#Cheap Removal in London | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bauliya · 24 days ago

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it’s funny how a trans woman acting even slightly horny on this site is chased off for being a groomer posthaste but the actual groomer and rapist targeting primarily young vulnerable female fans has a dedicated fandom. very cool of you.

(full article below the cut. photos removed)

SCARLETT PAVLOVICH WAS A 22-year-old drama student when she met the performer Amanda Palmer by chance on the streets of Auckland. It was a gray, drizzly afternoon in June 2020, and Palmer, then 44, was walking down the street with the actress Lucy Lawless, one of the most famous people in New Zealand owing to her six-season stint portraying Xena the warrior princess. But Pavlovich noticed only Palmer. She’d watched her TED Talk, “The Art of Asking,” and was fascinated by the cult-famous feminist writer and musician—by her unabashed self-assurance.

On the surface, Pavlovich appeared to be self-assured as well. A local girl, she had dropped out of high school at 15 to travel to Europe, Morocco, and the Middle East on the cheap, pausing in Scotland—where Tilda Swinton gave her a scholarship to attend her Steiner school, Drumduan—and London to work in the cabaret scene. Eventually, her visa expired and she ran out of money and so, in 2019, she returned to Auckland, where she enrolled in an acting school and took a job at a perfumery. Pale and dark-haired and waifish, she favored bold colors and outrageous outfits. On the day she met Palmer—on most days then—she’d painted a triangle of translucent silver beneath her lower lashes so it looked as though she’d been crying tears of glitter. It was Pavlovich who approached Palmer on the sidewalk outside the perfumery. She was surprised when Palmer texted her a few days later. “It’s amanda d palmer,” she wrote. “Your new friend.”

Palmer, an obsessive chronicler of her own life in songs, poems, blog posts, and a memoir, got her start as half of the punk cabaret band the Dresden Dolls, but she is perhaps more famous for her ability to attract a tight-knit and devoted following wherever she goes. In 2012, she became the first musician to raise more than $1 million on Kickstarter and later became one of Patreon’s most successful artists. As Palmer explained in her book The Art of Asking— part memoir, part manifesto on the virtues of asking for assistance of various kinds—she had built her entire career on “messy exchanges of goodwill and the swapping of favors.” Out of this mess, she argues, a utopian sort of community formed: “There was no distinction between fans and friends.”

Over the following year and a half, Palmer and Pavlovich occasionally met for a drink or a meal. Palmer offered Pavlovich tickets to her shows and invited her to parties for the Patreon community at her house on nearby Waiheke Island, a lush bohemian retreat with vineyards, golden beaches, and more than 60 helipads to accommodate the billionaires who vacationed there. Sometimes Palmer asked Pavlovich for favors—help running errands or organizing files or looking after her child. Pavlovich was happy to assist. She had a crush on Palmer. She didn’t mind that Palmer only occasionally discussed paying her, even though Pavlovich was always strapped for cash. For Pavlovich, who was estranged from her family and without a safety net, Palmer filled a deeper need. In November 2020, Palmer invited her to hang out at her place for a weekend with a group of local artists. At the gathering, Palmer asked Pavlovich to babysit while she got a massage. Early the next morning, Pavlovich wrote a diary entry about the easy intimacy she’d felt in Palmer’s sun-drenched home, where she’d read to Palmer’s son, who was 5 at the time, their limbs entwined. “The years absent of touch build up like a gray inheritance,” she wrote. “I’m hungry. I am so fucking famished.”

On February 1, 2022, Palmer texted Pavlovich and asked if she wanted to spend the weekend babysitting, which would mean bouncing back and forth between her house and her husband’s. Pavlovich had never met Palmer’s husband, from whom she was separated, though of course she knew who he was: Neil Gaiman, the acclaimed British fantasist and author of nearly 50 books, including American Gods and Coraline, and the comic-book series The Sandman, whose work has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. Gaiman and Palmer had arrived in New Zealand in March 2020, but just weeks later, their nine-year marriage collapsed and Gaiman skipped town, breaking COVID protocols to fly to his home on the Isle of Skye. Now, he’d returned and was living in a house near Palmer’s on Waiheke. Their previous nanny had recently left, and they needed help. Pavlovich agreed and was pleased when Palmer offered to pay her for the weekend’s work.

Around four in the afternoon on February 4, Pavlovich took the ferry from Auckland to Waiheke, then sat on a bus and walked through the woods until she arrived at Gaiman’s house, an asymmetrical A-frame of dark burnished wood with picture windows overlooking the sea. Palmer had arranged a playdate for the child, so not long after Pavlovich arrived, she found herself alone in the house with the author. For a little while, Gaiman worked in his office while she read on the couch. Then he emerged and offered her a tour of the grounds. A striking figure at 61, his wild black curls threaded with strands of silver, the author picked a fig—her favorite fruit—and handed it to her. Around 8 p.m., they sat down for pizza. Gaiman poured Pavlovich a glass of rosé and then another. He drank only water. They made awkward conversation about New Zealand, about COVID. Pavlovich had never read any of his work, but she was anxious to make a good impression. After she’d cleaned up their plates, Gaiman noted that there was still time before they would have to pick up his son from the playdate. “‘I’ve had a thought,’” she recalls him saying. “ ‘Why don’t you have a bath in the beautiful claw bathtub in the garden? It’s absolutely enchanting.’” Pavlovich told Gaiman that she was fine as she was but ultimately agreed. He needed to make a work call, he said, and didn’t want Pavlovich to be bored.

Gaiman led Pavlovich down a stone path into the garden to an old-fashioned tub with a roll top and walked away. She got undressed and sank into the bath, looking up at the furry magenta blossoms of the pohutukawa tree overhead. A few minutes later, she was surprised to hear Gaiman’s footsteps on the stones in the dark. She tried to cover her breasts with her arms. When he arrived at the bath, she saw that he was naked. Gaiman put out a couple of citronella candles, lit them, and got into the bath. He stretched out, facing her, and, for a few minutes, made small talk. He bitched about Palmer’s schedule. He talked about his kid’s school. Then he told her to stretch her legs out and “get comfortable.”

“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich recalls. “He said, ‘It’s okay—it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’” She didn’t move. He looked at her again and said, “Don’t ruin the moment.” She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet. At that point, she recalls, she felt “a subtle terror.”

Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap. Pavlovich stammered out a few sentences: She was gay, she’d never had sex, she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15. Gaiman continued to press. “The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich tells me. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me ‘master,’ and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’ ”

Afterward, Pavlovich crouched down in the water and tried to clean herself off. Gaiman looked at her and smiled. “‘Amanda told me I couldn’t have you,’ ” Pavlovich recalls him saying. As soon as he’d heard this, he “knew he had to have” her. “‘God,’ ” he continued, “ ‘I wish it were the good old days where we could both fuck you.’ ”

IN THE SANDMAN, the DC comic-book series that ran from 1989 to 1996 and made Gaiman famous, he tells a story about a writer named Richard Madoc. After Madoc’s first book proves a success, he sits down to write his second and finds that he can’t come up with a single decent idea. This difficulty recedes after he accepts an unusual gift from an older author: a naked woman, of a kind, who has been kept locked in a room in his house for 60 years. She is Calliope, the youngest of the Nine Muses. Madoc rapes her, again and again, and his career blossoms in the most extraordinary way. A stylish young beauty tells him how much she loved his characterization of a strong female character, prompting him to remark, “Actually, I do tend to regard myself as a feminist writer.” His downfall comes only when the titular hero, the Sandman, also known as the Prince of Stories, frees Calliope from bondage. A being of boundless charisma and creativity, the Sandman rules the Dreaming, the realm we visit in our sleep, where “stories are spun.” Older and more powerful than the most powerful gods, he can reward us with exquisite delights or punish us with unending nightmares, depending on what he feels we deserve. To punish the rapist, the Sandman floods Madoc’s mind with such a wild torrent of ideas that he’s powerless to write them down, let alone profit from them.

“THAT SAME VOICE THAT TOLD ME THOSE BEAUTIFUL STORIES when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe, and that we were friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.”

As allegations of Gaiman’s sexual misconduct emerged this past summer, some observers noticed Gaiman and Madoc have certain things in common. Like Madoc, Gaiman has called himself a feminist. Like Madoc, Gaiman has racked up major awards (for Gaiman, awards in science fiction and fantasy as well as dozens of prizes for contemporary novels, short stories, poetry, television, and film, helping make him, according to several sources, a multimillionaire). And like Madoc, Gaiman has come to be seen as a figure who transcended, and transformed, the genres in which he wrote: first comics, then fantasy and children’s literature. But for most of his career, readers identified him not with the rapist, who shows up in a single issue, but with the Sandman, the inexhaustible fountain of story.

One of Gaiman’s greatest gifts as a storyteller was his voice, a warm and gentle instrument that he’d tuned through elocution lessons as a boy in East Grinstead, 30 miles south of London. In America, people mistakenly assumed he was an English gentleman. “He spoke very slowly, in a hypnotic way,” says one of his former students at the fantasy-writing workshop Clarion. He wrote that way, too, with rhythm and restraint, lulling you into a trance in the way that a bard might have done with a lyre. Another gift was his memory. He has “libraries full of books memorized,” one of his old friends tells me, noting that he could recall the page numbers of his favorite passages and recite them verbatim. His vast collection was eclectic enough to encompass both a box of comics (Spider-Man, Silver Surfer) from his boyhood and the works of Oscar Wilde he received as a gift for his bar mitzvah. For The Sandman, a forgotten DC property he had been hired to dust off and polish up, Gaiman gave the hero a makeover, replacing his green suit, fedora, and gas mask with the leather armor of an angsty goth, and surrounded him with characters drawn from the books he could pull off the shelves in his head, from timeless icons like Shakespeare and Lucifer to the obscure San Francisco eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton. Norman Mailer called it “a comic strip for intellectuals.”

Gaiman and the Sandman shared a penchant for dressing in black, a shock of unruly black hair, and an erotic power seldom possessed by authors of comic books and fantasy novels. A descendant of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gaiman had gotten his start in the ’80s as a journalist for hire in London covering Duran Duran, Lou Reed, and other brooding lords of rock, and in the world of comic conventions, he was the closest thing there was to that archetype. Women would turn up to his signings dressed in the elaborate Victorian-goth attire of his characters and beg him to sign their breasts or slip him key cards to their hotel rooms. One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011. His assistant wasn’t around, and he was late to a reading. “I can’t get to it if I walk by myself,” he told her. As they made their way through the convention side by side, “the whole floor full of people tilted and slid toward him,” she says. “They wanted to be entwined with him in ways I was not prepared to defend him against.” A woman fell to her knees and wept.

People who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,” one of Gaiman’s former friends, a fantasy writer, tells me. They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says. They want to share their souls with the creators of these works. “And if you have morality around it, you say ‘no.’ ” It was an open secret in the late ’90s and early aughts among conventiongoers that Gaiman cheated on his first wife, Mary McGrath, a private midwestern Scientologist he’d married in his early 20s. But in my conversations with Gaiman’s old friends, collaborators, and peers, nearly all of them told me that they never imagined that Gaiman’s affairs could have been anything but enthusiastically consensual. As one prominent editor in the field puts it, “The one thing I hear again and again, largely from women, is ‘He was always nice to me. He was always a gentleman.’ ” The writer Kelly Link, who met Gaiman at a reading in 1997, recalls finding him charmingly goofy. “He was hapless in a way that was kind of exasperating,” she says, “but also made him seem very harmless.” Someone who had a sexual relationship with Gaiman in the aughts recalls him flipping through questions fans wrote on cards at a Q&A session. Once, a fan asked if she could be his “sex slave”: “He read it aloud and said, ‘Well, no.’ He’d be very demure.”

But there were some who saw another side of the author. One woman, Brenda (a pseudonym), met Gaiman in the ’90s at a signing for The Sandman where she was working. On signing lines, Gaiman had a knack for connecting with each individual. He would ask questions, laugh, and assure them that their inability to form sentences was fine. After the Sandman signing, at a dinner attended by those who had worked the event, Gaiman sat next to Brenda. “Everyone wanted to be near him, but he was laser focused on me,” she says. A few years later, Brenda traveled to Chicago to attend the World Horror Convention, where Gaiman received the top prize for American Gods, the book that cemented him as a best-selling novelist. The night after the awards ceremony, she and Gaiman ended up in bed together. As soon as they began to hook up, the feeling that had drawn her to him—the magical spell of his interest in her individuality—vanished. “He seemed to have a script,” she tells me. “He wanted me to call him ‘master’ immediately.” He demanded that she promise him her soul. “It was like he’d gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me.”

