Fiction story idea

Story outline

A sequel to “lamb to the slaughter”, framed around, marriage, guilt, and insanity, using 1981’s Royal Wedding as a slight framing and to strengthen the theme of marriage and the breakdown of marriage.
Mary Maloney’s daughter is the main character, Mary Maloney is still living in the house from the original story, but living with the guilt has crippled her, and as an elderly lady, she has the beginnings of insanity, sometimes she seems fine, other times she is completely lost in her own world, where she still believes Patrick Maloney is alive. Her daughter, Elizabeth becomes very worried about her mother, and being pregnant herself, she cannot cope with looking after her mother so she thinks about putting her into a home. After going to her mother’s house and starting to clear things out, Elizabeth finds some disturbing things, including journals that speak to Patrick and about Patrick as if her were alive, the grocery receipt that formed her ‘alibi’ in the original story, and jumbled and rambled notes that hint at the murder of her husband. So over the course of the story Elizabeth seeks to find out what really happened to her father who she had always thought had been murdered but they never found the killer, she begins to remember things from her childhood that gives her mother away. Throughout the story we also see Elizabeth’s marriage begin to hit the rocks as she descends into depths of revelation and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth. She spends her times in libraries, ellis island ancestry museum and searching the web for the case notes and any information about her father, which leads up to an emotional meeting with her mother, when she finally confesses what she did. This is ambiguous as Mary is only sane some of the time, and halfway through this big emotional revelation, Mary descends back into insanity and shouts at Elizabeth and acts as if she does not know her, when Elizabeth says she is her daughter, she refuses and says that she is still pregnant with her and that she is still married to Patrick. Elizabeth is then faced with the decision of protecting her mother, or telling anyone what she did. Alongside, her marriage is worsening and she suspects her husband of cheating, and disgusted by her accusations he leaves. Elizabeth begins to mirror her mother’s insane behaviour. In the scene after her husband leaves, she erratically starts to cook, and is talking to herself. “I could kill for some lamb”. She begins scribbling things down onto notepaper, frantically, mirroring her mother’s behaviour again.
She then leaves her house, halfway through cooking, erratically, she has no shoes on. She then pulls up to her mother’s empty home. She mixes two glasses of whisky. She calmly goes into her mother’s room and puts on her clothes; she sits in her mirror and applies her lipstick, calmly. She looks at a picture of her mother and her father on the dresser, her youthful smiling mother. She then stares at herself. She picks up a pair of scissors and cuts her hair in attempt to copy her mother’s youthful appearance.
She then starts to throw things and rips off wallpaper. She then discovers more crazy scribbles on the walls, written by her mother, written in childlike writing. “Patrick’s favourite is lamb. He loves it. He loved it to death.”
Meanwhile Elizabeth’s husband had come home to find things burning, Elizabeth’s shoes are still there but the front door was open and her car was gone. He knows where she has gone.
He speeds to Mary’s house and finds Elizabeth crumpled on the floor, screaming out in pain. She has gone into labour and it is too late to go to the hospital. He has to deliver their baby. This brings them back together, she exclaims that she is sorry, and the arrival of their child slaps Elizabeth back to reality. The final scene is Elizabeth and her husband proudly clutching their new daughter, and Elizabeth say’s “We’ll call her Mary”.