viv young Young

I am a writer, journalist and, after completing a Masters in screenwriting - and a lot of hard work - a screenwriter! My feature length script A DARK REFLECTION was produced and I currently have several TV pilot scripts, including COME OUT TO PLAY and BLOOD RELATIONS, with my lovely agent. Last year my short play RELATIVE VALUES was produced on stage at the Chiswick Playhouse. A short film commission FINDING WILSON is now in post. After the publication of a non-fiction work in a 'previous lifetime' I have digitally published HUNGRY FOR LIFE, a finalist in the Page Turner Book Awards. It is the first in a series of books following an Irish family from Victorian times to the present. Currently I am working on the second book in the Irish, and with an LA-based producer on a high concept TV drama series called JACKALs . I have a passion for history, and for telling stories from unique or underrepresented perspectives - especially the older woman, so often overlooked and undervalued by society. Whether exploring these character's lives, loves and flaws in long-form television drama, or the magical big screen, my goal is to fascinate and engage viewers with a fresh voice and a light touch.

A firefighter discovers the biggest cover up in aviation history when he sets out to find the truth about a fatal passenger jet crash. A fictitious framework for a very real danger.
Smoke and Mirrors
My Submission

Synopsis:

A strong hand reaches into a wardrobe for a black tie. As the mirror door closes we catch a hauntingly sad reflection: Jack Kincaid, 30. But his jaw is set as he packs the tie into a holdall. A sense he’s been here before. He pulls on a London Fire Brigade baseball cap and hurries downstairs towards a black cab. His phone alerts him to a message - from “Chris”, sending condolences and insisting he’ll pick Jack from the airport when he lands back from the funeral tomorrow.

As Jack peers out through condensation and rain on the cab window, his mind drifts and we hear a young woman’s voice asking “what do you see, Jacko?” The sound of a car racing past breaks the memory.

Jack boards the Flysure internal flight to Newchester and first officer ‘Mitch’ Mitchell, 30, catches sight of him. The long lost school-pals buddy-hug and after Jack explains he is travelling home for his granddad’s funeral, they arrange to meet with old friends and family that night. It’s a celebration of Mitch’s promotion. Jack heads for his seat. Grimacing at an unpleasant smell, he glances down as a beer-bellied man wriggles his dirty, sweaty socks. Jack takes his seat beside Kelly Shaw, 33, who is going to collect her five-year-old son Jonny from her ex. When she shows Jack the toy fire engine she has bought him, Jack gives her his baseball cap for Jonny.

Jack peers out of the rain-streaked aircraft window and again hears the woman’s voice: “What do you see, Jacko? Tell me what you see.” A small boy’s voice responds. “Cars… lights…”

Later, Jack hovers outside a restaurant. About to head off, Mitch’s mum Betty spots him and hauls him inside. Jack’s former schoolteacher and surrogate mother figure, Betty is saddened to see the old rift continues when Jack declines a call from his father. “He lost his family that day too, Jack”.

Jack studies Mitch: his pained expression, a tremble to his hand. Together they chat to FlySure engineer Gary, 30, another former school pal. But the chemistry really sparks when Jack meets Sarah Myers, 28, from the airline’s op’s team. Later Jack tells Mitch he’ll see him on the flight back tomorrow and catches up with Sarah. As they chat, he learns her parents divorced when she was young. Now she struggles to please her successful father with whom she has recently reconnected. Jack empathises; he’s estranged from his father. When Sarah finally hails a taxi, Jack climbs in too.

Later as Sarah sleeps, Jack quietly dresses and slips away. He walks the deserted streets, a memory on every corner. As he passes the gates of the cemetery, the woman’s voice and little Jack’s response ring in his ears again.

The next day, we see Jack inside those same gates, standing beside the grave for ‘beloved wife and mother Rosemary Kincaid and her son Matthew”. A frail, well-worn man in his late fifties watches Jack from outside the chapel. Jack looks up as his father, Alan Kincaid, discreetly nips from a hip flask.

As Alan edges closer to Jack, his awkward gait visible, Jack turns away, consoles his maternal Grandmother. When the coffin arrives, gran collapses in his arms. Later from her hospital bed, she reassures him she’ll be fine. And reminds him “none of us are getting any younger – including your father. Your mother wouldn’t want you to throw your remaining family away, blaming him for the crash.”

