PM : Our unique justice system is proof of ultimate democracy in our country. Inclusion is a right, exercising opinion is a right, being a valued member of society is a right. Our system promotes all this, giving all of us a voice to affect the safety of our nation. Together, we are world-leading. Together, we are the voice of justice.
The audience applaud and whoop. Kristina smiles wide and dabs at her eyes with a tissue as she is brought centre-camera.
KRISTINA: I am certain, ladies and gentlemen, that our PM, although on his well-earned holiday, will be glued to the screen in his villa, watching this thrilling case develop – our first ever teen on death row.
She dips her head, as the audience applaud again.
KRISTINA: Thank you to our guest this evening and apologies for being unable to continue our fascinating discussion of his interesting, if somewhat out-dated, views on justice. Do remember to log your vote for Martha Honeydew. Do you believe her guilty of the terrifying murder of celebrity charity worker Jackson Paige, or think her innocent, as our controversial guest did today? Do we want another killer let loose on our streets? Let’s take a look at those all-important numbers and the voting information. Dial 0909 87 97 77 and to vote guilty add 7 to the end or to vote not guilty add a 0. You can also vote by texting DIE or LIVE to 7997. To vote online visit our website www.aneyeforaneyeproductions.com, click on the ‘Martha Honeydew Teen Killer’ tab at the top and log your vote. Calls are charged at premium rate, please seek bill payer’s permission, texts cost £5 plus your network provider’s standard fee, voting online is also £5 after an initial registration fee of £20. For full Ts and Cs visit our website. Her fate is in your hands. Don’t go anywhere though, viewers, because after the break we’ll be joined by the former employer of our Cell 6 occupant, who will explain to us why he believes the devoted father of three has been framed.
The eye logo spins on the screen as the lights dim.
Eve
Eve turns off the television.
The living room is dark and the house is quiet. Behind her, rain patters against the blackened window and in front of her the table is strewn with files and papers; flickering orange from the open fire casts forever moving shadows, while a small table lamp lights the smallest circle underneath it. A cold cup of coffee is abandoned in the middle and a half-eaten sandwich balances on a text book.
‘You cocked that up, Cicero,’ she mutters to herself.
As she leans back in her seat a photograph on the hearth catches her eye – Jim, Max and herself.
She rubs her hands over her face and glances back to the photo. ‘It’s like you all over again,’ she breathes.
The fire pops and crackles as if talking to her.
‘Why is she saying she did it? She’s the same age as Max and they’re going to kill her and I don’t think I can stop it.’ She shakes her head and tears fall down her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t before.
‘I did this for you because you had nobody. I fought for counsellors. Fought so they’d, you’d, have someone to talk to but …’ Her voice breaks and her chest stutters. ‘It hurts every time and this time is … worse … you know it’s worse … because … because … and I can’t … do it … any … more. She has to be the last one.’
She tips her head forward and her whole body trembles as she sobs and sobs. ‘I miss you,’ she says. ‘I miss you, I miss you, I miss you and it’s my fault. Without you it’s … if it wasn’t for Max …’
The doorbell rings.
Ignoring it, she puts her face in her hands.
The doorbell rings again. For a moment she listens to the rain outside, then lifts herself out of the sofa and pads through the house to the front door, blotting her face and nose on the sleeve of her jumper.
‘Hang on!’ she shouts as she reaches the hallway, her voice croaky and broken.
She unlocks the door and pulls it open. ‘Max, did you forget your –’ She stops. ‘You’re not Max.’
In the darkness outside, she can’t make out the person’s face; his hood is pulled up and his head hidden, his clothes are dark and wet. There’s nothing to distinguish him as anything but anonymous.
‘No.’ She pushes the door, but he rams his foot in the gap, stepping closer to the light of the hallway, taller than her and intimidating.
‘Eve Stanton?’ a deep voice says.
‘Get out,’ she replies. ‘I’ll call the police.’
‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘I don’t want any trouble. I know your son is out. I know you’re alone, but don’t scream. I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘What do you want? Money?’
‘No,’ he laughs. ‘A favour, and a promise.’
‘I can’t …’
‘You went to see Mrs B today with a note from Martha.’
‘How do you …?’
‘Did you read it?’
‘Have you been following me?’
‘Did you read it?’ he asks louder.
‘No,’ she replies. ‘No.’
He watches her. ‘I’ve looked into you. I know what happened to your husband. I know your son goes to Foxton School. I know he’s in his last year.’
‘Are you threatening my family?’
‘No. I want to know I can trust you.’
‘Well, you can’t, so go away.’ She shoves the door again but his hands block it. His face is closer to the light now; she can see dark hair under his hood and the outline of a thin face.
‘I can’t,’ he replies. ‘I need a favour and a promise.’
‘What?’ she asks.
He takes his hand off the door, reaches into a pocket and pulls out a white envelope. ‘The letter you gave to Mrs B was for me. This is my reply. Please, give it to Martha.’
‘You can’t correspond with prisoners; they can’t have contact with anyone outside.’
‘Except you,’ he replies. ‘But you have to promise not to read it.’
