by C. J. Skuse
Ty stood on his chair. ‘I got kidnapped today,’ he told Shona’s pendulous milkers.
‘I know, Honey, you are so brave,’ she said, holding his face between her hands. ‘We’re sure glad you’re back though!’
‘Me too,’ said Ty, reaching for another bread roll and stuffing it in his face. ‘I don’t have to clean my teeth tonight cos brave soldiers don’t have to.’
Happiness swelled in me all night long and I found that the more people were nice to me, the less I resented them. Kindness kills the hate. It fills you up. Happy human bonds. But I had got the message loud and clear that day: to exist in this life now, I couldn’t be Hilary or Rhiannon in entirety. I had to be both of them. Hilary for business, Rhiannon for pleasure.
We rounded off the evening with a Nineties boyband reunion show in the main theatre. One of them had found God and refused to do the thrusting but it didn’t stop their front row of 50-somethings frothing at the crease.
‘You were so brave,’ said a voice, sidling up to me – Bardot. ‘Saving Ty.’
‘He needed saving. So I saved him,’ I said. ‘Pity I can’t do the same for your husband. More difficult when it’s a grown-assed man.’
‘Now look, I don’t appreciate—’
‘—save your breath,’ I interrupted. ‘When I want to exchange pleasantries with a despotic hambone who can’t even peel their own apples, I’ll WhatsApp you, ’K?’
It felt good to make her cry. I laughed in her face for a good two minutes as we stood there clapping the encore. She didn’t move – she just took it. But as I turned away, Ryan Prosser was watching me, holding a child’s milk bottle. He gestured towards the door and I followed him out.
‘Where’s Jayde and the kids?’ I asked as we emerged out onto the deck.
‘She’s putting them to bed. I’m supposed to be warming up Sansa’s bottle. Listen, about today, I can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘I’ve told you, we’re cool. I ran after her, rugby-tackled her to the ground, you grabbed Ty and she ran off, never to be seen again.’
‘You’d have killed her,’ he said, his voice quivering on the salt breeze. ‘If I hadn’t dragged you off her, she’d be dead.’
‘And?’
‘Is that all you can say?’
‘What do you want me to say? Ty could be on some boat to fuck knows where now with fuck knows who doing fuck knows what—’
‘Don’t you dare say that—’
‘Say what? The truth? You’re having a go at me for beating the bitch dry when I was the one who saved him? You wouldn’t have caught her.’
He shook his head. ‘That’s what worries me,’ he said. ‘You saw her first. You saw her before anyone else… did you know her?’
‘You what?’
‘Did you know her? Did you know she was going to do that?’
I laughed. ‘You think I truck with women who steal children?’
‘I don’t know what to think. But what I saw – in that alley today – it scared the living shit out of me. And the fact you’re around my kids…’
‘You reckon I’d hurt them?’
‘I don’t know, do I—’
‘—well I wouldn’t. Ever.’
‘I know what I saw and I don’t want that around my family. I won’t go to the police because, yeah, as you say, you saved him. I’ll make some excuse to Jayde about breakfast tomorrow, why you can’t join—’
‘—what excuse? What are you going to say to her?’
‘I’ll say you’re busy with your husband. An early excursion he booked as a surprise or something. Where is he, by the way?’
‘I told you. He had a bad prawn. He’s in our cabin.’
He folded his arms. ‘Is he.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Is he English too?’
‘What?’
‘Your Australian accent has disappeared.’
Big boo-boo. I stood there, stinging like a smacked arse.
He pointed at me, his eyes black. ‘Don’t come near my family again.’
I reared back. ‘That’s the thanks I get, is it? Your son could have been Maddie McCanned today and I get a load of filth for saving him?’
‘You’re a psychopath,’ he hissed, pulse thumping, black eyes searching.
Ty and Sansa’s faces flittered through my mind. I put my hand to my own neck, with one swift move tearing off the pearl necklace, my hero present, sending the pearls bouncing to the deck. ‘Swine don’t wear pearls.’
And I turned on my heel and I headed back to my cabin.
