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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.