1. People who design hotels – why in God’s name can’t you put the mother-loving plug sockets by the bed?
The fry-up at the B&B was beyond disgusting, but I kind of knew it would be because a) Craig recommended it and b) I never have luck with hotels. There’s always a pube, always a stain, and always a shag-a-thon or a troupe of horses doing dressage in the next room at 3 a.m.
Up at the Crack’s runner Jemimah Double-Barrelled met me at the back entrance of TV Central. She was wearing trainers with neon laces, which irked me beyond socially acceptable levels, and her hands appeared glued to the edges of an iPad. In the lift upstairs, she told me I was to be on air between a segment about a botched hysterectomy and a recipe for a three-cheese quiche.
‘So we’ll take you in to make-up and get you all sorted and do your hair and then you can have a quick meet with the presenters.’ Her fingertips went back to the mole cluster on her neck and picked at it like she was selecting the thickest Malteser.
‘Who, John and Carolyn?’ I said, sending a tiny bubble of hope into the universe that the Biggest Wanger in Town, Tony Tompkinson, was ill or on holiday or something, so I wouldn’t have to spend the whole interview staring down at the massive bulge in his trousers.
‘No, it’s Tony and Carolyn on today. John does it with Carolyn every other day and then it’s Melinda and Tristan on Fridays.’
Tristan was the black presenter they chucked in on a Friday with the gay weather girl to even things up a bit, diversity-wise. The weekend sister show Chatterday they gave to the blonde in the wheelchair.
The hair and make-up women went to town on my face, and by town I mean Slutsville. Whilst doing me, I overheard them bitching about Carolyn’s demands for a dressing room of her own, some boy-bander’s request for no-carb toast and Tony Tompkinson’s latest bust-up with his agent.
Apparently, he was shagging her.
Apparently, Tony is shagging everyone.
Well, when you’ve got that much hot dog it’s silly to put it in just the one roll.
The woman in the make-up chair to my right was an actress in some crime thing. To my left was a bloke whose pug had just got through to the semi-finals of Pets Who Can Sing and Dance. I didn’t feel like conversating with either to be honest but I tried my best. Well, my head was nodding and my mouth was all ‘How interesting’ but really I was thinking about bleeding Julia out over the bathtub at Mum and Dad’s.
Then Tony and Carolyn swept in for a pre-show ‘touch up’ before they went live. It looked to me like they’d been touched up quite a bit already.
‘Tony, Carolyn, this is Rhiannon Lewis, today’s Woman of the Century shortlister.’ Jemimah had reappeared behind me, sans iPad, avec protein ball.
‘Well, no need to introduce you, Rhiannon, your reputation goes before you,’ Tony chuckled. ‘How you doing?’ Cue unauthorised body contact #1 – shoulder rub.
‘Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.’
‘It’s so lovely to meet you, Rhiannon,’ said Carolyn, smiling like a grand piano. Her face was caked in foundation but there were bumps all over it. ‘What do you prefer to be called?’
‘Rhiannon’s fine,’ I said. Rhiannon was what I always wanted to be called but most people insisted on saying Rhee to save time. Linus once called me Rheetard and I nearly yanked his head back and spat in his mouth.
‘We’ll be gentle with you, we promise!’ Tony heh-heh-hehed. My eyes were fixed so concretely on his face so as not to look down to What Lies Beneath, they were almost watering. I think they took it as nervousness, causing Tony to commit unauthorised body contact #2 – supportive forearm grab and accidental boob stroke. Ugh.
‘So our womb lady’s stuck on the bridge in Cardiff, which means her item’s been shifted to tomorrow. You’re on after the quiche but before the boy band, OK?’
They ran through the in-depth questions they would ask me in the three-and-a-half-minute slot – there’s no time for tragedy when there’s a three-cheese quiche in the oven, after all – and I was parked in the Green Room, to sign release forms, have my microphone clipped on and await my fate. After a fidgety age, Jemimah Double-Barrelled came and got me and we walked down a purgatory of white corridors to the studio.
The set looked more of a headachy pink and yellow colour in real life than it did in HD, like someone had puked Rainbow Skittles over it. The edges of the floor were covered with long snaking black wires and large portable cameras wheeled around back in the shadows and forth in a strange robotic dance. Carolyn and Tony were in situ and I was ushered to sit down opposite on the famous fuchsia-pink banquette. All I could smell was burnt cheese.
‘OK, Rhiannon,’ said Tony, ‘so we’ll run the competition trailer and then come to you, all right? Try not to fidget, stammer or sneeze and if you feel a cough coming on, there’s a carafe of water there and yours will be poured out. All right? And don’t swear or else we get shot by them upstairs.’ Heh heh heh.
‘Don’t say “fuck” or “bugger”,’ I mimicked.
They looked at me like I’d doused them both with petrol and was about to strike a match.
‘Sorry. It’s OK, I won’t swear.’
Before I knew what was happening, the lights were brighter, a chubby brunette with drawn-on eyebrows had run on to sweep my forehead with a fuzzy brush, the end of the competition whinnied away and a camera wheeled forward.
‘Welcome back,’ said Carolyn. ‘This month we’ve been meeting our contenders for Woman of the Century and, in the last instalment, we are profiling Rhiannon Lewis, the young survivor of the Priory Gardens attack. This year marks the twenty-first anniversary of the tragedy when a man entered childminder Allison Kingwell’s house in a small Bristol suburb and brutally murdered her, along with five of the children she was looking after.’
Tony took over. ‘When police arrived at the house in Bradley Stoke, what they found was a scene of absolute horror. Not only did they find Ms Kingwell’s body, but also the tiny lifeless bodies of one-year-old Kimmy Lloyd, two-year-old Jack Mitchell, three-year-old twins George and David Archer and five-year-old Ashlea Riley-House. Also dead was the perpetrator, 37-year-old Antony Blackstone, the estranged husband of Ms Kingwell, who had taken his own life.’
The baton went back to Carolyn. ‘Amazingly, one child, Rhiannon Lewis, survived against all odds, having been struck with a hammer. She lay silently beneath Ms Kingwell’s decapitated body for hours. Today, the house at Priory Gardens no longer stands as it did, replaced instead by a playground, and Rhiannon herself is now twenty-seven years old and fully recovered from her ordeal. And we’re delighted to welcome her into the studio today. Rhiannon, thanks so much for coming in.’
‘Thank you for having me.’
I could see my face on the monitor on the edge of the floor. Jeez they’d put a lot of blusher on. I looked like I had red light bulbs stuffed in my cheeks.
‘Rhiannon, take us back to that day if you can. Do you remember anything about it?’
‘No, nothing before the attack,’ I said. ‘Only what people have told me and what the witnesses said.’
They were both nodding, like they should be on a shelf in the back of a car. Tony’s legs opened like the gates to Jurassic Park. The T. rex bulged at the seam. It was All. I. Could. Look. At. I’d need a chainsaw to chop down that trunk.
‘So you don’t remember the moment Blackstone got into the house?’
‘No. Apparently, he knocked at the front door and Allison told him to get lost, and then a neighbour saw him go round the back and jump