Sweetpea: The most unique and gripping thriller of 2017. C.J. Skuse

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