’s body, but also the tiny lifeless bodies of one-year-old Kimmy Lloyd, two-year-old Jack Mitchell, three-year-old twins George and David Archer and five-year-old Ashlea Riley-House. Also dead was the perpetrator, 37-year-old Antony Blackstone, the estranged husband of Ms Kingwell, who had taken his own life.’

The baton went back to Carolyn. ‘Amazingly, one child, Rhiannon Lewis, survived against all odds, having been struck with a hammer. She lay silently beneath Ms Kingwell’s decapitated body for hours. Today, the house at Priory Gardens no longer stands as it did, replaced instead by a playground, and Rhiannon herself is now twenty-seven years old and fully recovered from her ordeal. And we’re delighted to welcome her into the studio today. Rhiannon, thanks so much for coming in.’

‘Thank you for having me.’

I could see my face on the monitor on the edge of the floor. Jeez they’d put a lot of blusher on. I looked like I had red light bulbs stuffed in my cheeks.

‘Rhiannon, take us back to that day if you can. Do you remember anything about it?’

‘No, nothing before the attack,’ I said. ‘Only what people have told me and what the witnesses said.’

They were both nodding, like they should be on a shelf in the back of a car. Tony’s legs opened like the gates to Jurassic Park. The T. rex bulged at the seam. It was All. I. Could. Look. At. I’d need a chainsaw to chop down that trunk.

‘So you don’t remember the moment Blackstone got into the house?’

‘No. Apparently, he knocked at the front door and Allison told him to get lost, and then a neighbour saw him go round the back and jump over the garden wall and try the lock on the patio doors. That’s when he smashed the glass.’

‘With hammers?’ said Tony.

‘Yeah, I guess.’

Carolyn took over with a heavy sigh. ‘Let’s take a little look at this VT which might help shed some more light on that traumatic day.’

They cut to the same old montage of people laying posies and teddies outside number 12 Priory Gardens, old women crying and holding tissues to their noses. The vox pop of two old men saying how it was such a close community, how ‘nothing like this has ever happened round here before’. The glistening red doormat. Wailing fathers. Sobbing mums. Three little stretchers. The policeman talking about the ‘unprecedented situation’. My limp body, wrapped in Peter Rabbit blankets.

I was sweating through my Bare Minerals.

Just before the VT finished, someone in the darkness beyond the psychedelic sofas called out: ‘And we’re back in three, two, one…’

Carolyn and Tony’s faces were painted with a new expression of anguish.

‘Rhiannon, I can’t imagine how this must have affected you. Can you give us a flavour of what life’s been like for you since that tragic day?’

Flavour? I thought. What? Like some days I’m smoky bacon, others a little more ready salted, that kind of thing? No, no time for facetiousness, this was important and sad and important.

‘Well, my parents did interviews with all the tabloids and I went on some talk shows. They flew me over for this American one and they gave us an all-expenses paid holiday to Disney World. You can still see the clip on YouTube. The whole audience is crying. I just sound like I’m broken.’

‘How long did it take for you to learn to walk and talk again?’

‘Um, I don’t think I was fully restored until my early teens. I virtually had to relearn everything. How to talk to people, how to move. How to be. I found it very hard. For the things I didn’t know, I developed a kind of act for them.’

‘In what sort of way?’

‘Well, my mum used to worry that I never cried when I fell over and I stopped hugging her. She’d say to me, “Why aren’t you more upset? Why aren’t you crying?” and then I’d try and remember that was what I was supposed to do for next time.’

Carolyn reached forward to the coffee table and grabbed the tissue box, plucking one out to dab at her eye. ‘Rhiannon, I’m sorry, this story always gets to me.’

Try starring in it, love.

Tony leaned in to the rescue. ‘It was the front of your brain which was affected by the hammer blow, wasn’t it?’

‘Mmm, yeah, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Frontal lobe. I had a lot of surgery to repair my skull. I have this large zig-zaggy scar behind my hairline.’

‘Like Harry Potter?’

‘Not as neat as that.’

