The reality TV show to die for. Literally

by Kerry Drewery

  ‘The car he hit your mother with?’

  They stare at each other. ‘Yeah, of course I was relieved when they arrested him.’ She doesn’t take her eyes from Eve. ‘Thrilled when they executed him. Who wouldn’t have been?’

  ‘You don’t think he did it?’

  Martha tuts. ‘Why are you even interested?’

  ‘Because it’s obviously important to you.’

  ‘You must’ve met him. He was in here.’

  ‘I’m not everyone’s counsellor,’ Eve replies. ‘There are a couple of us.’

  ‘Were you his?’

  Eve puts her hands together and lifts them to her face. ‘I don’t remember,’ she whispers.

  Martha stares at her. ‘Time’s up,’ she says, and she stands and moves to the door.

  ‘Martha …’

  ‘Press the button, call the guard.’

  ‘It’s not easy, watching people through this, knowing they’ll more than likely die.’

  ‘But we deserve it, don’t we?’

  Eve doesn’t say a word.

  Martha strides back to the table, puts her palms on the surface and stares at Eve. ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘If …’ Eve mutters, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back in her seat. ‘If …’ her voice is low, ‘… you did …’ She shrugs her shoulders. ‘The law states that should the accused be found guilty of the crime of taking another life, then their life shall be taken from them.’

  ‘Culpae poenae par esto,’ Martha says. ‘“Let the punishment fit the crime.” I know what the law says. I asked what you think.’

  ‘What I think doesn’t matter; what I do does. I do this job because I believe everyone should have support in what could be their final days. Nobody should approach death alone. And I do it because,’ she swallows hard and brushes a loose strand of hair from her face, ‘because, believe it or not, I do care.’

  Martha sits down, watching Eve while seconds tick by on the clock above them. In the window movement catches her eye and as she glances over Eve’s shoulder, sees the sparrow is back in the tree.

  ‘Prove that you care,’ she whispers. ‘Do something for me.’

  Martha reaches across the table, pulling the notepad and pen towards her.

  With her left arm draped in front of her, hiding the pad from Eve, she starts to write.

  ‘I want you to take this to someone.’ She doesn’t look up. ‘But I don’t want you to read it, OK? You said you care – if you do, then do this for me.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to …’

  ‘I’m guessing you weren’t supposed to plant a tree outside the window either.’ She finishes writing, tears the sheet from the pad, folds it over and writes on the outside.

  ‘Where am I taking it?’ Eve asks.

  Martha glances up to her, a smile touching the edges of her mouth. ‘The address is on it.’ She pushes the note across the table and under the folder. ‘Promise you won’t read it.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Now I’d like to go.’

  Sliding a hand under the table, Eve presses the button to call the guard.

  As the key creaks around in the lock, Martha looks back to Eve and frowns. ‘You said your name was Stanton.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘Are you related to Jim Stanton?’

  The guard steps into the room. ‘Done, are we?’ he says.

  Ignoring him, Eve nods slowly at Martha, lifts her hands onto the table and turns her wedding ring around on her finger.

  Martha shuffles to the doorway, the chains rattling against each other, but she pauses and looks back at Eve.

  ‘If it means anything,’ she whispers, ‘he seemed a nice man.’

  Eve

  Eve drives past the cluster of flowers and tributes to Jackson that are starting to be left and pulls up at the side of the road.

  She stops the engine and chews at her fingernail as she looks around at the landscape outside the car. The pavements are dirty, some broken; empty crisp packets, chip wrappers and burger boxes collect in corners or gutters, and past them dry, scrubby grass leads to a park with two rusty swings, a broken climbing frame and a wooden bench with only two slats left for the seat.

  A gang of kids sit around it, hoods up and huddled close against the winter cold. Over the grass is a shop with boarded-up windows and a half-illuminated sign flickering in the dark as the last few bulbs struggle to keep going. Outside of it a couple of young men and women chat with hands stuffed in pockets and collars turned up against the wind.

