Speaking of Martha, Jennifer was sure there had been an interview with her on drive that Liz had provided. She fished it out of her bag and slotted it in then brought up the list of contents. Sure enough, near the bottom of the list was a file labelled “Martha Sawyer Q&A 12/05/2046”. Jennifer noticed the date – over twenty years after Sidney’s harvest! Referring to her notes, she realised this would have been around the same time that Martha’s book about Sidney as she knew her had come out so this was likely some kind of interview or promotional appearance related to that. She opened the video file and began to watch.

From context, it was clearly a segment on some kind of children’s magazine show, the type that mix cartoons, interviews with current celebrities, music videos, competitions and sketches over the two or three hour runtime of each episode. Martha, by then well into her seventies, still looked pretty great! Her Features didn’t seem to have changed all that much from the pictures and footage Jennifer had seen of her with Sidney and during the time she worked for her, but her auburn hair had turned almost pure white with just a few elegant streaks of silver. She was dressed in a smart, white trouser-suit and was sitting looking quite relaxed, with one leg crossed over the other, in a rather luxurious-looking leather swivel chair next to the host in a matching one while an audience of children sat in a semi-circle in front of them.

“Thank you for being with us today, Martha.” The energetic host, a young man in a loud shirt greeted her, introducing the segment. She smiled graciously at him. “As I’m sure you all know,” the host addressed the camera, “Martha was Sidney Roebuck’s right-hand woman and number one supporter all the way through her campaign and, once the Sidney’s restaurant chain launched, she became head of marketing until she retired last year. She’s just released a book all about Sidney and she’s flown all the way from Texas in the USA to speak to us here today! Now, Martha,” he turned back to his guest, “perhaps you’d like to tell us a little bit about your book then the audience have some questions for you. We have no idea in advance what they’re going to ask and I’m just here in case you need anything repeating or help to explain something but really this is their time to ask whatever they like. Is that okay?”

“Of course!” Martha grinned out at the audience. “As long as none of you are planning on asking me any complicated maths questions?” She raised an eyebrow and the audience of children laughed, clearly liking her already. “Okay, so, you may wonder why the world needs another book about Sidney.” She picked up a hardback copy of her own book, identical to the one Jennifer had on her night-stand, and held it visibly for the camera. “There are, after all, at least a dozen out there about her and her campaign. But all of those, you see, are about the public figure. The glamorous celebrity the world knew, with only the basic biographical details of the rest of her life. I wanted the world to know the Sidney that I knew! The smart, driven tom-boy who loved hockey and reading and slobbing around in baggy jeans with her hair in a messy bun or simple pony-tail. That was my Sidney and I thought it was time to share her with the world!”

“It sounds like a great read!” the host enthused. “And I hope everyone watching at home will want to order this book once they’ve heard your interview and I believe you’ve brought us some signed copies to put in our competition today?”

“I certainly have!” Martha grinned, setting the book down on her lap and patting the cover. “Now,” she turned back to the audience, “who has the first question?” A black boy in the front row wearing glasses and a smart shirt put his hand up. “Yes!” Martha smiled warmly. “What’s your name, honey?”

“I’m Richard.” the boy answered.

“Well go ahead, Richard.” Martha encouraged in a kind tone. “What would you like to ask me?”

“What was Sidney’s favourite thing to eat?”

“Oh an excellent question!” Martha nodded thoughtfully. “Well that really did depend what mood she was in and where she was. Of course she had to do her best to stay in good shape for the cameras but everyone’s allowed a cheat-day now and then, aren’t they?” She winked and the audience giggled. “Let’s see, she was a big fan of grilled chicken. That’s what she would normally order if we went somewhere fancy. At home she loved mac’n’cheese but if she really wanted to treat herself it was always the triple Baconator burger from Wendy’s! Too bad she never got to try the Sidney Stack Girl-burger!” she grinned. “As I’m sure she’d have absolutely loved that!” Richard grinned, apparently satisfied by this answer.

“Who’s next? Yes, honey!” She looked at a pretty blonde in T-shirt with the Sidney’s logo. Her long, straight hair was tied back in a neat ponytail and she had an intelligent look about her. “What’s your name and what would you like to ask me?”

“I’m Samantha.” the girl smiled. “In your book there are lots of pictures of Sidney in her normal life, away from the cameras, and you mentioned just now she liked wearing baggy jeans and wasn’t fussy about her hair. I was wondering where her public image came from?”

