‘—I’m interested in what everyone’s views are on Rhiannon and the whole story, having read the book. Have y’all read the book yet?’

I don’t know why he’s saying ‘y’all’ like he’s some hickory-smoked banjo strummer from the Bible Belt – he’s from Torquay. Anyway, a chorus of ‘Yeahs!’ follow and he grins. Once upon a time that grin could have supplexed me into a mattress and skewered me like a kebab. Now it just irritates.

Bryan invites Freddie to do a reading from said book. And I have to stand there listening to him putting the emphases on all the wrong words so my jokes fall flat and it’s all I can do to stop myself getting up, grabbing the mic and doing it myself. I can’t bear it when people tell jokes ineffectually.

After the reading, Bryan asks a series of tedious questions which are basically segues into his own book about serial killers and his time working with them – he’d visited Ted Bundy’s cousin’s niece once in jail or something. I drifted off to a nearby shelf to flick through a Patricia Highsmith biography, only half-listening.

I perk up when the convo swivels back to me.

‘The British media dubbed Rhiannon “Little Miss Vigilante” and “Ripperella”. Are those fair nicknames, do you think?’

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ Freddie smiles, teeth a-twinkling, and you can almost hear the elastic snapping on each pair of knickers on the Frow. ‘I think Rhiannon would have liked those names.’

I didn’t.

‘A lot of readers have reported that they found themselves rooting for her as they read the account, myself included actually—’

Yawn. Nobody cares, Bryan.

‘—did you root for her as you were reading her diaries for the first time?’

‘Yeah, for sure,’ says Freds. ‘I can see why people took to her. She was kind to animals and children and the vulnerable. She once saved a woman from being raped. She’s extremely popular in the UK, still is. There was a survey on British TV, not long after the story broke – 90 per cent of the respondents said they wouldn’t call the police if they met her.’

‘That’s extraordinary,’ says Bryan, with no meaning behind it because he’s too busy getting lost in his notes for the next question. ‘But there were a few particularly shocking killings, weren’t there?’

‘Dean Bishopston for sure, yeah. He was merely a taxi driver in the wrong place at the wrong time. And AJ Thompson, the father of her baby. He was only 19. They did nothing wrong.’

‘But just because the other people did do wrong, the guys in the van, the old pederast, it doesn’t mean they deserved to die, does it?’

A hush descends. My eyebrow involuntarily rises as though it’s trying to grow an extra ear to hear Freddie’s answer to this one.