A series of images follow, each with Patty and Jackson looking glamorous and generous as they hand out oversized cheques, or sit at bedsides of the ill and suffering.
PM VOICEOVER: The epitome of their care for the community came when tragedy struck as Jackson was returning from supporting a food bank close to his old home in the High Rises. A struggling young mother threw herself from her balcony. The first on the scene, Jackson was heartbroken over the impending plight of the son left behind, and together he and Patty took him into their care and adopted him as their own. No expense was spared in the young orphan’s upbringing and further charity work within the Rises was instigated.
A grainy black and white photo fills the screen: Jackson on his knees next to a young boy with tears down his cheeks.
PM VOICEOVER: He was a figure of hope for many, a charity worker, a public idol. He was a true prince, although born into pauper clothing, yet he was taken from us in a meaningless and shocking act of violence.
A still from the police head-cam fades in – Jackson’s blood-stained body lying in a wet road, half hidden by the shadow of the underpass.
Music begins: the slow, emotive sound of violin strings.
Images of people wrapped in sadness appear on the screen, faces streaked with tears or paused in anguish. Young children leaving pictures they’ve drawn at the site where he fell. Teenage girls holding single roses, grown men patting each other on the back, women with hands clasped across mouths and boys with heads angled down and faces hidden in hoods.
PM VOICEOVER: All because of this girl.
A smiling school photograph of Martha glares bright on the screen. Her hair is curled, her shirt is ironed, her jumper is clean.
PM VOICEOVER: At 8.30 last Monday evening, Martha Elizabeth Honeydew took this weapon …
A police photograph of the gun is shown.
PM VOICEOVER:… and offloaded bullets into Jackson Paige until his body fell to the floor in front of her and his blood seeped into the ground.
A grainy video clip begins: the feed from the police head-cam again, streets zooming, blue lights flashing, headlights falling onto Martha holding the gun, running forward, police gun pointed towards her.
POLICE OFFICER: Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!
Martha drops the gun and puts her hands on her head.
MARTHA: I did it. I shot him. I killed Jackson Paige.
Again the screen changes: a large room, one wall made of glass, a solid door and bare floor. The light is dim, illuminating pools of the room but leaving corners and edges in shadow. In the middle is a solid wooden chair, a high, straight back, with five leather straps – two at ankle height, two across the arm rests, and one on the back of the chair at chest height. At the top a metal crown is attached to an adjustable arm.
PM VOICEOVER: What is there to debate?
The music fades and the eye logo fills the screen as the camera pans back to Kristina and Joshua. The studio is silent, the mood sombre.
KRISTINA: Indeed. And we extend our thanks to the PM for taking time from his holiday to record those words for us. It most certainly means a great deal.
She pauses, takes a tissue from a pocket, dabs her eyes and looks back to camera.
KRISTINA (a half-smile): But on our show, and in our country, we pride ourselves on our democratic system and a voice for all. Join the debate on social media now, share your opinions, phone us and leave your messages. We’ll be back after these words from our sponsor, Cyber Secure, to hear your thoughts, but first let’s see those all-important voting numbers …
Martha
My head’s back and forth today. Confused. Thoughts and ideas drift in, mix up, drift out, then back. I can’t settle. Can’t sit still. My brain can’t rest.
Y’know, what’s surprised me is the amount of time I used to spend thinking about the future. Not big stuff, but like what I’d have for tea tomorrow, what’d be on TV next week. If it’d snow this winter. Things like that.
I’ll find out what I’ll have for tea tomorrow but that’s about it.
It’s hard to think about the impending nothing. What it’ll be like to not … be … any more.
No thoughts. No memory. No TV next week, or snow this winter, or birdsong in spring or … or … daffodils or conkers or rainbows … or … lightning … or …
Shit, girl, just shut up.
Just. Shut. Up.
I close my eyes, trying to ignore my own worries, but then all I see in my head is a vision of this silly cow reaching out for a gun and I’m shouting at myself – ‘Put it down! Don’t do it!’
The bang was so loud, and the flash from the gun so bright, and all it took was a fraction of a second and the tiniest movement of one finger to end a life. What was it that scientist said? Newton, was it? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction ?
Doesn’t seem quite right. Move your index finger and someone dies.
It’ll be the same tomorrow, won’t it? Dial a few digits on your phone and I’m a goner.
They have the power over my life, the responsibility to do the right thing.
We had the responsibility that night, yet it was the first time the power had been in our favour.
With hindsight, I see now, from here in my cell, that everything had been tumbling forward to some point in time I couldn’t quite see and it all had to come to an end at some point, and the longer it went on, the more speed it was gathering and the more mess it was going to make when it was forced to stop.
My God, will this make one hell of a mess.
People will talk about it. They’ll remember. I hope they will act.
It’s a month before that night. We’ve had dinner with Mrs B, you bought the food, she cooked it. We hadn’t seen meat in a long time and when the smells of cooking started through the corridor along our floor, we thought we’d start a riot.
You never rubbed it in our faces that you had money and we didn’t; you were the most down-to-earth snob we’d ever met!