  Casting everything and everybody in darker shadows are the High Rises. Tall, dull, grey concrete flats blurring against a cloudy and grey sky. Concrete trees in a concrete jungle.

  Eve steps out of the car, pulls her coat tight; wraps a scarf around her neck and pulls a woolly hat onto her head. In her pocket, Martha’s note crinkles.

  As she crosses the road and heads across the grass towards the High Rises, she feels the eyes of the kids on her.

  ‘Hey, woman!’ one of them shouts. ‘You lost? You come off the motorway too soon!’

  She dips her face into her scarf.

  ‘There’s nothing here for you and your folk. Not unless you want to end up like Jackson Paige!’ His laugh cackles through the icy air.

  Eve keeps facing forward, eyes on the High Rises, watching them get closer, but she hears footsteps running towards her, louder and louder, until they slow and she senses someone next to her.

  ‘You press?’ he asks. ‘Tourist? I can show you where he was shot. There’s still blood on the path. You can take a photo of it.’

  She ignores him.

  ‘I can tell you loads about it. For a price. I know everything what goes on round here, see? I could get you a scoop for your newspaper.’

  She glances sideways to him as she walks. ‘I’m not press,’ she says.

  ‘TV then. Reckon I could get one of them women to give you an interview for the right price. As long as you don’t mention my name, that is.’

  Eve stops. ‘What women?’ she asks. ‘Are you talking about Jackson Paige? Are you suggesting he was having an affair?’

  He scoffs. ‘You folks put yourselves in your ivory towers and haven’t got no clue as to what goes on outside of them. Everyone round here knows he was having affairs! And they know the truth about what happened the other night.’

  ‘You’re Gus. I saw you on Death is Justice.’

  He looks down, shaking his head and shuffling his feet. ‘Nah, you’re wrong, that weren’t me.’

  Eve takes a tentative step forwards and stares at him, and as she lifts her face from her scarf he recoils slightly.

  ‘Yes, it was.’ Her voice is quiet and she watches his dirty fingernails scratch at his face. ‘Why did you lie?’ she asks. ‘Why did you say all that about the cells? That’s not how they are.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I know that, don’t I?’

  ‘Were you lying about being on death row too?’

  He pauses for a second. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘No. You tell me what you know about Paige.’

  ‘I know information’s important. Know not to give nothing away what folks like you’ll pay for.’

  Eve walks on. ‘I won’t pay,’ she mutters.

  He chases after her. ‘But you want to know, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think you know anything,’ she shouts over her shoulder.

  ‘Well, I do. I hang around here, see? Watch stuff, people going about their business and that. I’m not thick, can put it all together, y’know?’

  ‘I still don’t believe you.’

  ‘Well, I know he’d been having affairs with women round here.’

  ‘You already told me that.’

  ‘Know I could get one of them to talk to you, for a price. Y’see, that’s why he was here all the time. That and selling drugs.’

  He stops walking, shoves his hands deep in his pockets and kicks at the dirt by his feet. The cold bites at him and
his eyes water as he watches her.

  ‘I don’t blame you for not remembering me!’ he shouts through the wind. ‘I mean, we only talked for what, seven hours all together?’

  She pauses.

  ‘There’s no need to feel guilty or nothing. I get that there’s more important things in your life than folks like me dying. Or not dying, as it happened.’

  She strides back to him, shouting across the parkland. ‘Are you a pathological liar? Is this some ridiculous game you’re playing with me? What is it you want? Money? Is that it?’

  ‘Money, money, money, everything’s money with you folk.’

  ‘You’re the one trying to charge me for information.’

  ‘Man’s got to eat.’

  She spins away from him. ‘You make no sense.’

  ‘Five years ago. Summertime. July 20th to the 27th. Hottest summer in God knows how many years. No air-con in that room of yours. They, the police, said I throttled a man for nicking my drugs. They had the body and everything. Woke up and it was there in my flat. Scared the crap out of me. Next thing they’re barging my door down.’