I was so frustrated that even though I’d tried my fucking best to be Hilary at all times on that boat, and even though I was the hero of the day, he could still see the scumbag beneath. Hilary wanted to cry. Rhiannon wanted to hurt something. So we compromised. We slammed some doors, stabbed a pillow with a plastic knife, watched Downton Abbey and ate room service sliders until we both vomited violently into the sink.
Friday, 11 January – Rome
Airport security. At any airport. Anywhere.
People who take FOREVER to eat their in-flight meals and leave their bread roll till last
Air stewards
People who are afraid of flying – don’t fucking fly then
Rita Ora. Enough already.
I stewed about Ryan Prosser’s verbal bollocking all night long but I didn’t do what I normally did – go out and catfish some pervert to make myself feel better. Only because I couldn’t though – we were in the middle of the fucking sea for a start. Instead, I waited until first light and went up to the Diamond Deck and knocked on Caro’s door – no answer. There was a slim chance she’d gone to breakfast early so I headed for the dining room but she wasn’t there either. Martin, who’d served us before, knew my question before I asked it.
‘She’s still in the Medical Bay,’ he told me. ‘After her fall.’
‘What fall?’
‘Down some stairs, I heard. Didn’t you know?’
‘No, I didn’t. I haven’t seen her for a couple of days. What stairs?’
‘I’m not sure. Medical Bay’s on Deck 2. Give her our best, won’t you? We’ve all been worried about her.’
I could smell the bullshit before I even entered her cubicle. She was reading her Cruise Letter and seemed surprised to see me.
‘Been sliding down bannisters again?’ I said. The room was windowless, fitted with that shiny, corpse-blue linoleum you only ever see in hospitals.
‘I fell,’ she said, folding up the Cruise Letter and wincing as the Iranian doctor prodded her ankle. ‘It’s probably broken, isn’t it?’ She glared up at him.
‘No, there’s nothing broken, Mrs Wellesley. Just a bit of bruising. I’ll give you something for the pain so you can enjoy the rest of your holiday.’
‘I’m not on holiday,’ she said. ‘I live here. And if they didn’t switch doctors so bloody often you’d know that.’ She flapped him away. ‘Pass me my handbag.’ He did so. ‘Now go away. I want to talk to my friend.’
The doctor made his excuses, wrote up his notes on the computer and left us to it. Caro clutched her bag against her and sat there, staring at me.
‘Why did you do this?’ I asked her. ‘We could have cancelled. You didn’t need to go full Madonna at the Brits.’ I pulled the visitor’s chair across.
‘Who told you I was here?’
‘Martin. He couldn’t believe I didn’t know.’
‘Why? We’re not related.’
‘That’s not the point. Why have you been avoiding me?’ We were closer to the ship’s engine in the Medical Bay but I could still hear a pin drop in that room over the distant hum. I could hear Caro’s throat as she swallowed.
‘Because I am scared.’
There was a newspaper folded up on the counter behind. I wondered for a split second whether she’d seen the story, recognised my face. Whether my number was up. She secured her stance on her stick before looking back at me. ‘Scared of what?’ I asked.
‘Scared of dying
. I didn’t want to show you that… weakness, I suppose. Knowing that Beatrice still loves me, knowing there’s another possibility of a life for me makes me realise how precious life is. And I’ve been a stupid, scared old woman, going through the motions on here all these years, drinking myself into oblivion, deluding myself into thinking I was living the good life. All I’ve been doing is avoiding it. Literally going round in circles.’
There was a hubbub outside the door and I got up to open it an inch. Several staff members were clustered around an elongated blue sack, fumbling it down the stairs, taking it into the next-door cubicle and barking orders in at least two different languages. I didn’t understand it. Caro did.
‘They’ve found Mr Carraway.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Is that all you can say?’
‘I told you, I didn’t even know the guy.’ I pulled the iPhone out of my pocket to quickly change the subject. ‘I’ll cancel Beatrice. I clicked onto Facebook and began typing a message to Enzo. Outside the room, some stewards chattered, leaving the Medical Bay one by one on several creaks of the main door. All went silent. Caro put her hand over my phone, rose to her feet before steadying herself and grabbing her stick from a hook on the wall.