Checking his watch, Jack bounds down the hospital steps. Switching on his mobile phone, it rings instantly: Carl. Jack immediately apologises for not letting him know he’d missed his flight. But Carl cuts in: the plane Jack should have been on crashed soon after take off. There were no survivors.

SIX MONTHS LATER

A memorial service: Outside the cathedral a display with the names of all those killed in the crash. Photographs are pinned next to many of the names. Jack watches as Philip Shaw, 30’s, pins a photo of a little boy in a fire-crew cap; Jack’s cap.

As the service unfolds, we glimpse flashbacks inside the cabin of the doomed aircraft as it hurtles along the runway for take off: Jonny in his fireman’s cap seated in the aisle seat; Kelly chatting to a man in the window seat; Jonny’s toy fire-truck falling to the floor; Jonny unbuckling his seat-belt and unnoticed by Kelly, toddling up the cabin after it; a stewardess trying to unbuckle to stop Jonny; the sudden shaking and juddering of the aircraft; Jonny thrown sideways, his head crashing against the metal seat base; the sounds of a disastrous crash. Smoke and fumes slowly fill the cabin.

The service over, Jack runs into Sarah as he hurries from the cathedral. Her initial joy that he didn’t die in the crash is quickly replaced by anger that he had not been in touch. As Sarah hurries away, Betty tells Jack of her fear that the industry will try and blame the pilots for the crash. Jack cursorily reassures her before leaving hurriedly.

One week later. Jack goes to a meeting at the fire station with Chris, 40, his buddy and senior officer. A real techy, Chris is deftly jumping through online hoops as Jack joins him. Jack’s mind quickly wanders; he hears a young boy’s screams for help, fists beating against the car window. In a cold sweat, Jack makes his excuses as he hurries from the meeting.

Moments later Betty doorsteps Jack and tells him that, as Chair of the local government transport committee, she has a copy of the initial report into the crash. It confirms her worst fears: everything seems to point to pilot error. She pleads with Jack to read it, as he’s used to dealing with fire and accidents, he might understand it better. Awkwardly, he declines to help and leaves.

At the fire station next morning, Chris tells Jack he believes he is suffering from survivor’s guilt and PTSD with his past and the present crashing together. But Jack rejects his suggestion to take time off and seek help, saying Chris maybe a Class 1 techy but Jack doesn’t trust online solutions. Later he sees a newspaper headline: “CRASH PILOT DRUNK THE NIGHT BEFORE?”

Jack arrives at Betty’s home and tells her he has taken one week’s leave and will give it everything he’s got to help her. Betty explains the newspaper has promised an apology after she disclosed the post-mortem proved there was no alcohol in Mitch’s blood. But they refused to name their ‘source’. After briefing Jack on her son’s career, Betty confides that Mitch had been suffering bouts of flu-like symptoms as well as shaking, fatigue and head-aches. She’d encouraged him to see a doctor but Doctor McCabe, the airline’s medical officer, had found him to be 100% fit for duty. He Googles McCabe, sees he also works for the Civil Aviation Authority, an influential and respected man.

When Jack leaves, taking Mitch’s computer and a copy of the report, he agrees to go with Betty to a FlySure meeting for families of the crash victims.

Jack begins to pick through the report and is troubled by disjointed conversations between the cockpit and the tower. As they prepare for take off, the Captain makes a half-obscured comment to Mitch about ‘socks again’. Jack sees it looks like pilot error even to him. The TV local news interrupts Jack’s thinking with a report on an economic boost for the ‘Northern Hub’, and Newchester Airport, with the announcement by FlySure CEO, Kim Sheridan, of huge expansion ensuring a growing workforce. Jack remembers Mitch’s enthusiasm for the job he loved. He stares at the report and on a notepad sets to work creating a hit list of unanswered questions from the report. He scrawls “windsocks?” with the page number of the Captain’s comment about socks. Then copies an extract from the report: “ASR RAISED” for a ‘tech defect with number one Bleed Air Supply”. He adds a big question mark to that one.

Jack makes peace with Sarah and they talk about Mitch, the crash and unraveling the draft report. Sarah warns him she is just a humble management trainee and anticipating Jack’s next question, tells him she will be unable to help him.

