The reality TV show to die for. Literally

by Kerry Drewery

  MRS B: Guilt? Why guilt?

  KRISTINA (with a laugh): Because your son killed her mother! Surely you hoped you’d brought him up better than that!

  MRS B: My son did not kill Beth.

  KRISTINA: You mean Mrs Honeydew?

  MRS B: Yes, of course I do. We were friends, I called her Beth.

  KRISTINA: So he killed your friend?

  MRS B: I tell you he did not kill –

  KRISTINA: Yet the public found him guilty. Are you trying to infer all of the …

  She glances back to her notes.

  KRISTINA:… six hundred thousand, four hundred and eighty-nine people who voted him guilty were wrong?

  MRS B (quietly): I know my son.

  KRISTINA: Leaving that aside for one minute – let’s return to a point you raised a moment ago – you and Beth Honeydew were friends?

  MRS B: Yes, very good friends. We lived next door to each other.

  KRISTINA: She helped you a great deal?

  MRS B: She did, yes. She was good lady. Her daughter is good girl – that is why –

  KRISTINA: We’ll come to that, Mrs B. As I was saying –

  MRS B: I said you call me my proper name – Mrs Barkova.

  KRISTINA: Apologies. Again, as I was saying, Beth helped you a great deal as your background – your origins, shall we say – are very different, aren’t they? Your values are not traditional to this country, are they?

  MRS B: I came to this country when I was three years old.

  KRISTINA: Yet when we look at your history, we can start to understand how things have gone so drastically wrong for you.

  MRS B: What went wrong?

  KRISTINA: You were raised solely by your father, who, not being able to afford child-care, took you to work on the docks and boat yards with him.

  MRS B: My father was good man.

  KRISTINA: Where you learned inadequate English.

  MRS B: Mrs Albright, you talk crap. I not sit here and listen –

  KRISTINA: Mrs B, your culture might not allow for manners, but mine certainly does, let me finish –

  MRS B: Manners? This is manners? You invite me here to talk about Martha and you insult me? No, I not let you bloody finish, cos you talk nothing of sense. You talk shit and you tell lies. I’m not here to talk about my son or my father, God rest their souls, or the fifty-four years I have lived in this country, I’m here to talk about Miss Martha.

  KRISTINA: Ladies and gentlemen, she says she has manners, yet she swears like a trooper!

  The audience laugh.

  MRS B: You interrupt again; you only like things your way. Now shut your face and listen.

  Kristina leans back in her seat and folds her arms across her chest and raises her eyebrows.

  KRISTINA: Please, go ahead, Mrs B.

  MRS B: Where I come from is not of interest. Who I am is. I know difference between right and wrong. My son too. Martha too. I’m here because Martha have no one, she is lonely in world. I’m here to tell you that she does not deserve to be killed.

  KRISTINA: You’re saying she’s lying?

  MRS B: She has been through very hard times. She has no family. She had to drop out of school to work to pay rent.

  KRISTINA: I’m sorry, Mrs B, but what rent? She’s a minor, she should be living in a care institution and supported by the government.

  MRS B (sighing): No, she not like that. She says they are shit places. She pays rent for her mother’s flat and she need to earn money for food too. She works hard, long hours cleaning toilets and things. She is kind girl. Caring too. She look after me since Ollie executed. She come round every day. Some days we eat tea together and sometimes she stay with me ’til late. That way we only need pay to heat one flat.

  Kristina leans forward, her hands clasped in front of her.

  KRISTINA (voice low): So you cook dinner for her and let her stay with you. That’s very kind of you.

  MRS B: She is lovely, sweet girl. She never done nothing wrong. This, it breaks my heart. She is a baby. Her mother would be …

  Mrs B takes a tissue from her pocket, wipes her eyes and blows her nose. Kristina nods her head and places a hand close to Mrs B.

  MRS B: I try hard to help. I miss my boy and I miss my friend and now, soon … She is good girl, I tell you. Her mother, Beth, she brought her up well and would want people to see what a good girl she is and not remember her as a murderer. She would be better at this than me, she would make people see and understand.