But you weren’t a snob, were you? Because you were from the Rises really.
‘The praise Jackson got for your rescue,’ Mrs B said as you carved the chicken. ‘Newspapers, they adored him for it.’
‘I don’t remember,’ I said.
‘You were six years old, just like him. What about you, Isaac? You remember?’
You shook your head. ‘Not at all, Mrs B. Although I think if I had lived near you as a child, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave.’
She smiles at you – you know how to charm.
‘Story of your mother was tragic,’ she said. ‘Good lady, would do anything for you. Never understood why she did it.’ She passed a plate up to you.
‘Did you know her?’ I asked Mrs B.
‘Saw her about. Lived near friend of mine in Bluebell House. Friend told me after that she always had a smile, couldn’t have thought she was so depressed.’
Isaac rested his knife on the plate.
‘Oh the commotion … the mess. ’Course then they put bars across windows, stop others jumping.’
Your eyes closed. I rested a hand on your leg.
With a shake of her head Mrs B continues. ‘Amazed how quick Jackson got to flat. Said it was to check you were OK, thought you could lean over and see her dead, maybe fall over too. Came out with you in his arms, tears down your dirty face. Press were there with that Patty woman already.’
‘Did he see it happen?’ I asked. ‘What was he doing around here?’
‘Said he remembered where he came from, his … what is word … seeds ?’
‘Roots,’ I corrected.
‘Yeah, that. Said he came back to give food and things, go see young families, keep people going. Me? Don’t think it was simple like that.’ She shrugs, her mouth turning down. ‘Who am I to say? Maybe he was walking near when it happened.’
I watched her fingers tapping against her lips and waited for her to carry on, but she didn’t. Jackson Paige coming up in conversation usually
meant the air would be blue with every expletive she knew, and she never cared who overheard her and if they agreed or not.
What was different?
Because Isaac was there and she didn’t want to bad-mouth his father?
I was touched she thought that much of him.
‘But how did he know which flat it was?’ I asked.
She looked at me with her eyebrows raised as if telling me I was out of order. ‘Lots of questions, Miss Martha, you should be police! I don’t know answers.’
I let it go. Whatever I thought, or she thought, or even Isaac thought I suppose, fact was he still brought him up. Still adopted him and he didn’t have to. Could’ve left him to go in an orphanage or institution. Why? The good in that didn’t balance with everything else I knew of the stinking shit of a man.
But your head was ticking.
‘What about Patty?’ you asked, cutting into a Yorkshire pudding.
‘Your stepmother?’
You nodded. You put the slice into your mouth and didn’t take your eyes from Mrs B as you chewed.
She lifted the gravy boat and shrugged. ‘Only saw her in real life that day. She was pretty. Beautiful.’
‘Clever?’ you asked.
‘Couldn’t say.’
‘Manipulative?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ she repeated. Then, as if she couldn’t contain it any longer, she put the gravy boat back on the table and sighed. ‘What’s that saying you have here … under great man … no … behind great women …’
‘Behind every great man stands a woman?’ you asked.
Mrs B nodded and smiled. ‘That’s it!’
You stared at each other and slowly her smile faded.
‘That’s it,’ she repeated with a whisper and a nod, and something passed between the two of you that I was not party to and for the first time I questioned whether Patty was really the dumb blonde she played.
When we’d finished eating we went back to my flat. We sat on the floor of the tiny living room, the curtains closed and the lights off. The fire was one of those with glass lumps on to look like coal, a light underneath and a fan. I took the glass off, turned the light and the fan on and we lay down watching the orange and yellow shapes dancing on the ceiling.
In the background was the low chat of voices from flats nearby, a rumble of a car outside, a police siren, but all of it was a world away. We were alone and we knew our time was coming to an end.
I rolled over to my side and watched the lights on your face. The edges of your mouth tilted in a smile as you caught me and I traced them with a finger.
‘That tickles,’ you said, so I moved down your cheek and your jaw instead. Then your neck, over your Adam’s apple. Then to the first button of your shirt.
Your breath quickened.
‘Martha,’ you whispered.
‘Shhh,’ I replied and I leant over and kissed you on the mouth. My fingers undid the second button, touched your chest.
Gently you pulled away, brushed the hair from my face and looked at me.
‘Martha,’ you whispered, ‘I’ve never …’
You let the rest of the words hang in the air.
‘Me neither,’ I replied.
‘Are you sure you want to?’
I nodded.
You’ll remember what happened next. How could you forget?
You kissed me back. We kissed each other. We melted into each other, nervous and awkward, with hormones and desire and lust that I didn’t know I had inside me.
Clothes came off and your skin was hot and soft, your chest fluffy, your arms strong, your fingers delicate but clumsy.
I wanted to touch everywhere but was scared to. I wanted you, loved you, couldn’t imagine anyone more right for my first time than you.
My nakedness embarrassed me, but so did yours. We watched each other’s eyes for reassurance, sniggered at our ineptitude, smiled for comfort, listened to our ragged breaths when things came together. As we moved, our hearts beat faster and our bodies clung to each other with sweat and nerves and carpet burns to our knees and elbows.