Jack checks through Mitch’s laptop, and everything seems to be routine until he opens the calendar. Mitch has logged all his flights and several have a red star next to them. He prints it out and begins to follow up on Betty’s information but it’s a fruitless task: the rep from Mitch’s union is unhelpful, the airline doctor Mitch saw never calls him back, neither does the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB). Then when he calls the airline for the third time, the voice on the phone tells him FlySure cannot speak to anyone but immediate family with regards to Flight FS03. Jack hangs up, bemused. He had not given a reason for his call, just his name and phone number.

Jack looks at his lengthening list of questions: who gave newspaper the false ‘drunk’ story? What do the red stars on Mitch’s calendar mean? Does the ‘socks comment’ mean windsocks? What was the ‘tech defect’? He Googles “Newchester Airport Fire Services”. As he scans the pages, a smile creeps over his face. He calls Betty.

Looking very much the smart businessman, Jack arrives at Newchester Airport Fire Services and is welcomed on to the Fire Safety Training Course as a delegate from the local authority. Joe Harrison, an airport firefighter, leads the course and over lunch, he chats to Jack about the crash. He discreetly takes Jack to see a scale model of the airport and explains what happened and where. Jack soon realises the windsocks would not have been visible from the cockpit; so what was the strange comment about? When he asks Joe about the CAA’s involvement with the airport and flight safety Joe scoffs; they’re an organization run by the airline industry, for the airline industry; the fox looking after the hen house.

At a buoyant FlySure meeting, Sheridan tells his team more about the airline’s imminent expansion and adds everything points to pilot error as the cause of the crash. But after the meeting, he and the finance director have a heated discussion regarding the implications of retro-fitting air filters to the fleet.

Jack Googles Doctor Ian MacCabe and discovers he also works for the Civil Aviation Authority but a message from his father sends him hurrying to the family home. Jack arrives as Alan pockets his hip flask. He is selling up to supplement a meager pension. Packing stuff into crates, he tells Jack to take anything he wants, points to a painting on the wall of a young Jack with a golden-haired boy, his brother Matthew. As Jack looks at the portrait his mother painted, Alan tells him she would want him to have it.

When Jack and Gary meet in a noisy bar, old times banter soon gives way to Jack quizzing him on one of his questions: the aircraft technical log’s entry of a ‘tech defect with number one Bleed Air Supply”. Gary explains it would have been a technicality raised on the air-conditioning system for the aircraft, which was found to be okay and returned to service. Jack is disappointed – just the air-conditioning. But Gary explains an aircraft’s air conditioning system is an essential not a luxury. Passengers and crew need it to stay alive. When Jack leaves, a tall man, who has been discreetly watching them, follows.

Kicking off his shoes, Jack discovers a hole in his sock; his mind again wanders back to the flight, and the smell. He returns a missed call from Chris, assures him he’s fine and tells him about aviation’s bleed air system, the ASR and the bad smell on his flight. He thinks he could be on to something.

The next day Betty and Jack are part of a sad audience listening closely to Sheridan as he shares his condolences with the families of crash victims. He confirms investigations are still underway and everything possible is being done to determine exactly what happened. Whilst he can’t pre-empt the full AAIB report, it looks increasingly like pilot error.

When question time is announced, Jack asks the panel about the ASR fault with the air-conditioning. When it is confirmed that the fault was cleared and the aircraft returned to service, Jack asks “then why was there a bad smell on the previous day’s flight up from London – four days after the ASR report?” A rumble rolls round the audience. But the issue is quashed as one of the panel confirms that, despite being on the same route with the same crew, Jack’s flight the previous day was on a different aircraft. There was no ASR on that aircraft, so no faults; to nods from the other panel members, it is suggested it was probably just a catering smell.

After the meeting, Jack’s resolve seems to flounder, but Betty calmly points out that the airline had the answer to his question before he’d even asked it. She’s on the money – the spokesman didn’t even refer to his computer to check the aircraft flying his route that day.

As Jack and Betty head off, the little boy’s father approaches him, thanks him for trying to find the truth even if he was on the wrong track. Giving Jack his phone number, he offers to help in any way he can. His only comfort, he says, is that Jonny didn’t suffer.

Jack and Betty go to her home and check the list of dates she’d kept of exactly when Mitch was ill. Jack compares it to a print out of Mitch’s calendar: The red stars match with the occurrences of Mitch’s symptoms.

Jack meets Sarah outside FlySure’s offices. Over coffee, he tells her about the meeting and his ill-researched foray into the world of aviation. But now he thinks he is on to something and needs details of all recent ASR’s. Sarah is adamant; as a junior trainee, she cannot help. Cannot – or will not, asks Jack.

