The Most Humane Way to Kill A Lobster

Duncan Macmillan

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781840025590
• eBook ISBN: 9781849437202
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

"You put it in the freezer, so when you transfer it to the boiling water it doesn't feel a thing. I suppose that this is how I've felt recently. I've been in some deep freeze and suddenly I can feel steam in my face, I'm falling headlong into scalding water."
It's 2005, the sun is shining and Loretta is planning to make her daughter's favourite meal. But when Sophie stops talking to her, children start vanishing, and rooms begin to cry, Loretta can't help feeling that something is up and that she might have something to do with it.
A play about one woman's journey back to her childhood, to stop her past flooding into the present.

1

A police station. Pale blue walls. A small window. A white wall clock. A water dispenser. A table. Two clear plastic cups. Four grey plastic chairs around the table, another next to a waste paper bin by the door. A pin-board covered in school photos of young girls, two black and white Ordnance Survey maps covered in yellow and pink pen marks, and several Post-it notes.

LORETTA is surrounded by shopping bags and sits opposite a uniformed POLICEWOMAN who is making notes on a piece of paper.

Outside it is snowing.

LORETTA The idea is to cause as little suffering as possible. I’m going to kill it. I’m going to eat it. But I don’t want to torture it.

Do you understand?

So you put it in the freezer. Alive. It slowly loses consciousness, so when you transfer it to the boiling water it doesn’t feel a thing. It’s asleep, you see? The boiling water kills the lobster fairly instantaneously which

I’m not sure how they know this. I’m not sure how they know what the lobster feels in its final moments. With its lobster memories flashing in front of its antennae.

What am I saying?

I suppose that

this is how I’ve felt.

Recently.

That I’ve been asleep. I’ve been in some deep freeze and suddenly I can feel steam in my face, falling headlong into scalding

no.

That’s not what I’m

that’s not

that’s not what I’m trying to say at all.

At all.

What I said before

I never said it was, that this man, I don’t even know if I should give his name because it really wasn’t as if

I mean, I never thought, not for a minute, that not at the time anyway, that

I’m sorry.

LORETTA drinks some water.

I have a daughter.

Do you have children?

I think there’s been a mistake, you see. I think you’re seeing me because the girl at the front, she thought I said

I was confused. I’d been shopping and I’d started to cry and before I knew it I was in here.

I’ve been following the case, the missing girl. Little Eleanor Lucas. The woman at the front, I think she thought I had information about that, which is why I’m here with you now. Is that what she

well, anyway. I wish I did. I don’t. Not about that.

The POLICEWOMAN clicks her pen and places it back on her pad.

I’m sorry, I’m really gabbling. I can hear myself talking and I’m really, you know, gabbling. I’m actually not much of a talker.

At all.

It’s just

these places I find very intimidating.

I have a thing about chairs. Certain chairs make me

anyway. Not relevant. But it’s to do with the plastic chairs I think.

The girls, the man that has been arrested, the papers said there were girls, more each day, who have come forward and said that they were, that they have had, you know, in the past that they have been

that they

I was reading about this and, I think I’m right in saying that the eldest was twenty-seven and the youngest was twelve.

Some of them tried to prosecute but it never got anywhere. I think that’s right.

Anyway, one fourteen year-old said that he wasn’t aggressive, I know he was with some of them, I know that with at least one of them he used that

you know.

But with this girl, he’d been with her, seeing her, for a few weeks and they’d slept together and she then reported him, or at least she tried to, for

for what? For child abuse.

Anyway, it got me thinking. How did she know?

She was fourteen. This is how she lost her virginity. To an older man who paid her attention, who had a car, who let her smoke cigarettes and drink vodka and Red Bull in his house.

How did she know it was child abuse? If it wasn’t, if he wasn’t

I’m sorry, I’m kind of still thinking this through, you know, out loud, because something is occurring to me and it hasn’t quite

surfaced yet. So I appreciate you listening. I know that’s your job, but still. I know you’re allowing me to talk, hoping I’ll reveal something crucial, but I assure you I don’t know anything.

Honestly.

I know you’ve got more important things. So thanks.

The POLICEWOMAN looks at the wall clock, closes her notepad and sits back.

At fourteen, I’m sure I had no conception of myself as being a child. I knew I was young, but a child?

I lost my virginity at fourteen. I slept with a man named Barnaby Castle. He was twenty-two.

I’ve never told anybody this until now.

The POLICEWOMAN opens a drawer in the table and takes a single tissue which she offers to LORETTA.

Thank you.

I really am sorry.

The POLICEWOMAN opens her pad, clicks her pen and writes something down.

If you’re writing down ‘Barnaby Castle’, you really don’t have to. I know you have to, of course you do. But you really don’t. I don’t intend to press charges. It’s hard enough prosecuting someone for rape, let alone something that happened thirty yea...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7