Monday, 12 March 2035
St Emily de Vialar School for Girls
Hawkchurch, Devon
Things That Have Bloody Annoyed Me This Morning:
Maddie Evans, for stealing my girlfriend.
Annaliese Caldwell for being Annaliese Caldwell.
Old Crossbreed for being utterly ineffectual at pastoral care.
Senor Martinez for being a little bitch snitch.
Christensen for making me go on extended leave to grieve – prick.
My birth mother, Rhiannon Lewis. For everything.
I’d continued reading the first Rhiannon book all through breakfast under the table. I wanted to get to the part where Rhiannon met my dad at work as I didn’t know that story, but there were too many distractions.
For a start there were paps outside the front of our house first thing – I saw them on the doorbell app on my phone. They were asking to speak to me.
‘Come on, we only want to know your side of things, in your own words, Ivy? Come on, we don’t bite.’
To be fair, one of them looked like he did bite – he reminded me of a shark as he peered into the fisheye lens. Big teeth chewing gum. Wide mouth. Grey overcoat. I was so glad I wasn’t at home.
And then those two detectives came round to Heather’s – the same ones who’d come to the school, Blunt and Sherrin. They had CCTV of a masked figure breaking into the school a few days before Andrews was murdered.
‘Seemed like a scouting mission,’ said Sherrin as I watched the footage. ‘Probably how he got Andrews’ address. We believe it was the same guy seen in Anning Court the night he was killed.’
‘Well, it’s clearly not me, is it?’ I said, snapping their police-issue tablet shut. ‘I have no idea who that is.’
I left the detectives in the lounge talking to Heather and her husband, Dan, while I went back to the breakfast table and my book. I had just got to the part where Rhiannon talks about meeting AJ for the first time.
We have a new kid in, called AJ – Claudia’s nephew from Australia.
I say ‘kid’ but he’s actually nineteen and on a gap year …
His top half dresses like he’s going to the beach; his bottom half has just come back from Glastonbury …
He’s actually very good-looking, tall and tanned, covered in friendship bracelets, and he smiles all the time …
You know when people say a smile ‘can light up a room’? … AJ has a smile that does that.
My heart pulsed. That’s my dad, I thought with a warm feeling. Then my toast clogged up in my mouth – I couldn’t swallow it, as I realised something: I was going to have to read about them having sex. And her killing him.
I continued reading it in the car on my way to school.
‘Claudia never liked you knowing about her,’ said Heather as she drove.
‘Well, she’s not here to stop me now, is she?’
‘Just be careful, all right?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, there’s a lot of information in those books that you won’t already have … a lot of detail.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
The car got going again after a brief stop at the lights and the conversation seemed to be over. She turned up the radio. Pretty soon, we swung into St Emily’s Way.
Heather pulled up to the kerb to let me out. ‘I still think it’s too soon for you to be going back, Ivy.’
‘I can’t sit at your place all day. I’ll go crazy. Not Rhiannon-crazy but …’
‘Any trouble, you call me.’
‘Pop the boot?’
I retrieved my bag, just as the bus pulled in ahead of us.
I watched as Chloe followed a load of other girls out.
She looked round at me, briefly, then another girl, Maddie Evans, called out to her and she walked off with her without so much as a smile back at me.
I had texted her about Mum and she’d responded with an obligatory Aw babes I’m so sorry kiss kiss and that was it. Nothing more. I slammed the boot shut.
‘Hey, take it easy!’ Heather called out through her open window.
‘Sorry. I’ll see you later.’
I walked in the same direction as Chloe and Maddie, holding back behind a throng of other girls so I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
I knew they were talking about me though.
It seemed like everyone was. Every eye was in my direction until I caught it and it turned away.
The walk to my locker outside the changing rooms was endless.
Chatters. Sniggers. Snatched conversations including the words Killer or Sweetpea.
Even the dinner ladies seemed to be wittering on about it as I passed the kitchens – I could hear them over all the clang clang and wafts of burnt pies and mash.
It didn’t end when I got to my locker either.
There was a wodge of paper shoved through the gap.
I pulled it out. It was the front page of our local newspaper.
Sweetpea Killer link to PE teacher stabbing
This wasn’t a new thing, Sweetpea-based bullying.
I was quite used to finding red paint daubings or Jellycat aubergines cut in half stuffed in the top of my sports bag or news articles wedged into books I’d left out.
It was always the same whenever a Rhiannon story hit the news.
Heather had been careful to keep it all away from me for the past week.
