Cover

Praise for C J Skuse

‘Brilliantly-written characters, original and engaging. It’s so good!’

BA Paris

‘This darkly comic novel… has the potential to become a cult classic’

Daily Mail

‘This isn’t a book for the squeamish or the faint-hearted … think Bridget Jones meets American Psycho’

RED

‘Filthy and funny… a compulsive read’

Sunday Times

‘You MUST read this book especially if you like your (anti) heroes dirty-mouthed, deadly dark, dark dark. I adored it’

Fiona Cummins

‘This anti-hero is psychotic without doubt… incredibly funny’

SHOTS

‘Makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mary Poppins… this is going to give me a serious book hangover’

John Marrs

‘If you like your thrillers darkly comic and outrageous this ticks all the boxes’

Sun

‘SO dark, SO laugh-out-loud funny, the world through Rhiannon’s eyes is perfectly, acutely observed. Brilliant!’

SJI Holliday

About the Author

C J SKUSE was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare. She has two First Class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing for Young People, and aside from being a novelist works as a Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University.

Booklist

Also by C J Skuse:

The Alibi Girl

Sweetpea Series:

Sweetpea

In Bloom

For Young Adults:

Pretty Bad Things

Rockoholic

Dead Romantic

Monster

The Deviants

Note to Readers

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• Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008312589

Dedication

For Alex, Josie and Joshua

Epigraph

How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole.

CARL GUSTAV JUNG, FOUNDER OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHIATRY

Wednesday, 22 January 2020 – Barnes & Noble, Fifth Avenue, New York City

1. Space invaders – arm overspill, leg overstep, sole of shoe overhang
2. Woman on her phone coming out of Sephora who barged into me and told me to apologise. Have wheelchair, must have attitude it seems
3. Cab drivers who stink of beefy crotch sweat
4. That jowly cuck news guy Guy Majors
5. Grandpa Joe – you lazy, lazy bastard

You can smell Bryan coming. He’s the store manager. He bounds onto the makeshift stage with all the elegance of a dying rhino – grey trousers at half-mast, stain on hurriedly bought tie, pustules along his chin, greasy hair scraped into an elastic band by fingernails caked up with newsprint and old cum.

We’re on the mezzanine. Twenty lines of chairs in the endless Biographies section. It’s standing room only. I’m at the back, facing the aisle between a woman with a bulky handbag and a MAGA-capped Hulk Hogan lookalike with more earrings than actual ear. At the front, behind two vacant stools and mic stands, is a huge poster of the book cover with my face on:

THE SWEETPEA KILLER:

The True Confessions of Rhiannon Lewis

They’ve gone to town on decorations. Paper lei garlands draped over bookshelves, fake roses dangling from jutting Barbra Streisand memoirs, fake petals scattered around the carpet. Everyone on seats or standing is carrying a copy of the book.

My book.

Wow wow wow, fellas. Look at the old girl now, fellas.

They’re giving out iced biscuits too. Flower-shaped – nice touch. The tray is empty by the time it gets to me, of course. Typical. God forbid someone nips out the back to open another packet and refill it.

I spent the best part of my twenties trying to get a book deal. And now I have a bestselling book out with my face on the cover and my story within the pages and it’s been at the top of the (non-fiction) bestseller lists for the last four months. The only problem is I can take none of the credit. No glow radiates on me.

Opportunity has knocked and, once again, I’m fucking out.

Not one of those Best Book Awards or Author of the Year awards or invitations to New York Fashion Week has my name on it. They all have his name on it: Freddie Litton-Cheney. The man whose name is on the cover above mine. He is the author – I am merely his muse.

‘Hey, everyone, thanks so much for coming out on this freezing night,’ Bryan laughs nervously into his mic. ‘A few more minutes and we’ll welcome our special guest to the stage.’ He reads out some fire regs and notices of upcoming events with Michelle Obama and that owl who saved the kids from the barn fire, before bouncing off, black T-shirt patchy with sweat.

Clearly there’s an issue. The star turn has thrown a wobbler over the blue M&Ms or the wrong puppies they got him to play with in the green room while he waits. Nevertheless, all gussets throb with anticipation.