Streetlamps struggle to break through the foggy darkness as Jack’s car swings into a parking space and Gary climbs in. As Jack drives away, he sees headlights in his rearview mirror. They arrive at the airport staff car park and don ID badge’s as they head airside.

Braving their way through tight security measures, they finally reach the maintenance hangar. Jack spots a computer terminal and asks Gary to access the maintenance records. But when he tries, Gary finds he’s locked out of the system. They head quickly towards a jet engine under repair. With the cowl removed to expose the workings, Gary explains to Jack how the air is provided on board via a “bleed-air system”. He shows him where air is ‘bled off’ the engine; all very straight forward, and safe, he explains. But Jack sees smears of oil on the areas where air is sucked through. When he realises this is not even a 737, Gary explains that except for 787s, this is the industry standard for all aircraft. Jack discreetly snaps a photo of an oilcan label.

When Jack gets back to his hotel, he senses something is wrong. Checking Mitch’s laptop, he discovers it has been wiped. Later Sarah calls and waves an olive branch, inviting Jack to a gallery. The next day they look at an exhibition of work by the late US artist and photographer Saul Leiter. Jack’s mesmerised by the images of city life, often seen from a car or shop window. It’s like his haunting memories are up on the wall. Sarah explains Leiter’s work extolls the importance of the medium the subject is seen through.

It’s getting dark as they wend their way back towards his hotel. Jack notices a tall figure poised outside. As he draws closer, he sees it is Chris who quickly explains to Sarah he and Jack have something important to discuss. As they hurry to Jack’s car, Chris produces the Mechanical Data sheet for the aviation oil in the photograph Jack sent him. One of the ingredients is tri-cresyl phosphate, an Organophosphate – like the agent found in Sarin nerve gas.

Jack hurtles along the fast lane of the motorway as Chris tells him he believes this could be a major health and safety issue. He fills him in on a Professor Miles, a scientist he knows from a case when he appeared as an expert witness. He is in Manchester to speak at a conference but leaves for Vancouver later tonight. The Professor’s field of expertise is toxicology in the workplace. As they pull into the conference centre, Jack calls Gary to ask if he’d been able to access the system yet. Gary reveals FlySure has suspended him.

Professor Miles explains the problem of organophosphates in everyday workplace scenarios. The bleed-air system on an aircraft is a prime culprit, with oil leaking into the engine and pyrolising into highly toxic fumes that are pumped into the cabin. These fumes attack the nervous systems of passengers and crew. He shows video clips of victims who have presented a variety of debilitating and dangerous symptoms. The professor’s conviction that repeated exposure prompts slower reaction times and impaired cognitive functions could explain the pilots’ incoherence in the report – and potentially the cause of the crash.

Driving to Newchester airport, Jack listens closely as Professor Miles explains not everyone is susceptible to the fumes in much the same way a flu virus can lay low one person, whilst the next man is unaffected. It’s in the DNA and other trigger-factors - just as not all farmers are affected by sheep dip or oil-field workers by machinery fumes. Jack’s ears prick up as the professor tells of a Norwegian oil worker who was so debilitated by the toxic fumes he inhaled daily, that he and two workmates were almost killed in a terrible accident. He shows them a short video of one of the workers describing his symptoms; the same symptoms as Mitch - and Jack’s father.

When they arrive outside the airport, Professor Miles gives Jack the contact details of a testing facility, and a small plastic bag with a swab testing kit to test the fuselage inside an aircraft to track what’s in the cabin air. But he warns Jack to take great care as he is taking on one of the most powerful industries in the world. Despite knowing about this issue for decades, they’ve preferred to risk lives rather than costly lawsuits and engineering changes. Everything is at stake for the aviation industry.

Later, as Chris boards a flight back to London clutching the swab test kit, he tells Jack he’s working on getting the schedule of all ASR maintenance at FlySure. Jack calls Betty and tells her there’s something he needs her to do. With the coroner’s hearing looming, it could be their best chance of proving Mitch’s innocence.

Jack catches up with Sarah as she walks to the office, apologises for abandoning her and quickly reassures her he will not ask for her help. He embraces Sarah and tells her he believes he will get to the truth.