Tony checked his script. ‘The police said the whole attack only lasted a few minutes. Does anything bring memories or images back to you?’

He reeeeeeally wanted some dirt; some bit of gore to share exclusively with the world that the nation could chew over with their soggy Shreddies – how a child’s skull makes a noise like a vase smashing when it’s hit with a hammer; how the sound of a glass smashing even now can cause me to break out in a cold sweat; how Blackstone’s hanging body was the last thing I saw before I lost consciousness.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Mercifully, I don’t remember any of it.’

They were speechless. I ventured a look downwards – Tony’s trouser seam was bursting with the pressure. Surely no material could hold back that penal tide.

‘You won Child of Courage and Pride of Britain Awards, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah. That was nice.’

The Pride of Britain one had snapped in half in the back of the taxi after the ceremony. I couldn’t remember what had happened with the Children of Courage one. Last time I’d seen it, it was in a box in Mum and Dad’s garage.

‘It must have been such a traumatic time for your family. In fact, your life’s been quite peppered with tragedy ever since, hasn’t it?’ said Carolyn.

‘Yes,’ I said, not venturing further information.

‘You lost a young friend in a car accident when you were still in recovery from Priory Gardens, didn’t you? Little Joe Leech, when you lived in Bristol?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, he got run over. He’d been coming to visit me.’

‘And your mother died of breast cancer when you were in your teens? And your father from brain cancer just two years ago?’

It was a bit of a non sequitur. I guess they were building up the public sympathy a bit more and waiting for the waterworks. Carolyn pushed the box of tissues along the banquette towards me, just in case.

Good luck with that.

Tony readjusted his position – he was sitting on at least half of his dick, I surmised. That can’t have been comfortable for three hours on a daily basis. I could almost feel sorry for him, if he hadn’t had reached out to pat my knee – unauthorised body contact #3.

‘Yeah, death seems to have a thing for my family,’ I said. ‘Everyone just seems to leave me. I mean, I had a few years of warning with Mum. But with Dad it was weeks. Out of the blue.’

Tony nodded. ‘That must have been a massive shock for you.’

‘Yes, it was a massive cock,’ I said, without even realising what I’d said until they both looked at me in abject terror. ‘Shock, shock, yeah,’ I said, like I’d just stuttered and was trying to claw back the blush blooming in both my cheeks. I attempted some firefighting: ‘I was totally in shock about it for weeks. We had photographers camped in our front garden like I was a celebrity, which didn’t make things easier. Funny sort of celebrity.’

Tony’s bald patch burnt a greasy red. I could see the cogs going in his head – Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, career suicide, career suicide, dead kids, dead kids!

Carolyn had to do the rest of the segment alone with the camera focused squarely on her rock-hard expression. ‘But things are going well for you now, aren’t they?’ She was clearly desperate for a whiff of a happy ending amidst all the doom and cock shrapnel in the cheesy air. Less skull-crushing, more yay. ‘You’ve got your lovely boyfriend and a brilliant job in journalism?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Everything is… awesome.’

Journalism? Is that what we’re calling it now? Yeah, everything’s really awesome now, Carolyn: my journalistic career begins and ends with making coffee and typing up skittles scores, my novel has been rejected by every agent and publisher in the country, my boyfriend’s having an affair with a cum bucket called Lana, I think about killing someone every twenty-five minutes, I hate all my friends and I’ve just made a twat of myself on national TV. Yeah, everything’s gravy, baby.

When I didn’t offer up any more information, she glared at me like I was the Goth girl with the pierced clit who’d announced she was marrying her son. I think she was beginning to wish that hammer had struck my frontal lobe a bit harder.

‘And how do you feel about being up for Woman of the Century?’

I smiled. ‘Oh, yeah, I’m thrilled. It’s an amazing honour. I’m so excited about the ceremony tonight and all the people I’ll meet.’ I saw my face in the monitor. I really needed to work on my smile. It was as wooden as my grandmother’s sideboard.

