misery from her comfortable home, reading about their poverty, their downright depravity, her dismay at their misery tempered, as ever, by relief that she wasn’t one of them. Reality Check could only help people so far.
‘How do people exist like this?’ she asked herself. Lorraine Plummer’s name was on the potential studio list again. Last autumn’s programme about her son’s stabbing strangely hadn’t stimulated much phone-in response and, as a favour to Dennis, she’d agreed to run a follow-up show. They were popular with the viewers – the ratings confirmed this. They were living soaps; a real-life glimpse into tragedies most people were fortunate enough to never experience.
Lorraine Plummer’s second out-of-studio segment had already been cut and edited and would air within the next month. Carrie prayed, for the mother’s sake, that the show would bring in a few useful calls to Dennis’s incident room. Since the lad’s death, there had been a spate of stabbings in the area, shockingly close to her own home, Carrie realised, wondering how two vastly different communities, Hampstead and Harlesden, could exist within a few square miles.
‘Poor little sod,’ she said, clicking off the face of the dead kid. She took a second to stare at Lorraine Plummer’s image in a scanned newspaper clipping. Empty eyes, hollow cheeks, gaunt expression; most of all, she could see that the woman’s soul was gone. She knew it would never come back.
Carrie fired off a high-priority email to Leah insisting they get Lorraine Plummer on air next week. There was something about the case that chimed with the way she’d been feeling recently – the creeping void, the unsettling state of mind, the loss of control. Normal feelings for the parent of a teenager, she assumed.
To block out all the misery, Carrie picked up a silver-framed photograph of her son. Smartly dressed in a suit and his school tie, it had been taken at the end of his final year at Denningham College, just before he’d decided he wasn’t going back.
‘You silly, silly boy,’ she mouthed at his image. ‘You could have finished your GCSEs at least.’ She recalled her total horror when he announced that, as well as leaving Denningham, he was dropping half the subjects he’d spent the last few years studying.
‘What do I want with Latin and German?’ He’d leant against the kitchen counter. Carrie remembered that his hands were grubby because he’d left smeary prints on the work surface after he stormed out – the same little hands that used to wring out her heart when he was a baby with his cute dimples and cheeky giggle.
‘A place at university?’ Carrie called out after him. ‘A decent job?’ His Oxbridge chances had gone down the pan since he’d left Denningham. Three meetings with the head, countless emails, thousands of harsh words with her son had got her nowhere.
‘I don’t want to turn out to be a superior rich kid with a famous mother,’ was his closing argument. No more to be said, he spat, slamming into his bedroom.
‘And no son of mine will turn out inferior ,’ she’d whispered, pouring shot after shot of vodka in the hope it might fill the hole in her heart.
She’d got him. With the footage of him flying into a rage when they’d filmed him with his two-year-old at home, with the fresh bruises on his wife and his girlfriend’s faces, with him upturning the stage furniture and security restraining him on set, there was no doubt that today’s star guest was a complete shit. Carrie despaired of society. She also loved it.
‘Look me in the eye, Vincent.’ She traversed the studio effortlessly. Security had him pinned into his chair. He was a small, weasely man. She wasn’t scared. She crouched down in front of him, half facing him and half turning to the camera that followed her closely.
‘Tell me honestly, now. Did you ever smack your little girl around?’ She paused. She knew he wouldn’t answer. Not yet.
‘How do people exist like this?’ she asked herself. Lorraine Plummer’s name was on the potential studio list again. Last autumn’s programme about her son’s stabbing strangely hadn’t stimulated much phone-in response and, as a favour to Dennis, she’d agreed to run a follow-up show. They were popular with the viewers – the ratings confirmed this. They were living soaps; a real-life glimpse into tragedies most people were fortunate enough to never experience.
Lorraine Plummer’s second out-of-studio segment had already been cut and edited and would air within the next month. Carrie prayed, for the mother’s sake, that the show would bring in a few useful calls to Dennis’s incident room. Since the lad’s death, there had been a spate of stabbings in the area, shockingly close to her own home, Carrie realised, wondering how two vastly different communities, Hampstead and Harlesden, could exist within a few square miles.
‘Poor little sod,’ she said, clicking off the face of the dead kid. She took a second to stare at Lorraine Plummer’s image in a scanned newspaper clipping. Empty eyes, hollow cheeks, gaunt expression; most of all, she could see that the woman’s soul was gone. She knew it would never come back.
Carrie fired off a high-priority email to Leah insisting they get Lorraine Plummer on air next week. There was something about the case that chimed with the way she’d been feeling recently – the creeping void, the unsettling state of mind, the loss of control. Normal feelings for the parent of a teenager, she assumed.
To block out all the misery, Carrie picked up a silver-framed photograph of her son. Smartly dressed in a suit and his school tie, it had been taken at the end of his final year at Denningham College, just before he’d decided he wasn’t going back.
‘You silly, silly boy,’ she mouthed at his image. ‘You could have finished your GCSEs at least.’ She recalled her total horror when he announced that, as well as leaving Denningham, he was dropping half the subjects he’d spent the last few years studying.
‘What do I want with Latin and German?’ He’d leant against the kitchen counter. Carrie remembered that his hands were grubby because he’d left smeary prints on the work surface after he stormed out – the same little hands that used to wring out her heart when he was a baby with his cute dimples and cheeky giggle.
‘A place at university?’ Carrie called out after him. ‘A decent job?’ His Oxbridge chances had gone down the pan since he’d left Denningham. Three meetings with the head, countless emails, thousands of harsh words with her son had got her nowhere.
‘I don’t want to turn out to be a superior rich kid with a famous mother,’ was his closing argument. No more to be said, he spat, slamming into his bedroom.
‘And no son of mine will turn out inferior ,’ she’d whispered, pouring shot after shot of vodka in the hope it might fill the hole in her heart.
She’d got him. With the footage of him flying into a rage when they’d filmed him with his two-year-old at home, with the fresh bruises on his wife and his girlfriend’s faces, with him upturning the stage furniture and security restraining him on set, there was no doubt that today’s star guest was a complete shit. Carrie despaired of society. She also loved it.
‘Look me in the eye, Vincent.’ She traversed the studio effortlessly. Security had him pinned into his chair. He was a small, weasely man. She wasn’t scared. She crouched down in front of him, half facing him and half turning to the camera that followed her closely.
‘Tell me honestly, now. Did you ever smack your little girl around?’ She paused. She knew he wouldn’t answer. Not yet.
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