‘Where are you going?’
I followed her out into the next cubicle, where she stood beside the zipped-up body of John Carraway on its gurney. She stood beside the bag for a while, probably five minutes, not saying a word.
‘Shall I unzip—’
Caro placed her hand on mine as I undid his zip. ‘No. Don’t.’
I hid my disappointment.
She stood silently, her hand on mine. ‘I told you that being alive is enough,’ she said eventually. ‘That fundamentally, just being here, is enough. And it is, for the most part. Life has been kind to me. But I know it isn’t worth living for if there’s something your heart aches for. I want to see my beautiful Beatrice. I want to hold her and not let go… until I have to.’
There was a hollow plink as one of her tears dropped to the body bag.
‘Where there is life, there is hope. That’s what you told me. You’re still alive, she’s still alive. Maybe that’s enough. So come on – let’s go get her.’
The Prossers walked along the opposite gangway. They didn’t see me – I had my big floppy hat on. Neither Ryan nor Jayde looked happy. I didn’t know if that was to do with me or the fact they were staring down the barrel of another day with Ken and Gloria. Either way, I didn’t care. What I did care about was Ty and Sansa. Ty was playing up, refusing to behave, and Sansa screamed in her pushchair. My two little friends. That was the last I ever saw of them.
I knew as soon as our car dropped us off at the Circus Maximus in the centre of Rome that day, I could not go back to that ship.
We passed a news stand. There were a few British tabloids facing out:
RHIANNON LEWIS: THE FULL CONFESSION
It took my breath away. My face was on the front of a national newspaper. Me. Not Craig, not the victims, not Trump or Boris or some model’s iCloud fappening. Me. It put something of a spring in my step.
I manoeuvred Caro’s wheelchair away from the newsstand and we blended in with a snaking line of tourists heading for the Colosseum. Halfway there I heard a ping! behind me, though whether it had come from my cracked iPhone 4 in my bag or someone else’s phone, I couldn’t make out. I couldn’t wait to get it out and check, in case Dannielle Fairly had sent me the last piece of information – where I was going, but we’d been constantly told by our driver to keep our belongings close in case of muggings and I didn’t want to take the risk of losing it.
Rome was even more packed with tourists and school groups than Florence, which I should have expected because, again, travel agents are lying ass-hats.
You could spot the Brits a mile off – we were the only ones sweating. Me and Caro couldn’t get close to the Colosseum so after a brief ice cream, we walked to the Forum, onwards to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps where the car picked us up and took us nearer to the Pantheon, as near as he could get due to several closed roads. Angela Merkel was in town for a conference, apparently. It was opposite the Pantheon in a little café that Beatrice had wanted to meet us with Enzo.
Caro took a deep, rattling breath as we got out of the car.
‘You OK?’ I said.
‘I’m OK,’ she breathed out. ‘Now we’re here, it doesn’t seem so fearful.’
There were more newsstands, dotted all around the Pantheon, all in different languages that I couldn’t translate but I could guess:
SERIAL KILLER BRITANNICO IN FUGA NEL MEDITERRÁNEO
‘You’re quiet,’ said Caro and I pushed her in her chair across the piazza.
‘Hot and bothered,’ I said.
‘Yes, let’s find this café and get some drinks.’
The closer to the Pantheon we got, the more I didn’t want to stand still in case somebody recognised me. The city was small and stifling and every direction I turned there were British accents and newsstands.
EL ASESINO EN SÉRIE BRITÁNICO PODRÍA HABER MATADO A 20 PERSONAS
All eyes were on me and, unlike the evening before at dinner, I didn’t like it. The hair extensions and the lenses and sunglasses and floppy hat were not enough to make me invisible anymore. My head itched, my eyes stung where I’d rubbed sun cream into them and the sunglasses pinched my bridge. I was Top Story. People would be actively seeking me out, especially the Brits.