THIS PAST JULY, a British podcast produced by Tortoise Media broke the news that two women had accused Gaiman of sexual assault. Since then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse. The podcast, Master, reported by Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, tells the stories of five of them. (Gaiman’s perspective on these relationships, including with Pavlovich, is that they were entirely consensual.) I spoke with four of those women along with four others whose stories share elements with theirs. I also reviewed contemporaneous diary entries, texts and emails with friends, messages between Gaiman and the women, and police correspondence. Most of the women were in their 20s when they met Gaiman. The youngest was 18. Two of them worked for him. Five were his fans. With one exception, an allegation of forcible kissing from 1986, when Gaiman was in his mid-20s, the stories take place when Gaiman was in his 40s or older, a period in which he lived among the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand. By then, he had a reputation as an outspoken champion of women. “Gaiman insists on telling the stories of people who are traditionally marginalized, missing, or silenced in literature,” wrote Tara Prescott-Johnson in the essay collection Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman. Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy.

Katherine Kendall was 22 when she met Gaiman in 2012. She was volunteering at one of his events in Asheville, North Carolina. He invited her to join him a few days later at an after-party for another event, where he kissed her. The two struck up a flirtatious correspondence, emailing and Skyping in the middle of the night. Kendall didn’t want to have sex with Gaiman, and on one of their calls, she told him this. Afterward, she recorded his reply in her diary: “He had no designs on me beyond flirty friendship and I believe him thoroughly.” She’d grown up listening to his audiobooks, she later told Papillon DeBoer, the host of the podcast Am I Broken: “And then that same voice that told me those beautiful stories when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe, and that we were just friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.”

At a reading ten months later, Gaiman suggested that Kendall and two other girls wait for him on his tour bus so they could all hang out after he was done signing. When Gaiman showed up, he pulled Kendall into the back of the bus and lay on top of her. He kept saying, “Kiss me like you mean it,” Kendall remembers. She tried to get into it, but she was panicked. Eventually, Gaiman rolled off her. “‘I’m a very wealthy man,’” she remembers him saying, “ ‘and I’m used to getting what I want.’ ” (Years later, Gaiman gave Kendall $60,000 to pay for therapy in an attempt, as he put it in a recorded phone call, “to make up some of the damage.”)

Gaiman had been having sexual encounters with younger fans for a long time. Kendra Stout was 18 when, in 2003, she drove four and a half hours to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to see Gaiman read from Endless Nights, a follow-up to The Sandman. She met him in the signing line. Gaiman sent her long emails and bought her a web camera so they could chat on video. Around three years after they met, he flew to Orlando to take her on a date. He invited her back to his hotel room, put on a playlist of love songs, and held her down with one hand. Gaiman didn’t believe in foreplay or lubrication, Stout tells me, which could make sex particularly painful. When she said it hurt too much, he’d tell her the problem was she wasn’t submissive enough. “He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me,” she tells me. Stout had no prior interest in BDSM. She says Gaiman never asked what she liked in bed, and there was no discussion of “safe words” or “aftercare” or “limits.” He’d ask her to call him “master” and beat her with his belt. “These were not sexy little taps,” she says. When she told him she didn’t like it, she says he replied, “It’s the only way I can get off.”

Gaiman told Stout he had been introduced to these practices by a woman he’d met in his early 20s who had asked him to “whip her pussy.” At the time, he claimed to Stout, he was such a naïve Englishman that he thought she meant her cat. Then she handed him a flogger and told him to use it on her vagina. “‘This is what gets me off now,’ ” Stout recalls him saying. A similar anecdote shows up in an interview Gaiman gave for a 2022 biography of Kathy Acker, the late experimental punk writer Gaiman befriended in his 20s, but he offers a different account of how it affected him. When Acker asked him to “whip her pussy,” he found it “profoundly unsexual,” he told the interviewer. “I did it and ran away.” He identified himself as “very vanilla.”

In 2007, Gaiman and Stout took a trip to the Cornish countryside. On their last night there, Stout developed a UTI that had gotten so bad she couldn’t sit down. She told Gaiman they could fool around but that any penetration would be too painful to bear. “It was a big hard ‘no,’” she says. “I told him, ‘You cannot put anything in my vagina or I will die.’ ” Gaiman flipped her over on the bed, she says, and attempted to penetrate her with his fingers. She told him “no.” He stopped for a moment and then he penetrated her with his penis. At that point, she tells me, “I just shut down.” She lay on the bed until he was finished. (This past October, she filed a police report alleging he raped her.)

According to the podcast, which quoted Gaiman through his representatives, his position was that “sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism may not be to everyone’s taste, but between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful.” (Gaiman declined to speak with me despite multiple requests, but through a legal representative, he responded to some claims.) If you know nothing about BDSM, Gaiman’s claim that he was engaging in it with these women may sound plausible, at least in some cases. The kind of domineering violence he inflicted on them is common among people who practice BDSM, and all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him. But there is a crucial difference between BDSM and what Gaiman was doing. An acronym for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism,” BDSM is a culture with a set of longstanding norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it. This, as many practitioners, including sex educators like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy who wrote some of the defining texts of the subculture, have stressed over decades, is the defining line that separates BDSM from abuse. And it was a line that Gaiman, according to the women, did not respect. Two of the women, who have never spoken to each other, compared him to an anglerfish, the deep-sea predator that uses a bulb of bioluminescence to lure prey into its jaws. “Instead of a light,” one says, “he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.”

AFTER GAIMAN GOT INTO the bathtub with Pavlovich, she retreated to Palmer’s house, which was vacant at the time. She sat in the shower for an hour, crying, then got into Palmer’s bed and began to search the internet for clues that might explain what had happened to her. She Googled “Me Too” and “Neil Gaiman.” Nothing. The only negative stories she found were about how he’d broken COVID lockdown rules in 2020 and had been forced to apologize to the people of the Isle of Skye for endangering their lives.

At the end of the weekend, Palmer texted Pavlovich to say how pleased she was to see Pavlovich and her child get along. “The universe is a karmic mystery,” Palmer wrote. “We nourish each other in the most random and unpredictable ways.” Palmer asked if she could babysit again. She needed so much help. Would Pavlovich consider staying with them for the foreseeable future?

Pavlovich was living in a sublet that was about to end. She was broke and hadn’t been able to find a new apartment. She’d been homeless at the start of the pandemic, when the perfumery closed, and had ended up crashing on the beach in a friend’s sleeping bag on and off for the first two weeks of lockdown. The thought of returning to the beach filled her with dread.

She didn’t consider reaching out to her own family. Her parents had divorced when she was 3, and Pavlovich had grown up splitting time between their households. Violence, Pavlovich tells me, “was normalized in the household.” One close family member beat her with a belt. Another would strangle Pavlovich when she got upset and slap her across the face until her cheeks were raw. She began to regularly cut her arms and wrists with a knife when she was 11. She became bulimic, then anorexic. By 13, Pavlovich had grown so thin that she ended up in a psychiatric unit at Auckland Children’s Hospital and spent weeks on a feeding tube. When she was 15, she left home and never went back.

In the years since, she had been looking for a new family, but many of the people she’d encountered in that search turned out to be abusive as well. “After all of this, Amanda Palmer was an actual creature sent from a celestial realm. It was like, Hallelujah,” Pavlovich tells me. Palmer was famous for speaking out about sexual abuse and encouraging others to do the same. In songs and essays, she had written of having been sexually assaulted and raped on multiple occasions as a teenager and young woman. Pavlovich didn’t think someone like that could be married to someone who would assault women.

Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing forms of violence that a person can experience. The majority of people who have endured it do not immediately recognize it as such; some never do. “You’re not thinking in a linear or logical fashion,” Pavlovich says, “but the mind is trying to process it in the ways that it can.” Whatever had happened in the bath, she’d been through worse and survived, she thought. And Gaiman and Palmer were offering her the possibility of a shared future. Palmer’s vision of herself as the central figure of a utopian community could, according to some of her friends, make her careless with the young, impressionable women she invited into her and her husband’s lives. “Her idealism could blind her to reality,” one friend says. (Palmer declined to be interviewed, but I spoke with people close to her.) Palmer told Pavlovich they might travel to London together, and to Scotland, where Gaiman was shooting the second season of Good Omens. Pavlovich had wanted to leave New Zealand—her “epicenter of trauma”—for as long as she could remember. These conversations filled her head with fantasies “of finally being on solid ground in the world.”

After Palmer’s offer, Pavlovich texted Gaiman: “I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I’m so hungry. What a terrible creature you’ve turned me into.” The following weekend, she packed up her sublet and boarded the ferry to Waiheke.

THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, Gaiman has written about terror from the point of view of a child. His most recent novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, tells the story of a quiet and bookish 7-year-old boy. Through various unfortunate events, he ends up with a hole in his heart that can never be healed, a doorway through which nightmares from distant realms enter our world. Over the course of the tale, the boy suffers terribly, sometimes at the hands of his own family. At dinner one night, the boy refuses to eat the food his nanny has prepared. The nanny, the boy knows, isn’t really a human but a nightmare creature from another world. When his father demands to know why he won’t eat, the boy explains, “She’s a monster.” His father becomes enraged. To punish him, he fills the tub, then picks up the child, plunges him into the bath, and pushes his shoulders and head beneath the chilly water. “I had read many books in that bath,” the boy says. “It was one of my safe places. And now, I had no doubt, I was going to die there.” Later that night, the boy runs away from home; on his way out, he glimpses his father having sex with the monstrous nanny through the drawing-room window.

In various interviews over the years, Gaiman has called The Ocean at the End of the Lane his most personal book. While much of it is fantastical, Gaiman has said “that kid is me.” The book is set in Sussex, where Gaiman grew up. In the story, the narrator survives otherworldly evil with the help of a family of magical women. As a child, Gaiman had no such friends to call on. “I was going back to the 7-year-old me and giving myself a peculiar kind of love that I didn’t have,” he told an interviewer in 2017. “I never feel the past is dead or young Neil isn’t around anymore. He’s still there, hiding in a library somewhere, looking for a doorway that will lead him to somewhere safe where everything works.”

While Gaiman has identified the boy in the book as himself, he has also claimed that none of the things that happen to the boy happened to him. Yet there is reason to believe that some of the most horrifying events of the novel did occur. Gaiman has rarely spoken about a core fact of his childhood. In 1965, when Neil was 5 years old, his parents, David and Sheila, left their jobs as a business executive and a pharmacist and bought a house in East Grinstead, a mile away from what was at that time the worldwide headquarters for the Church of Scientology. Its founder, the former science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, lived down the road from them from 1965 the church. By the late ’60s, David was the church’s public face and chief spokesperson in the U.K.

It was a challenging job, to say the least. The U.K., following the example of a handful of other governments, had issued a report declaring Scientology’s methods “a serious danger to the health of those who submit to them.” Hubbard would routinely punish members of the organization who committed minor infractions by binding them, blindfolding them, and throwing them overboard into icy waters. Back in England, David gave interviews to the press to smooth over such troubling accounts. The church was under particular pressure to assure the public it was not harming children. In his bulletins to members, Hubbard had made it clear that children were not to be exempt from the punishments to which adults were subjected. If a child laughed inappropriately or failed to remember a Scientology term, they could be sent to the ship’s hold and made to chip Scientology lingo, is what happens when you complete one of the lower levels of coursework.) What was happening away from the cameras is difficult to know, in part because Gaiman has avoided talking about it, changing the subject whenever an interviewer, or a friend, brings it up. But it seems unlikely that he would have been spared the disciplinary measures inflicted on adults and children as a standard practice at that time. According to someone who knew the Gaimans, David and Sheila did apply Scientology’s methods at home. When Neil was around the age of the child in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the person said, David took him up to the bathtub, ran a cold bath, and “drowned him to the point where Neil was screaming for air.”

As a teenager, Neil worked for the Church of Scientology for three years as an auditor, a minister of the church who conducts a process some have likened to hypnosis. One former member of the church who worked with Gaiman’s parents and was audited until 1967, when he fled the country and began directing the church from international waters, pursued by the CIA, FBI, and a handful of foreign governments and maritime agencies.

David and Sheila were among England’s earliest adherents to Scientology. They began studying Dianetics in 1956 and eventually took positions in the Guardian’s Office, a special department of the organization dedicated to handling the church’s growing number of legal cases, public communications, and intelligence operations. The mission of this office, as Hubbard wrote, was its “covert use in destroying the repute of individuals and groups.” On the side, the Gaimans ran the church’s canteen, lodged foreign Scientologists in their home, and opened a vitamin company in town, where they supplied courses of supplements for Scientology’s “detoxification” programs, a business that grew exponentially alongside the expansion of rust for days or confined in a chain locker for weeks at a time without blankets or a bathroom. In his book Going Clear, Lawrence Wright recounts the story of a 4-year-old boy named Derek Greene, an adopted Black child who stole a Rolex and dropped it overboard. He was confined to the locker for two days and nights. When his mother pleaded with Hubbard to let him out, he “reminded her of the Scientology axiom that children are actually adults in small bodies, and equally responsible for their behavior.” (A representative for the Church of Scientology said it does not speak about members past or present but denies that this event occurred.)

