The Silent Appeal
To: Carol Dearing
From: Dustin Perez
Subject: Good intentions
Dear Carol,
Well, congratulations, Mrs. Warren! Isn’t it typical us to be cast as a divorced couple, just when we start seeing each other in real life?
California Suite is my first Neil Simon and I know we’re going to have fun with it—unless Stage on the Bois turn out to be just like Fairways and Mendhams—heaven forbid!
I’m at work now and thought you’d like to know the latest news on Fran’s appeal.
It’s all hush-hush at the moment (so don’t mention it to anyone), but I’m reliably informed her lawyers are breaking down what happened at every stage and working out what degree of intent there was to cause harm.
Poor Father Josh was caught up in a perfect storm it seems. This is the gist of it.
Nicky-Rose’s relationship with Lucas gets the ball rolling. He keeps dodgy LSD for longer than he intends because Nicky-Rose wants to buy it to plant on Trina Neale, her one-time partner.
Amelia, suffering from her sleep-out injury and worried about ruining the play, tears off a tab, intending to use it to numb her pain—until Lucas tells her on no account must she take it.
As the play is about to start, Amelia retrieves Lucas’s phone backstage and sees messages that are evidence of his fling with Nicky-Rose.
She drops the drugged paper into a water bottle in a bag she believes belongs to NR, intending her to suffer the effects of a bad trip.
However, she actually plants them in Fran’s bag, in the bottle of Bliss Bubbles Fran is drinking throughout Act One to take her headache tablets and stay hydrated.
Meanwhile, Fran is devastated at the news—revealed accidentally by Kevin in his group email—that Elizabeth is pregnant. She knows Father Josh has been lying to her and will never leave his family.
In the interval Fran meets Father Josh, with the starter pistol and the moletrap, and kills him in a state of diminished responsibility.
At the time, and until a retired KC, Roderick Tanner, reviewed the evidence, no one, including Fran herself, realized she was acting under the influence of a drug.
That’s why she confessed to murder, aware she was in a heightened emotional state, but as clueless as everyone else as to why she’d killed the man she loved.
No one intended anyone else to die. The most egregious act was Amelia spiking a water bottle in order to cause harm.
I understand we’ll be questioning her, but in the absence of firm evidence she’s unlikely to be charged with anything and without a confession it will be difficult for the CPS to prove intent.
Unlike Mark Digworth, whose shenanigans with the Fairways’ light caused Amelia’s accident and could have killed her, or anyone else asleep on the stage that night.
He hobbled into the police station and admitted everything to the officers on duty.
Mick and Marianne Payne said they found him in the lane, and he pleaded with them to give him a lift to the police station.
If there’s more to the story than this, we can’t prove it, but the duty nurse subsequently reported that both his kneecaps had been fractured and he was admitted to the hospital.
Fell off a shed roof and then decided to come clean is his final word on the matter.
He’ll be charged with attempt to endanger life, ABH, and aggravated criminal damage.
Could be looking at ten years. Karen Payne was back on the dating apps that same morning.
Is there any news from Nicky-Rose? All my love, Dustin
To: Dustin Perez
From: Carol Dearing
Date: January 14, 2026
Subject: Re: Good intentions
Dear Dustin,
My Mr. Warren! I’m as excited as you to be cast in California Suite and in such a strong role too. Stage on the Bois seem rather normal at the moment, which I hope doesn’t become boring, because a little gossip is a good thing!
Thank you for the update. I’ve relayed the information to Sarah-Jane. Poor Fran. To have been betrayed by Father Josh and then to realize she’d killed him. It’s such a sad case and no happy ending for anyone. How soon will it be before Fran is released do you think?
Nicky-Rose hasn’t been in touch, I’m afraid.
In my darker hours it’s tempting to feel very down, but I choose not to be one of those people who focus on what they’ve lost and forget what they have.
Sarah-Jane and I are so close that even when we fall out, we never land far away from each other.
I have a wonderful son-in-law and two beautiful grandchildren.
I want for nothing, Dustin, and now I have you, too, and thrilled I am at that.
As for Nicky-Rose, I hope she’ll contact us when she’s ready, but until then, at least I know she can take care of herself. With love, Carol
To: Carol Dearing
From: Dustin Perez
Date: January 14, 2026
Subject: Re: Good intentions
If Fran wins her appeal she won’t be released.
Her conviction would likely be commuted to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, so she’ll serve four to eight years before she’s considered for parole.