We shared the sky, we shared the stars, now we shared our first time.
I dragged the throw from the sofa and we lay naked under it.
‘You seduced me,’ you said with a smile.
I laughed at you. ‘I don’t think so!’
‘I’m not complaining.’
In a neighbour’s flat a clock struck twelve.
‘Midnight,’ I said. ‘Your parents are going to be suspicious.’
You propped yourself up on an elbow. ‘I wish I could stay.’
I was thinking the same but shook my head. ‘Don’t give him reasons to follow you here,’ I said.
‘You know what Mrs B was saying earlier … she was wrong, he wasn’t there to give out food parcels,’ you said.
‘I know,’ I replied.
‘You know my mother, my real mother, not Patty, well, after my father died her and Jackson were …’
I rolled over, watching your eyes glisten in the light.
‘He was in her flat before …’
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ I whispered.
‘It does,’ you replied. ‘I know she didn’t jump.’
I watched the colours reflecting on your skin and sensed your pain.
‘She had her problems but she never broke a promise – not even on her blackest days. It was my birthday the next day, the very next day, and she’d promised to take me to the zoo, she had the tickets, had even made a picnic to take. She was in good spirits. It made no sense.’
‘Are you saying he pushed her? Why would he have done that?’ I whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ you replied. ‘Maybe she threatened his cosy life. Maybe he was on some power trip to prove something; maybe he just enjoyed it.’
I watched the memories and the years of trying to make sense of it tear through you, all the while with a question in my head that I knew I shouldn’t ask.
‘Isaac,’ I whispered, resting a hand on yours. ‘Why did he adopt you?’
Slowly his face turned to mine.
‘It made him look good, didn’t it? Adopting me, a poor orphan boy from the Rises. Makes him look kind and sympathetic. People admire him for it, you know. They like him. Respect him. What a good guy, they think.’ You shook your head. ‘I don’t think it was his idea. The more I think about it, the more I think someone else was pulling his strings all along. And the more I think about it, the more angry I am.’
‘It’s pointless being angry,’ I whispered. ‘It won’t change anything.’
‘Nothing will ever change,’ you said. ‘The longer this goes on, the more I’m sure of it. It’s all pointless; you know it as much as I do.’
But with those words something happened, a feeling washing over me like waves of a cold sea. Like I’d been slapped awake or missed a step going downstairs.
‘Yes, it will,’ I said with total conviction. ‘Something will happen and things will change. They have to.’
And something did, didn’t it?
Something fucking did.
CELL 7
Martha
The door to Cell 7 opens and I step inside.
The chair stands in the middle of the floor, straps around it, waiting for me.
I stop, can’t move.
There’s a whirring sound and I look up to the top of the wall; a camera’s pointing at me. I want to smile at it, wave, give it the finger or shout at it, but I can’t do a thing.
The door slams behind me and I jump, give a scream of shock, that I wish I hadn’t. Don’t want to show weakness, but my heart’s pounding so much I’m sure everyone watching will see my whole body shaking with it.
I stand in the gloom not moving, staring at the chair and the straps.
On the wall, the clock ticks.
‘The time,’ a stunted electronic voice announces, ‘is 8 a.m. You have: thirteen hours until your possible execution. The current stats are: 97% in fa
vour, 3% against. We will update you in: one hour.’
Shit.
Isaac
In his room, Isaac turns off the television.
He takes a deep breath and looks down at the array of things over his desk: photographs, documents, a memory card … He picks up an envelope – ‘Last Will and Testament’ it says across it – and puts the other things inside.
He looks at his watch.
‘Twelve hours and fifty-eight minutes until your possible execution,’ he says.
Eve
Eve stares into the mirror of her dressing table. Her hair is done, but her face is bare of make up.
‘You know they’ll bring up Dad,’ Max says from the doorway.
Eve nods. ‘I know,’ she whispers, ‘but I have to do this.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
She turns to look at him.
‘I don’t mind,’ he says.
She nods. ‘That’d be good.’
Cicero
‘You’re not a judge any more,’ Cicero tells himself as he smears his face in shaving foam. ‘What you think doesn’t matter. Nobody cares.’
He wipes the steam off the mirror so only his eyes show, and he stares into them. ‘But I know innocence when I see it,’ he whispers, ‘and I know corruption.’
He draws the razor down his skin.
‘Your time of influence has gone, old man,’ he tells himself. ‘All you can be now is a shoulder for others to stand on.’
His stubble crackles against the blade. ‘Weak, useless shoulders,’ he mutters.
Death is Justice
Flecks of white buzz and crackle on a dark blue screen. The eye logo blinks and the words ‘An Eye For An Eye For’ spin in a circle around the black pupil.
MALE VOICEOVER: An Eye For An Eye Productions brings you …
The words stop spinning. The sound of electricity fizzes again and the font of the words goes from smooth to jagged. The eye reddens and closes.
The reality TV show to die for. Literally Page 17