Take Two Tablets

“If people think I’m bad, then I’ll be good at that!” Macy Lord is living her worst life: victimised at home, vilified at school. When novice Religious Studies teacher Mr Fairclough asks his class to re-interpret The Ten Commandments, Macy resolves, for the sake of authenticity, to break them. Blaming, blaspheming, coveting, dishonouring, lying, stealing, and worshipping shiny stuff all come easy, but then she kills – and kills again. Traumatised by her potential parricide, Macy goes on the run: faking adulthood in London, blurring art and death in Paris, escaping undercover in Arabia, raising the bar in Brooklyn. Pursued by a coterie of vengeful cast-offs, Macy craves her calm, cool Mr Fairclough, but having lost his star pupil, he too has eschewed education for misadventures of his own. If nurture is absent, will nature take its course? Can Macy find redemption in the chaos of her life? And how will she ‘complete the set’ with The Seventh Commandment still unbroken?