Noughts and Crosses: Oxford Modern Playscripts

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Alone in the house together, Sephy and Callum have sex, and Sephy instantly bursts into tears afterwards. Jude and Morgan return before Sephy and Callum are fully dressed and while Sephy is still crying. They conclude that Callum raped Sephy, and they share that someone told the police about them: police arrested Leila, Pete is dead, and Andrew is gone. Jude and Callum fight and while they’re distracted, Sephy runs away into the woods. Callum finds her before Jude or Morgan can, and he points her toward safety. Before she leaves, Sephy shares that Andrew is working with Mr. Hadley—Andrew is the man she saw meeting with Mr. Hadley years ago. Sephy gets home safely, and Callum, Morgan, and Jude split up for their safety.

The first day of school is horrible for Sephy and Callum both. A mob outside protests the nought students, and Sephy gets the mob to disperse by screaming that her classmates are acting like “blankers.” Callum is hurt and offended, so Sephy agrees not to use the slur again. Six months after Lynette dies, Callum and Sephy decide to meet at the mall—but Jude tells Callum very seriously not to go. Suspecting the worst, Callum races for the mall and drags Sephy out—just before a bomb explodes, killing seven people. Enraged when she realizes that Dad and Jude were involved, Mum slaps Dad so hard she breaks her finger. At the hospital, so she can receive treatment, Mum allows the nurse to scan Callum and Jude’s ID cards, which are linked to their fingerprints. That night, to help herself sleep, Sephy tries wine for the first time. A few months pass while Callum grieves, and his unhappiness, confusion, and hatred of Crosses grows. When Jude comes out of hiding to recruit him to the L.M., Callum agrees. Sephy is leaving for boarding school, and she writes to Callum, asking him to run away with her; Callum opens the letter too late and sprints to the Hadley estate only to see Sephy's car pulling away. Callum gets home one day to find Jude and Lynette exchanging blows. To stop all three children from fighting, Dad tells Jude and Callum why Lynette is ill: three years ago, she and her Cross boyfriend were beaten for being in an interracial relationship. One night, Lynette leaves the dinner table to go on a walk. Hours later, police come to the house and deliver the news that Lynette was hit by a bus and killed. They say it was an accident, but Callum discovers a letter from Lynette under his pillow admitting she committed suicide. He vows to keep this secret. At about the same time, Sephy’s mother attempts to commit suicide but survives.

These events at school are complicated by their respective home lives. Sephy’s parents are estranged, and her mother is a lonely alcoholic. Callum’s siblings, Jude and Lynette, often argue because Lynette is unwell—after a traumatic event three years ago that Callum doesn’t understand, Lynny has been off in her own world, and she believes she is a Cross. After an especially heated argument, Ryan McGregor explains to his sons that Lynny is like this because she was beaten nearly to death by a group of nought men who found out she was dating a Cross. As a result of that argument, Lynny is injured, and she snaps out of her fantasy world; within a few weeks, she steps in front of a bus, leaving a note to Callum explaining that she killed herself. At the same time, Sephy's mother Jasmine takes sleeping pills in an attempt to end her life (though Kamal Hadley and others seem to think it was just to get attention). Five weeks after returning home, Sephy discovers she’s pregnant. Though Minnie initially agrees to keep Sephy’s pregnancy a secret, she ultimately tells Mother and Mr. Hadley. Mr. Hadley insists that Sephy get an abortion, but she refuses. Callum learns about Sephy’s pregnancy on the radio a few months later, and he heads home to see her. The cell is expecting the General of the LM’s second-in-command to visit them at their remote location, but Callum is immediately suspicious of the man, Andrew Dorn. When Andrew asks to see Sephy, Sephy visibly startles at the sight of him. The next day, Andrew, Jude, and three other members of the cell, Morgan, Leila, and Pete, leave to deliver more demands to Mr. Hadley, leaving Callum to guard Sephy. Callum McGregor and Persephone “Sephy” Hadley are from different worlds. She is a Cross, dark-skinned, wealthy, and privileged; he is a nought, the light-skinned lower class that was once enslaved by Crosses. Sephy’s father, Kamal, is the Home Office Minister, and she has multiple homes with servants; Callum’s parents, Meggie and Ryan, can hardly scrape by, especially after Meggie was fired by Sephy’s mother, Jasmine, three years ago. The children are forbidden from seeing each other, but for the last three years, Sephy and Callum have been secretly meeting on Sephy’s private beach. They are best friends, though Callum is very aware of the differences in their status and world views.

Best friends Callum and Sephy are at their secret spot on the beach, where they kiss to see what it’s like. Sephy is almost 14 and is thrilled that 15-year-old Callum will be attending her school this year to integrate it. Callum, though, isn’t sure he and Sephy should act like friends at school—he’s a nought and she’s a Cross, and noughts and Crosses don’t mix. That night, Sephy overhears her father, Mr. Hadley, meeting with a nought man and saying that he’s angry “ blankers” (a terrible slur for noughts) are attending his daughter’s school. Sephy is the only Cross to attend Lynette’s funeral, but her presence isn’t well-received; Dad and Jude both tell her to leave. In the weeks after the funeral, Callum realizes that Dad and Jude are becoming more involved with the LM. Mother’s drinking escalates, which frightens Sephy—but her sister Minnie says they shouldn’t do anything.Months later, out of the blue, Jude approaches Callum at a burger joint and invites him to join the LM. Feeling he has no other options, Callum agrees. At the same time, Sephy’s parents have finally agreed that she can go away to boarding school—but Sephy writes Callum a letter asking him to run away with her instead. Callum doesn’t read the letter until it’s too late, so he and Sephy part ways for two and a half years. During this time, Callum works his way up the LM ranks, hurting and killing Crosses and losing his humanity in the process. Sephy quits drinking, finds herself at school, and joins a resistance group. She decides to be a lawyer like Kelani Adams when she grows up. One hot afternoon, Mother makes Sephy put on an expensive dress to go to some undisclosed location. Sephy enters Hewmett Prison extremely confused and doesn’t realize she’s at Dad’s execution until guards bring him out to the scaffold. However, just before Dad is killed, the prison governor stays the execution. When Mum and Callum get to see Dad hours later, Dad says he’s done fighting. Sephy is extremely disturbed by the day’s events—and is then confused when she learns Mother paid the McGregors’ legal fees. She goes to bed and cries herself to sleep. Sephy watches the case unfold on the news from home, and she knows Dad is innocent. Callum is suspended from school for no reason, but he’s somewhat hopeful about Dad’s prospects when an anonymous benefactor—presumably Sephy—pays for one of the best lawyers in the country, Kelani Adams, to represent Dad. But though Dad pleads not guilty to all the charges, and though Kelani mounts an impressive case, the jury finds Dad guilty of all the charges.