David used Neil as an exhibit in his case to the public. In 1968, he arranged for Neil to give an interview to the BBC. When the reporter asked the child if Scientology made him “a better boy,” Neil replied, “Not exactly that, but when you make a release, you feel absolutely great.” (A release, in by Gaiman recalls him as precocious and ambitious. It was unusual for a teenager to have completed such a high level of training, he tells me. But the Gaimans were like “royalty,” he says. In 1981, David was promoted to lead the Guardian’s Office, making him one of the most powerful people in the church. But the same year, he fell from grace. A new generation of Scientologists, led by David Miscavige, who eventually succeeded Hubbard as the church’s leader, had Hubbard’s ear, and David was “caught in that grinder,” as his former colleague puts it. A document declaring David a “Suppressive person” was released a few years later. It accused him of a range of offenses, including sexual misconduct. David, the document claims, put on a “front” of being “mild mannered and quite sociable,” adding that his actions “belie this.” His greatest offense, it seemed, was hubris. “Gaiman required others to look up to him instead of to Source,” it reads, referring to Hubbard.

In the ’80s, David was sent off to a sort of rehabilitation camp. It was around this time that Gaiman set out to make a living as a writer. Charming and strategic, he used the contacts he developed as a journalist to break into the business of genre writing, endearing himself to the giants of that world at the time: Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, Alan Moore. “When I was young, I had unbelievable chutzpah,” Gaiman says in the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously. “The kind of monstrous self-certainty that you only get normally in people who then go on to conquer half the civilized world.”

GAIMAN AND PALMER MET in 2008, when she was 32 and he was 47. Both were at a turning point in their lives and careers. Gaiman was in the midst of finalizing a divorce from his first wife, with whom he had three children, and on the verge of breaking into Hollywood (nine of his works have been turned into movies or TV shows); Palmer was in a fight with her record label that would culminate in a split. Palmer had a collection of photos of herself posing as a murdered corpse and wanted Gaiman to write captions to go along with the pictures. Gaiman liked the idea, and the two met to work on the project, a book tied to her first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. As Palmer described in The Art of Asking, they were not attracted to each other at first. “I thought he looked like a baggy-eyed, grumpy old man, and he thought I looked like a chubby little boy.”

Gaiman was the first to propose a romantic relationship. In an interview, he later said, “I got together with her because I couldn’t ever imagine being bored.” Palmer could. Ever since she’d gotten her start as a street busker, painting her face white and standing on a crate in Harvard Square dressed as a silent eight-foot-tall bride, she prided herself on a low-rent, bohemian lifestyle, couch-surfing when she toured, playing random shows in the living rooms of her fans. She had no savings and didn’t own a car, real estate, or kitchen appliances. Gaiman owned multiple houses. He was too rich, too famous, too British, too awkward, too old. And they didn’t have great sexual chemistry. But he appeared to be kind and stable, a family man, and they shared a dark, fantastical aesthetic. She also felt a little sorry for him. He seemed lonely, in spite of his fame, and Palmer found herself hoping that she could help him. “He’d believed for a long time, deep down, that people didn’t actually fall in love,” she wrote in her book. “ ‘But that’s impossible,’ ” she told him. He’d written stories and scenes of people in love. “‘That’s the whole point, darling,’ he said. ‘Writers make things up.’ ”

They wed in 2011 in the Berkeley home of their friends Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the novelists. Their union had a multiplying effect on their fame and stature, drawing each out of their respective domains of cult stardom and into the airy realm of tech-funded virality. They became darlings of the TED Talk circuit and regulars at Jeff Bezos’s ultrasecret Campfire retreat. Gaiman introduced Palmer to Twitter, which he had used to become fantasy’s most beloved author of 140-character bons mots. Palmer, in turn, leaned into her growing reputation as a crowdfunding genius. Online, they flirted, went after each other’s critics, and praised each other’s progressive politics. In an interview with Out magazine in 2012, Palmer said that the main “other” relationship in both of their lives was with their fans: “Sometimes when I’m with Neil, and go to the other room to Twitter with my followers, it feels like sneaking off for a quick shag.”

This wasn’t strictly a metaphor. During the early years of their marriage, they lived apart for months at a time and encouraged each other to have affairs. According to conversations with five of Palmer’s closest friends, the most important rule governing their open relationship was honesty. They found that sharing the details of their extramarital dalliances—and sometimes sharing the same partners—brought them closer together.

In 2012, Palmer met a 20-year-old fan, who has asked to be referred to as Rachel, at a Dresden Dolls concert. After one of Palmer’s next shows, the women had sex. The morning after, Palmer snapped a few semi-naked pictures of Rachel and asked if she could send one to Gaiman. She and Palmer slept together a few more times, but then Palmer seemed to lose interest in sex with her. Some six months after they met, Palmer introduced Rachel to Gaiman online, telling Rachel, “He’ll love you.” The two struck up a correspondence that quickly turned sexual, and Gaiman invited her to his house in Wisconsin. As she packed for the trip, she asked Palmer over email if she had any advice for pleasing Gaiman in bed. Palmer joked in response, “i think the fun is finding out on your own.” With Gaiman, Rachel says there was never a “blatant rupture of consent” but that he was always pressing her to do things that hurt and scared her. Looking back, she feels Palmer gave her to him “like a toy.”

For Gaiman and Palmer, these were happy years. With his editing help, she wrote The Art of Asking. They toured together. And when Palmer was offered a residency at Bard College, Gaiman tagged along to give some talks, then ended up receiving an offer to join the faculty as a professor of the arts. After they’d been together for a few years, Palmer began asking Gaiman to tell her more about his childhood in Scientology. But he seemed unable to string more than a few sentences together. When she encouraged him to continue, he would curl up on the bed into a fetal position and cry. He refused to see a therapist. Instead, he sat down to write a short story that kept getting longer until it had turned into a novel. Although the child at the center of the story in many ways remains opaque, Palmer felt he had never been so open. He dedicated the book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, “to Amanda, who wanted to know.”

IN 2014, THE CRACKS in Gaiman and Palmer’s marriage began to show to those around them. While they were at Bard, they decided to buy a house upstate. Palmer would have preferred to live in New York City, but Gaiman liked the woods. Eventually, he picked a sprawling estate set on 80 acres in Woodstock. It was Gaiman’s money, a friend who accompanied them on the house hunt says, “and he was going to have the say.”

Later that year, Palmer got pregnant. She and Gaiman were spending more time at home together and talked about slowing down and devoting their attention to their marriage. She wanted to close the relationship, and he agreed. But when she was eight months pregnant, Gaiman came to her with a problem: He had slept with a fan in her early 20s, taking her virginity. Now, Gaiman told her, the girl was “going crazy.” He promised to change, and they met with a couples counselor. Gaiman was prone to panic attacks and had never been in treatment. “Amanda was shocked at how traumatized Neil was, given his public persona and the guy she thought she’d married,” a person close to them says.

One of the people in whom Palmer confided about her marital issues at the time was Caroline, a potter who, along with her builder husband, Phillip, had been living on the Woodstock property and working as a caretaker. Gaiman had made them an offer that seemed too good to be true. They would build an addition on one of the cabins on the land at Gaiman’s expense, and in exchange, Gaiman would sell them a five-acre parcel, allowing them to put up a barn-style home to share with their three daughters. They tended to the garden, ran errands for guests, and rehabilitated the buildings, which needed plumbing and electrical work.

At lunch one day, Palmer told Caroline she hated living in the woods and was disturbed by what she was learning about her husband. “‘You have no idea the twisted, dark things that go on in that man’s head,’ ” Caroline recalls Palmer saying. Palmer said she wished her marriage were more like Caroline and Phillip’s, but their marriage of 11 years was falling apart, too. In 2017, Phillip moved out of their house. Caroline, 54, spent her days in bed crying and drinking. She stopped eating and, for the most part, stopped working. It was then that Gaiman began paying attention to her. He would bring juices up to her cabin and fret that she was losing too much weight. The first time he touched her, in December 2018, she was sitting on his couch next to him, crying from exhaustion. Gaiman told her, “You need a hug.” She stood and he hugged her, then slid his hands down her pants and into her underwear and squeezed her butt. She does not recall saying or doing anything in response. “I was stunned,” she says.

Over the next two years, they had a series of sexual encounters, always when Palmer was away. When Gaiman wasn’t around, they occasionally engaged in phone sex. At first Caroline, who hadn’t been with anyone since Phillip left, went along willingly. But at the end of their second encounter, she remembers asking Gaiman what Palmer would think about their romance: “He said, ‘Caroline, there is no romance.’” After that, she tried to keep her distance from him, darting away when she saw him on the estate. He was difficult to avoid. He kept an egg incubator in Caroline’s cabin and would come down and check on it, entering without texting first. On one of these visits, he found her crying by the fireplace. He walked over to her, stuck his thumb in her mouth, and twisted her nipples. She told Gaiman the arrangement was making her “feel bad.” She recalls him replying, “I don’t want you to feel bad.” But nothing changed. Caroline had no income at the time and was borrowing money from her sister to get by. She worried that if she didn’t appease Gaiman, he’d kick her out of her house and then she and her three daughters would have nowhere to go. “ ‘I like our trade,’ ” she remembers him saying. “ ‘You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.’ ”

Sometimes she would babysit. Once, Caroline and the boy, then 4, fell asleep reading stories in Gaiman and Palmer’s bed. Caroline woke up when Gaiman returned home. He got into bed with his son in the middle, then reached across the child to grab Caroline’s hand and put it on his penis. She says she jumped out of the bed. “He didn’t have boundaries,” Caroline says. “I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him.”

In April 2021, Gaiman informed Caroline that the land he’d promised her was no longer available. That summer, she stopped responding to his attempts to engage in phone sex and Gaiman increased the pressure on her to leave his property. One night in December 2021, Gaiman’s business manager, Terry Bird, called Caroline and offered her $5,000 to move immediately if she’d sign a 16-page NDA agreeing to never discuss anything about her experience with Gaiman or Palmer or to take legal action against Gaiman. Caroline recalls saying to Bird, “What am I going to do with $5,000? I need therapy. This is maybe $300,000.” Looking back, she says she didn’t know how she came up with that number, but Gaiman agreed to it, and she signed. (Gaiman’s representatives say Caroline initiated the sexual encounters and deny that he engaged in any sexual activity with her in the presence of his son.)

TWO MONTHS LATER, Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke. By then, Palmer and Gaiman were divorcing. According to Palmer’s friends, she asked for a divorce after Rachel called to tell her that she and Gaiman were still having sexual contact, long past the point when Palmer thought their relationship had ended. She was hurt but unsurprised. “I find it all very boring,” she later wrote to Rachel, who recalls the exchange. “Just the lack of self-knowledge and the lack of interest in self-knowledge.” In late 2021, Palmer found out about Caroline, too. “I remember her saying, ‘That poor woman,’” recalls Lance Horne, a musician and friend of Palmer’s in whom she confided at the time. “‘I can’t believe he did it again.’”

By the time she asked Pavlovich to babysit, Palmer was fed up with Gaiman’s behavior, but “she still had some faith in his decency,” a friend says. Still, she knew enough to warn Gaiman to stay away from their new babysitter. “I remember specifically her saying, ‘You could really hurt this person and break her; keep your hands off of her,’ ” the friend says. And Palmer still hoped, according to those close to her, that she and Gaiman would be able to negotiate a peaceful co-parenting arrangement. She found a school for their child and the two houses on Waiheke. “She was going to do her best to keep Neil as a presence for her son,” one friend says.

One evening, Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gaiman and retreated back to her own place. Pavlovich was in the kitchen, tidying up, when he approached her from behind and pulled her to the sofa. “It all happened again so quickly,” Pavlovich says. Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to beat her with his belt. He then attempted to initiate anal sex without lubrication. “I screamed ‘no,’” Pavlovich says. Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a rape scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent. But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done. After she said “no,” Gaiman backed off briefly and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he brought butter to use as lubricant. She continued to scream until Gaiman was finished. When it was over, he called her “slave” and ordered her to “clean him up.” She protested that it wasn’t hygienic. “He said, ‘Are you defying your master?’ ” she recalls. “I had to lick my own shit.”

