by C. J. Skuse
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 agai
n. 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