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.

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

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

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.