As Jack heads off, he sees a car pulling out behind him. Watching it in his rear view mirror, he slows; so does the car; he accelerates, ditto. But as he leaves the main road, the shadow car continues on. He smiles at his own paranoia as he pulls up outside Betty’s house. As the front door opens, Betty hands him a small polybag with a phial of blood in it and he quickly drives off.

On a monotonous stretch of ‘average speed’ controlled motorway, Jack’s mind goes back once again to his mother’s voice in the car before the crash. The rain on the window, her words “tell me what you see”. Young Jack’s reply: “a car, a truck – a lamp post”. His mother laughs, “no what you can really see - right before your eyes!” As the camera pulls back, young Jack sees the image like a Saul Leiter picture; he looks at the actual window, not through it. Drawn in the condensation is a large heart shape, with all the family’s initials written around it. Then a huge CRASH and the scenario flips, over and over. Amidst smoke and crunching metal, Jack yells for help, trapped. His brother’s motionless body lolls sideways, his father lays on the tarmac face down. Jack’s eyes focus on his mother in the front passenger seat; slowly, she turns back towards the rear seats. She gasps as she sees her boys; one dead, one probably. Painfully, she fights to reach the clip of Jack’s seatbelt. Finally he tumbles from the car door and rolls onto the tarmac just as - BOOM; the wreck is blasted by an explosion.

A sudden screech of brakes blasts Jack back to the present reality. He edges back into his tightly coned middle lane, checks the rear view mirror. The shadow car is behind him again. The exit signs for Bristol show less than a mile to go when suddenly Jack slams his foot on the accelerator, swerves in front of a van and rumbles across the hatched tarmac and out on to the exit slip road. Trapped on the offside of the van, the shadow car brakes sharply but cannot get through the traffic in time to make the exit.

Jack hurries into a large, nondescript building and enters a laboratory. He hands a man in a lab coat the phial of blood. Watches another scientist who is analysing Chris’s fuselage swab.

Back at her home, Betty and Jack know it will be the final throw of the dice if the Coroner cites ‘pilot error’ as the likely cause of the crash and the fatalities. Betty reassures Jack that she had set out to find the truth about the crash, not to prove Mitch’s innocence. She will love her son just the same whether he made a mistake or not. That’s how a parent’s love for their children works.

Next morning, Jack pulls up outside his old family home as removal men load up a van. He goes upstairs to his old bedroom where he finds Alan staring at the height marks on the doorframe, cloth in hand. He mumbles that he just can’t wipe them away. Alan takes a hip flask from his pocket and opens his hand to reveal a clutch of tablets. “It’s spring water, son: Just water”.

Alan talks about his time working the oil fields and of his spiraling health before the car accident that killed his wife and eldest son. Alan blames the crash on his slow reactions; like Jack, he has survivor’s guilt. Jack can scarcely believe he had not seen this unfolding. “Sometimes we can’t see for looking, as your mum used to say,” says Alan. He reassures him his mother had as much love for Jack the ‘Meccano kid’, as she did for his brother Matt the artist. It was just that Jack could just never see it.

As Sheridan closes a meeting, three team members remain and discuss the approaching Coroner’s hearing. Once the media frenzy dies down with a ‘pilot error’ decision, they can discreetly begin retro-fitting air filters to all the fleet to stay in line with industry changes,

As Jack climbs into his car, his phone rings: it’s the lab, confirming Mitch’s blood sample has come back and shows positive for Op exposure, as did the swabs Chris sent through from the aircraft. No test exists to conclusively tie the two results to one shared source, but this proves the OP poisoning - cut and dried.

It’s the first day of the coroner’s hearing and the room is tense. Glimpses of people giving evidence increase the morbid atmosphere. At a lull in the evidence, Jack stands up and, uninvited, makes his case about Op exposure. He delivers his punch line: Organophosphates were found in Mitch’s blood AND on swabs from the fuselage of a similar FlySure aircraft taken just days ago. The room is alive with speculation.

But the glory is quickly shot down. The FlySure spokesman dismisses as ‘unscientific’ the swab test and waves a pile of Post Mortem reports: “Every one of these victims’ blood samples indicates Op exposure – they all inhaled the toxic fumes and smoke from the fire after the crash; a crash caused by the ineptitude of the pilots.”

