‘Yes,’ he replies.
‘I feel bad for encouraging her to do it.’
‘Don’t. She’s glad she did it. She had to try.’
She nods as she turns from the fire and catches his eye.
‘How did you find out where I live?’
‘That isn’t difficult to find out, Mrs … Eve …’
‘For someone with your money and influence?’
‘No,’ he replies, staring straight at her. ‘For anybody who has a phone or a computer and the internet.’
‘That’s not everyone.’
He shuffles forward in his seat. ‘I know that,’ he says. ‘Just because I share a surname with my father, doesn’t mean I share the same ethics.’
‘Like father, like son …’ She takes another sip of wine.
‘If that is what you truly believe then you’re not the person I thought you were. Or you’ve had too much to drink.’
‘I can’t be the person I want to be, Isaac.’ She puts the glass on the table. ‘I don’t think I ever will be and I’m sorry for that, I really am, but I’m done with all this. You’re wasting your time coming here. I’ve been fooling myself. I don’t make any difference to any of those prisoners on death row. I’m sick of seeing people dying. People who could be innocent but nobody cares as long as it’s entertaining and the crime figures are low. Oh, and as long as someone is making money out of it.’
‘You’re wrong. You do make a difference.’
‘I don’t know about that, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Martha is my last case whether I like it or not. I’m being replaced. By a virtual counsellor.’
‘A what?’
‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? I’m being replaced by a computer program. A screen that talks to the prisoners. Searches its database for answers. Computer-generated empathy.’
‘When does this happen?’
‘Tomorrow. Or the day after. I’m not sure. Apparently it keeps crashing. Sometime this week anyway.’
‘Then you have to make Martha count.’
Slowly Eve leans towards Isaac, her brow furrowing as she focuses tight on his face and stares into his eyes.
‘Why are you here?’ she whispers. ‘Why did she send you a letter? How did Mrs B know your phone number?’
Isaac lowers his head and stares at his shoes.
‘Martha didn’t kill my father,’ he whispers.
‘Then who did?’
He props his elbows on the coffee table and rests his head in his hands.
Eve walks across the room, closes the door and sits back down on the sofa next to him.
‘Tell me who did it,’ she breathes. ‘And why she’s taking the blame.’
His face is pale and blotchy as he looks up to her. ‘Do you believe in promises, Eve?’ he says. ‘That if you make a promise to someone you love, and who loves you back, that you have to uphold it, even if doing so means they will die?’
She stares at him, memories of Jim, that night and the promise she made to him flitting through her head. ‘You and Martha Honeydew …’
‘Even if that promise was their idea, and they knew when they asked you to keep it what it would mean?’
‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘Share it with me. Let me help you.’
‘I can’t,’ he breathes. ‘I can’t betray her trust.’
‘You know who killed your father?’
He nods.
‘You know for certain that it wasn’t her?’
Again he nods.
‘Can you prove it?’
He snorts with derision. ‘What does prove matter any more? Who cares about evidence?’ He pulls in a staggered breath. ‘I’ve said too much. I didn’t come here for this. I was hoping she’d replied to my letter.’ His tone is abrupt, final.
‘I’m sorry,’ Eve mumbles.
‘Get her to ring me from your phone.’ As he stands to leave, he passes her a piece of paper with his number on.
‘If they let me see her …’
‘Five minutes ago you said you couldn’t make a difference; this is your chance to. Your last chance ever. You have to see her.’ He turns away.
‘Why is she covering for someone else?’ Eve says after him.
He stops.
‘We had this idea, a plan of sorts, but things changed quickly. My father, he …’ He pauses. ‘I need to tell her I’ve had time to think and it doesn’t have to be this way – I don’t want it to be – we were too hasty. And you need to find Gus too. Ask him for the papers Isaac and Martha left. And when you go there, when you leave, make sure you’re not being followed or all this will be for nothing.’
Martha
My mum would’ve liked you. My proper mum, not that hallucination-weirdo from last night. Mrs B liked you. After she got over the shock of who you were.
‘What the fuck you doing with a Paige? They no good,’ she said, her language bluer than the sky, picked up from her father who learnt English from dockers and fishermen. ‘Pretend they are, like painted faces, but bad people. You bloody know.’
‘He’s different,’ I told her. ‘He’s adopted anyway, he’s not a real Paige.’
‘Ach … makes no odds … Born naked in body and mind,’ she says. ‘Situation, bringing-up, you know – pears and trees.’
‘You mean apples,’ I chuckle. ‘Apples don’t fall far from the tree.’
In two weeks she was asking you over for dinner.
‘That bloody pear sprout legs and run away from tree,’ she said after you’d gone home.
I laughed at her. ‘Apples, Mrs B.’
Not long after, I found her sitting in the middle of her living room floor surrounded by old newspapers. She tapped the one closest to her.
‘Took long time to find,’ she said. ‘But I remember now.’
I crouched next to her and took the paper, the smiling photo of a dark-haired man.
‘God, he looks just like –’
‘Because he is Isaac’s father,’ she said. ‘Died when boy was only baby. Cancer.’
The man’s deep eyes drew me to him.