‘I’m not supposed to do this. If they find out they’ll strike me off.’
‘But they won’t find out.’
‘What if I say no?’
‘I don’t think you will, because I think you’re different. I think you actually care.’
She stares into the darkness inside his hood, trying to see more of his face, but he leans back into shadows.
She takes the letter. ‘Who are you?’ she asks.
He steps away from the door. ‘You haven’t worked that out? Shame on you.’
With another few steps, he’s gone.
Martha
I read once that if people are left alone too long they start seeing faces in things, like their brains are looking for company, but I can’t see any.
Cell 2 looks pretty similar to Cell 1, but muted. The walls are more a dirty white, the bed sheets too. Like everything’s used and old, and it smells damp too. I think the window’s smaller. The cell definitely is. Maybe the next will be smaller, then smaller still, until the last cell’s just a box. A coffin.
It’s dark in here today as the sun goes down outside. There aren’t any lights, not any candles or burning torches or anything like that, it’s not like medieval times apart from the cobbles on the floor in the corridor and I can’t see them from here anyway because the door’s shut. The door’s always shut.
There’s moonlight coming through the glass and the bars at the window. I like it. If I squint my eyes together so I can just see the dark and the moonlight I can nearly forget about the walls holding me in.
It’s raining out there too. I can hear it on the glass, and there’s a leak at the side of the window too. The rainwater’s coming in, dripping. Drip, drip, drip. Maybe it’ll rain and rain and rain and it’ll drip and drip and drip and this cell will fill up and I’ll drown.
Drip, drip, drip.
I’m lying on the bed
Drip, drip, drip.
watching the drops
Drip, drip, drip.
catch the moonlight and
Drip, drip, drip.
I wait for each one to
Drip, drip, drip.
tap a rhythm.
Drip, drip, drip.
Guilt, guilt, guilt.
Drip, drip, drip.
Dead, dead, dead.
Drip, drip …
Oh fucking hell. Drip, drip fucking drip! Stop with your fucking dripping.
Drip, drip, drip.
Bang, bang, bang.
Gun, gun, gun.
Dead, dead, dead.
Gone, gone, gone.
Drip, drip, drip.
Arghhh! Stop!
Stop, stop, stop.
Shit, this is relentless.
Shit, shit, shit.
Stop, please.
No, no, no.
Please.
Mum, Mum, Mum.
No.
Ol, lie, Ol …
I’m not listening.
I, saac, I –
Enough! I’m not being tortured by some bloody dripping water. I’ll stop you.
I leap from the bed and go to the window. Where it’s coming from the wall and dripping onto the floor is about my shoulder height and I put my fingers into it and it runs down them and up my arm instead.
‘Stopped you,’ I whisper to it.
The water’s cool and my heartbeat slows; it’s like I’m touching outside again.
‘Tamed you,’ I breathe.
I rub my hand in it and smear it on my face. Then I stand underneath, lean my head against the wall and let the rain run down my shoulders and on my skin and I’m not there in that cell any more.
I’m outside.
I’m on Crocus Street again as I am every evening since she was killed. I’m in the shadow of the underpass – the shortcut from the station to the Rises where the homeless seek shelter in concrete corners with the rubbish that’s blown in, but where the rain can’t reach.
The homeless know I’m here, we see each other from a distance every night, but I stay clear of them. They don’t bother me, I don’t bother them.
The one with the dog on a piece of string, he saw her die. Told the police. Said it wasn’t like a hit and run because the guy wasn’t in his car at first. Said he got into his car, started the engine and then ploughed straight into her on purpose. He told them, and me, that after, the car stopped long enough for a stocky, well-dressed man to get out, see what he’d done, get back in again and drive away.
‘Weren’t no Ollie B,’ he said to me. ‘Weren’t his car neither.’
But I already knew that.
In my memory, I’m at the underpass. I’m standing in the only place where rain leaks through from a gap above. I don’t have a coat and it’s dripping onto my head and running down my face. I pull my hood up and step sideways into the shadows. Across the road is a row of old shops, some with broken windows, others boarded-up, graffiti on them or fliers for something or other stuck to them. None are open.
I take another step sideways and I see something – no … someone in the doorway of the old sweet shop. A dark shadow steps out into the rain, a hood pulled up covering his face, and his hands in his pockets.
He’s tall. His shoulders are wide and he’s staring at me.
He’s walking forwards, striding purposefully, confidently across the street, towards me and I can’t move.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ I say as he approaches. ‘Hiding in that doorway. I know who you are and I’ll report you. And those men over there? Those homeless guys? They’re looking out for me. You can’t do anything. They’ll tell the police …’ My heart’s pounding as he steps closer and closer. His head is nodding.
‘Of course,’ he says, ‘because nobody could be killed here without the police and the media knowing exactly who the culprit is.’ His voice is low. Warm, friendly yet controlled and unwavering.
I stare up to his face half hidden in shadow.
‘What do you want?’ I ask.
He pauses, lifts his hands up and takes down his hood, and there, in the orange tint of dim, far-away streetlights, is a face I’ve seen a thousand times in newspapers, magazines, and on television. Jackson Paige’s son.
