It's Christmas Eve, 2024. The pubs are busy, laughter spilling onto the streets and the smell of festive drinks hangs in the air. But somewhere in the crowd, a woman is drinking a double vodka and coke, her mind elsewhere.

Her name is Kirsty Carlos.

Hours later in the early hours of Christmas Day, a single screenshot appears on her phone.

Lewis Price, her ex, her child's father, is smiling back at her from a Tinder profile.

Something inside her snaps.

This is Red Rum.

This is your Patreon exclusive bonus episode.

Today we're in Canuck Staffordshire back in 2021, and two people are about to cross paths. A 29-year-old woman called Kirstie and a 28-year-old man, Lewis. He's a father and a man known in his community as close to his family. He likes

fishing and hanging out with friends. Now, exactly how he and Kirst Kirsty met isn't known. It could have been

a pub or a football match, but whatever the circumstances, a spark ignited. It wasn't long

before the pair moved in together and then Kirsty becomes pregnant. She gives birth to their

first child,

and this is actually Lewis's sixth child.

Now, from the outside,

Lewis and Kirsty might have looked like any other couple in their early 30s,

navigating relationships, social obligations, and just general family life.

But beneath that, something else was taking root, something volatile.

It was by the end of 2021 that patterns had begun to emerge.

Friends and neighbours noticed cycles of separation, reconciliation, arguments, and these arguments

would then escalate quickly, and emotional extremes that seemed to consume both of them.

By early 2023, the cracks in the relationship were no longer invisible. In fact, they were becoming

impossible to ignore. And apologies for going sort of from when they met in 2021, all the way to

...