‘Handsome, hey?’ she said with a nudge of her elbow. ‘Like Isaac.’
Heat spread through my face. ‘I … d–don’t … know,’ I stammered.
Mrs B’s laugh filled the room and the walls seemed to vibrate with it. ‘You never have no words!’ she said. ‘Yes, handsome, isn’t he?’ Her huge hands slapped me on the back and her wide eyes twinkled. ‘Watch yourself, girl: boys like that make your knickers fall off.’
I ducked my head down, hotness in my cheeks. ‘Mrs B! I don’t know what you mean!’
‘I think you do.’ She nodded, her narrow eyes peering at me through her glasses. ‘Make sure you keep your hand over your tuppence!’
‘What?’ I sniggered. ‘My tuppence? What’s that?’
‘Your moneybox, your privates, minnie, honeypot. I hear all kinds of words for it. You know what I’m saying. No mother here to tell you so I do. Keep you safe.’
My cheeks burnt red.
‘Mrs B, you really don’t need to worry, I can take care of my … my … tuppence …’
Her elbow nudged me again. ‘Funny when you embarrassed,’ she said. She put her arm around me, hugged me tight and the air in her lungs bellowed a hearty laugh.
I laughed back with her.
It’s nice to feel a smile in my chest. Those memories of you are good. In here, memories are all I have to pass the time. And visions of hope for a fairer place. A better one you can fight for when I’m gone …
When I met you off the train at the underpass a few days after, you were an hour late; you had a different jacket on, bigger and with a large hood pulled over your head.
‘I tried to ring you,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think he’s done something to my phone,’ you replied. ‘He knows everywhere I’m going. I think he suspects something. He keeps making jibes about girlfriends. Saying things like me bringing home a nice girl who lives in the
Avenues.’
‘What?’
You shook your head. ‘Forget it, it’s not important. But …’ You held my arm and ushered me into the shadows. ‘There’s something else. Where can we go to talk?’ you whispered. ‘Not your flat, they could find us there. Somewhere safe. I’ve found some things.’ You eased open the front of your jacket and in the orange of the streetlights I could see rolled-up documents and papers stuffed wherever they’d fit. ‘I photocopied them.’
I stared at them. ‘I know someone,’ I said. ‘We can trust him.’
Your face was a picture when Gus answered the door to his flat. ‘Untidiness doesn’t make you untrustworthy,’ I whispered to you as we stepped inside.
Between discarded clothes, chip wrappers, empty drink cans and dirty plates, we pored over the documents you’d gathered from your father’s office: hand-scrawled letters, accounts in different names, bank details in different countries.
‘I don’t understand all this,’ I said.
‘Me neither,’ you replied.
Then we found a list – names of police officers, high-powered officials, journalists, TV personalities, executives of multi-national companies … all with large figures next to them, some with details of crimes and misdemeanours nobody would want made public.
‘They were all in his pocket? He could do whatever he wanted and hold this over their heads until it all went away?’ I asked.
‘It looks like it,’ you said.
I held the list in my hand, scanning over the names.
‘This is crazy,’ I said. ‘This is huge. How could nobody have been punished for these crimes? These … murders and rapes and … Jesus … ’
‘Somebody would’ve been,’ you replied.
‘Yeah, maybe, but someone who was innocent!’
‘What I don’t understand,’ you said, ‘is how he organised this. How he thought it up. He’s a straightforward man. This is cunning and sly. He’s not that intelligent.’
‘You think someone else …?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
Neither of us dare say the names or the crimes out loud but in our heads we read down the list. I couldn’t swear or shout. Couldn’t even cry for the shame I felt for being part of a society where this could happen.
‘This isn’t just about me and you any more and whether we can see each other or not,’ I said. ‘This is about everyone. My mum, yours, Ollie, Mrs B, Gus, all the victims who’ve never had proper justice, the people on death row with no defence … everyone.
‘Everyone knows the system’s become corrupt, just nobody says it. Nobody dare. But they don’t know it’s as bad as this.’ I waved a hand over the documents in front of us. ‘Do you reckon …’ Thoughts whirled around my head. ‘… reckon we could use this somehow?’
‘And do what with it?’ you asked.
‘We could hide it here, with the letter I found too, and we could get someone to listen. Show it all to them.’
‘Who? You know what will happen – mention it to anyone who could do anything, like a journalist or the police, and somehow either this will all go missing, or we will. That’s if they’d listen in the first place.’
‘Maybe they wouldn’t listen to an orphan from the Rises,’ I said, ‘but they would to the son of Jackson Paige.’
‘But …’
‘Just imagine – if we could bring him down, we could bring down all those connected to him. Think how many lives that could save, and if we could prove the corruption, maybe that could change the justice system, bring fairness back to it. It’s too late for Ollie and my mum and yours, but for others … This is what you wanted.’
When I got home that night my flat had been broken into and trashed. Cupboards were emptied, sofas and chairs ripped apart, wardrobes pulled over, photos torn from frames and the glass shattered.
You remember that? You remember how speechless you were when I told you about the threat painted on my living-room wall? Was that the tipping point for you? Knowing that your so-called father had threatened my life if I ever saw you again?