Freddie asked me once why I wasn’t milking my fame more, back in the days when Craig had just been banged up for my crimes and I found myself basking in ‘his’ reflected glory. I’d been offered a shit ton of telly work and magazines to tell my story as Girlfriend of a Serial Killer. Could have earned thousands. He said I was a headliner – I should be centre stage, like Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act. And now here I am, centre stage – and everyone’s throwing flowers at my understudy. I couldn’t answer him then. I can now.

Bryan gets a message and bounds back on and through his sheen of sweat announces:

‘OK we’re ready now so please put your hands together for tonight’s guest. We are so privileged he’s been able to stop by on his tour of the States, and he’s fresh from a recording of The Ellen Show too, I’m told—’

Cue the chorus of ‘woo hoos’ and palpable hum of excitement.

‘—and he has to fly to Chicago straight after this event—’ ‘Woo hoo’ squared.

‘Mr Freddie Litton-Cheney!’

And on he bounds, with infinitely more elegance and poise than old Cum-Nails Bryan. Freddie’s in his highly polished Tom Ford loafers, a tailored cream suit and trousers so tight you can see the dead presidents on his pocket change. His grin is predictably shit-eating and as knicker-wettingly seductive as ever and I can almost hear the distant explosion of a thousand ovaries.

No wonder he’s a star.

‘Thanks so much, everybody.’ He nods with a polite British wave, before manspreading widely atop his stool so The Bulge cannot be ignored. Every one of us is now pregnant with his child. Even the chairs.

He shakes hands with Bryan – poor bastard – but to his credit doesn’t wipe it off afterwards. Hulk Hogan next to me and a couple of younger women further along are fixed on Freddie’s face. Awestruck. That’s the expression. After all, the man they are looking at is the man who has met a serial killer. The man who has hugged a serial killer. The man who has the number one bestselling book about said serial killer.

And that serial killer is little old me.

‘So Freddie, how are you enjoying New York City?’ asks Bryan, slurping up some rogue drool as a few dandruff flakes float from this thatch.

‘Oh, it’s great. I’ve been well looked after by my publisher—’

Freddie informs the crowd that he has already done a tour of major news networks, which produces a third ‘woo hoo’ from a woman in a neck brace on the Frow. He has quite the following. A whole herd of leather trousers gaze up at him – all snap-happy with their phones, all hair-did specially. The fact Freddie has been happily married to another man for years, with whom he has two children, doesn’t put them off. Every hand gesture, every hair flick is to be admired. Every time he says something mildly suggestive, they yank off their knickers and several sodden Tena Ladys fly at his face.

OK that’s a lie, but I’m sure they’re one neat vodka away from doing so.

‘You’ve heard all about the book already of course,’ he says, ‘but part of the reason why I’m doing this tour—’

International fame and a fat stack of cold hard cash?

‘—is that I want to give people the chance to ask me any questions about it, about Rhiannon herself and the time I spent with her—’

I choke back a guffaw. He doorstepped me twice and bought me one ice cream. Our conversation ranged from our favourite doughnut to reasons why Back in the Habit is the best Sister Act movie. We’re hardly besties.

‘—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.

‘Nobody deserves to die, of course,’ he says on a long exhale, ‘but in Rhiannon’s mind, sex offenders and paedophiles were fair game.’

‘Was she raped herself?’ asks Bryan, escalating the chat with admirable aplomb. ‘Was that why she held sex offenders in such particular disdain?’

‘If she was, she never mentioned it in the diaries,’ replies Freddie. ‘It could explain a lot but I have no evidence to suggest that, no.’

‘What about the grandfather?’ calls out an achingly thin woman with red hair three rows from the back. ‘The one she watched die in the river?’

Freddie looks in the woman’s general direction. ‘That can’t be proven, madam. She certainly didn’t divulge such information to me.’

‘What kind of vibe did she give off?’ asks Bryan. ‘Were you scared in her company?’

‘I didn’t know what Rhiannon had done when I met her. I thought she was simply Craig Wilkins’ girlfriend and he was on remand for multiple murder. I thought she was a victim. I felt sorry for her but no, I wasn’t scared of her.’

Bryan’s practically rubbing his crotch by this point. ‘What was it like when you got that mail with her diaries in?’

‘It was an ordinary morning, a few days into the New Year. My husband had gone off to work. I was taking our kids swimming and the postman rang the door. I had a parcel and I left it on the dining table.’