  She stares at him.

  ‘Told them I never did no drugs, but they found some in my flat, didn’t they? Told them it was planted there. The body too. Asked them for a blood test to prove it but they refused.’

  The wind batters them both, rubbish blowing past their feet and off across the scrubby grass, the sound of the air through the chains of the swing in the distance like ghosts whistling around them.

  Gus kicks at the ground. ‘Had to do something. Couldn’t just give up, could I? Didn’t want folks to remember me as some murdering druggie. Weren’t right. So I did the only thing I could. I stopped …’

  ‘You stopped eating,’ Eve interrupts, her voice quiet as memories flood back.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  ‘Then you refused water too.’ For a moment she does nothing but watch his expression.

  ‘You look so different now,’ she says. ‘I didn’t recognise you.’

  Gus shrugs.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she continues, ‘I should’ve done more for you back then, but …’

  ‘You tried,’ he says. ‘Snuck me chocolate in, didn’t you? Tried to tempt me but it didn’t work. Don’t matter now though.’

  ‘It does but …’ She rubs a hand across her forehead. ‘At least you got off.’

  He laughs. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘What? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Come on! It was rigged! The whole thing. It was a set-up cos they wanted someone. You remember that doctor who came to my cell? He weren’t no doctor. Gave me an option, he did. I can get you out, he says, sort the stats, he tells me, but you have to do things for us. What kind of things? I ask and he just laughs, but don’t say nothing. Got you, he’s thinking.

  ‘Y’know what it did, all that? Proved to everyone here that they own us. They can do whatever they want. Accuse, set up, lie about. Y’know where I am now?’

  He takes her hand and gently peels open her fingers. ‘Right there,’ he says, touching her palm. ‘Right where they want me and I can’t do nothing about it. Can’t change it, can’t get out, can’t do nothing. They want to know something, I’ve got to find it out. They want me watching someone? I’ve got to watch them. It’s like I’m their stooge or something. And as soon as I do something they don’t like …’ He squeezes her hand into a fist. ‘I’ll be a goner …’

  ‘How do I know I can trust you then?’ she asks. ‘How do I know you won’t tell them I’ve been here? Whoever they are.’

  He shrugs. ‘If I was going to blab about you being here, why would I be telling you all this? I’m just a decent guy in a crap situation. I tell them some shit, I don’t tell them other.’

  ‘Isn’t that a dangerous game?’

  ‘Well, some folks don’t deserve telling on.’

  ‘Like Martha?’

  Gently he moves her hands back down to her side.

  ‘Different that, isn’t it?’

  For a moment they stand in silence. Above them clouds grow darker and lower; a storm is in the air, the damp of threatening rain, the thrill of static waiting for lightning. Eve pulls her coat tight around her and shuffles her chin into the collar.

  ‘Tell me where you’re going then and I’ll see you there safe.’

  ‘Are you going to try to charge me for that?’ she asks, a hint of a smile in her voice.

  ‘Nah,’ he replies, ‘I’ll do it for free just cos I’m nice like that.’

  She glances at him from the corner of her eye.

  ‘Daffodil House,’ she says. ‘Floor eighteen. Flat eleven.’

  He frowns at her. ‘That isn’t Martha’s place, that’s next door, Mrs B’s. Why are you going there?’

  Eve ignores him.

  ‘OK, OK, don’t tell me.’

  ‘You knew Martha, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing about that. Not even if you do pay me.’

  ‘I’m trying to help her,’ Eve mutters.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replies. ‘Reckon you are. C’mon then.’ He starts walking. ‘It’s the one in the middle. Don’t look much like no daffodil, does it?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For telling me things for free.’ She flicks him a brief smile.

  Martha

  I didn’t think I’d feel this lonely.

