to be changed

1. James Mason, 18, has just lost his Mother, Mardi Mason who committed suicide. It is her
funeral day and James is attempting his eulogy. James tries to speak but can’t and instead
starts crying as he tries to come to terms with his Mother’s sudden death. Mark, Mardi’s
husband just stares at his son, glassy eyed and barely able to move.
As the service comes to an end, the small congregation file out of the church in a solemn and
synchronised fashion. The emphasis is now on James as he studies the church ceiling,
admiring it’s beauty and technicality. People come up to him and give their condolences but
James hardly processes what they say. Instead he notices a female figure in black, with long
blonde hair and seems to be in her early twenties. Frankie doesn’t recognise the figure that is
walking towards him, who turns out to be named Bella. Bella pulls a single hydrangea from
her cloak pocket with a small tag attached to it that hung to the flower with yellow ribbon –
(In its negative sense hydrangea symbolises heartlessness). She places the flower on Mardi’s
coffin making eye contact with James, her eyes are deep brown and unreadable. Bella walks
away from Frankie whilst he tries to gather his thoughts, attempting to figure out his relation
to this woman. He can’t. She leaves the sight, slipping behind the crowd so nobody notices
her.
James wondered what was attached to the flower and so excuses himself from the crowd of
distant family members and Mardi’s old friends. He turns over the note and it is written in
curly handwriting, ‘suicide is the perfect excuse for a murder.’
James runs to try and catch Bella to ask her what she means by this but she is gone.
James returns home but throughout the week he keeps struggling to forget how he last saw
his mother, lying on the kitchen floor with self inflicted cuts all over her body. His mind
often wanders to the note attached to the hydrangea.
Ten days after the funeral, James can hear Mark whistling at the door and he comes in with
fish and chips in a jolly mood. Mark sets the table up and happily chats to James about the
football match earlier in the day. After he realises that James isn’t listening to what he is
saying Mark goes quiet. Suddenly James asks, do you believe that mum really killed herself?
Mark stops eating and his mood is now sullen and scared. Mark questions James’ reasons for
asking and avoids answering James. Instead he says that he forgot to buy a lottery ticket for
the euro million and needs to go and buy it. Excusing himself he leaves James alone again.
James remembers how on the night of his Mother’s death he couldn’t get hold of Mark until
Mark turned up at the hospital at 4am saying that he had been with an old friend from school.
There is then a knock on the door and James gets up expecting it to be Mark back from the
shop as he had forgotten his key and needed letting in. Instead it is Bella. She is dressed in
white and has her long blonde hair in a ponytail. James is shocked to see her but invites her
in. He is struck by her beauty and her face is so innocent and pure that James instantly trusts
her. Bella explains that she was a therapist that Mardi had secretly hired Bella to help her.
She says how sorry she was about Mardi’s death and what a wonderful woman she was. Then
they both hear Mark enter through the back door, Bella jumps saying that Mark can’t see her
and James quickly pushes Bella into the cloakroom before Mark comes in. Mark opens the
bottle of whiskey that he has bought a pours himself a drink. He tells James that he is going
upstairs for an early night. He takes his glass and the bottle upstairs. James knows that by the
morning the bottle will be empty.

2. James goes to tell Bella that she can come out and finds the cloakroom empty but he notices
another note saying that she will explain everything if he meets her at the kings head pub
tomorrow night.
In the morning Mark doesn’t wake up until 12 and then tells James that he is off out with
friends. James uses the opportunity to try and find out more about Bella on the internet and
finds nothing.
James goes out later to meet Bella. As he approaches the pub he sees Bella outside smoking
and lost in her own world. When he approaches her she stubs out her cigarette and tells James
that
she knew he would come. They enter the pub and sit near a window with Venetian blinds.
Bella orders a margarita with salt and James orders a beer. James cannot contain his curiosity
and forgets his politeness and bluntly asks Bella what she meant by her first note and why
couldn’t Mark see her? Bella laughs sweetly and says that she spent three months working
with Mardi. Over that time Bella made notes on what mardi was saying, how she was feeling
and what was happening in her life. Bella gives the notes to James and says read them for
yourself.
The notes tell the tale of Mardi and her broken relationship with Mark. Mardi describes her
suffering from emotional and physical abuse that Mark inflicted. One occasion Mardi tells
Bella of a time when Mark almost killed her and then threatened that nobody would ever
know that it wasn’t a suicide.
James starts crying and aggressively accuses Bella, screaming at her for not alerting the
police and keeping his mothers suffering quiet. Bella stays quiet until James has calmed
down. She sips her margarita. She says that Mardi had made her promise to not tell anyone,
because if Mark knew that Mardi was speaking out mardi feared Mark would kill both her
and Bella. James promises to get revenge on Mark and asks Bella if she will help him. She
answers him with a kiss. They agree that they will go to the police with Bellas notes and get
Mark arrested. James goes to buy them another drink and comes back to see a drunk man
harassing Bella . James rushes back and punches the man who turns around and knocks
James out cold. When James wakes up he outside the pub and Bella is smoking. Bella says
thank you to James and kisses his bruise. James suggests that they ring the police straight
away but Bella said that during the fight the notes had been knocked and the man had thrown
them in the pub fire. James says that she can just tell the police what was written but Bella
reminds him that no one knew Mardi was seeing her and she was being paid cash so Mark
couldn’t suspect anything. They had no proof.
James rings Mark to tell him that he will be staying with a friend for a few days. Bella invites
James to stay at her flat. They try and come up with a plan together.
They live together for a few weeks, plotting and working things out. James begins to notice a
few strange things about Bella but ignores them as he is starting to fall in love with her. She
seems to have no family and no history apart from one deformed teddy bear that she said she
had as a child. She seems to be out all of the time and James keeps on noticing her lie about
lots of little things. They laugh that Bella smelt like Mark’s aftershave, they assumed that
James was just becoming obsessed with Mark. Someone on the street came up to Bella and
said hello Gemma when they were out buying groceries, but Bella blamed James’ hearing. A