Tony had composed himself, though he was pretty red in the face still. ‘Is your boyfriend proud of you?’ Cue lecherous glint. Even though it wasn’t bodily contact, I felt like he’d wiped his bell-end all over my face.

‘Yeah, he’s delighted.’

‘What’s his name? Give him a shout-out.’

‘Craig.’ I looked to the camera. ‘Hi, Craig.’ I imagined him and Lana waving to the TV at the end of our bed, lying in post-coital stickiness, smoking endless joints.

‘Aww, that’s lovely,’ said Carolyn. ‘Well, the best of luck for tonight, Rhiannon. We’ll be cheering you on, have no fear.’ It was clear that they’d cut my interview very short. They’d have to stick on a few more sofa adverts in the break.

‘Yes, thanks, Rhiannon,’ said Tony, and did his old man wink, and I risked one final glance down at the peen seam. The anaconda had a baby while I wasn’t looking.

‘Thanks for having me.’ I smiled confidently.

Carolyn and Tony turned to the camera. ‘We’ll see you after the break, when we’ll be talking about the rise in the number of nursery-school children downloading Internet porn, Michelinstar chef Scottie Callender will be in the kitchen with his three-cheese quiche and we might find time to have a chat to these young fellas…’

Four pre-pubic teen boys bounced onto the sofa from behind, scaring the crap out of me and knocking over the bowl of croissants on the coffee table.

Carolyn giggled like a drain as the lead singer and official fittest one, Joey, apologised and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

‘Yes, Boytox, the YouTube-born boy band taking the world by storm at the moment, are here to chat about their sell-out world tour. We’ll see you in three,’ she said to camera, fanning herself theatrically. The saxophone music signalled we were clear and it felt like the whole studio breathed a sweet sigh of relief.

The youngest Boytox member, who wore glasses, stank of Emporio Armani and would certainly be the first one to announce he was gay, sat next to me. He put his heavily tattooed arm around me. ‘I loved the interview. So cool that you, like, didn’t die and stuff.’

I could have killed them all, one by one, right there on the fuchsia banquette.

Tuesday, 6 February

So I didn’t win. Malala beat me into a cocked hat. Oh, and there was a second and third place and I didn’t get either of them. One of the cancer women came second. The foster mum got bronze. Taliban trumps cancer. Cancer trumps hammer-wielding maniac. So, as it turns out, I’m not the big kahuna when it comes to heroism. And though my photo will appear in Take a Break magazine alongside all the other nominees, it turns out being the only kid at the crèche not to die from a hammer blow to the skull isn’t that big a big deal.

The ceremony was at this massive opulent hotel in Soho. I’m terrible at schmoozing at the best of times so for the most part I stayed in a corner staring at my phone, filling my mouth with green olives so I wouldn’t have to make conversation.

When I got into work this morning, it was a different story. I lied my little ass off. How I’d got a selfie with Gary Barlow and some tart from Loose Women (it was on her phone, which was why I couldn’t show them). How I’d heard one of the footballers finger-banging one of the TOWIE lot in the lavs. How two celeb hairdressers snorted coke at the bar. How the presenters of the wildlife programme had a tiff over peanuts. How this actor tripped over some woman’s Gucci dress, how that actress stumbled into a taxi and everyone saw her stench trench.

Oh, yah, I was all OVER the gossip, dah-ling.

The unvarnished truth was that I made a sharp exit the moment they read out the results to catch the rape o’clock train home. No man made a move though, much to my chagrin. Always the same when you’re all knifed up and ready to go.

By 9:14 a.m., they’d all moved on anyway. And the empty space on the shelf above my desk, which I’d dusted clear to make room for my award, was filled with complaints about litter, press releases and some local farmer’s self-published memoirs for me to do a feature on. I really needed that fucking award. The only praise I ever get is when Hotmail tells me I’ve got a very clean inbox.

It sucks major BALLS.