  I thought I’d be allowed visitors or something. Or there’d be something to do. Reading, maybe, or be allowed out of the cell, talk to the other accused. Not just this. In a cell for twenty-three hours a day. Nothing but thoughts and worries. Old memories, few good.

  I’ve never felt so alone.

  When Mum went to work at night and I’d lie in bed listening to bumps and creaks around me, I’d know she’d be back in the morning. After she was killed, the TV kept me company and Mrs B was always next door and popping in to make sure I was OK.

  I miss you, Mrs B. Miss having dinner with you and Ollie after Mum had gone, both of us as sad as each other but not saying anything. What could we say? You were like an auntie to me and I’m sorry. You’ve suffered so much and were so good to me, and to Mum too. I hope you understand.

  When Ollie was arrested and you cried in my arms, saying over and over that he didn’t do it, I believed you because I already knew – so did the whole population of all the Rises put together – but it didn’t matter, did it?

  ‘How could he have hit her when his car was stolen?’ we screamed at the television and that Death is Justice programme.

  Everybody we knew voted for his innocence, even people we didn’t know, who’d come up to us on the street and tell us that they’d voted and so had their mother, brother, father, sister, aunt, uncle, next-door neighbour, even the bloody dog if it could!

  Because we all knew who did do it – that slimy toe-rag of a man, with all his money and celebrity friends, and police influence and all that crap.

  Jackson Paige.

  We were no match for his money, were we?

  He could leave his phone on redial, voting hundreds and thousands and millions of times. We were ripping apart sofas to find enough change for one more vote.

  ‘We can eat properly next week,’ I remember telling you. ‘Pay the bills, the rent … everything, next week.’

  I went with you to his execution; the press had a field day.

  ‘Victim’s Daughter Escorts Killer’s Mother’ – was a headline – ‘Forgiveness As Justice Is Served?’ was another.

  Justice?

  What justice?

  You didn’t even get to hold your son one last time.

  When the press shoved microphones into our faces afterwards, I opened my mouth to tell them what I thought, but before we could speak, we were dragged away by Jackson’s men, bungled into a car and thrown back out again at the bottom of Daffodil House.

  Then you’re old news, aren’t you?

  Nobody’s interested. Someone el
se is facing the chair. Who cares if they’re innocent or guilty? It’s entertainment, isn’t it?

  Bitter?

  Yeah, you know what? I am bitter.

  But I’m also determined now.

  I can be lonely for a week.

  And I can be dead.

  People will see, hear what I have to say and maybe, maybe, they’ll understand. Maybe they’ll finally get it and be shocked and all that, and I’ll have done my bit. Then it’ll be up to you, Isaac, to use that shockwave and change things for good.

  Eve

  The lift doors of Daffodil House judder open and Eve steps out and into the corridor of floor eighteen, the lights above her flickering onto the bare walls and dirty floor.

  ‘It doesn’t smell much like a daffodil either,’ she mumbles to herself.

  The yellow police tape and no-entry signs outside lead her like a beacon towards number twelve. Next to it, plain and innocuous, is number eleven. With a deep breath, she knocks, waiting as police sirens and car alarms sound in the distance.

  After a few minutes she hears the shunt of bolts and the turn of keys, and as the door creaks open, a crinkled pair of eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses peer out from the gap spanned by the safety chain.

  The eyes widen. ‘Eve Stanton,’ the woman croaks. ‘What brings you to my door?’

  ‘I have a message for you.’

  The eyes continue to stare.

  ‘Well?’ Mrs B says. ‘What is it?’

  Eve takes the folded-up paper from her pocket, pauses a second as she looks at it, then holds it to the gap.

  Mrs B pulls it from her and before Eve can say a word the door slams in her face.

  She shakes her head and closes her eyes, both aching from the lights flickering across the darkness.

  ‘Great,’ she says to herself, ‘what do I do now?’ But before she can decide, the chain on the other side of the door jangles and the handle creaks down.

  ‘Come in if you want,’ Mrs B says.

  Eve steps inside and closes the door behind her.