Afterward, she got into the shower and tried to wash her mouth out with a bar of lavender soap. It had a grainy texture and tasted of metal, acid, and herbs. She noticed blood swirling down the drain. He hadn’t used a condom, and she worried she might have gotten an infection. She had a migraine, and her whole body ached. But she didn’t consider leaving. She’d hated herself her whole life, she tells me, “and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent.” She says she understands how Scientologists might have felt when they were sent to the Hole, a detention center where they were forced to lick the floor as punishment. She’d heard of how some would stay in the room even after they were allowed to leave. “People keep licking the floor in that horrible room,” she says.

The nights with Gaiman blurred together. There was the time she passed out from pain while Gaiman was having anal sex with her. He made her perform oral sex while his penis had urine on it. He ordered her to suck him off while he watched screeners for the first season of The Sandman. In one instance, he thrust his penis into Pavlovich’s mouth with such force that she vomited on him. Then he told her to eat the vomit off his lap and lick it up from the couch.

A week or so into Pavlovich’s time with the family, their son began to address her as “slave” and ordered Pavlovich to call him “master.” Gaiman seemed to find it amusing. Sometimes he’d say to his child, in an affable tone, “Now, now, Scarlett’s not a slave. No, you mustn’t.” One day, Pavlovich came into the living room when Gaiman and the boy were on the couch watching the children’s show Odd Squad. She joined them, sitting down next to the child. Gaiman put his arm around them both, reached into Pavlovich’s shirt, and fondled her breasts. She says he didn’t make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy. Another time, during the day, he requested oral sex in the middle of the kitchen while the boy was awake and somewhere in the house. “He would never shut a door,” she says.

On February 19, 2022, Gaiman and his son spent the night at a hotel in Auckland, which they sometimes did for fun. Gaiman asked Pavlovich if she could come by and watch the child for an hour so he could get a massage. It was a small room—one double bed, a television, and a bathroom. When he returned, Gaiman and the boy ate dinner, takeout from a nearby delicatessen. Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad. The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed. Pavlovich perched on the edge of the mattress; Gaiman got onto the bed and pulled her so she was on her back. He lifted the covers up over them. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop. She mouthed, “What the fuck are you doing?” She didn’t want the child to overhear what she was saying. Gaiman ignored her. He rolled her onto her side, took off his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have sex with her from behind while continuing to speak with his son. “ ‘You should really get off the iPad,’ ” she recalls him saying. Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow. After about five minutes, Gaiman got up and walked to the bathroom, half-naked. He urinated on his hand and then returned to Pavlovich, frozen on the bed, and told her to “lick it off.” He went back to the bathroom, naked from the waist down. “Before you leave,” he told Pavlovich, “you have to finish your job.” She went to the bathroom, and he pushed her to her knees. The door was open. (Gaiman’s representatives say these allegations are “false, not to mention, deplorable.”)

Three weeks after Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke, Palmer told her that the child would be traveling with Gaiman to Edinburgh in a few days to visit the Amazon production of his series Anansi Boys. They wouldn’t need her for a couple of weeks. That morning, Pavlovich came down with COVID. Palmer and Gaiman agreed that she could isolate in Gaiman’s empty home. They still hadn’t paid her for a single hour she’d worked for them.

TEN DAYS AFTER Gaiman left New Zealand, Pavlovich went to Palmer’s house for dinner. She asked Palmer if she could tell her something in confidence and made her promise not to tell Gaiman. She begged for reassurance that she would still keep her job as the child’s nanny. Palmer assured Pavlovich her employment was not in danger. Sitting in the kitchen, Pavlovich told Palmer that Gaiman had made a pass at her. She told Palmer about the bath. “I didn’t have any choice in the matter,” she said. “He just did it.” She said he had been having sex with her ever since. She withheld some of the most brutal details and did not describe her experience as sexual assault; she didn’t yet see it that way.

Palmer did not appear to be surprised. “Fourteen women have come to me about this,” she said. She mentioned that Gaiman had slept with another babysitter during his first marriage, and that she’d heard from other women who were disturbed by their experiences with him. Pavlovich waited until the end to tell Palmer about the child being present in Auckland. Afterward, she recalled, Palmer was silent. She appeared shocked. Palmer insisted that Pavlovich spend the night in her guest room. She told her, “I’ve had to do this before, and I can do this again. I will take care of you.” Pavlovich lay down in the bed and heard Palmer pacing back and forth in her room upstairs until 3 a.m.

Palmer called Gaiman that night. According to Horne, the musician, she asked Gaiman whether their son had been wearing headphones while he and Pavlovich were in the hotel room. He replied “no,” then hung up. The following day, Palmer emailed Gaiman and their couples counselor, a man named Wayne Muller, a minister and “a sort of marital companion,” as he put it to me. According to Muller, who relayed the contents of the email to me, Palmer wrote that Gaiman needed psychiatric treatment and had finally agreed to seek it. “Everyone was trying to make the best of what was clearly a difficult situation,” Muller tells me. Palmer then flew to Edinburgh, where Gaiman was staying with their son, whom she collected. Meanwhile, Pavlovich received a text from Gaiman: “Amanda tells me that you are having a rough time and you are really upset with me about what we did. I feel awful about this. Would you like to talk about it? Is there anything I can do to make anything better?” Pavlovich didn’t respond immediately. “My reflex was to fix the situation,” she tells me. The next day, she wrote, “Hey. We’ll speak soon … hope you are doing good.”

In the days and weeks after Pavlovich’s revelation, Palmer was solicitous, checking in frequently over text and sending warm notes: “From the minute you entwined your fate with mine on ponsonby road i’ve been glad i met you. That is tenfold so now.” She helped Pavlovich find a temporary apartment and invited her over for meals. In late March, Palmer sent a message to a friend of Pavlovich’s, a 41-year-old ceramicist named Misma Anaru, in whom Pavlovich had confided about Gaiman. “I’m glad she had you to take care of her,” she wrote. “It’s been a rough month for everyone.” Anaru’s partner, Kris Taylor, was a doctor of psychology who had lectured at the University of Auckland on coercion, consent, and rape. Although Pavlovich had never used the words rape or sexual assault to describe what had happened to her, both Anaru and Taylor believed Gaiman had raped her repeatedly. Anaru felt Palmer bore a share of the blame. Replying to Palmer, she wrote that “the majority of my rage is directed at Neil.” But she couldn’t understand why, with all Palmer knew about Gaiman, she had sent Scarlett into that situation. “Did you not see this coming a mile away?” She added, “And yes I know you asked him not to do that to her, but honestly, the fact you even felt that was something you should ask is fucked up in ways that defy comprehension.”

Around the same time, Pavlovich followed up with Gaiman. “I had a very intense dream about you last night,” she wrote. “Are you doing okay?” In his reply, he made a reference to something that had happened two weeks earlier. In a session with Muller, Palmer had said that Pavlovich was telling people he had raped her and was planning to “Me Too” him. “I wanted to kill myself,” he wrote. “But I’m getting through it a day at a time, and it’s been two weeks now and I’m still here. Fragile but not great.” He expressed dismay at Anaru’s message, which Palmer had told him about. “I’m a monster in it,” he wrote, “and Amanda seems to have bought it hook line and sinker.” Apologizing for “bringing any upset” into Pavlovich’s life, he wrote, “I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed.”

Pavlovich remembers her palms sweating, hot coils in her stomach. She was terrified of upsetting Gaiman. “I was disconnected from everybody else at that point in my life,” she tells me. She rushed to reassure him. “It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she wrote. Anaru had been “triggered by something I think,” she added.

“I am so glad that you messaged me,” Gaiman wrote. “I thought you were a monster.”

Gaiman asked Pavlovich to speak with Muller. “Knowing that you would be prepared to say, ‘It’s not true, it was consensual, he’s not a monster,’ makes me a lot more grounded,” he wrote. Muller reached out to Pavlovich to offer a “safe harbor.” When they spoke on the phone, Pavlovich told Muller what Gaiman, who was paying for the session, had asked her to say. After listening to Muller’s “esoteric, spiritual claptrap,” she felt worse. “I really felt it was all my fault.” Muller, for his part, tells me that ethical boundaries prevent him from sharing anything about his sessions with Gaiman, but he apparently felt comfortable sharing details of his conversation with Pavlovich. “What she called to speak with me about was feeling pressured—from very diverse, mostly older women in her community—to take action that she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable taking. I accompanied her on a journey to help her figure out the answers for herself to that issue.”

In the weeks that followed, Muller connected Gaiman with the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric facility in Massachusetts. According to Muller, Gaiman had several preliminary phone calls with the facility and was considering entering a six-week inpatient evaluation process. But Gaiman never followed through. “I don’t remember why not,” Muller says.

Pavlovich grew suicidal. She hoarded zopiclone and aspirin and walked around the city surveying bridges. She decided she’d take the pills and told Palmer about her plan. At Palmer’s urging, she checked into an emergency room. “You are loved,” Palmer texted. After a few days in a respite center, feeling slightly better, Pavlovich reached out to Palmer to ask if she could resume working as the child’s nanny. The apartment Palmer had set her up with was temporary, and she needed a place to stay. “It would be really good for me I think to have something to do and people to be around,” she wrote. Palmer argued that it was not the time for her to take on the responsibility of caring for a child. “Your job is to care for you,” she replied. She proposed they get together when Pavlovich got out, promising to help her get back on her feet, and suggested in the meantime she go home to her parents. This infuriated Pavlovich. “There is a reason I have divorced my parents,” she wrote. “I’m starting to feel very much on my own and like I hate everyone.”

“I can’t offer you exactly what you want from me,” Palmer wrote, “but i can still be here. remember this.”

“Babe I am more alone than I’ve ever been in my life,” Pavlovich replied. She wished she’d never agreed to be their nanny: “If I hadn’t gotten on that first ferry I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

That night, Pavlovich texted Gaiman. “Amanda keeps saying she will help but it seems more philosophical rather than actually like she will help.” Two minutes later, she added, “I’ve been thinking of you so much.” Gaiman replied that he’d be happy to help in a tangible way. Pavlovich then received an NDA dated to the first night of her employment, when he had suggested she take a bath. She signed it. A month later, she received a bank transfer from Gaiman: $1,700 for her babysitting work. Two months after that, she received the first of nine payments totaling about $9,200.

Over the course of the year, Pavlovich’s perspective changed. “As he faded away, I began to let other voices in,” she says. Friends connected her with women who were experienced in dealing with sexual assault and abuse, including Zelda Perkins, a former assistant of Harvey Weinstein’s and an advocate for ending the “misuse of NDAs to buy women’s silence.” (Caroline and Pavlovich broke their NDAs when they spoke out about Gaiman.) These women encouraged her to go to the police.

In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault. At the station, she gave a formal interview about the case. After she told the officers her story, one of them told her that Palmer’s cooperation would be essential for the case to move forward. Pavlovich assured them Palmer would participate. “I said to them, ‘She’s a public feminist, and she knows what happened. She’ll want to protect me. I’m sure she’ll speak.’ ”

When the police contacted Palmer later that year, she declined to talk with them. Gaiman never spoke with the police either, though he did provide a written statement. Whatever feelings Palmer might have had about the situation went into a song she performed on tour in 2024, one she wrote shortly after Pavlovich’s confession. It was called “Whakanewha,” named after a park near their homes on Waiheke. “Another suicidal mass landing on my doorstep—thanks a ton/A few more corpses in the sack/You’ll get away with it; it’s just the same old script/This world is shaped to have your back/You said, ‘I’m sorry,’ then you ran/And went and did it all again.”

THIS PAST FALL, Pavlovich began studying for a degree in English literature at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. As it happens, the university had awarded Gaiman an honorary degree in 2016. In December, Pavlovich approached the head of the university, Dame Sally Mapstone, to share her experience and ask the university to review the decision to honor Gaiman. Mapstone was sympathetic but indecisive; some on the board, she told Pavlovich, would likely want evidence of prosecution to rescind his degree. As far as the police report goes, the “matter has been closed,” a spokesperson says. Gaiman’s career, meanwhile, has been marginally affected. A few pending adaptations of his novels and comics have been put on hold or canceled. But the second season of The Sandman is set to premiere on Netflix this year, as is Anansi Boys on Amazon Prime. (Amazon did not return a request for comment.) He and Palmer are entering the fifth year of an ugly divorce and custody battle. Gaiman has “bled her dry” in the divorce proceedings, according to someone close to her. She’s moved back in with her parents in Massachusetts. (Gaiman’s representatives alleged that Palmer was a “major force” driving this story in light of their contentious divorce.)