I realised why now. The police hadn’t questioned me again about it so I figured I was in the clear, but obviously the school did not.
Several girls walked past as I stood there reading it, nudging my shoulder and giving me full evils.
I folded up the newspaper and posted it in a neighbouring recycling bin, swiping my ID to open my locker.
‘Hallo, Ivy, how are you?’ came a voice. Mrs Crossley, substitute PE teacher. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your mum.’
‘Did you kill her as well?’ shouted another voice. Annaliese Caldwell and her blonde mob cackled as they lingered in the background, staring hard until they got their desired reaction. I looked away.
Crossley did nothing to punish them – she had no skin in this game – and just said, ‘Rise above it. Will we see you at footy later?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Good girl,’ she said, sweeping off with a swish of her pleated skirt.
‘Good girl, Ivy,’ mimicked Crudhole when our authority figure was out of earshot. ‘You’re finishing what Sweetpea started, are you?’
‘Say it again without your herd of cattle, Anal-lies, and I’ll be impressed.’
She laughed. The cattle mooed along with her, practically in harmony. ‘We know you killed Mr Andrews. It’s written all over your face.’
‘That’s funny, cos last time I checked he spunked all over yours.’
The cattle gasped. Anal-lies did not, just smirked without denying it.
‘The police know it was you – you did it cos he was shagging Chloe.’
‘He was shagging everyone.’
The cattle threw their leader a glance but said nothing.
But Anal wasn’t done. ‘Including you?’
I stuffed my sports bag in my locker and pulled out my satchel of Spanish texts. ‘I wouldn’t shag him if it was only him and cucumbers left.’
‘Yeah right. Like you have any right to be fussy,’ she spat.
‘At least I don’t shag my mother’s boyfriends …’
It went on and on like this for some time, barbs back and forth. She seemed to be very hung up on the Sweetpea thing especially. They all were. Like I was some sideshow in the London Dungeon and they were waiting for me to spring out at them with a knife.
‘Sweet peas are toxic, Anal, so if I be poisonous, best beware …’
But Anal stood her ground. ‘What are you going to do, kill me as well? Then you’ll be a serial killer just like your mum.’
‘I wouldn’t kill you,’ I said, matter-of-factly. ‘I’d just torture you.’
Her face retained its rictus grin but her eyes stopped smiling as I pulled out the book and waved it in front of her.
‘Don’t you know what she did, my killer mum?
She kept her school bully hostage in a house for three months.
Chained her to a wall. Cut off her fingers. And her blood runs in my veins.’
Anal wasn’t smiling anymore, nor were the cattle. ‘You’re a psychopath. You’re going to jail, Ivy. Best place for you.’
She retreated. One of her herd, Bonnie Fray, echoed the ‘Best place for you!’ line and another parroted ‘Psycho!’ as they trotted down the corridor on a medley of echoey laughter, leaving me alone at the lockers with the Rhiannon book clutched to me like a shield.
For some reason, I wasn’t afraid of them anymore.
I always acted like I wasn’t afraid anyway, to save face and all that, but this time I actually wasn’t scared.
This fluttery feeling pumping through my chest wasn’t fear – it was adrenaline.
I wanted to yell. I wanted to sprint after them and beat them all to death with the book.
I wanted to see them all writhing in their own blood on the polished parquet.
But I didn’t. I closed my locker and trotted off to Spanish like a good girl.
We were doing practice papers for our exams and I finished mine in record time cos I’ve always found languages piss easy, so I carried on sneak-reading Sweetpea under my Bandera de Espana textbook. Rhiannon was killing a guy who’d kicked her dog in a park:
And that was what it took to wake up the monster within me. I pulled the scissors from my hoody and thrust the blades into his neck – one, two, three times, right up to the hilt …
‘Shit!’ I gasped.
I didn’t cut off the penis this time. It’s not a trophy thing with me. I don’t even remember walking back to the flats because I was on such a high; nothing else mattered …
‘IVY SILVERTON!’ came the shout.
Turns out, our teacher Senor Martinez had been calling out my name for some time but I hadn’t heard a word, so engrossed was I in Tales of a Serial Killer Mami.
Just as I stood up in alarm, the book fell and thudded to the floor.
A sea of giggles floated up from the others as I quickly bent down to grab it.
Unfortunately, Senor Martinez was quicker. He took one look at it.
‘Get your things and come with me, please,’ he huffed, taking me by the elbow and tugging me out of the classroom.