Because throughout the week, media training experts had been rehearsing with her all potential lines of questioning and the most advantageous ways to respond to them. She was as prepared as she could be.
‘What do you think, hun?’ asked her friend, Tracy. ‘This look all right?’
In the Perspex mirror, Roxi checked the reflection of her hair from all angles. She loved her honey-blonde extensions.
‘It looks perfect,’ Roxi replied, ‘thank you.’ She ran her tongue over her newly re-plumped lips then opened and closed her eyes and tried but failed to frown. Her facial muscles were satisfactorily paralysed. The natural Jem Jones-look no longer interested her, not now she had access to Harley Street cosmetologists. If this was going to be her Second Coming, her physical reinvention might as well be as much of a talking point as what she was about to reveal.
‘Good luck,’ said Tracy and blew her an air kiss. ‘We’ll all be watching.’
Roxi was alone for the first time in weeks. It was normally a situation she actively sought to avoid, because silence gave the voices in her head space to breathe and to remind her of those she had trampled over to get to where she was today. However, for the time being, they were mute.
A few minutes passed before she heard her name spoken in her earpiece.
‘Roxi Sager, you are no stranger to controversy, but surely this offer must have taken even you by surprise?’ began Esther. ‘On the day protesters are preparing to march against the Sanctity of Marriage Act, the Government has just made you the brand new face of it.’
‘It did take me by surprise as I’m sure it will a lot of people,’ Roxi replied, staring into the camera above the monitor. ‘But who better to argue the case for it than someone who will do anything to protect their marriage?’
‘Even kill?’
‘Even kill,’ Roxi repeated, a firmness to her tone.
Cheers echoed along the corridor and into the recreation room of the women’s prison Roxi now called home. And a fire she once thought extinguished suddenly lit up inside her.
*
The offer to become the spokesperson for anything, let alone a national Government campaign, came out of the blue. It began with a guard leading Roxi to the prison visitors’ room. Waiting for her in the empty space was a thin, pale-faced man with eyes as dark as his hair. He was sitting upright, drumming his fingers on the table, but not out of impatience. He stretched out his hand to shake hers. She responded cautiously. His bony fingers were ice-cold. She racked her brains for how their paths might have crossed but she was stumped.
‘I’ve watched you so often in the media that it feels as if we’re already friends,’ he began.
‘And you are?’
He ignored her question and rested each fingertip on his chin. ‘I have a proposition for you, Roxi.’
‘If you’re a journalist, I’m sorry but I’m not doing any interviews . . .’
The man looked around the room. ‘If I were here to interview you, do you think the Governor would’ve cleared the room for me?’
Roxi shook her head.
‘I represent His Majesty’s Government. We have followed your story with interest. You’re unique, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not the only woman to have made a mistake.’
‘ “A mistake”?’ he repeated. ‘Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? You killed someone.’
‘You’re wasting your time if you’re here to make me feel any more guilty than I do already. I’ve tortured myself enough without your help.’ She pushed her chair out and prepared to leave.
‘Sit down, Roxi,’ he said. The narrowing of his eyes suggested it would be in her best interests to comply.
‘In describing you as unique, I was referring to how people on both sides of the Marriage Act are using you for their own agendas. The pros believe you’re an example of someone who’ll do anything to protect the basic principles of the Act, while their counterparts believe you’re the victim of an oppressive regime.’
Roxi couldn’t deny the level of support had taken her by surprise, particularly after admitting to the charge of manslaughter. She’d no choice. Technology had her bang to rights.
Before Roxi had listened to Owen’s recordings on Cooper’s laptop, she had turned off the wifi first, making it untraceable. What she hadn’t considered was that Cooper’s devices had been registered to analyse her online biometric behaviours. They knew all her operational habits, from the speed she used a trackpad, to how quickly she moved her mouse and navigation patterns. Hundreds of hours of insights had created a unique profile, like a digital version of a fingerprint and near impossible to duplicate. And, like millions of others, Roxi had a profile of her own online biometric behaviour. Each time she’d accessed Cooper’s laptop to play Owen’s sessions, the computer had registered it was not Cooper using it and identified Roxi from her own stored records. But, by briefly connecting to a cafe’s wifi, the device had reported the unregistered user and Roxi’s match to a cyber security team.
And when Cooper’s family had told police her laptop was missing, they hadn’t had far to look. The search team had found the device wrapped in refuse sacks and hidden in a box inside Roxi’s wardrobe. ‘I didn’t mean to kill her,’ Roxi had blurted out to the surprise of officers who appeared at her door. ‘It was an accident.’ She’d been arrested in her kitchen and charged the following day.
‘It’s like she wanted to get caught,’ she’d overheard one of the officers say later. ‘She couldn’t wait to get out of that house.’