AJ was asking me about it on and off all day, bless him. I’m starting to like him again. He holds the door open for me, makes me peanut butter and banana on toast and hates Linus almost as much as I do. Linus gives him nicknames as well – Apache Junction, Angelina Jolie, Aussie Jim. Unfortunately, though, he has Claudia’s boring gene and I had to hear all about his life back in ‘Straya’ with his teacher mum and mechanic stepdad. How his dad left him when he was five and how long it took him to learn to surf, how he doesn’t like Vegemite despite the stereotype, how his high school had a terrorist attack once and how wondrous the sunsets are where he lives. He also calls charity shops ‘op shops’. His breath smells good too – no aftertang. Minty. I watch his neck pulse sometimes when he’s talking to me.

As of 8.31 p.m. this evening, #UpAttheCock is still trending on Twitter. So is #WomanOfTheCentury. I’m not mentioned in any of those tweets though. It’s mostly about Ant and Dec’s radical new facial hair. Typical.

Wednesday, 7 February

1. The entire human race. Even the ones not born yet who are just poised in the birth canal, ready to come out and piss me off

I woke up in a chronic mood, which wasn’t unusual given the dreams I have, but what was unusual was that every single ittybitty thing was annoying me. Even Tink, and she was usually the one thing that didn’t. I tripped over her twice getting dressed so I shouted at her. Then I felt bad and she crawled up my lower leg, begging for a pick-up so she could lick my face.

There was an uncertain feeling in my chest at work all day long, clenching like sharp teeth. I wanted to kill again.

Carol the sub was in the staffroom when I went to make the coffees.

‘That AJ’s got himself a bit of a crush on you,’ she told me, with a conspiratorial stir of her camomile.

‘On me?’ I said. ‘Why?’

She laughed. ‘You’ll have to ask him, won’t you?’

I shrugged. ‘How do you know?’

‘He was asking me if you had a better half.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I said he should ask you himself. Do you like him?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘He could come in useful somewhere.’

She shrieked at that, only it took me a while to realise she thought I meant that as a pun. I truly didn’t. ‘Watch out for Claudia though. She’ll be on the warpath if you’re found defiling her nephew. She keeps a pretty close eye on him.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised she doesn’t make him work in a little cat basket under her desk.’

Cue another deafening shriek.

Talking of the Gulp Monster, Claudia wants me to do my own write up on the Up At the Crack interview – The Editorial Assistant’s Eye View – as opposed to the Editor’s Comment next week.

‘There’s a little moment in the sun for you, sweetpea,’ she said with a smile so patronising it could strip paint.

Whoopee Shit. It’ll be squeezed between a half-page advert for sixty years of Darlington Caravans and a story about a dead World War Two carrier pigeon someone found up their chimney. She can suck my mammaries till Michaelmas if she thinks I’m going to be grateful for that, gigantic bag of crabs that she is.

Joyless Joy slurped her tea all morning. The comment about my personal appearance today was ‘What’s the matter with your legs in those leggings? You couldn’t stop a pig in a passage.’ I still very hate her too.

There’s been a robbery at the One Stop, so the reporters were all over that this afternoon. Other than that, nothing else is making headlines. Same old, same old. There’s the upcoming fifty-year anniversary of the wildlife sanctuary and a hit-and-run on the retail park and they’re trying to get hold of the family of a teen who live-streamed her suicide on Periscope because she used to live in the area so, technically, she’s ours. No luck yet though.

Canal Bloke’s death isn’t worrying anyone much. I asked Linus about it, more as a decoy – AJ was replacing his lip gloss with a joke one. We have a little wager between us – who can prank him the best.

I made it through about a third of my emails when I noticed one from Curly Sue herself – Laila at Tanner & Walker, the estate agent who had once tried to sell Mum and Dad’s house and failed like a whale trying to shag a snail.

Tried to reach you on your landline but no answer. Could you give me a call first thing? Thanks.

I called straight away.

‘Rhiannon! Oh, great to finally reach you!’ she shrilled, so much fake she could bake a fake cake. ‘I was trying to get hold of you all day yesterday.’

‘I had my mobile on,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I tried it. There was still no answer.’

‘Oh.’ I frowned. So she was a bullshitter as well as a crap estate agent. Hmmm.