3. few nights he has noticed that Bella has not stayed in bed with him, but he assumed that she
was outside smoking. He even spotted her having her hair dyed in a hairdressers when she
claimed her hair was naturally blonde and she said she was out working with a client.
They finally agree on their plan to frame Mark and they decide that the man that harassed
Bella in the pub should be Mark’s victim. James has to go and live back with Mark in order
for him to ensure that Mark gets drunk enough that he can’t remember whether he committed
the murder or not. They decide James should leave it two days before framing Mark so that it
is not suspicious. James hates being around Mark but he notices how sad Mark is. James
wonders whether Mark will confess to him anyway and so James starts questioning Mark.
James says that he knows Mark did something wrong and Mark starts crying. Mark confesses
that he was having an affair at the time and had told the woman that he couldn’t be with her
on the night that Mardi committed suicide. He said that he met her whilst he was lecturing at
university and he was amazed by her beauty and she loved the attention he gave her. He said
that he was stupid and hated himself for it. Mark said that Mardis death had upset him so
much he had turned to alcohol and when he got upset he spent his time with the woman he
was having an affair with. He tells James that he had arranged to meet her tonight and would
he like to meet her. James is surprised and not sure if he believes Mark and so agrees in order
to try and work out what has been happening.
When they arrive at the kings head pub they walk inside and Bella is sitting with an empty
seat opposite her. She spots Mark first as James has his back turned and is buying drinks from
the
bartender. When James hears Bella kissing Mark and greeting him he freezes. Then he hears
Mark introduce James and he turns around. Bella and James make eye contact and Bella’s
brown eyes look black. Mark introduces Bella by her real name, Kristen Gilbert. Kristen
walks up to James and she looks at him as if this was the first time she had ever seen him.
James whispers, who are you? Then James asks Mark if he could give him some time with
Kristen. They are left together. James is devastated and asks, why? Kristen says, your dad
was the first man I ever loved and I couldn’t cope without him. James suddenly realises that
the therapist notes were faked, Kristen had planned to burn them whilst James was knocked
out and that it was actually Kristen who killed Mardi. James had been manipulated. He tries
to attack Kristen who is laughing hysterically and singing, I got in mark’s bed, now Mardi’s
dead and I got in your head. The man that knocked James out before in the pub protects
Kristen and pushes James outside, mark comes running behind. The man pushes James
against the wall and says that he is Gemma’s (aka Bella and Kristen’s) pimp. He pulls out a
knife and James tries to fight back and Mark helps. Mark manages to get hold of the pimp’s
knife and stabs him. Mark and James run away realising that they may have just killed a man.
They stay up all night hoping that they don’t get found by the police.
They both jump as Kristen enters the room in the early morning . She is holding a gun in her
gloved hand. She demands that they don’t move and just watch. She puts a DVD in their tv
and footage plays. She has filmed last nights murder on her phone. She says that she loves
them both, she gives them two options, either they choice to be with her or she sends the
footage to the police where they will be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. James says that
he would rather be imprisoned than be with her and mark agrees. Kristen laughs at them and
only then do they realise how mentally ill she is. She says, ‘wouldn’t it be tragic if Mardi’s
two boys couldn’t cope with her death.’ She turns around and shoots mark in the side of the
head. She laughs and tells James that he has one more chance to be with her. He lunges for

4. the gun and she shoots him in the side of the head. She places the gun in James’ hand and
kisses his lip and then kisses Mark. Laughing she leave the house through the back door and
skips down the road. She stops and picks two yellow hydrangeas. A free woman.
Mardi, Mark and James Mason were the first victims of the psychopath Kristen Gilbert.
Based on the real psychopath, Kristen Gilbert.
Kristen trained to be a nurse thanks to her university degree, where she met Mark (which was
funded by the money her pimp gave her during her work as a prostitute). She became know
as the “Angel of Death”. She was convicted of three counts of first degree murder, two counts
of second degree murder, and two counts of attempted murder, for injecting epinephrine into
her patients, causing them to have heart attacks. Growing up, Gilbert was a pathological liar,
who manipulated people by faking multiple suicides. She also had a history of violent
outbursts, and checking herself into psychiatric wards regularly. She was convicted of her
crimes in 2001, and was sentenced to life in prison.