‘To apologise,’ he says.
CELL 3
Martha
They moved me into here, Cell 3, before the sun had even come up. Some guard I’ve never seen before marched in at 5.30 this morning and dragged me away from the wall where I’d fallen asleep soaked to the skin.
I shouted at him, ‘What you doing? What you doing to me?’
‘Shut up, scum!’ he shouted back.
Then I woke here. My head hurts, my fingers are swollen, and I feel wet still and cold to the core, but a crack of dull sunlight filters through the even smaller window and melts away the shadows, and I watch the dust particles playing in it and I wish I was as carefree as them, and as small as them so I could float out of here, up to you, and feel you with me one last time.
I lean my face into the warmth of it and close my eyes.
‘Take my coat,’ he said.
I was cold and wet, standing in the rain with him looking down at me, but I shook my head.
‘I don’t want anything to do with you.’ I walked away from him, across Crocus Street and past the boarded-up shops. ‘I’ve seen you watching me!’ I shouted back. ‘You can leave me alone.’
He strode along next to me.
‘How are you coping?’ he asked. ‘How are you doing for money? Why are they letting you live in that flat without your mother? Are they going to take it away from you?’
I stopped and stared at him. Rain was pouring down my face and soaking through my clothes. He’d taken his jacket off and was shivering in a T-shirt sticking to him and wet jeans. His hair, which must’ve been perfect before, was plastered to his head.
‘What do you care?’
‘If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here.’
I carried on walking, cutting through the park. ‘Thought you’d come to gloat,’ I shouted over my shoulder. ‘Look down at us all from up there on your podium with all your money and opportunity and influence and all that shit. Like poverty tourism, or something.’
He trotted after me, his coat still in his hand. ‘I know Oliver Barkova didn’t kill your mother.’
‘Ollie B?’ I shouted through the wind and rain. ‘Yeah, so do I. So does everyone.’
‘And I wanted to apologise to you.’
My shoes squelched across the grass. ‘Wasn’t you, was it? It was some stocky bloke. What do you want to apologise for?’
The rain had soaked through my clothes and my feet were in puddles. In the background the Rises stood like sentinels overlooking our people.
He rushed up next to me and threw his coat over my shoulders. I wanted to shrug it off, or for it to fall, but it didn’t. I didn’t want it to feel warm, or smell of him.
‘I don’t know … I just thought.’
‘Think it was one of your people, did you? Heard some rumour that the car seen was so new and shiny that it couldn’t possibly have belonged to someone here?’
‘Why? Who saw it happen?’
I snorted at him. ‘Well, you’ve apologised, so now you can go,’ I said.
‘Aren’t you angry?’
The rain came down heavier, the sky became darker and lower like it was hemming us in and holding us to the ground. In the distance thunder groaned. I picked up my pace.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘No. I don’t know. What does it matter anyway?’
‘I want to do something for you.’
I laughed but kept on walking. ‘So that you don’t feel guilty for having your millions when we have nothing?’
‘No … because I want to make things better for you.’
‘I don’t need your charity,’ I snapped back.
I reached the entrance to Daffodil House as thunder roared above and lightning split the skies. I stopped and rested my hand on the door.
‘I know what you can do to make things better for me.’ I pushed the door open and his coat fell to the ground.
‘Anything,’ he said.
‘You can fuck off,’ I replied.
I slammed the door behind me.
‘Meet me tomorrow by the underpass!’ he shouted through the door.
Eve
Cicero places a cup of coffee in front of Eve and sits down opposite her.
‘White, no sugar,’ he says.
‘You remembered,’ she replies, watching as he tips two sachets of sugar through the froth of his cappuccino. ‘You know, you shouldn’t really …’
‘I’m beyond caring,’ he says.
She shrugs and turns a spoon in her drink.
‘Do you know you’re being followed?’ he asks.
She lifts the spoon out and watches the liquid drip from it. ‘You mean the man by the window with the blue scarf?’ she says. ‘He works for the National News. He’s been following me since this began.’
‘He’ll have photographs of us together now.’
‘I should think so,’ she replies. ‘Yet I can’t imagine it could do any more harm.’ She takes a slow sip of coffee and places the mug back on the table. ‘You cocked up yesterday.’
‘They twisted my words.’
‘You didn’t expect them to? Why the hell did you go on? You must’ve known …’
‘It had to be said, Eve! I shouldn’t have got angry, but I had to do something.’ His voice is low and urgent. ‘Day three now! And do you know what the stats are?’
‘I don’t follow the stats …’ Her eyes drop to the table.
‘No, of course you don’t, but … I know they were wrong with Jim, I remember how it was looking for him, we all thought he’d get off. I remember.’
‘He was at ninety-five percent not guilty on day six, Cicero.’
‘I know, and everyone thought he was coming home to you.’
‘Ninety-five percent!’ she hisses at him. ‘You can’t trust stats!’
‘Martha’s ninety-nine percent guilty.’ He leans towards her, his eyes peering over his glasses.
The reality TV show to die for. Literally Page 6