‘You just let Willy and Nilly bite you?’ he chuckled.

‘No, I stayed away from them.’ He looked at me funny. ‘They weren’t me doing any harm.’

He shook his head. ‘You are more loca than I gave you credit for. If you didn’t do so much pissing and whining, that hole would be done by now.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ I griped, wiping my brow and grimacing at the caked mud under my fingernails.

‘It harder to kill when you are the one who has to dig the graves, eh, Rhiannon?’

This little exchange stayed with me all day, seeing as I had a ridiculous amount of time and space to think about it. Why did he care who I killed or if I killed? What did it matter to him? And I wondered if it was some sort of lesson – hard labour for my crimes against humanity. It didn’t make sense.

It came up again a few days after when I was walking past his office.

‘Hey, Rhiannon. You are blowing up in Europe.’

‘What, literally?’

‘Your story. You’re everywhere. Every news show, it’s your face!’

‘Cool,’ I said, settling into his swivel chair. ‘Should we be looking for me online though? What about the search getting flagged by the police?’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Tenoch. ‘My computer has a re-routed IP address. Means the searches are coming from somewhere else. You’re safe here, I promise. Take a look.’

Almost a week after my confession broke, the UK was suitably obsessed with me, and America was waking up to Ripperella too.

I was everywhere. Every thread. Every paper. All the headlines:

BRITISH BOBBITT WHO CUT OFF MAN’S PENIS IS CHILD BRAVERY AWARD WINNER

LET HIM OUT:

Wilkins expected to be freed from jail this week

IT WAS ME: RHIANNON LEWIS CONFESSION

Boyfriend innocent, reveals diary. Exclusive by local newsman who got the full confession

I was the subject of endless chats, Twitter threads, Facebook discussions, YouTube crime enthusiasts creaming their mum-ironed jeans over my ‘magnificence’, my ‘audacity’, my ‘savagery’. There were more fan pages, thousands of new site members every day, memes created of my bored little face taken from one of the PICSOs’ parties with the tagline It’s Monday again, kill me now. Someone had even made a GIF of me walking across the farm shop car park from the CCTV footage with the tagline Big Dick Energy.

‘Wow,’ I said, looking up at Tenoch who had his arms folded and was squinting down at the screen over my shoulder. ‘I’m famous.’

‘Yeah. You are. You like it?’

I did like it. It had got my adrenaline pumping, my heart thumping. It had brought back that rippling, crippling can’t-do-anything-else-but-kill sizzle. Every thread, fan site, and Reddit thread was a tiny back pat, a tickle under the chin, some human acknowledgement of appreciation. That I was admired. That I might even be loved.