‘You didn’t open it up right away?’

‘No, I assumed it was some books I’d ordered for my husband for his birthday. They were coming from Australia.’

‘Right, right.’

Two mentions now of the husband but the Frow don’t seem to have noticed. One brunette is visibly unbuttoning her blouse.

‘When I got back, I made the kids lunch and we settled down to watch a film – Coco, I think it was. I put the parcel in the wardrobe and forgot it.’

Cue audible gasp.

‘I know, it’s crazy, isn’t it? But my husband’s birthday wasn’t till February so I thought I’d wrap it up nearer the time. About two weeks later, the parcel fell out of the wardrobe while I was packing away some blankets and I opened it to have a look at the books. Instead it was these two handwritten diaries. On the front it said “The True Confessions of Rhiannon Lewis, aged 27/28”.’

Another audible gasp.

‘And it began on New Year’s Eve 2017 with her realising her boyfriend Craig was having an affair. It went on to talk about her life in minute detail, and included the murders of various people. Planning it, doing it, covering it up. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.’

‘Wow, that’s completely amazing.’

‘I read them in two days. I barely slept. From the first chapter when she killed that guy by the canal and sliced off his penis, I was stunned—’

That bloody penis, it never stops coming up. The media’s always obsessed by that, even though there was only one. I haven’t severed a cock since but even so some magazines still insist on calling me The Slicer which sounds pretty cool, but others call me Lorena Bobbitt Two, Cock-A-Doodle Daisy or Buffy the Wangpire Slayer, which doesn’t even work. The first thing they ALWAYS mention is that fucking dick.

I HAVE DONE OTHER THINGS. Now I know how Daniel Radcliffe feels.

‘So was it just the diaries she sent you? The full confession we all know?’

‘And a postcard,’ says Freddie.

‘What did it say on the postcard?’

Freddie smiles, a secret smile. ‘The postcard said, When you’re shoving your foot in the door, make sure you’re wearing a big shoe.’

There follows a light-hearted but confused murmuring in the audience.

Freddie explains. ‘It relates to the last conversation we had. I told Rhiannon I was leaving the Plymouth Star, the local newspaper I used to work for, but that I still wanted to get “a foot in the door” of journalism.’

‘So she helped you?’ asks Bryan, swatting away a fly that seems hella interested in his left ear. Probably a doughnut parked in there for later.

‘Rhiannon Lewis has changed my life,’ says Freddie and the room goes silent. So quiet you can hear a fake petal fall. ‘She wanted her story to be told and she assigned me to tell it. My husband said I should take the manuscripts straight to the police. It was evidence after all and there was her ex-boyfriend Craig Wilkins, looking at a life sentence for the crimes on those pages. We had an argument about it because I was so keen to get the story out there—’

And make shitloads of money off it—

‘—but in the end I did the right thing. I gave them to the police, but not before I’d made copies. I couldn’t do anything with them at that point because I’d fall foul of sub-judicial procedure but as soon as the CPS made the decision to charge Rhiannon in absentia, I took the risk.’

Bryan scratched his temple. ‘They had a trial in the UK, didn’t they?’

‘Yeah, they had a trial with a jury and they sentenced her to life, with a minimum forty-year tariff. They issued a warrant for her arrest—’

‘—but they never found her,’ Bryan clarified.

‘Quite.’

‘I don’t get how they had evidence to jail her without her being there to go to jail,’ said Bryan, like it was the most ludicrous thing he’d ever heard.

‘They had enough evidence – a written confession in her own handwriting, bearing details only the killer could possibly know. They just didn’t have her.’

‘Ah right. So eventually, you were allowed to release the book?’

‘Yeah, once she’d been confirmed as deceased, there was nothing stopping me. The rest is history.’ He beams up at the humongous poster.

Herstory, you mean. Prick.

‘That’s incredible,’ says Bryan. ‘So your book went on sale globally in September and it’s sky-rocketed, hasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, it’s caught fire.’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong but it’s been published in thirty-four countries, is that right?’

‘I believe it’s thirty-six now. And we’ve sold the film rights too.’

‘Oh wow,’ says Bryan. Cue gasping, flailing and a rapturous applause.

Yawn.