  She gulps tears back.

  KRISTINA: I think, Mrs B, that life has been very hard for you too and I – I’m sure the audience as well – hear your plight and your worries and we wish you happiness for the future. You have done your friend proud, hasn’t she, ladies and gentlemen?

  Nodding, she looks to the audience and a ripple of applause sounds around the studio.

  KRISTINA: You have done your duty – provided Martha with a representative, informed us about her and put her case over to us, and for that society is grateful.

  MRS B: She is a clever girl. She knows what is going on, she sees the corruption and she wants to –

  Mrs B’s voice is suddenly cut short. Kristina ignores her and stands. The spotlight follows her towards the audience as the light around the desk and over Mrs B fades.

  KRISTINA: As we bring this to a close, viewers, let’s round up what we have found out this evening from Martha’s representative who, by her own admission, knows her better than anyone. Mrs Barkova, an immigrant to this country who was brought up mainly within the rough boat yards and docks, who after more than fifty years is yet to learn our language properly, has stated that Martha has dropped out of school, that she is illegally paying rent on a council flat that is not in her name and is too big for her needs. She has informed us too, that Martha thought herself too good for care institutions.

  A quiet scuffle in the shadows around the desk is drowned out by Kristina’s voice.

  KRISTINA: We have also learnt that the accused would visit Mrs Barkova every day and eat her hard-earned food, yet pay no money towards it. But despite all this, a lonely Mrs Barkova insists the girl does not deserve to die. I ask you, viewers: does this fit the description of a girl who is innocent, or does it sound to you like a lonely old lady is being tragically manipulated through her guilt? This is not my decision to make. All we can do here is provide you with the information given to us.

  Behind her the lights slowly fade up and Mrs B has gone.

  KRISTINA: We’ll leave those questions in your mind, viewers, as you ponder on which way to vote, and we’ll take ourselves back to Cell 7.

  The video link of Cell 7 fills the screen behind her, the man sitting on the floor in the corner, his head in his hands.

  KRISTINA: With less than two hours before voting closes, we can see the stats are …

  Two columns appear on the screen, Guilty and Not Guilty, accompanied by a ticking noise as they move upwards. Not Guilty stops under halfway, Guilty continues, the ticking louder and louder.

  It stops with a bang. ‘75%’ flashes across it in red.

  KRISTINA: And there you see it, ladies and gentlemen – 75% – there will have to be some fast fingers to get that dropping! Looks like we’re in for an execution tonight. Join us after the break.

  She smiles and the screen fades.

  Eve

  Eve throws the remote at the screen. It cracks and goes blank.

  ‘One chance to speak for her. One. And that cow …’

  Max steps into the room, looking at his mother and the broken television screen.

  ‘You remember I set that camera up at the front door ages ago?’ he says.

  Eve closes her eyes and leans back on the kitchen cupboards. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I got it to zoom in on your visitor yesterday. You’ll never guess who it was.’

  She peels her eyes open. ‘Show me,’ she replies.

  Martha

  They’ve left the cell door open. I still can’
t get out though, there’s bars across it instead. Never noticed them before; they must be on the outside wall.

  I can’t see much – the wall opposite and the door to Eve’s room – but I can hear movement and voices coming from down the end of the corridor.

  Think I know why.

  Seven cells, you see, but not seven people, because someone isn’t murdered, or caught, every day. I don’t know how many other people are down here. There’s not just me, but I don’t think there’s someone in all of them.

  One thing’s for certain though – seems like there’s someone in 7. He’ll be the one I saw on my first day, who laughed when I told him I killed Jackson Paige. I should’ve told him murder isn’t a laughing matter and neither’s death. I’d never wish anyone dead. I’d wish they’d fuck off and leave me alone, become better people or go live under a rock away from everyone, or something like that, but I’d never wish them dead.

  I wonder if it was the Cell 7 man I heard crying earlier.

  I wonder what his name is, what he did. Or what he didn’t.

  I don’t know where the guard’s gone. Left us, maybe. Maybe he isn’t here all the time. We’re all locked away, how would we even know?