Outside Sarah consoles a furious Jack; the airline was ready for him – again. When Gary joins them they go to a nearby bar where he asks what other leads Jack could follow up – time is running out. Gary suggests maybe Sarah can do something? Jack quickly dismisses the idea but Gary persists. After all she is the FlySure CEO’s daughter? Jack looks at Sarah and instantly knows it is true. She was at the party the night before Mitch’s last flight and could have tipped off the press with the ‘drunk’ story; he’d confided in her about his investigations too. Sarah had betrayed him.

Jack sits in his bedroom, a dark place in so many ways. This is his darkest, lowest point. All the research papers and post mortem reports are spread ominously in front of him. He picks up one document, then another. In his hand, a diagram he has drawn of the inside of the cabin. He looks closely at it, tries to imagine the inside of that aircraft before it crashed. But the image disappears; he tosses it down in frustration.

Pacing the streets alone, Jack’s mother’s voice comes back to him yet again: “What do you see?” He closes his eyes. He’s at his wits’ end; enough is enough. Then his mother’s voice again: “Tell me what you can see Jacko.”

Another world, a haze of wispy clouds; we hear the sound of deep echoing breathing. As the breathing gets louder, the haze clears and we realize we are peering through a breathing apparatus mask; we are in Jack’s mind - inside the aircraft hurtling down the runway before it crashes. A ghostly observer, Jack crouches low. Now he can see Jonny, stretched out motionless on the floor. He turns over the limp child’s body, Jonny’s eyes wide open in death. The bumping accelerates and amidst screams of panic, the crashing sound and twisting metal...

… Jack snaps back to the present and sprints home. He rummages through papers until he finds what he is looking for. As he reads, the frown lifts from his forehead. He makes a call but no one picks up. Checking his watch, he rushes off.

We follow the rear view of a man in blue scrubs heading down a corridor with a purpose. Passing a small ward, he discreetly grabs a clipboard from the end of a patient’s bed. On again he hurries. At the sign for “PATHOLOGY LAB” he heads left. We see it is Jack. Finally when he reaches the lab, a nurse finally parts with a blood sample after some serious persuasion. As he climbs into his car, Chris calls; he has something for him.

Back at the coroner’s hearing, proceedings head towards an inevitable conclusion. Betty sits alone, ramrod straight as she listens to the summing up of evidence of ‘pilot error’. It seems a foregone conclusion. And then Jack enters. In Jack’s hand is a report – a blood toxicology report proving a passenger on the stricken flight was poisoned with organophosphates. The FlySure team’s eyes rolls. But Jack holds the report aloft: this blood test confirms the presence of Op’s in the blood of young Jonny Preston. FlySure’s medical officer reiterates his comments earlier in the hearing: anyone inhaling toxic smoke and fumes from the burning aircraft would have these same traces in their blood.

Jack agrees. But Jonny didn’t breathe in any of those fumes. He was dead before the fire broke out, killed by a freak accident as he fell and struck his head. The toxins in his small body were already there before the crash; he was breathing in noxious fumes as the aircraft prepared for take off.

The room is silent as Jack continues. He produces Mitch’s own diarized record of fume events and his increasingly poor health. Every fume event coincided with Betty’s record of his health issues heightening. Jack then produces further reports to unions, doctors and the airlines that pledged to keep crew and their passengers safe. He has made his point: if the pilots’ made an error, it was because they were incapacitated. As the crowd erupts, the Coroner adjourns the hearing.

Outside the court, Sheridan declares that if they are true, he is shocked by these revelations and urges the CAA to look into the matter. He is aghast but of course, neither he nor his airline knew anything about the issues surrounding bleed-air, or the consequences. He is about to make a hurried exit when a journalist steps forward waving a document at Sheridan. The journalist asks how that can be true and proceeds to describe the legal document in his hand whereby the CeO of a now defunct Australian airline agrees to accept millions in hush money from an engine manufacturer in exchange for placing an order for four new aircraft. The signatory on behalf of the major engine manufacturer is named – and then the journalist turns the document to camera. The CEO of the Australian airline was Kim Sheridan. He was very well aware of the danger bleed air presented on board aircraft.

Jack is stunned. Standing just behind the journalist is Sarah. As the bun fight begins, she turns away and disappears from sight. As he watches her go, he notices a guilt-stricken Gary shuffling away with Sheridan’s PR spokesman.

An open wardrobe door, a strong hand reaches in and grabs a jumper. A sombre Jack closes the mirror door. He heads down the stairs.

Outside, we see Alan strolling beside Sarah.

Their pace slows. Sarah looks back over her shoulder, waits for Jack.

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