In December, Pavlovich flew to Atlanta to meet some of the other women who had made accusations against Gaiman. They had been unaware of one another’s existence until they’d heard the podcast. Since then, they had formed a WhatsApp group and grown close. “It’s been like meeting survivors of the same cult,” Stout tells me. “It’s impossible to understand unless you were there.” On New Year’s Eve, Pavlovich, Stout, and Caroline gathered around a bonfire at the Athens home of the musician Michael Stipe, an old friend of Caroline’s. Kendall joined them on Face-Time. With their dark hair and delicate features, they looked like they could be sisters. Around 11 p.m., they wrote down their intentions for the year and cast the scraps of paper into the fire. Pavlovich had written that she wanted to “release the yoke of victimhood” and “invite in self-acceptance.” The next morning, she woke before the others, made coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and sat on the porch in the winter sun. “Am I happy?” she wrote in her journal. “No.” But she also noted that she wasn’t alone. “There is no need to feel abandoned anymore

#Neil Gaiman #good omens

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pilferingapples · 5 months ago

Text

got started talking about Zines in the Letters server and realized an alarming number of people don't know about the True Nature of Zines, namely that they are Cheap and Have No Artistic Requirements So I decided to Illustrate My Point with: A Very Quick Zine

FIRST the Tools of my Masterpiece:

ID: a piece of used printer paper, cheap pens, and my kitchen scissors 2)Behold An Cover

Cover reads: ZINE TIME , Zines R veRy Romantic (like this : skull and dagger image ) (not like Hallmark)

P1-2:

P 1&2 read: Spontaneous Unplanned Personal Expression , in this case my deep conviction that ZINES ARE CHEAP AND AWESOME (a scratched out area says "SEE I messed up , don't worry about iiiiiit" )

p3&4

p3 and 4 read: Bouzingo parties would have concerts where no one would play an instrument UNLESS they DIDN'T KNOW HOW (this is illustrated with a VERY bad drawing of a drum and a horn)

p5&6

p 5&6 read : these were NOT popular with the neighbors but that wasn't the point (this is illustrated with a frankly amazing depiction of an eviction notice)

Zines can be JUST AS BAD! EVEN WORSE! and the neighbors won't care

p 7&8

p 7& 8 read: LOOK @ THIS NONSENSE ! I don't even got a STAPLER (illustrated by a hand pointing at my UNSTAPLED zine center, a stapler, and a staple remover) (Every staple remover is tortoiseshell, why)

p 9&10

p 9& 10 read: But I got Soul (to sell in Fallen London) and I'm not afraid to be REAL BAD at something (the first step to being Kinda OK at something!) EMBRACE THE GROTESQUE (yr own bad art) (a person is hugging a skeleton,in a work that rivals Gustave Doré, probably)

p 11&12

p 11 & 12 read Like a skeleton , Bad Art is FOUNDATIONAL and (nearly) FREE (Audobonesque birds illustrate the concept of Freedom, and also say Cheep Cheep) And we all face our own some day, even in only internally

p 13 & 14

p 13 & 14 read: NO art is worse than BAD art (like NO skeleton is...worse than...a bad skeleton...this metaphor is escaping) IN CONCLUSION a zine should never cost more than a taco AND to hell with the Academie thenk you thenk you ( a gravestone clearly tells us this is THE END )

Back cover:

Back cover reads: ... gonna pin this with a dang chip clip

(final shot: the zine is indeed pinned with a chip clip.)

SEE a 15 page zine made and posted about in less than an hour! this is how it goes! do not even worry about it!!! make zines! make joy!!

#Zineposting #A Very Quick Zine

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internationalremovals23 · 2 months ago

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The process of organizing and carrying out a move might be intimidating, but moving to a new apartment in London is an exciting chapter. There are many factors to take into account, from packing your possessions to negotiating congested streets. You could believe that moving from a small apartment will be easier, but even smaller quarters provide special difficulties. Whether you're moving across the city or to a local neighborhood, here's how to organize your move effectively.

#Compare Removal Companies #Cheap Removal in London #House movers in London #House removal companies in London #Storage Services London

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mtcremovalsposts · 8 months ago

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#London removal pricing #removal costs London #affordable removals London #removal service prices London #cheap removals London #removal quotes London #London moving costs #moving prices London #removals price list London #London removals rates #budget removals London #cost of removals London #removal company pricing London #London house removal costs #office removal prices London

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inevitably-johnlocked · 2 months ago

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Five Fics Friday: December 13/24

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! Let's get into the long weekend with five more fics that have been put on my radar this week! I hope you have a gay old time!! :D

RECENT MFLs

A Magical Holiday by PipMer (T, 1,107+ w., 1/2 Ch. || WiP || Established Relationship, Fluff, POV Sherlock, Johnlock on Holiday, Magical Realism, Christmas) – He had wanted to wait until after the new year, but it seemed that John needed some kind of pick me up to get him through his first Rosie-less Christmas. Maybe a get-away was just the thing. Not an exotic, far-away place, but just far enough removed to escape the melancholy and focus on fresh surroundings. And he could kill two birds with one stone in the process. Yes. Good. He would do this.

Every Song Reminds Me of You by ChrisCalledMeSweetie (G, 1,157 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Humour, John's an Idiot, Posh Sherlock) – Music hath charms to help John acknowledge his feelings for Sherlock.

Polychromatic Wrapping by Lock_John_Silver (M, 6,187+ w., 12/31 Ch. || WiP || Alternating POV, Established Relationship, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Childhood Memories, Domestic Fluff, Tumblr Prompts, Kissing, Minor Illnesses, Sherlock's Mind Palace, Christmas Presents, Rimming, John's Red Pants, Grumpy John, Cooking, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Traditions, Caring Sherlock, John in a Kilt, New Year's Kiss, Celebrations, Travelling, Switzerland, Blow Jobs, Alcohol, Making Up) – Sherlock tells John about a challenge he and Mycroft participated in when they were children, initiated by their mathematician mother. (NOTE!! WiP updating daily in December 2024)

Looking Up by StarlightAndFireflies (T, 11,704+ w., 3/4 Ch. || WiP || Alternate First Meeting / Neighbours AU || Single Father John, Domesticity, Falling in Love, Mental Health Issues, Crime Fighting, Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content) – When John Watson, single father to toddler Rosie, finds a cheap flat for rent in central London, he's sure there must be a catch. He can't afford to be picky, though, and so he moves in... only to discover that his upstairs neighbor is far more unconventional than he bargained for. But this strange man might just be the fresh start John needs. AU in which Sherlock and John meet when John moves into 221c.

Murder in Sussex Trilogy by ChrisCalledMeSweetie (T, 78,331 w. across 3 works || 1920s AU, Case Fics, Surprise Ending, Alternating POVs, Humour) – Can you follow the clues to deduce whodunnit?

#johnlock fic recs #five fics friday #my fic recs

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manandvanstar1 · 11 months ago

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Man and Van Services in London: Simplifying Your Moving Experience

Moving to a new home or office in London can be both exciting and daunting. From packing up belongings to arranging transportation, the process often entails numerous logistical challenges. However, with the assistance of reliable man and van services, such as Man and Van Star, the transition becomes notably smoother and more manageable.

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At Man and Van Star, customer satisfaction is paramount. From your initial inquiry to the completion of your move, their friendly and professional team is dedicated to providing exceptional service and support. They understand that every move is unique, and they strive to accommodate your specific needs and preferences every step of the way.

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Despite offering top-notch service, Man and Van Star remains committed to affordability. They understand that moving expenses can add up quickly, and they strive to offer competitive pricing without compromising on quality or reliability. With transparent pricing and no hidden fees, you can trust Man and Van Star to deliver value for your money.

Conclusion

If you're planning a move in London and seeking a reliable and efficient partner to assist you every step of the way, look no further than Man and Van Star. With their comprehensive services, customer-focused approach, and competitive pricing, they are the go-to choice for hassle-free moving experiences in the bustling capital city. Trust Man and Van Star to turn your relocation into a seamless and stress-free journey.

#a man with a van london #hire man with van london #london van and man #hire van and man london #man with a van london cheap #north london removal companies

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httplilyyy · 2 years ago

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𝐈𝐃𝐈𝐎𝐓𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 || 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐇 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐌𝐒𝐎𝐍

pairing: leah williamson x reader

request: ‘hope you’re doing well! i just want to say that i absolutely love your fics and when i saw that your requests were open again i almost screamed bc i have been holding onto this idea just for you. i actually saw this idea on my college love letters instagram page that said “if we're both single by a certain age we will marry each other" is always a fun story concept but it could be even better if the pact is made between rivals (r x leah) as a drunken dare and they go on to sabotage each other's relationships because they've been secretly in love all along.’

summary: you hated each other, right? so why the hell do you want to kiss her?

warnings: swearing (that’s pretty much it)

word count: 3.8k

a/n: i’m alive mfs, i kinda changed the request a little but i hope that’s alright. let’s also ignore the fact that this is my first post of 2023 and it’s march also a huge thank you for 850 followers :)

woso masterlist

Your fingers tapped absentmindedly on the glass in your hand. The smell of cheap booze and sweat lingered in the air. Watching as drunken bodies swarmed the dance floor, you leaned your back against the bar.

You don't know how many drinks you’ve had, you didn’t know what was going on, who you were with or where you were. But what you did know was how much you hated her.

You swirled the straw in your glass, watching on as, out of all the clubs in London, she happened to be in the same one as you.

No matter how drunk or sober you were, you always found something in you to dislike every little thing about her.

Whilst some people would call you petty and childish, they didn't know how the feeling was reciprocated.

From the moment you joined Arsenal one thing was made clear. Leah Williamson did not like you. Whatever you did, good or bad, Leah always found something to make her dislike for you more prominent.

At first it was little comments here and there, out of shot from your teammates but it soon escalated into making it her personal mission and life goal to hate you in front of anyone at any time and at any place.

No matter what you did you could never get Leah to like you, so, if you can't beat them, join them.

Every comment leah made, you retaliated and leah didn't like it. Not one bit.

“Of course you're here.” Leah sighed as she stood beside you, ordering herself another drink.

You didnt turn to look at her, your focus still lingering on everyone else. Breathing through your nose, you gave a disgruntled hum with a small nod of your head.

“Not in the talkative mood tonight, y/n?” Leah questioned, a teasing undertone to her voice as she cocked her head to the side, looking at your side profile.

“Nope.” You replied, popping the ‘p’.

“That's unlike you.” Leah said. “Normally you’re going on and on about how much you hate me.”

“Mhm, maybe I've run out of energy.” You shrugged your shoulders, finally turning your head to look at her.

“Woah, who are you and what have you done to y/n?” Leah chuckled, the alcohol definitely present in her system.

“Very funny, good night Leah.” You said, your voice holding little emotion; sounding somewhat like a robot.

You placed your drink onto the bar counter and walked away from the defender; whose eyes stared at your back curiously.

Just as you were about to make your way out of the club, you felt a cold hand grab onto your arm. Turning around, you were met with a, now very noticeable, drunk Leah.

Sighing to yourself, your head dropped to the floor as you tried to regain any type of courage.

“And where do you think you’re going y/l/n?” Leah questioned, her voice coming out slurred.

“Home.” You deadpanned, removing Leah’s hand from your arm.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Leah pondered, eyebrows furrowing.

“A lot actually, I'll be away from you.” You said, giving a sarcastic smile before walking away again.

“Hey! Wait, one dance.” Leah shouted, catching up to you.

“I’m sorry?” You questioned incredulously, turning around to look back at Leah.

“One dance,” Leah pleaded, “and then you can go.”

“No?” You said, chuckling to yourself at how drunk Leah was.

“Come on. Stop being a party pooper.” Leah said, pulling on your arm and the two of you slowly made your way to the dance floor.

“Fine. One dance,” you huffed, giving in, “but that's it.”

A beaming smile took over Leah’s face as she dragged you in between all the bodies that littered the dance floor, planting the two of you right in the middle.

“Kill me now.” You muttered to yourself, standing as stiff as a board, freezing even more when Leah took a hold of your hands and placed them onto her waist.

“Let loose y/l/n.” Leah whispered into your ear before she turned around and started to dance.

Loud music drowned out your thoughts allowing you to forget about everything going on around you.

For a moment you forgot who you were with, what you were doing and where you were, allowing your mind to go somewhere else.

One dance seemed to turn into four and before you knew it you had been dancing with Leah for minutes on end.

Just as you were about to get lost in another dance, a body crashed into yours from behind, snapping you from whatever trace you were currently kept in.

Finally snapping back to your senses, you pulled your hands away from Leah and made your way out of the club, not uttering a single word to the blonde defender rushing behind you.

Letting out an exhale of air once you walked outside you rummaged around in your pockets for your phone only to come up short til you heard your name from over your shoulder.

“Looking for something?” Leah questioned as she walked towards you, your phone in hand.

“How did you get my phone?” You wondered as you tried to reach for your phone but Leah moved it out of your reach.