And they didn’t even know about the documents then. Was that in your head the night Jackson Paige was shot? Because it sure as hell was in mine.
‘I can be the martyr,’ I had said to you that night, the gun in my hand, Jackson on the floor. ‘But the fighter has to be you.’
Blue of police lights flashed on your face and in your eyes. My God, did I love you! Still do.
‘No,’ you replied.
I wanted to tell you we could run away and always be together, but that was selfish. We were staring at possibility of change, proper justice and for the truth to finally be out; I could not turn from it.
‘It has to be,’ I said. ‘You have the influence and the money. People will listen to you. You can do that. I can’t. But I can do this.’
If I close my eyes now, here in this cell, I can remember the feel of his last kiss touching my lips, and if I imagine hard enough I can smell him close and sense him with me. And I can hear the last words I’ll ever hear from him as he said I love you.
‘Go!’ I shouted to him on that night, and I watched his shadow disappear into the darkness, knowing it was the last time I’d ever see him.
CELL 5
Eve
Eve’s car rolls down Crocus Street. Her dark glasses cover her bloodshot eyes but as she peers and squints through the windscreen at something in front of her she pulls them off and her eyebrows lift in surprise at the expanse of flowers and tributes to Jackson now stretching the whole length of the path and into the road. Grey and cracked pavement and tarmac covered in soft petals and beautiful colours.
‘How many now?’ she says to herself.
With a sigh and a shake of her head she turns the car the other way and sees what she was looking for. Slowing down, she pulls up next to young man in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt, a hood pulled up hiding his face. She winds the window down and he glances sideways.
‘You again,’ he says.
‘Get in the car, Gus,’ she tells him.
He carries on walking. ‘What?’
‘Get in the car!’
‘Hell, no. I was told about getting in cars with strangers,’ he says. ‘And you about as strange as they come.’
‘Get in the bloody car before I ring the police and have you arrested for something I make up!’
He stops. ‘Jesus, you crazy woman! All right, all right.’
He climbs into the car and she drives away.
Martha
Two more sleeps.
Two more sunrises through smaller and smaller windows.
Two more breakfasts of cold toast and orange juice.
Three more lunches.
Three more dinners ’til I die.
I stare around the cell. It’s soul-destroying. Brain-numbing. Hope-eating. Madness-inducing and all those other things that bring you down.
I feel drained.
The days revolve around food and sleep and the rise and fall of the sun.
Will I get to choose what food I have on my last day?
My last supper, but there won’t be wine or friends around a table. I don’t have enough friends to fill a table anyway and there’s only one person I’d want to share my last hours with.
We could never socialise like normal people. In his part of the City the paparazzi followed him around like wasps to jam; if he’d been seen with me, a girl from the Rises, it would’ve been splashed over every tabloid in town.
He said he didn’t care, but I did.
They’d dig up stuff on me too. Go on about Mum being killed. ‘Daughter of Hit and Run Mum,’ it’d read, or ‘Orphaned by Killer Neighbour’. All that crap and all those lies.
World’s made up of lies and half-truths.
I didn’t want whatever me and Isaac had shadowed by that and reminding us both that it was his dad who killed my mum.
But hey, I suppose that was what brought us together.
If I co
uld pick a last supper, it would be him and me. An evening in the woods, orange sunset through branches, quiet but for birdsong. I don’t care what the food is – something that doesn’t make my breath smell or make me burp – sticky toffee pudding like my mum used to make, or Mrs B’s honey cake. I’d eat it slowly, enjoying every mouthful and every second with him.
One summer’s night, we sat together in the park on the two remaining swings. It was about a month since his father had started asking questions about where he was spending his time and who with, and our conversations had become more serious. Our time felt threatened. We sucked up every second we could before the inevitable end came.
‘The evening of the crash,’ he told me, our swings creaking as loud as the traffic in the distance, ‘he came home ranting and raving. It was late. Eleven o’clock maybe, or midnight. I heard him talking on the phone. He’d been drinking. My mother was shouting at him, she was hysterical. “You been seeing that bitch again,” she said.’
‘He was having an affair?’
‘He’d had quite a few, all with women from the High Rises, but my mother, adoptive mother, looked good on his arm and her family had money; he’d never leave her … she’s a powerful woman in her own way. Anyway, they were outside the back of the house shouting and screaming at each other, so I climbed out of bed and went to see what the fuss was about. You couldn’t miss the car, it was …’
‘A homeless guy told me it was a 4x4 that hit her,’ I said.
He nodded, looking sideways as we swung past each other.
‘Ollie’s car was only some tiny thing. Rattled if it did over forty. We used to joke that he better avoid foxes cos hitting one would write it off.’
‘The car was wrecked,’ he said, scuffing his feet on the ground under the swing and coming to a halt. ‘It was … the front was … well, you don’t need to know.’
I stopped next to him. The bulbs on the streetlights near the park had blown ages ago and nobody had replaced them. It was dark. I could see his outline against the lights from the main road in the distance but not much more.
The reality TV show to die for. Literally Page 12