How to Kill Men and Get Away With It(16)

Joel Gidding, a 32-year-old man from Greenwich, has been reported missing. Joel, who lives with his mum, Moira, and dad, Geoff, hasn’t been seen since the couple returned from their holiday home in Spain last week.

‘We spoke to him two days before we were due to fly home,’ Moira, 63, told us. ‘He was meant to pick us up from the airport, but didn’t turn up. We had to get a cab instead and it cost an arm and a leg. We’re really worried.’

Joel was last seen leaving a pub in Greenwich and heading in the direction of his parents’ home.

His mum suspects he might have been kidnapped after an attempted burglary. ‘It’s very strange but a sculpture of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has also gone missing,’ she told us.

Anyone with any information about Joel is urged to call Thames Valley Police.



Maisie’s cheeks flush with what seems to be excitement.

‘Should I call them?’ she asks while we sun our legs and sip espresso martinis.

‘And tell them what exactly?’ I ask her, mopping away my creamy moustache. ‘That you’ve literally not heard a thing from him in weeks? That you thought he’d ghosted you?’

Something approaching a smirk of satisfaction passes over Maisie’s face.

‘I told you something terrible must’ve happened to him,’ she says, eyebrows raised over her cocktail. ‘I knew there was no way he’d just gone cold on me like that.’

I stare at her open-mouthed for a moment as she sips her drink and stretches her lithe body out under the sun. Is she seriously happier that he’s missing, presumed who-the-fuck-knows-what, than just ghosting her? A little smile plays on her lips as she wriggles herself into a comfier position on her lounger.

‘It’s fine anyway,’ she says with a sly smile. ‘I’ve met someone else.’

Are you fucking kidding me?

Some people are so ungrateful.





14


KITTY’S APARTMENT, CHELSEA

Tinder has now become my hunting ground and I’m absolutely loving it. Opening the app and swiping through the ‘honest, easy-going’ men with great senses of humour, desperately looking to find someone they can connect with on the most basic of human levels, is soul destroying. I pity the women who actually use apps like these to find love.

But.

Those photo-less profiles, the hazy pics where you can’t make out the face, the ones shrouded in dirty, deceitful mystery get my pulse racing like nothing else ever has. No drug or sex has even come close. For these are the men who need wiping from our society. These are the men who leave women crying into their pillows at 3am or wondering why they haven’t come home. These are the men who destroy families, whose children grow up with more issues than they can ever work their way through, even with the help of the most expensive therapists.

The world is better without these men, these cheaters, liars and predators. I’m just helping out really, cleansing a society that’s almost too grubby to bear. I know what it’s like to be that woman. At home, trying to untie the sick knot in my stomach, the inner alarm system telling me something isn’t right. I’ve sat in bed, crying my eyes raw, wondering why I wasn’t enough. There is no pain quite like that of a broken heart. No matter what anyone says. Time doesn’t heal and nothing can prepare you for it.

Even worse, nothing can fix it for you either.

It was Adam who broke my heart, of course. Adam Edwards. Older, successful and the toast of London at the time thanks to his first published book, ‘a hugely experimental work of fiction that will make you not only question your place in the world, but whether you deserve it’.

Yeah, I know.

But I was very young.

And Adam was very beautiful, well, he still is, I suppose. I didn’t kill him, that’s not where this is going. He’s dark-haired and dark-eyed with skin that tans like toast. His face, perfect. The kind of defined jawline that goes missing somewhere around the age of forty. But it wasn’t his looks that got me, it was his brain. He knew everything and could make anything sound interesting. When Hen introduced us at one of her dad’s soirees, he kissed my hand and said, ‘There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.’

Bram Stoker.

I was hooked right away. But, even back then I was wise enough to realise that Adam absolutely did not need to know this.

‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your book. I hear it’s made quite the impact.’

I ignored him for the rest of the night.

Predictably, it wasn’t long before he managed to wrangle my number from one of my friends. He began his seduction with a tsunami of iMessages a few days after our first meeting.

Adam: Beautiful Kitty. I was so charmed by you at Hen’s party. I’m very sad we didn’t get time to talk again. You’re a very popular lady.

Adam: Oh, I got your number from Ben btw. Hope you don’t mind. I get it’s a bit stalker-ish. But I can confirm 100% that I’m not a murderer.

Adam: Which I now realise is exactly what a murderer would say.

Adam: Anyway, what I’m trying, badly, to say is that I’d like to see you again when I’m back in London. Things are a bit crazy at the moment with the novel but I should be around in a couple of weeks. Can I text you?