CONFESSION DE RHIANNON LEWIS: JE SUIS UN TUEUR EN SÉRIE
I mean, yeah, I was famous, something I’d always wanted, but I couldn’t enjoy it at all. I was a sitting duck. A fish in a barrel. A babe in the woods. All it would take was for one person to notice me and the long arm of the law would swoop down and embrace me in its chokehold forever.
At 1.30 p.m., we reached the café – La Piccola Casa Della Tortain. We had to queue and wait for a table for four on the terrace. A TV flickered inside, showing round-the-clock news. My picture again, a photo booth shot taken at Lucille’s birthday party three years ago. Footage of me being interviewed on Up at the Crack, trying not to look at the presenter’s schlong. More pictures from my Facebook page. Drone footage of police at the farm shop. Sandra’s bits and pieces taken out in covered boxes. A bloody axe in a see-through bag.
I became fidgety and unsettled – the café was small and the outside tables too close together. There were British voices all around me – Scouse accents, Brummies. Two blonde women definitely catching glimpses at me whenever I caught a glimpse of them. I desperately wanted to check my phone.
The waitress brought us our drinks – a strawberry smoothie for me, piña colada for Caro. When Caro went in search of a toilet, I saw my chance.
And I did have a message. From Dannielle. It simply said:
Go. Now.
I immediately dialled her back. On the tenth ring, a woman answered. And she didn’t sound at all happy.
‘Yeah?’
‘Dannielle? It’s Hilary…’
‘Oh, thank fuck for that, where’ve you been? I’ve been ringing for ages.’
‘We only got into port at eight – I don’t get a signal at sea and the WiFi’s too expens—’
‘—never mind that now, are you at the airport?’
‘What airport?’
‘Any airport. You need to be on your way, lady. They’re on to you. You’ve got to get out of Europe before they find out what cruise you were on. Your confession’s broke.’
‘Yeah, I saw some headlines. You haven’t told me where I’m supposed to be going, though.’
‘Yeah, I did, I told you. Hacienda Santuario.’
‘Where? What country?’
‘Oh, did I not say?’ And then she told me.
I stopped short of saying the word out loud at that moment, observing that the two blondes had definitely stopped talking and were listening in. ‘Right. So what do I do?’
‘Are you near an airport?’
&
nbsp; ‘Um, I’m in Rome today.’
‘Right, get to the Leonardo Da Vinci Airport and get on the first flight out. Book return Business Class for two people.’
‘Why two people?’
‘It’ll throw off any suspicion, as will a return ticket. Business Class passengers are less likely to be interrogated. Look, I have to go. We’ve got the police coming again at four. You’ll stay with Tenoch for a bit until you get yourself sorted, he’ll arrange a new passport for yer, an American one, and that’ll get you into the States. OK? Destroy the phone as soon as you can, preferably now. Make sure you write down that address before you do.’
‘But what if I’m recognised on the way to him?’
‘You’re on your own, Kid. I’ve done my bit. Good luck.’
When I got off the call, I checked Twitter: I was trending in the UK. There’d been a hastily produced Panorama on TV last night:
United Kingdom trends
#MondayMotivation
#TheRhiannonLewisStory
#NationalSausageWeek
#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek
#loosewomen
#RuinAFilmByAddingUpYourBum
#RhiannonLewis
#serialkiller
#CraigWilkinsIsHot
#StabMeRhiannon
Caro returned from the toilets, beaming.
She was smiling, for the first time that day. ‘We came here once.’
‘What?’ I said, distracted.
‘Me and Beatrice. One Sunday at Pentecost.’
‘Oh right,’ I said, scrolling through BBC News, Sky News, Al Jazeera, Fox, CNN – the story hadn’t reached America yet but British news channels heaved with information from the diaries.
‘We attended mass with the rose petals,’ Caro continued. ‘I’ve only just realised why she wanted to meet us here. It’s where she told me she loved me.’
They listed all my victims, one after the other.
Pete McMahon. Dad. The guy in the canal. The Man in the Park. Julia Kidner, my childhood best friend. The Blue Van Rapists. Derek Scudd. Dean Bishopston – the poor, innocent taxi driver.
‘They drop them through the hole in the top, the oculus.’
