Judged Part Two
David raked the people sitting before him with his penetrating gaze.
"I shall invite you to tell me your stories one by one in a moment. Then you will choose your door."
"Don't you mean, order, not invite?" snapped the young man with the Yorkshire accent.
"Whatever word of your choice seems suitable" David replied.
He suddenly snapped his fingers at the pink-haired blonde.
"You. Begin."
And Alicia Munroe spoke.
Alicia had always been dominated by her mother, Jill Brennan, since she was small. When she'd been five years old and attended infant school for the first time, she'd met a lovely smiley girl called Mandy Gillett and was happy to agree to be 'bestest friends' with her. She'd invited Mandy to tea the next evening. But when she'd gone home that night her mother had told her that Mandy was a vulgar little girl.
"She's been heard making bottom jokes" she sniffed and continued:
"Now why don't you invite that nice Willow Pike to tea instead?"
"I hate her. Her nose runs."
Jill winced but replied:
"I'll speak to her mother and all that will stop. You invite her to tea tomorrow. Remember you've a birthday coming up soon."
That, Alicia knew, meant "Do as I say or you'll not get the present you've asked for."
So the next day she told Mandy she couldn't have her to tea and asked Willow Pike instead. Mandy told Alicia to 'go down to blackest hell' and cried herself to sleep that night.
When Alicia was sixteen she had an interview with her careers office and told her she wanted to be a travel agent. The careers officer approved. Alicia had top marks in Geography each year and if she could work hard and learn a language, there was no reason why she shouldn't be a travel agent. Her mother, however, had different ideas. She enrolled Alicia in a secretarial college, at which Alicia had no aptitude at all. So she became practically unemployable in the business world.
Alicia would have happily stacked shelves in a supermarket rather than do nothing, but her mother had just smiled and said to her:
"You can stay at home and do jobs for me to earn your keep."
"I'll not get paid any benefits if I don't look for work."
"You let me take care of that. I'll pay your National Insurance for you, and you just do what I tell you."
Alicia could have defied her mother and taken a job, even gone to university, but she was afraid she'd lose her cosy room and all the free clothes and treats. So she did housework in return for pretty outfits of her mother's choosing.
A year later she asked if she could go to an eighteenth birthday party.
"Whose?" demanded Jill.
"Mandy Gillett's."
Mandy and Alicia had met at the cinema and had made up their differences.
"No, Alicia. She's turned out to be a little tramp, just as I predicted. Now Willow's having a party soon…"
Alicia actually found the courage to go to Mandy's party without permission while her mother was away for the evening, visiting Alicia's aunt. It was there that she met Stephen Munroe, and disliked him. But Stephen was hard to shake off, and it was easier for her to let him walk her home. As her mother opened the door, the angry glare on her face turned to a saccharine smile as she spotted Steven. Jill loved men like Steven; none of that nasty gay nonsense and he also thought feminism was the most stupid idea he'd ever heard of. Little by little, Alicia's resistance was worn down and she found herself walking down the aisle – no registry office wedding for Jill Brennan's daughter! - to Stephen almost as if she'd sleepwalked into it.
When Alicia returned from her doctor's appointment and told Stephen she couldn't have children, the slap she'd been dreading never came. Instead Stephen hugged her.
"That's fine, my little fluff brains, now I get you all to myself."
In time Jill began to suffer from dementia. Steve was outraged at Alicia's suggestion. Put Mrs Brennan in a home? When Alicia was there to look after her twenty-four hours a day? So Alicia put up with all the strange words, all the forgetfulness, and worst of all, the disgusting incontinence by day, and Steven's fumblings and gropings by night. Alicia would take her mother shopping, dreading what she could only describe as two hours of torment, while Stephen, who drove them there and back, enjoyed two hours of listening to his I Pad and relaxing.
One day she snapped at Jill while she was wheeling her along the street. A neighbour said bluntly:
"All those lovely clothes and things you've had from your mother, Alicia, and now you begrudge her a little fresh air?"
Alicia bit back the retort.
Things came to a head when Alicia was preparing the evening meal one day. She was used to Jill's questions, endless repetitions of 'what time do we eat?' and constant jabbering. But this evening she had the radio turned up loudly. Alicia heard every word of the news broadcast.
Mandy Gillett had been murdered by her husband, who had found her in bed with a woman; a colleague from work.
Jill began to cackle, as if she understood the words the announcer had spoken perfectly.
"A lesbian. That nasty girl was a lesbian. No wonder her husband got rid of her, the filthy little slut…"
Alicia gripped the knife more tightly.
"You're lucky that Steve stopped you having anything to do with her, and made you stay friends with that nice Willow Pike. Now she's got her own florist's shop, did you know?"
Alicia wondered where the woman with dementia had gone; the one who could hardly string a lucid sentence together.
"She got what she deserved!" crowed Jill.
Her voice broke off into a repulsive gurgling croak as Alicia buried the knife in her throat.
"You murdering little bitch!" Steve felt sick. His wife was a killer, and her own mother, too. He'd never needed to hit a woman before, even the disobedient ones he'd known, but now his fist shot out. Alicia, still dazed by what she'd just done, had no more resistance than a child. As Steve's fist made contact she fell backwards, hitting her head on the stone floor. Everything went dark.
"She was destroying me" Alicia wailed to David.
"You could have left home. Taken a job. But you were too fond of your own comfort; all those lovely things your mother bought you. "
There was no gloating in David's voice. It was expressionless. He continued:
"Sit down. You'll be able to choose your door when the others have finished speaking."
Alicia sat slowly, shaking in fear.
"You!"
Honey looked up at him, clearly terrified.
"Please… not yet."
"Speak now" David's voice was inexorable.