That’s a big difference to twenty years, of course, but in the immediate future, nothing changes.
I doubt very much anyone else will be handed a custodial sentence for their role in Father Josh’s death. His family will never have closure through the legal system, I’m afraid. It makes this appeal something of a hollow one.
Thank you for your kind words! At some point we should tell everyone we’re an item, but I’ll let you decide when. Sarah-Jane and Kevin should be first, so you’ll want to pick the right moment. All my love, Dustin
Message exchange between Sarah-Jane and Kevin MacDonald on January 14, 2026:
9:00 a.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
Mum has been cast in California Suite, playing a tetchy divorcée, opposite Dustin.
9:02 a.m. Kevin wrote:
Good for them. When will they tell us they’re together? Not sure I can pretend I don’t know for much longer. Sunday lunch is becoming awkward.
9:09 a.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
Choose calmness over chaos. Let the universe pop your cares like balloons on a rose tree. Peace blooms unbound.
9:11 a.m. Kevin wrote:
I deleted that app months ago.
9:12 a.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
At least I’ll soon be in rehearsals for the next play, while you babysit. I won’t have time to worry about anything else.
9:15 a.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
Except Harley and Samantha and their uncertain futures.
9:16 a.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
And the fact that if a devastating catastrophe can befall Fran and Father Josh, then no one is safe from the slavering jaws of fate.
9:22 a.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
And Nicky-Rose. Where is she? How is she? I didn’t worry about her before she came back, now she’s gone again I can’t stop.
9:28 a.m. Kevin wrote:
Not your circus. How the Other Half Loves by Alan Ayckbourn, that IS your circus. Worry about that.
9:29 a.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
You know, this is one of those rare moments you might be right. I’m drafting my first email to cast and crew now. It all starts here.
Article from the Lockwood Gazette online dated January 29, 2026:
UNDERTAKER JAILED FOR STAGE LIGHT HORROR
Undertaker Mark Digworth, 29, has been jailed for ten years on charges of Actual Bodily Harm, Attempt to Endanger Life, and Aggravated Criminal Damage.
Mr. Digworth, from Lower Lockwood, pleaded guilty to deliberately causing serious injury, when he rigged a stage light to fall on an actor whose part he wanted his girlfriend to play.
Mr. Digworth had prepared the light to fall and initially intended to jog the rigging when Amelia Stibson, 28, was onstage under it, during rehearsals.
But when he saw his victim set her sleeping bag under the light during a charity sleepover, he decided to loosen the pulley ready to dislodge it after lights out.
In the event the compromised light fell of its own accord, and landed on the victim’s leg, causing severe injuries.
In sentencing, Judge Clauson said, “You placed an entire community drama group in danger with your reckless actions. In my opinion you are lucky to escape an attempted murder charge, which you only did because this court could not determine beyond reasonable doubt that you intended your victim to die.” Mr. Digworth worked for the family firm Digworth & Sons on Lockwood High Street.
Article in the Daily Nation, Barbados, dated January 30, 2026:
SOLITARY FOR PRISONER WHO ATTACKED CELLMATE
A woman who tried to strangle her cellmate to death with an electrical cord has been moved to solitary confinement.
Malania King, who was serving life in prison for killing her husband in 2012, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of her cellmate at Dodds Prison in St. Philip.
Her victim, Canadian national Katrina Neale (43), a former resident of Bridgetown, was found unresponsive in the cell she shared with King on December 23 last year.
She is awaiting trial for conspiracy to abduct and drug offenses, following her extradition from the UK.
Prison officers said Ms. Neale sustained “significant life-changing injuries” and that the attack was “an unimaginable horror.”
An investigation into how Ms. King—who had a history of violent attacks on other inmates—came to be housed in a cell with a remand prisoner is ongoing. A spokesperson for the Barbados Prison Service confirmed her removal to a high-security unit separate from the general prison population.
Message exchange between Unknown Number and Sarah-Jane MacDonald on February 6, 2026:
11:34 p.m. Unknown Number wrote:
Sorry about your passport.
11:43 p.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
Luckily we’re not planning any foreign holidays.
11:42 p.m. Unknown Number wrote:
Please don’t tell Mum I texted you, but let her know in whatever way you can that I’m fine.
11:42 p.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
Are you fine?
11:45 p.m. Unknown Number wrote:
Staying with a good friend. I’m fine.
11:46 p.m. Sarah-Jane wrote:
I mean in yourself? I worry.
11:46 p.m. Unknown Number wrote: