Tenoch had seen the present giving and bided his time.

‘You will find new people,’ he told me over breakfast, still sweaty from his workout. ‘Don’t get too reliant on them.’

I pushed my uneaten Pop Tart away. ‘I like them. They’re good kids.’

‘I know, but they will not be around here forever.’

Fury bubbled in my core. I seethed as he wanged on and on.

‘You could go to your sister. I can get someone to drive you over the border, if that’s what you want.’

‘That’s not what I want.’

He downed the rest of his poached eggs. ‘I’m gonna take a shower. Don’t forget your consultation tomorrow. Paco will take you at eleven.’

‘Why aren’t you taking me?’

‘I can’t go to Cabo,’ he said. ‘Even with a facelift, I’m a dead man walking there. Are you making my smoothie this morning or am I?’

I looked away. He set about doing it himself, chopping and blitzing all the ingredients, pouring them in his glass before he said one more word to me.

‘Don’t be miserable, gatita. Enjoy yourself while you are here.’

He scuffed out of the kitchen and headed upstairs.

I sat watching the knife drawer he’d inadvertently left open. I looked out at my little seedlings on the patio, quietly growing away. I would be here to see those flowers grow, one way or another.

Monday, 4 February – Hacienda Santuario

1. Virtue-signallers who barge into fan forums for the express purpose of educating people on why their fetishes are wrong
2. The Prossers who’d done an interview with a Sunday newspaper where Jayde agreed with the journalist that I was, indeed, ‘pure evil’
3. Terminally gullible people who believe everything they read, including that I severed every one of my victims’ penises
4. American true crime YouTuber and Rhiannon super-fan Dash Kuric who’s got a GoFundMe page going to raise funds to travel to the UK and locate said penises

I didn’t want to kill Tenoch. It didn’t feel right, just necessary. Everything was so uncertain again, like the ground had become unmoored. I was a bad, bad person and I needed to hide but he wasn’t giving me any other choice. There was nowhere else to go. Across the pond, my celebrity was growing each day.

Several more fan sites had popped up since the last time I’d looked. Tumblrs, blogs, Facebook pages, and a couple of teenage crime enthusiasts in the UK had even filmed a video of their pilgrimage to some of my kill sites and posted it up on YouTube – it had over 150,000 hits so far. They’d rocked up at the Gazette offices and Jim and Elaine’s house, leaving gifts of knitted mushrooms and Sylvanians on the gate. Two girls had dyed their hair blonde like mine used to be, others wore sweet peas tucked behind their ears.