‘Anyway, we’ve had a new offer on your mum and dad’s place. Full asking price and no chain. How’s about that? It’s almost unheard of at this time of year.’

‘Uh, I took it off the market months ago,’ I said, heart quietly thumping away.

‘Yes, I know, but the couple who looked at it last August – the Pembrokes – have found nothing else they liked and they went back to have another look…’

‘When did they go back for another look?’

‘They were in the area last week and drove past.’

‘They had no right to.’ I flicked a couple of Vs down the phone. Childish? Yes, but I was panicking.

‘They didn’t go in or anything, just looked at the drive and the frontage.’

‘So they were sniffing around the property without permission, is that even legal?’

‘No, it wasn’t like that at all. They just happened to be in the area and swung by the place. They liked the idea of the woods at the back as they have four quite big dogs. They’d like another look inside if you’re still looking to sell?’

‘Well, I’m not. I’m not ready. Nowhere near ready.’

‘They’re pretty keen, Rhiannon. You’d be hard-pressed to find—’

‘No, it’s not happening. I took it off the market for the foreseeable future and I haven’t changed my mind about that.’ I grabbed my bottle of Gaviscon from my desk drawer. I swigged down two glugs and winced at the chalkiness.

‘But your sister—’

‘I don’t care about my sister,’ I shouted, garnering a couple of glances from the subs on the other side of the room. ‘She’s a billion miles away.’

‘Okaaay,’ said Laila. ‘But you’ll find that she has half…’

‘You’ve no right to even contact me any more.’

‘Rhiannon, I can assure you—’

I put the phone down without saying goodbye. Brutal.

I swigged again at the Gaviscon. Sodding, sodding, sodding ARSE. I mean, yes, half of £825,000 would come in handy. And yes, I knew it would ‘make a great family home or a wonderful rural retirement opportunity’ for two old codgers with a sit-on mower and nothing else to do but moan about the migrants.

But of course I had to deal with Julia.

After that, yeah sure, bring it on. I’ll bake an apple tart and we can have an open house. Let’s get the whole neighbourhood round for a coffee and a stroke of my curtains. Only just let me get rid of the woman tied up in the back bedroom first.

I swigged the Gaviscon again but it was empty.

Normally, I put up with stuff. Keep my mouth shut and moan inwardly or write it down. But today, something had shifted. I don’t know if it had been due to talking about Priory Gardens again or what but my anger was off the charts. I needed to go fishing again. I needed to get out. I needed to find Derek Scudd.

This town isn’t that big – he has to be somewhere, the maggot.

*

Lana went on lunch at 1.05. Today, I followed her.

I heard them as I snuck my way in through the front door and across the lounge. The bedroom door was ajar and I could see they were both naked. She was on all fours. He was at the end of the bed, thrusting against her. She was making a noise like a dying seal being repeatedly, well, fucked up the arse. He never put as much effort into it when we were doing it. He put more oomph into Artexing the kitchen.

I heard Tink then; an intermittent squeak coming from the bathroom. He’d locked her in so he could screw that bitch on my bed. OK, so Tink had a habit of getting in the way when me and Craig were having sex – I think she thought he was hurting me – but locking her in the bathroom? That’s just evil.

I couldn’t kill them both – that would be too quick and easy. And I couldn’t let Tink out of the bathroom either cos then they would know I’d been home.

So I went back to the office via the small chemist where my Pill prescription was and I loaded up on more Gaviscon. Next door was Granny Smiths the grocer’s – where I impulse-bought a bag of apples and some Conference pears. I needed something hard to crunch on while I thought about them doing it on my Tempur Sensation Deluxe mattress.

Lana reappeared in the office at 2.03 p.m., flushed of cheek, sex-hair brushed back – my boyfriend’s cum puddle cooling in the crotch of her knickers. I wondered if she’d been the one to lock my dog in my bathroom before presenting her slick behind to my boyfriend. I wonder if Craig had remembered to let Tink out before he went back to work, stinking of Avon perfume and Marlboro Lights.