“That's for me to know and for you to find out.” Leah chuckled as she tapped your phone on your chest.

“Look leah,” you sighed exasperatedly, “just give me my phone, I need to call an uber.”

“How about I propose a deal?”

“I- yeah fine, whatever just give me my phone.” You said, throwing your hands up in the air as your patience grew very thin.

“Let's say I give you back your phone only if you agree to us getting married by a certain age- if we are single of course.”

“No chance.” You laughed, shaking your head in disbelief at the words that just came out of Leah's mouth.

“Fine, I get to keep your phone then.” Leah said, shrugging her shoulders before walking away and down the road.

“Fuck my life.” You muttered, looking up into the sky as your shoulders sagged.

You took one cleansing breath in before shaking your head and running to catch up with a certain blonde defender.

“I’ll do it.” You said, finally catching up to Leah, walking beside her.

“Finally came to your senses have you?” Leah questioned, the teasing tone coming back in full force.

“Don’t. I can't believe I agreed,” you sighed, “can I have my phone back now?”

“One more thing-”

“Oh what now?”

“You give me a ride home too.”

“Yeah, fine, okay.”

After you booked an uber, the two of you waited on the side of the road. You would occasionally turn your head to look at the blonde beside you, noticing that she hugged herself, shivering from the cold.

“Here.” You muttered, handing your jacket in front of Leah.

She looked at you confused for a second, before she gingerly reached her hand out and took the clothing from your hand.

A small ‘thank you’ fell from her lips as she slipped your jacket on, unconsciously pulling the material up to her nose, taking in your perfume that lingered on it.

The two of you didn't have to wait much longer and before you knew it, you were holding a car door open for Leah, letting her get into the uber before you.

The journey to Leah’s was short and the two of you were soon pulling up outside her place.

“Walk me to my door?” Leah asked, a small smile gracing her lips.

“I might as well, huh?” You replied, rolling your eyes although there was no malicious intent behind the action.

Promising the driver you would only be a couple of minutes, you exited the car and walked around to Leah’s side before opening her door. You held out your hand and she graciously took it in hers, pulling herself up and out of the car.

Shutting the door behind her, you walked her up to her front door where you stopped and waited for the blonde to open it.

After a little struggle, Leah managed to get her door open and she stepped into her place, turning around, one hand on the door the other fiddling with her keys.

“You’re a real piece of work, y’know.” You smiled, shaking your head.

“You love me though.” Leah joked, looking at her feet.

“In your dreams,” you laughed, “make sure you have some water and paracetamol in the morning.”

“Awh, you care about me.”

“Piss off, I'm going to be best friends with your hangover in the morning.”

“Yeah, yeah, goodbye y/l/n.” Leah smiled.

“Night.” You said, replying with a similar smile.

Just as you were about to back away from Leah’s doorstep her cold hand grasped your arm again for the second time that night. Stopping in your tracks, eyebrows raised, you wondered what Leah was going to say.

She looked a little conflicted, not knowing what to say so she didn’t say anything, giving you a little peck on your cheek before pulling away and walking back into her place with a smile not leaving her face.

Your eyebrows rose even higher than they were before and you let out a breathy chuckle before making your way back to the uber and back to your place.

The next morning you had training, begrudgingly getting out of bed, you got ready for the day. The journey wasn’t bad, although you felt a headache creeping its way into your head.

Suddenly, you regretted the amount of alcohol you consumed yesterday. You don't remember much from last night, only a few things here and there albeit they were still a little fuzzy.

You soon met up with the other girls and conversed as you walked onto the pitch. Out of the corner of your eye you saw a certain defender who looked like they had been to hell and back.

Letting out a quiet snicker, you walked past her shaking your head with a smile. Leah noticed and sent a sneer your way, not that you cared and that only aggravated her more.

Time went by quickly and before you knew it training had finished. You were walking back to your car when Katie came running up to you.

“Hey y/n!” Katie shouted, causing you to stop in your tracks.

“What's up?” You smiled, turning around to face her.

“Me and a couple of the girls are going bowling later and we wondered if you wanted to come?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s not like I've got anything else to do.” You shrugged.

“Cool, I'll send you the address.”

“Yeah, no problem, see you later.”

It was around six in the afternoon when you pulled your car up to the bowling alley. Getting out of your car you slid your phone into your pocket before walking into the place. You knew immediately where to go from the loud noise coming from a particular group.

Sending them a smile you walked up to them but it soon dropped, not enough for anyone to notice, but it was safe to say you didn't think you were going to enjoy tonight.

Standing next to Beth, Leah was typing away on her phone. Once the blonde looked up from her phone she sent you a look which can only be described as unfriendly. To everyone else, however, they seemed to miss the way the two of you interacted and put you both into a pair.

It was you and Leah, Manu and Viv, Beth and Katie, Lotte and Steph as well as Rafa and Jen. You had very low hopes and you had a strong feeling that instead of hitting the pins Leah may end up hitting you.

Beth and Katie were to go first and it was safe to say that you didn't think they were going to win. Whilst you watched as everyone took their turns you were sat beside Leah. the two of you sitting like statues.

You thought it was because of the hatred Leah had towards you but it was completely the opposite. All the defender could think about was last night, when she kissed you on the cheek.

She didn't know why she did it but it felt right. But she knew it shouldn't have. The fact that it was so wrong was why it felt so right. Leah knew she shouldn't be feeling the way she is but she couldn't help it.

The only reason why Leah acted like she hated you was because she was afraid of getting hurt. Before she could do anything about it she was already too far down the rabbit hole for her to get out.

Leah just had to accept the fact that you’d never like her the way she liked you, and she was fine with having you in her life as an ‘enemy’ rather than not having you in her life at all.

Whilst Leah was so caught up in her own thoughts she missed the way that you looked at her. Like she was the only person in the world. Although you wouldn't tell her that.

The two of you were pining over each other and the only thing stopping you both from telling your true feelings is the fake hatred you had created.

As time went on and as the little arguments grew and grew they turned into true feelings but you never really did hate her. You were using it as a defence system, afraid of getting hurt.

The two of you were so afraid of getting hurt you didnt realise it was already too painful for you both. Too painful to realise you could be together if you weren't stupid. Too painful to realise you were falling and you were falling hard.

It was finally your turn and you stood up, grabbing a bowling ball. You looked back at Leah, searching for any kind of encouragement from her but she was too focused on the floor.

Sighing to yourself quietly, you took a quick cleansing breath and acted as if it was a match final, and you were going to win.

With your first bowl of the evening you managed to get a strike causing an uproar from the girls, snapping Leah from whatever state she was in.

Turning her head towards the noise she noticed you had put the two of you in the lead and she let out a small smile, watching on as you dodged the playful insults being thrown in your way as you sat back beside Leah.

“Guess I won't have a go this round, huh?” Leah said, a small smile gracing her lips.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, my bad.” You replied, scratching the back of your neck.

“We’re winning, it doesn't matter.” Leah shrugged, turning to watch Manu as she bowled.

“Yeah.” You whispered, trying to fight off the smile that slowly crept onto your face.

It was the fifth round when everyone started to get hungry so you volunteered to go and get some food. After asking what everyone wanted you set off to the little snack bar.

“Hey.” You said, walking up to the bar.

“Hey, what can I get for you?” The lady asked, standing behind the counter. You weren't going to lie, she was beautiful but she didn’t come anywhere near to Leah

You told her what everyone had ordered and she left you to get all your food. As you waited you drummed your fingers on the counter. She was back before you knew it and handed you your food.

“Hopefully that's not all for you.” She chuckled, nodding to the food stacked in your arms.

“I don’t think I'll even get what is mine with how hungry my friends always are.” You replied with a chuckle of your own.

“Well, you're always welcome to come back.”

“Now, is that a marketing line or an excuse to see me again?” You questioned with a raise of your eyebrow.

“Depends on your answer.” She responded.

“I guess you’ll have to find out later.” You smiled, looking back at your friends who were waving you over.

“If i’m not here just ask for Holly.”

“Yea-” You started a reply but was cut off as someone spoke over you.

“I think they will be fine.” You didn’t need to turn around to notice who it was, sending a look of apology to Holly, you walked back to your friends with Leah.

“What was that for?” You asked.

“What?” Leah replied, acting oblivious.

“Back there, I was talking to her.”

“You were taking too long and everyone is hungry.” Leah said, dodging the real reason.

“Whatever.” You muttered, speeding up so you walked ahead of her.

Everyone cheered once you placed down all the food that you had brought and were quick to tuck in.

You sat down in your original place and fiddled with the receipt, not bothering to touch your food, once you realised there was writing on the back. You turned the receipt over and in blue writing was a number scribbled down with ‘text me’ underneath it.

Letting a smile take over your features, you looked over your shoulder and caught Holly’s eye, sending her a quick wink before finally opening the packet of crisps you bought.

Leah, who was sitting in front of you instead of next to you, watched the whole interaction and couldn't help the frown that formed on her face, anger bubbling from deep inside.

“What have you got there y/l/n?” Leah asked before she could stop herself and you looked like a deer caught in headlights.

Everyone turned to face you where you were sitting, struggling to find something to say.

“Y/n’s got someone's number.” Steph said as she looked over your shoulder and the girls ‘oohed’ teasingly.

“Leave me alone.” You chuckled, putting the receipt in your pocket.

“You going to text them?” Lotte questioned and you didn't miss the way Leah rolled her eyes.

“I don't know, do you think I should Leah?” You said, looking at Leah with a challenging look on your face.

“Why are you asking me?”

“It's just that you don’t like me, so you won’t mind me asking them out, right?

“No.” Leah said, a little too quickly gaining a look from a couple of the girls.

“No, as in you don’t mind or..?”

“I- I don’t-” Leah struggled, “just do what you want.”

Before you could even comprehend what was going on, Leah had gotten up rather abruptly and made her way into the toilets.

“What was that about?” You questioned, looking at the other girls.

“I think you should go talk to her.” Viv suggested.

“Why? I mean, you see how much we don’t like each other.”

“Actually, we see how much you love each other.” Beth corrected.

“You’re joking,” you laughed, “she hates my guts.”

“But what about you?”

“What about me?”

“How do you feel about her?” Jen joined in.

“Okay, there's no need for you to gang up on me.” You said, raising your hands up in defence.

“Just go talk to her. I think you both need to have a one on one conversation.” Rafa said.

“Fine, but if we end up killing each other, it's not my fault.” You sighed, getting up from your seat and making your way to the bathroom.

As you walked into the toilets you saw Leah splash her face with some water. At the sound of the door being closed, Leah looked into the mirror and her eyes caught yours.

“How was the hangover this morning?” You asked, not really knowing what else to say.

“What are you doing in here, y/n?” Leah wondered, ignoring what you had said and getting straight to the point.

“I came to check on you,” you shrugged, “the girls made me do it.”

“How kind of you.” Leah said sarcastically.

“Why’d you run off?” You questioned, walking closer to her.

“Like you care.”

“I did ask.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I don't mind complicated.” You said, leaning back against the sink.

“I don't know.” Leah mumbled, looking at her hands. “I guess I got hurt.”

“How?” You asked, genuinely confused.

“Seeing you talk to that girl-”

“Holly.”

“-yes her, I don't know, I guess it hurt knowing that I couldn’t make you smile like she did.”

“So you're jealous? That's why you interrupted our conversation.”

“No, tha- I- no. I'm not jealous.”

“So if i were to go back out-” You said, pointing your thumb towards the door.

“No.” Leah said quickly, grabbing onto your arm.

And that's when you felt it. Her cold hands on your arm sending sparks up to your heart, setting your whole body alight. Her chest was moving up and down, her gaze actively avoiding yours.

“You know, all of this would be so much easier if I actually hated you.” You whispered, your right hand coming up to brush a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“What do you mean?” Leah asked, her gaze finally meeting yours.

“I never hated you and I never will.”

You cupped her cheek and ran your thumb along her cheekbone. Leah leant into your touch, unable to stop herself from the overwhelming feelings bubbling inside her.

Before either of you could realise what you were doing, you were both leaning in. Leah's grip tightened and her breath got caught in her throat. Hesitantly, you placed your lips on hers.

The sudden action had stunned Leah, her breath catching in her throat. She did not expect you to kiss her now. As her brain started to register what was going on, she kissed you back, putting her hands on your waist pulling you closer.

The two of you were caught up in your own small world, getting lost in the kiss. It wasn't rushed nor hungry, it was passionate and slow. You ended the kiss as you needed to breathe, getting a soft whine of protest from Leah.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.” You said breathlessly.

“Kiss me again.” Leah said, not letting go of your waist.