  For a second the thought of a fire breaking out and us all roasting like chickens fills my head, but then I think, what would it matter anyway, and then I wonder if I’ve already thought that before. Then I wonder if I’m going mad.

  They say solitude does that to you.

  Then there’s lack of sleep and that bloody dripping yesterday.

  It’d be no wonder if I lost it.

  Seven days of hell. I’ll be begging them to kill me at the end.

  Somewhere there’s a door opening and closing, a cold draught, loud serious voices, then someone laughing. Someone else sobbing.

  ‘No, no, no!’ I hear. A man’s voice. ‘Please, no!’

  Is that him? The Cell 7 guy?

  ‘Guilty!’ I hear. A chorus of voices. A few cheers, some clapping.

  ‘Kill the bastard!’ someone shouts.

  ‘An eye for an eye!’ someone else says.

  I wonder if he actually did do it. If he actually did kill someone. In cold blood. Eve comes to my head, and her husband – that was self-defence, well, kind of. What if you killed someone by accident?

  There’s so much grey.

  But there isn’t room for grey any more.

  It’s gone quiet now and a strange atmosphere fills the place. I feel overwhelmed by sadness and suddenly I’m crying. I sit down on the floor and my tears roll off my nose and drop onto the floor.

  Splash, splash. Tiny drips making tiny dark marks.

  I touch a hand to my cheek to wipe them and I’m thrown into the past and there you are in front of me. I close my eyes.

  ‘We knew it could never last,’ you said when Jackson first became suspicious. ‘Remember that night in the woods? You told me it has no future. You said the only thing we could ever share is the sky and the stars above us, not family, or friends …’

  ‘We shared Mrs B. She accepted us.’ I was starting to panic.

  ‘But nobody else. We agreed to share it while it lasted, while it was simple. It’s not any more …’

  ‘You’re finishing it?’

  ‘Martha, if we don’t, he’ll finish it for us. He’ll finish us!’

  ‘Isn’t it worth fighting for?’

  ‘If it was only my life, I’d risk everything, but how can I risk yours? You know what he’d do. I can’t risk him hurting you and I can’t risk someone else paying for that.’

  I took his hand in mine and stared at him. ‘What do you want, Isaac?’ I whispered. ‘What do you really want in life, for your future? What do you dream of?’

  ‘It’s different,’ he whispered. ‘What I wanted before I met you … it’s changed.

  ‘I suppose I’ve always known how corrupt he is, my dad, and the killings …’ He paused and shook his head. ‘But, and this sounds terrible, I had to ignore them so I could get on with living. Otherwise, I don’t know, I don’t think I could’ve coped. I watched him doing his charity work and, you know, I liked that, and I liked going in to the places with him and I thought I could do something like using his money and influence to do some kind of good in the world. Try to balance things a bit … But meeting you? You’ve opened my eyes and made me see there is so much more to balance than I ever thought there was.’ He paused and swallowed hard.

  ‘But you’ve inspired me too, made me see that perhaps I can actually try to change things, on a big scale.’

  I shifted uncomfortably.

  He smiled. ‘You are so strong. You are a tiny person in a great big world with no money, little education, no family …’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘Hear me out. You haven’t got any of that, but you want to keep fighting to try to show people the truth of what happened when you don’t have to.’

  ‘I owe it to them.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t really, but you’re a good person like that. But here I am with the money, and the influence and the education, and some kind of warped family, and what do I do? Nothing. You … you …’ He moved forward again and took my face in his hands. ‘… have given me this dream that things can change and things could be better, for me, for you, for everyone.’

  ‘Everyone knows the justice system’s corrupt,’ I whispered, ‘but they’re all scared of being caught on the wrong side of it. You really think you could change things?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not by myself,’ he said.

  ‘Together?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  Justice and truth for my mum and Ollie was all I dared to hope for; what he was talking about seemed way out of my league, but I dared to think at that moment that maybe he was right – maybe if we each played our own part, then together we could change things.