I bumped into her in the staffroom around 3 p.m. when I went up to make the drinks for AJ, who was taking meeting minutes. She smiled at me, I smiled back and then we had a little staring competition. I won.

Linus finished the day with blue lips and had to go into the office for a meeting with Ron about the murders, which can’t have looked very professional. AJ and I laughed ourselves out of the building.

Tink scampered across the floor to greet me when I got in at 6 p.m. She seemed unscathed but desperate to lick my face and dog-tell me what Daddy had been up to in my absence. When I went in there, I noticed there was a small pile of treats that Craig had obviously left in an attempt to keep her quiet. Chihuahuas are loyal to their owners – she never eats until I’m home. He was making my favourite dinner – steak and peppercorn sauce, presumably so he could sizzle the smell of Lana’s ass out of the flat. Red meat? You think it’s a good idea to give me red meat tonight, boy?

‘Post for you,’ he said, looking up from the breakfast bar as he chopped green peppers. I could smell pot too – there were two joint dog-ends in the coffee table ashtray. One has the faintest tinge of hot pink at the end.

I checked my three letters – bank statement, circular, another agent rejection, this time from Thickett & Wump. Dear Madam, Thank you for allowing us to consider your novel, The Alibi Clock. Unfortunately…

Tink was still licking the epidermis from my cheek as I watched Craig tossing the salad and opening the Pinot Noir. He held it up for me to see the label.

‘Nice.’

‘Bit more expensive but it’s a good cut of meat so it deserves it. Good day?’

‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, picturing the perfect spot in the woods behind Mum and Dad’s house where I could bury him.

‘What you looking at me like that for?’ He smiled.

‘Oh, just thinking how much I love you, that’s all.’

And how I’d finally worked out what to do with Dan Wells’s severed cock.

Monday, 12 February

1. Creepy Ed Sheeran in Lidl’s car park, who today jumped out of the bushes in front of my car wearing a Bazinga T-shirt

2. People who wear Bazinga T-shirts

3. Woman with the two brown spaniels who always attack Tink and are never on leads – though today she said good morning for the first time when I accidentally made eye contact

Nothing more’s been said about Canal Man. There’s not been any teary-eyed relatives in the office, having tea and sympathy with Ron and Linus or even a public appeal to find his penis. It’s most odd. I asked around.

‘Have the police found out anything about that guy in the canal, Claudia?’

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘Most grisly. They still haven’t found it.’ She looked up. ‘Why, did you know him? I know your other half is some sort of electrician, isn’t he?’

‘He’s a builder. Actually, by trade he’s a—’

‘Oh, Johnny, great, have you got those run-outs for me?’ she interjected.

Johnny, one of the photographers, had appeared behind me, camera as big as my head around his neck. They chatted and it took me a minute to realise that my part in this conversation, if I’d ever had one, was over.

I didn’t like any of the photographers at the Gazette – Stuart, Brian and Johnny. They were all arrogant tit flannels, swanning around the place like rock stars, fat in the knowledge that the party don’t start till they walk in.

I asked Bogdan the receptionist if he’d received an obituary from Daniel Wells’ parents. All the reporters were now calling him ‘Dan’, like they knew him. Like they liked him. Like they’d had barbecues in his garden or he’d installed Sky TV for them at a knock-down price. I even heard Edmund say, ‘Golly, poor chap.’ No obituary yet though. Bogdan doesn’t flirt with me any more I’ve noticed. Obviously his asylum application came through and he’s allowed to stay.

Dan Dan, the Dickless Man, as henceforth, he shall be known.

Left work early so I could take Tink to the park to play ball. I felt I’d been neglecting her of late and she’s such a good dog, she deserves more attention. Tried to teach her Shake a Paw for the millionth time, to no avail. Then we snuggled on the sofa and to watch The Simpsons on Sky.

Craig invited round the usual suspects tonight – Eddie, Gary and Nigel – for a gourmet evening of Call of Duty, lager and live football. Fridays used to be my Pilates nights but I gave that up a few months back when I realised spending an hour in a room full impossibly thin women stretching and farting along to Enya wasn’t a good use of my time. On football nights, I’d sit at the dining table, eating Revels and ‘working on my novel’. More often than not, I was on Facebook or in the chat rooms.