“But- mmph”

You moved your hand from Leah’s cheek to bury your fingers in her hair, the other hand sprawled out on the small of Leah’s back, pulling her closer until your chests were pressed together. The defender clutched the bottom of your shirt, feeling as it slowly rode upwards.

Her cold fingers splayed across your stomach, gently scratching your skin. You finally broke the kiss once again and you leaned your forehead against hers.

“For the record, I still hate you.” Leah smiled, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

“No you don't.” You chuckled.

“No I don't.” Leah said, shaking her head slightly, placing another peck to your lips.

#leah williamson #leah williamson x reader #leah williamson imagine #leah williamson imagines #woso #woso imagine #woso imagines

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friendly-books · 5 months ago

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Rivers of London read and write up

Thanks for the recommendation @temporaryyuri. I’ve been told it's about a magic london cop. I won’t hold him being an Englishman against him that’s not his fault but I will hold him being a cop against him. But I’ve been told he’s cool.

“when he noticed that it was in fact missing a head.” pg. 1 Well looks like there’s been a murder. Now let’s see if it’s mundane or supernatural.

“Martin Turner dialed 999 and asked for the police.” pg. 2 What your supposed to do if you’re in Great Britain and deal with a crime call the emergency line 999

“everything else being equal, it probably wasn’t a case of accidental death.” pg. 2 Ha and yes having your head removed definitely isn’t accidental

This book is so British. I might need to go eat a burger and apple pie to compensate

“why it was me that met the ghost” pg. 3 Metaphorical or “physical” ghost?

“We maintained a strictly professional relationship despite my deep-seated yearning to climb into her uniform trousers.” pg. 5 Well then good to know.

“My name’s Nicholas Wallpenny” pg. 7 Such a British name

“Seeing as I’m dead.” pg. 8 Well at least he knows he’s dead

“The killing gentlemen did t just change his hat and coat, he changed his face” pg. 10 Spooky

“Separate beds, unfortunately” pg. 11 Just ask her out

“Trident was always on the lookout for black officers to do hideously dangerous undercover work and being mixed race meant I qualified.” pg. 15 POC protagonist! Not a fan of Trident or that police force

“Too easily distracted”

“You were checking what was written on the lions bum”

“I like you, I think you’re a good man, but it’s like you don’t see the world the way a copper needs to see the world-it’s like you’re seeing stuff that isn’t there.” pg. 21 Does Peter have ADD or ADHD?

“I’m going to hack HOMES and see if my ghost was right,” pg. 25 Homes like Sherlock Homes? And what do you mean hack? Hacking takes exploiting security vulnerabilities or a phishing con? This is going to take so long

Whats the main character’s name? I don’t think anyone’s said it yet.

“I wondered if we could enhance the faces” pg. 29 I don’t think that’s a thing

“Nicholas the corporally challenged,” pg. 31 Ha

“Peter” pg. 32 Protagonist name finally

“emphasized the width of his shoulders and a trim waist.”

“When he strolled over to talk to me, I thought he might be looking for that slightly ethnic boyfriend after all.” pg. 34 Ha Is Peter bi? Time for a counter. Bi Peter 1

“Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale,” pg. 35 I was told I would like this character and that I would ship him with Peter so let it begin

“Ghost are real.” pg. 49 Fun

“You took sciences at A-level,” said Nightingale as we pulled out. “Why didn’t you take a science degree?”

“I got distracted, sir.” pg. 51 Time to look up what A-level means

“We call it vestigium” pg. 54 Cool

“He was from Yorkshire or somewhere like that and, like many Northerners with issues, he’d moved to London as a cheap alternative to psychotherapy.” pg. 55 What’s wrong with people in Yorkshire?

“He bore down the corridor toward us like a bull on steroids and as he did I had to fight the urge to hide behind Nightingale.” pg. 56 I’m sure Nightingale will protect you

“I’m late for my colonic irrigation.” pg. 57 Is he talking about a colonoscopy?

“What’s the agreement?” I asked?

“It’s not important,” said Nightingale” pg. 57 That’s going to come up again

“A life of quiet desperation,” said Nightingale. I knew it was a quote but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking who’d said it.” pg. 58 Well I’m going to look it up. It looks like it’s from Henry David Thoreau book called Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“but the Murder Team didn’t know about know about my psyche powers and the vestigium of the barking dog.” pg. 59 Peter you didn’t know about your psyche powers up until a couple of hours ago

“I looked at Nightingale, but he just raised an eyebrow.” pg. 61 Nightingale what did you do to the dog?

“A wizard.”

“Like Harry Potter?”

Nightingale sighed. “No,” he said “Not like Harry Potter.”

“In what way?”

“I’m not a fictional character,” pg. 63 Ha

“Brandon Coopertown was a good-looking older man in his mid forties with black hair and narrow features.” pg. 65 Bi Peter 2

“Stone retains vestigia very well. That’s why old buildings have such character.” pg. 69 Interesting

“Just ask him about the year of his birth.” pg. 75 Interesting how old are you Nightingale

“thrown a baby from a second story window.” pg. 80 Oh no

“Salaam” I said

“Assalaamu alaykum” pg. 91

“dissimuo was a magic spell that could change your appearance.” pg. 92 Interesting

“It’s almost impossible to steal another man’s magic.” pg. 94 Almost that’s the key word here

“It’s theoretically possible, but, morality aside, I couldn’t do it.” said Nightingale. “I don’t think any human wizard could.” pg. 95 But a non human wizard could

“Do I have to call Sifu?” pg. 97 Ha

“You have to call me Master.”

“Master?”

“That’s the tradition” said Nightingale.

I said the word in my head and it kept on coming out massa.” pg. 97 Glad I’m not the only one who got a bad taste in my mouth when Nightingale a white man says that Peter a bi racial man should call him ‘master’ Massa is a offensive and outdated term used in writing to represent spoken altercations of the word master.

“And your patron Sir Issac Newton?” I asked

Nightingale grinned. “He was our founder and the first man to systematize the practice of magic.

“I was taught that he invented modern science,” I said.

“He said both,” Nightingale. “That’s the nature of genius.” pg. 106 Interesting

“And she is…”

“Indispensable,” said Nightingale” pg. 108 Glad that Nightingale is nice to the “help” but what is Molly?

“while I, easily distracted remember, had been wondering whether I could sneak Leslie back to my room in Folly.” pg. 114 Peter focus please

“Middle aged women suddenly goes bonkers and attacks someone in the cinema, in front of her children.” pg. 118 Suspicious maybe magic?

“What’s she going to do with it all the leftover.”

“I’ve learned to not ask these questions,” said Nightingale

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m not sure I want to know the answers.” pg. 120 Ha

“So it’s not a process of oxidation, is it?” I asked

“Focus,” said Nightingale “Magic first science later.” pg. 123 Peter can multi task

“Good,” I said. “Now I’m incentivized.”

Nightingale laughed and let me to it.” pg. 124 Ha and I take it Nightingale hasn’t laughed in awhile

“I’d managed to get it turn it on but got distracted when Nightingale put us around the Hogarth roundabout fast enough to smack my head against the side window.” pg. 125 Ouch slow down Nightingale who taught you how to drive? How do you have your drivers license?

“Eel Pie Island I knew, as a collection of boatyards and houses on a river islet barely five hundred meters long.” pg. 126 Interesting

“Better than watchdogs,” said Nightingale “ask the Romans” pg. 126 Why did you know any Romans? How old are you? And yes geese are terrifying

Glad the books explaining London police talk

“River spirits” pg. 131 Cool

“He’s a troll.” pg. 135 Trolls are real in this world

“That the boys in the boat had been followers of Father Thomas, and had come downstream to raid the shrine at Eel Pie Island and been caught by followers of Mother Thames.” pg. 137 Why does this give me slit verse vibes?

Does Peter have daddy issues? That’s what I’m picking up

“I tried to keep my eyes off the long legs emerged slender and brown below the helm of the tshirt.” pg. 141 Focus Peter

“I was fighting the urge to fling myself to my knees before her and put my face between her breasts and go blubby, blubby, blubby.” pg. 144 So definitely some sort of supernatural thing right? Charm person?

“Are you on speaking terms with the Mississippi, then?” pg. 145 Ha

“My father always swore that jazz, like the blues, was born in the muddy water of the Mississippi.” pg. 145 Yep and resisting the urge to talk about music history

“there were too many Igbo in my class.

‘I can no longer wait for you to make up your mind and I am going to marry a white bitch Irish woman.” pg. 147 Someone’s bitter. Igbo refers to a member of the largest ethnic group in southeastern Nigeria. And there’s no need to bring the girl’s ethnicity in this :|

“This is the cleanest industrial river in Europe.” pg. 150 That’s concerning. How dirty are the other rivers?

“I dreamed that I was sharing a bed with Leslie May and Beverly Brook both lithe and naked on either side.” pg. 153 Peter don’t make this into a love triangle

“Tactus disvitae,” he said “The smell of afterlife-they must be down here.” pg. 169 Good to know

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we deal with vampires in Old London Times.” pg. 173 With grenades and white phosphorus

“Fuck me, I thought. I can do magic.” pg. 178 Yep Peter can do magic!

“I said she could come in, but she looked shifty and said she couldn’t.” pg. 179 Oh threshold magic

“Surprisingly, Molly was standing beside her, their heads close together as if exchanging confessions.” pg. 180 Ohh interesting

“I noticed Toby was my dog now.” pg. 185 Yes!

“I hung up as Beverly Brook sauntered over from the hospital, the swing of her hips dragging my eyes.” pg. 186 Peter I feel like I need a spray bottle for every time you get like this

“one of her breasts pushed against my shoulder and I resisted the urge to put my arm around her waist.” pg. 192 Come on Peter focus on the plot and the magic. I’m choosing to believe there’s some magic involved when it comes to Beverly

“She was spontaneously created by the midcholorians.” pg. 194 Ha nice Star Wars reference

“Detective Sergeant Miriam Stephanopoulos, Seawoll’s right-hand woman and terrifying lesbian.” pg. 205 I love her already even though she’s a cop

“You’re not the first apprentice with an inquisitive mind.” pg. 210 Were you one Nightingale?

“The man was holding silver topped cane and for a moment I thought he might be Nightingale, but the man was older and his eyes were an intense blue. Nightingale senior perhaps?” pg. 212 That’s Nightingale isn’t it.

Good for Molly with the painting

“It was Inspected Nightingale, dressed in the blue polo shirt and blazer that I recognized as being the closest thing he ever got to casual dress. I stared at him stupidly for a moment.” pg. 217 Oh I’m choosing to believe this is a Bi Peter 3

“Thank you,” he said. “Call me Thomas, please.”

Which was just not going to happen.” pg. 218 Come on Peter call him Thomas :)

“You don’t think she and Nightingale…?” asked Leslie

“Ew,” said Beverly. “That’s just wrong.” pg. 219 I agree they can just be friends

“Young men are always tempted to use brute force,” Nightingale had said. “It’s like learning to shoot a riffle; because it’s inherently dangerous, you teach safety, accuracy, and speed-in that order.” pg. 222 Oh were you tempted to use brute strength Nightingale? And he’s definitely old who uses a rifle anymore?

“Officially she was there to liaise with me on the case but really she was mainly there for the wide-screen tv, takeout, and the unresolved sexual tension.” pg. 223 No Peter stop :(

“It’s the change in the clocks,” he said. “Twice a year she takes the day off.” pg. 224 Good for her

“of the horseshoe roof of a wooden gypsy caravan” pg. 227 I believe the term is Romani

“I nearly said that not all fathers were worthy of respect, but I managed to keep my gob shut and anyway not everyone had a dad like mine.” pg. 238 Daddy issues

“We both laughed out loud at that and bypassed Swindo.” pg. 242 Aw they’re laughing with each other

“It was the same Old Man in 1914, I can tell you that for certain.”

“How do you know that?”

Nightingale hesitated, then he said, “I’m not quite as young as I look” pg. 242 I knew it

“It’s escalating,” pg. 245 Yep

“All to no avail, except pissing off Nightingale” pg. 251 Hold on Nightingale Peter’s experiments could be useful

I like that Peter experiment with magic

“Nightingale laughed. I caught a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision and I turned to find Molly standing in the doorway, eyes shining with reflected fire and fixed on Nightingale.” pg. 255 Aw :)

“The Folly has three libraries;” pg. 261 Can I live there?

“Vincit qui se vincit August 1821. I wondered what it meant.” pg. 262 According to google translate it means “he conquers who conquers himself”

“Nightingale smiled

“What is it?” I asked

“You remind me of a wizard I used to know called David Mellenby,” said Nightingale. “He had the same obsession.”

“What happened to him?” I asked. “And did he leave any notes?”