  I drift back to the present and I stare around the cell: cold and harsh, and so lonely, yet the light different with the bars across the doorway. I never thought back then that what we did would be this big or this final, but this is my part and it’s nearly played out.

  I’m trying, but all I was, all I am, and all I will ever be, is an orphan girl from the Rises.

  There’s a shuffling outside in the corridor, or in a cell, and my stomach tips in surprise or fear.

  ‘What’s your name?’ a voice says.

  ‘What?’ I reply and I sit up and wipe my face, trying to figure out where the voice came from.

  ‘Your name?’ it says again. A male voice, scratchy like there’s something in his throat.

  ‘Martha,’ I reply. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Emilio,’ he says.

  ‘You a prisoner?’ I ask him. ‘What cell are you in?’

  ‘Errr, 4, I think,’ he grumbles. ‘Kinda lost count.’

  ‘I’m in 3.’

  ‘Well, I must be in 4 then, cos I’m sure as shit it ain’t 5. You’re a woman?’

  ‘Ermm, girl, I suppose. I’m sixteen.’

  ‘Sixteen? What you doing in here?’

  ‘I killed a man.’

  ‘You’re admitting to that? I mean, I killed a man, but I’m not telling no one. Innocent, I said, try to prove otherwise. Not that they need to prove … Who’d you kill? Some boyfriend?’

  ‘No. Jackson Paige.’

  His laugh echoes down the corridor and through the cells.

  ‘Jackson Paige? What, the Jackson Paige?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply.

  He laughs again. ‘Brilliant,’ he says. ‘’bout time someone took him off that pedestal he put himself on. Brilliant.’

  ‘But he’s dead.’

  ‘Girl, you probably saved lives getting rid of him. No probably about it, you saved lives; they should be giving you a medal, not sending you to the electric chair!’

  ‘Still,’ I reply, ‘can’t go around killing folk just because you disagree with them.’

  For a moment he’s quiet and I can hear his hea
vy breathing and his body moving. ‘Yeah, well, y’know … complicated, ain’t it? Sure it wasn’t like you just killed him for fun. Must’ve been reason.’

  ‘Yeah, there was a reason, but I’m still going to die,’ I whisper.

  Again he’s quiet. On the other side of the corridor there’s the noise of shuffling chairs and a door creaking.

  ‘I’m not gonna to lie to you,’ he says. ‘You’re going to die, probably, yeah. He had too many people in his pockets. But if I get out, girl, I’ll use every last penny I can find to vote for your innocence.’

  ‘Emilio …’

  ‘But it wouldn’t make no difference. He made himself the nation’s sweetheart. But one day, right, one day, people will see what fools they were.’

  Voices come from the other side of the corridor, some laughter too, and a clattering of wheels and metal.

  ‘Did you really do it?’ he asks.

  The door at the end of the corridor smashes open and I jump.

  ‘Did you do it?’ he asks again.

  From the bars across the door I can see a trolley coming down the corridor, the wheels spinning across the cobbles, two sets of boots pushing it. I glance up and lying on the trolley is a body dressed in the same white prison overalls as me; his arm flops sideways and dangles at his side, his fingers like sausages from the fridge, the tattoo of a rose down his hand.

  The man I saw on my first day here.

  I watch it swing past me on the trolley, follow it as it heads down the far end and listen as the other door bangs closed.

  ‘We had this idea,’ I whisper.

  ‘What?’

  The door flies open again and the guard appears.

  ‘Bedtime, ladies!’ he shouts. Keys jangle around him, a metallic thud sounds and the door begins to slide across.

  I scurry to my knees, pressing my face against the bars as the door moves towards me.

  ‘We had this crazy idea!’ I shout to Emilio.

  A baton slams between the bars and down on my fingers. I scream but I don’t move. ‘That we could actually make things better!’ I shout again but everything turns black.

  Something wakes me. A hissing noise. Like a can of deodorant being sprayed, or air freshener. Then it stops.

  I’m lying on the floor near the door. It’s dark. So dark I could be floating in space. No, darker than that because there’s no stars. It’s cold too. And now, completely, absolutely silent.