The chat rooms are where weirdos congregate like frog spawn and feminism died with a boot in its neck. I call myself Sweetpea and play the part of the confident slut. There’s never a shortage of takers for my filthy bravado and I’ve been known to bring men to climax with just a few choice words. Of course, the men were all the lowest specimens of the gene pool – sad, hunched-over beardy types who would ask for photos when their wives were out of the room and send me short video clips of the moment they tugged themselves to ecstasy over my pics. It’s a cheap thrill. I get them where I can.

Tonight I tried something I’d never done – I pretended to be a guy. I sent them some of Craig’s nakes off my phone. They couldn’t get enough of me. It was a whole new experience and, I have to say, I had fun. Almost wish I had a penis. One of my own, I mean.

Meanwhile, four other penises congregated on my sofa. Eddie O’Connell was a failed professional footballer, now a trainee solicitor, and is distantly related to Raheem Sterling (he says). He can speak five languages. Including English, unlike Gary.

Gary fancies me, which is unfortunate because he has a face like a smashed egg. He’ll drop hints like, ‘I love your dress, Rhiannon,’ and [when watching Saw 3], ‘You’re so brave – I don’t know how you can watch this without wincing.’ Yes, I am curiously sangfroid when it comes to others experiencing pain. Well, it’s not happening to me, is it? Why would I wince? Thanks for noticing anyway, you patronising, mouse-dicked mother-humper from Sodom. He also says I’m funny, ‘which is so unusual for a girl’. I say Gary’s a twat, ‘which is not so unusual for a boy’. He has a window sticker in his motorhome that says NO JAFFA CAKES KEPT IN THIS VEHICLE OVERNIGHT. I’m just going to leave that one hanging, like Gary should be.

Nigel Yardley looks like a large ball of Play-Doh with a smaller ball of Play-Doh stuck on top. Just looking at his beach-ball stomach had me taping down my Revels for another night. He has a decorating business and his own van – NYPD EMERGENCY it says on the side. Who needs something decorated in an emergency? ‘Help! Someone! Please! My wallpaper’s come unstuck and my dado’s crooked!’ And don’t get me started on the apostrophe in ‘Fascias’.

‘Roooooaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ came the cheers from Sofa Land as some winger landed a diving header, sending Tink flying off my lap, barking her little apple head off. They all squawked with laughter.

I checked the news pages for updates on Daniel Wells’ watery end. No witnesses yet, the missing tallywhacker hasn’t turned up and a third man they brought in for questioning has been released without charge. The police don’t seem to have a clue. Dear dear dear.

‘Roooooaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

‘Caw bloody hell, he left it wide open!’

‘Plays like a bloody girl.’

‘Referee needs a chuffing guide dog, that was well offside, that!’

Now I may have mentioned before that I don’t like loud noises. Not loud noises, not raucous football enthusiasm, not fireworks. Or when someone drops a plate. My nerves just start frying beneath my skin. When I couldn’t take any more of their armchair punditry, I adorned Craig’s DMs and announced I was taking Tink for a long walk. By this point they were all pretty drunk and I don’t think Craig even heard me.

It was quiet out. I passed Mrs Whittaker in the bin shed, throwing various black bin bags into their correct holes. We traded ‘Evening’s’ and ‘Isn’t it warm outs?’s and for once she didn’t try to nick anything from me.

I checked my phone at 9.43 p.m., as I reached the traffic lights by the supermarket. All seemed oh-so quiet. Half an hour passed and nothing, nobody about.

But soon I sensed a tug on the end of my line – someone was following me. I got out a poo bag and bent down to pick up Tink’s offering in the grass, lingering as I did, watching him. Definitely a Him. He stopped by the bus stop, lit up a cigarette. He was about average height but stocky – at least sixteen stone. Could be a tricky one. I pushed the poo bag in a litter bin, and carried on walking, breathless.