‘It’s been life-changing. I can pay my bills without worrying now, myself and my husband have new cars, our kids are in good schools—’

Freddie talks with ease, enthusiasm, and occasionally expressive flourishes of his arms. Piano player’s hands. Creative fingers. His eyes are alive and passionate about his subject, which in this case happens to be moi.

Twenty hands shoot up into the coffee-thick air of the bookshop as we come to the Q&A.

‘How do you think she got out of the UK, Freddie?’ whines a Roseanne Barr-esque woman with purple hair, fifth row from the front.

‘I don’t know for sure,’ says Freds.

‘Neither do the cops!’ a Metallica-beard dude shouts from the back.

‘Well, quite,’ Freddie chuckles. ‘According to the police, the last phone signal that came through on her mobile bounced off a transmitter on the Western Esplanade in Southampton which suggests she left from Southampton Docks, doesn’t it? But there was no record of anyone called Rhiannon Lewis boarding a cruise ship at the terminal. She simply disappeared.’

‘Did she catch a ride on some smaller boat?’ suggests a small guy near me who had been watching videos of himself dicking about with his cat on Tik Tok before the gig had got going.

‘There were theories that she was hiding in Portugal or Spain with one of her dad’s cronies. There were sightings of her in Africa, Thailand, Buenos Aires as well but there was no telling what was true.’

Old Lady Chunky Blue Heels on the aisle shoots her bingo wing up. ‘What do you think made Rhianna murder in the first place, Mr Cheney?’

Rose West Fucking Wept – my name’s on the cover of the damn book she’s bought and she still can’t say it right.

‘Could be any manner of things,’ says Freddie. ‘We could speculate that it comes from the brain injury she suffered when she was six. Her father was a vigilante and she used to watch him at work in wild fascination for his violence – and this was from an early age, remember.’

Cue serious faces all round, one batting of eyelids and several lost little headshakes. Poor kid, poor poor Rhianna.

‘Studies have shown that children with weak or dispassionate relationships with their mothers often lapse into patterns of violent crime—’

He’s talking like a criminology YouTuber. I’m briefly impressed.

‘—or you could surmise that she was just a bad seed.’

‘Amen,’ says Old Lady Chunky Blue Heels.

A woman with a beaky nose and Pot Noodle perm gets the roving mic. ‘Did you get to interview her sister? Do you know how she feels about it all?’

‘No, she wouldn’t talk to me,’ says Freddie. ‘She wanted no part in this story. Which is ironic when you consider her role in it.’

Another Texan throwback pipes up. ‘I read that most serial killers don’t just stop killing – that there may be a cooling-off period but that they never stop because it is a predilection which cannot ever be curbed or rehabilitated. Now what I want to know and what you might be able to tell me, sir—’

There’s always one. It’s as certain as the scrawny autistic kid will win Countdown – the guy who takes as long as he pleases to ask a question.

‘—in your opinion do you think she carried on killing people after she left the UK, sir? Because we don’t know anything about what she did after killing that woman at the farm shop up until the point she—’

Freddie butts in. ‘Yes, I do. I do think she carried on killing.’

The lesser-known Carry On film.

‘Rhiannon Lewis is a killer. That’s what she did, that’s what she enjoyed. I’ve spoken to a number of criminal psychologists while working on the book, and they’re all in agreement: there is no way she stopped after Sandra Huggins. She got better at hiding it, that’s all. And herself.’

Another arm shoots up. Guy with big cheeks and a stained Jeffrey Dahmer T-shirt gets the mic. His hand’s been up a while. He’d cream his jeans if he knew I was in the room.

‘Why d’you think Rhian left her story for you to tell, Mr Litton-Cheney?’

‘I think I got lucky,’ he replies. ‘If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. Maybe at the newspaper office where she used to work.’

Mmm, no, he has me wrong there. I wouldn’t piss on anyone in that office if they were thirsty, let alone give them the scoop of the century.

Woman in yellow coat with too-red lipstick and smokers’ mouth creases shoots up a hand. ‘I didn’t appreciate all the cursing in the book,’ she complains. ‘Was that your input or hers? Some of it was quite disgusting.’

‘It’s all hers,’ Freddie smiles ruefully.

‘Why does she have such a filthy mouth?’ the old bint quacks on.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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