“Ah yes!” Martha smiled. “A very good question indeed! Well, you see, for any campaign to be successful, it needs two things. A clear message and a public face. No matter how many people are working behind the scenes, there always has to be one person or mascot that everyone instantly associates with the idea. Now, believe it or not, Sidney was actually rather shy and reserved in real life. She didn’t have many close friends her own age, although she was generally well-liked, and preferred hanging out with adults. Maybe because her brothers were so much older than her, I’m not sure. Anyway, we needed to craft this very ordinary, not that I mean that in a bad way,” she added quickly, “girl into an icon that everyone would recognise instantly while also allowing Sidney to have her privacy. She needed to be recognised on posters and TV but ignored on the street. With me so far?” The girl nodded.

“Great! So, at the start of her campaign, before I got involved and before anything was really official, she had been putting out short videos on sites like Instagram and TikTok asking what was so wrong with the idea of cannibalism and stating that she could not be the only girl out there who wanted to be eaten. In one of these, the last one she made without my help, she had appeared naked with meat-cuts drawn on her body and the different parts labelled to show that a girl was just like any other meat-animal. She’d got the idea, rather ironically,” Martha chuckled, “from some old vegetarian propaganda posters where famous actresses and models would pose nude and marked up like a butcher’s chart, their private parts discretely hidden of course as people were a lot more sensitive about that sort of thing back then, trying to put people off the idea of eating meat by saying that it was no different from eating a person!” The children in the audience giggled, amused by how this line of reasoning seemed to have backfired.

“Anyway,” Martha continued, “when we first began discussing how she should present to the public, Sidney had wanted to go with this idea but I wasn’t so sure it was such a good idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, it didn’t really fundamentally change anything about how she looked. If you held up the video next to the regular eight year old, as she was back then, you’d see they were clearly the same person. Now up until that point, her life had been fairly sheltered and she wasn’t too aware of things like press intrusion. The school she went to was full of the children of other billionaires, Hollywood actors, politicians, tech giants and high-ranking military officers. In other words, everyone’s parents were somebody.” She made air-quotes around this last word. “So Sidney didn’t really stand out but if she was going to become a celebrity in her own right, I knew we had to disguise her a little more so that nobody would associate the rather scruffy little girl eating burgers or playing arcade games with her friends with the character on the billboards.” She paused to let the audience take in what she was saying.

”The second reason,” she explained, “was that it felt a little too confrontational. A little on the nose, as people used to say. You have to remember that what we were suggesting at the time was hugely controversial. Cannibalism was a massive taboo, something reserved for true crime documentaries and horror movies. The idea of killing, cooking and eating a sweet little girl was, at the start of her campaign, nothing short of horrific for most people. So I knew we had a massive up-hill battle ahead of us and needed to tread carefully. Our best bet, I decided, would be to get the public to fall in love with Sidney so that they would want her to get whatever she wanted, even if that was to be butchered and eaten!” She grinned and the children giggled again.

“Of course, we still had to keep the idea of her body as meat front and centre,” Martha continued, “so she was quite firm about being naked, like a piggy as she put it!” More giggles. “So, seeing as how she was a Texas girl, I came up with the idea of making her look like she lived on a farm or ranch, blurring the line between farmer and livestock. For her first photo-shoot, we put her hair in plaits and dressed her in brown leather cowboy boots, a straw hat and a red bandanna round her neck. She did look really cute and we actually had all the files made up and ready to print when our legal team informed us she looked too close to Wendy’s mascot and that, if we went ahead as planned, they could end up suing us. Now, there’s no amount of money any company could have sued Sidney’s father for that would have kept him up at night, but a legal battle would have tied up the campaign and we’d have likely had to withdraw those images and start over so, not wanting that kind of black mark against us or bad publicity so early on, we agreed to a fast re-think.” Just like the children in the studio audience, Jennifer found herself drawn into the story. It was technically not new information for her but hearing Martha explain it in person gave it a new life and dimension.

“We have to move quickly,” Martha explained, “since the campaign was due to go live any day and the advertising companies that were going to be running the ads were waiting on us for final copy. Sidney was actually booked on her first chat show at the end of that week, meant to launch the whole thing, so there really was no time to waste! Frustrated and desperate for inspiration, we decided to go to the mall to get lunch and look around some shops, hoping we would spot something that would point us in the right direction. And, low and behold, in the window of one of the higher-end kids’ clothing stores was a faceless mannequin in denim shorts and a white shirt paired with pink leather cowboy boots, decorated with silver paint and rhinestones, and a matching hat! I remember the look we exchanged as we both saw it at the same time, Sidney and I, knowing we had struck gold!”


To be continued...