“I’m afraid he died in the war,” pg. 263 So many thoughts. I love that Peter makes Nightingale smile and laugh I take it this hasn’t happened in a long time. I want to learn more about David. I don’t know if David actually died maybe he’s behind the murders? Tinfoil hat theory. And what war Nightingale? World War One or two? How old are you?

“Help me,” he said

“What’s wrong?” I asked

“He’s eating me,” pg. 269 Oh no

“There was a poster, white lettering on a blood red background, keep calm and carry on, which I thought was good advice.” pg. 270 Peter please tell me you know England history. And interesting that Nightingale has the original poster. Peter doesn’t mention whether the poster has a crown on it

“We broke off for morning tea” pg. 272 Morning tea? Really? So British

“You keep asking the kind of question,” said Nightingale, “that really shouldn’t be coming up for another year or so.” pg. 273 Come on Nightingale tell Peter. So what if he’s asking questions that “shouldn’t be coming”? why does there need to be a time table when Peter “should” learn things?

“You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed,” pg. 274 I’d hope so as murder and human sacrifice are illegal and unethical

“safety within screaming-for-help range” pg. 276 Ha

“Chemical glow sticks from the local camping shop and these I cracked and placed where the crib sheet called for candles.” pg. 277 If they work then that’s cool

“I heard Nightingale yelling and looked over to see him running flat out towards me.” pg. 280 Go Nightingale save Peter

“Nightingale grabbed my collar and pulled me away as cherry blossoms and clods of dirt rained down around us.” pg. 281 Oh how romantic with the cherry blossoms falling around them :)

“You’ve got a devious mind, Peter,”

“Thank you, sir.” I said “I do my best.” pg. 283 Ha

“I wanted to watch her tuck her long legs under the dash.” pg. 285 Stop

“She stretched and arched her back, making her breasts strain alarmingly against her sweater.” pg. 288 I will get a spray bottle

“You really are the most extraordinary gullible young man,” she said. “What on earth are we going to do with you?” pg. 292 My thoughts exactly

“A most terrible Irishman”

“Had that Irish temper” pg. 293 Stop being prejudice about the Irish

“before I could stop her she kissed me.”

“What the fuck was that about?” pg. 296 Again my thoughts exactly

“She pulled my head down and kissed me on the cheek.” pg. 301 What is happening?

“I’d like to know what your intentions are with my sister.” pg. 301 Is Peter getting the shovel talk?

“Pikey is a word for Gypsies that a well brought up young policeman is not supposed to use.” pg. 302 I don’t think you’re supposed to use gypsy either and can the rivers stop being racist

“I’ve got nothing against the Old Man or his people but this is the twenty first century and this is my town I haven’t busted a gut for thirty years so some ‘gentleman of the road’ can move back and take what’s mine.” pg. 302 His people that’s a bit racist

“Technically he’s my master” I said “I swore a guild oath as his apprentice.” My tongue felt thick and dry as if I’d spent the night sleeping with my mouth open.” pg. 303 The wince I made when Peter said ‘master’

“A Ministry of Magic” pg. 303 Ha

“Why don’t you have a nice drink?” pg. 305 Don’t drink it

Tyburn is the worst :(

“People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting, and head shaking and girlfriending and “oh no you didn’t” and if they’re not sassy, then they’re adignified and downtrodden and soldering on and “I don’t understand why folks just can’t get along.” But if you see a black women go quiet the way Tyburn did, the bright eyes, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred.” pg. 308 Run Peter run

“We were going to use vampires during the war?” I’d asked, and been surprised by the look of genuine hurt and anger on Nightingale’s face. “No,” he’d said sharply and then with more moderation, “Not us-the Germans.” pg. 311 So Nightingale definitely fought in WW2 and has seen some stuff

“It was his guide dog” pg. 313 Good dog

“In her words, ‘Why does this shit always fucking happened to me’ pg. 314 Ha and I can’t see Nightingale saying that even quoting someone else

“You’re volunteering to have your head beaten in?” pg. 316 It sounds like he’s volunteering himself for possession with the ‘sequestration’

“Like the manifestation of the social trend, crime and disorder, a sort of superyob. The spirit of riot and rebellion in the London mob.”

We all looked at her in amazement.” pg. 317 That is a good theory but I doubt it

“I might have even written an essay, but I’m damned if I remember any of the why.” pg. 326 Ha and I still can’t believe that Nightingale swears

“Nightingale smiled” pg. 327 Aw I just love that Nightingale smiles

“No man strikes his wife without provocation-was she a shrew?”

“A man can be driven to terrible acts by the tongue of a woman.” pg. 329 De Veil is the worst

“Seawoll’s people would provide containment in case things went pear shaped” pg. 331 Things are going to definitely go pear shaped I’m only 60% done

“shot Nightingale in the back.” pg. 332 Ahhh! :0

“Inspector Nightingale was alive” pg. 336 Good

“It’s beautiful” pg. 343 Aw :)

What’s Tyburn doing here?

“Your father’s a junkie, has been for thirty years.” pg. 351 Ouch rude Tyburn

“his heroin” pg. 352 Heroin?!

“So you understand why I don’t find Nightingale’s shabby gentility impressive in any way.” pg. 353 There’s no need to be so rude Tyburn

“Why aren’t you inside right now?” pg. 354 She probably can’t get in the the whole threshold magic

“What did he see in you?” pg. 354 Someone’s jealous

“Checking first to make sure that no one was likely to see me, I reached out and squeezed his hand.” pg. 356 Come on Peter just hold Nightingales hand

“you can’t just walk into a random pub and buy a handgun.” pg. 359 Good point this isn’t the U.S.

“Which meant that somebody had told Henry Pyke” pg. 360 We have a rat dun dun dun

“Leslie May was my suspect.” pg. 365 Oh no Leslie

How am I only 70% of the way though there’s still so much left

Who let Beverly drive?

“but it came out muffled on account of the fact that my jaw felt like it was dislocated.” pg. 378 Is Peter the possessed?

“the bastard had stolen Nightingale’s cane” pg. 382 No

“exaggerated poop deck” pg. 382 PETER THAT’S NOT WHAT IT’S CALLED (sorry the theater kid came out of me) It’s either center stage, right or left stage, downstage or upstage. Trying not to unleash my theater history onto everyone

“I know you’re out there, you black Irish dog.” pg. 383 Stop being racist

“But he has the luck of the Irish and the gift of gab.” pg. 387 So racist

“God spare me from fools and amateurs,” pg. 388 Ha

“Seawoll must have walked up behind me while I was feeding clever.” pg. 393 Oh no, are they all possessed?

“safety harness to be worn by the handsome baritone” pg. 394 Bi Peter 4

“Why is it that good quality pay their taxes while foreigners pay naught and yet expect the liberties that are an Englishman’s hard-won prerogative.” pg. 395 Is this the play being racist or Henry being racist

“Nobody likes a riot except looters and journalists.” pg. 403 Oh no a riot

“but I was distracted by the sight of the helicopter hovering directly overhead.” pg. 404 Peter you’re always distracted

“He wouldn’t have been able to spell racial discrimination on his report, if there had been a report.” pg. 406 I really hope that’s just the magic talking and not the guys actual thoughts

Inspector Neblett to the rescue

“I was wrong about you Grant,” he said. “You do have the makings of a proper copper.”

“Thank you sir” pg. 408 Aw that’s nice

“A Molotov cocktail makes a very distinctive sound.” pg. 409 Oh no

“We kissed.” pg. 422 Ahhh :) Beverly and Peter kissed

“I saw my ranting drunk-he had the face of Mr. Punch.” pg. 429 Oh no

“Mr. Punch-the spirit of riot and rebellion” pg. 430 I can’t believe Leslie was right

“From September 1944 to March 1945, that lovable Nazi scamp Wernher Von Braun” pg. 431 What did I just read.

“Just to let you know that Thomas is conscious and asking for you.” pg. 440 He’s awake :)

“How old are you?”

“Old,” he whispered “Turn century” pg. 442 I knew it!

“Nightingale made a wheezing sound that alarmed me for a moment until I realized that it was laughter.” pg. 442 Glad that Nightingale can laugh in this situation

“Is it natural?”

He shook his head” pg. 442 Oh interesting so it’s not normal.

“He was a heavyset white man with a skinned head and a faded tattoo of SS lighting bolts on his neck.” pg. 448 He’s a skin head?! Get away from Peter

“Someone sniggered-probably Beverly” pg. 449 Ha

“My duty, my obligation-my decision.” pg. 449 Yes go Peter

“You want to fuck with me, Tyburn, you had better know who you’re messing with.” pg. 449 Ohhh

“Your father is a failed musician and your mother cleans offices for a living. You grew up in a council flat and you went to your local comprehensive and you failed your A-levels.” pg. 450 She didn’t go there >:( Someone shouldn’t throw stones at glass houses. The only reason your immigrant mother from Nigeria is a goddess is because she chose to commit suicide from failing her medical exam and her fiancé leaving her and by some struck of luck became a goddess instead of dying. Tyburn won’t have the opportunities and the power she has if not for her mother being an actual goddess.

“Toby slammed into my ankles as soon as I was across the threshold.” pg. 452 Aw :)

“Which meant-nothing” pg. 453 I’m sure it means something

“as she bit me hard.” pg. 455 Ahh

“After knocking my forehead a couple of times, I just opened the side door like a normal person.” pg. 457 Ha

“But no, not Nickolas Wallpenny, it was Henry Pyke. It was always Henry Pyke, right from the start.” pg. 460 It was him from the start!? :0

“You know;” he squeaked, “you’re not nearly as stupid as you look.” pg. 460 Rude

“Where’s Henry now?”

“He’s in your girlfriend’s head, having carnal knowledge of her brain.” pg. 461 Beverly?! No wait he’s talking about Leslie. Come on Mr. Punch keep up this the new relationship details you’re so far behind on the gossip

“I could no more have not chased him than I could have stopped breathing.” pg. 461 Cool

“I closed the last couple of meters on Mr. Punch and rugby-tackled the dead fucker to the ground.” pg. 463 Yes go Peter!

“Bastard,” he said. “Black Irish bastard dog.” pg. 463 So rude and racist >:( it’s not even that creative come up with better honestly

“Was there a god of Justice? And where would I find him-or maybe her.” pg. 464 Way to be inclusive Peter :)

“And suddenly I understood what Mama Thames had been trying to tell me.” pg. 465 See I knew it would come in handy

“It was the spirt of Old Man of the River as a young man.” pg. 466 So cool and he’s so old

“Molly was hunched over, her face turned away and hidden by her hair, vomiting blood onto her nice clean tiles.” pg. 467 Oh dear

“I looked into her eyes and saw that they were all back, no trace of white at all, and filled with hunger and despair.” pg. 468 Oh no

“Nightingale’s name made her pause, but only for a moment.” pg. 469 She still paused that’s something

“It was Toby” pg. 470 Go Toby!

“It was Leslie, waiting for me on the chaise lounge, holding Nightingale’s cane across her knees and staring into space.” pg. 471 Oh come on

“I blame it on the Italian, Piccini, a passionate race-they have to incorporate lust into all their endeavors, even their religious works.” pg. 473 Well that’s racist

“And then the mouthy git was gone, right on cue.” pg. 477 Good

“whom he piled with alcohol”

“he might have pressed his case a little too fervently”

“she was a willing partner, or at least not objecting too strenuously”

“At least right up to the point where she bit his dick off.” pg. 480 Good for her

“Beautiful, but she didn’t have slanty eyes.” pg. 481 More racism I’m so glad you got your dick bitten off

“I couldn’t help thinking that hanging out with me had almost killed her.” pg. 482 Poor Peter

“It had been less than six months” pg. 482 It hasn’t even been six months?!

“Nightingale was in the adjacent room, was awake and sitting up and doing the Telegraph crossword.” pg. 483 Yay Nightingale and he’s doing ok

“two people who definitely still believed in divine rights.” pg. 486 Ew divine rights

“It can’t be Tyburn.” I’d said. You don’t inflict Tyburn on anyone as a gesture of peace or goodwill.” pg. 487 Yep

“old-fashioned rectangular hay bays, of the type I happen to know are no longer common in British farming practices.” pg. 488 It’s not common? Over here it is at least where I live

“Don’t worry, it’s basically just like the country,” I said. “Only with more people.” pg. 491 Ha

Final thoughts

I enjoyed this book. I adore the characters, especially Peter, Nightingale, and Molly. I liked the Rivers. The book was very British. I enjoyed the magic and the mystery. I’m glad this book didn’t go into a love triangle with Peter, Leslie, and Beverly. Bi Peter is up to 4 (yes I’m turning this into a counter) I wasn’t a fan of how horny Peter. I wasn’t expecting all the racism.

Onto Moon over SoHo

#rivers of london #peter grant #peter grant is bi #starlinggail

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