He started walking too, lit cigarette in hand. He wore a black beanie and his coat collar was pulled up around his neck, like it was cold out, which it wasn’t. I only had a hoody and tracky bottoms on but I was boiling. It crossed my mind that he might not be following me – that my sense of self-preservation was too strong – but my suspicions were confirmed as I crossed the road towards the park. There was a shady bit with trees. A cycle path. No kids out, smoking in the bandstand or on skateboards. I was all alone and breathless with anticipation.

I could feel it about to happen. My body tingled and my lungs heaved with the expectation of it. I dropped Tink’s lead and she wandered off to sniff a lamppost.

And then it did happen – he pounced on me from behind, grabbing my chin with one strong hand and my waist with the other. Tink barked right on cue.

‘Don’t scream or I’ll kill your dog.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me.’

He dragged me backwards towards the bushes. Tink yapped and growled her loudest but he wasn’t paying her any attention. My heart was racing and that was pushing the adrenalin around, getting me going. My knickers were already soaking.

He had an accent. ‘Stop wriggling. Let it ’appen and you won’t get ’urt.’

Tink growled and gnashed her tiny teeth at his ankle hems. That was helping me too. I was so alive with the sensation of what he wanted to do to me – the feeling of his huge rough hands on my breasts – my knees almost gave out, but I had to stay standing. Tink snarled and yapped and I knew what he was going to do next and it wasn’t until he did it that I reacted.

He kicked her. He kicked my dog.

More a Get off, you’re annoying me kick than one truly intended to hurt her. But she yelped and rolled squeaking into the long grass. And that was what it took to wake up the monster within me.

I pulled the wallpaper scissors from my hoody and thrust the blades deep into his neck – one, two, three times, right up to the hilt. The kinetic energy of my sexual thrill ignited into pure focused wrath. Blood spurted and sprayed across my face in hot dabs. He gulped and he gulped and stepped back from me, eyes bulging out and hands loosening their grip on me. I pulled the scissors out and the blood ran down his neck, down into the blackness of his coat. My hand was covered in it. The scissors were covered too. I stepped back and allowed him to stagger, falling to the footpath. I wanted to mount him. I wanted to straddle him as he lay dying, put his dying hands on my breasts and have him hold me there but I knew I couldn’t go near him now. There couldn’t be anything on him that would lead back to me.

Tink was trying to climb up my leg for a pick-up, so I took her in my arms and she began frantically licking my face, shivering so violently I nearly dropped her. Still breathless, still watching him, I held out my bloody hand for her to lick. We stood over the man, watching his gargles and spits of bloody pain into the night air. I watched the last of his breaths cloud above him, his dick still erect in undone jeans.

Jesus Christ was I turned on.

I didn’t cut off the penis this time. It’s not a trophy thing with me. That would be stupid, like the burglars who always leave the taps on in Home Alone. Besides, where would I put them all? We’ve only got a two-bed flat. It was hard enough deciding where to put the dehumidifier.

I don’t even remember walking back to the flats because I was on such a high, nothing else mattered. I don’t remember getting in the car, or the entire drive to Mum and Dad’s house.

Julia called out to me. I unlocked the door to the back bedroom and flicked on the light, standing in the doorway and allowing the full horror of how I looked to dawn on her face. First she winced with the brightness. Then she screamed when she saw the blood.

‘I need a shower,’ I announced. ‘If you don’t stop fucking screaming, I will do the same to you. And feed you to my chihuahua.’

*

I’m at home now. Balanced. Restored. Clean. Craig and the lads had done their usual thing of going down Wetherspoon’s for last orders and a ‘cheeky kebab on the way home’ so undoubtedly the flat will stink of his lamby farts tomorrow morning. I don’t even care tonight. Seriously, the power trip you get when you take a life – you just feel better. All the other shit washes away. Tink’s sitting on the end of my bed now, looking at me with her ears down. She’s still damp from our shower at Mum and Dad’s. She just keeps looking at me. I wish I knew what she was thinking.