by Alice Feeney
“Remove your clothes, all of them, and put them on the chair.”
I do as I am told.
At first I feel violated because I haven’t done anything wrong, and they shouldn’t be treating me like this, but then I start to question everything again, unsure whether I can trust myself and my memories of what did or didn’t happen.
Ben is dead.
They found his body buried beneath the decking in our garden. His remains had been burned using some kind of accelerant, just like the lighter gel I discovered in our kitchen bin, which the police found in the bin outside, along with my fingerprints. They say I bought it in the petrol station, then burned him somewhere else, before burying his remains at home.
What they are accusing me of is unthinkable.
I wouldn’t believe what they said at first, but dental records confirmed that it was Ben. I thought I saw him, just for a moment at the wrap party before I was arrested, but I must have been mistaken about that, too, because my husband is definitely dead, and the whole world thinks I killed him.
Detective Croft said that the bullet wound in his skull was consistent with those from the bullets that fit my gun at home. The gun I bought, legally, to try to make myself feel safe. The gun they can’t find because I won’t tell them where to look.
They think I’m hiding evidence, but I did not kill my husband.
Did I?
What if I did?
No, that’s not what happened. It can’t be. I shake the thought and stick to the script I already wrote for myself: I’m being framed, I just don’t know who by.
I’ve been in a police station, then a police cell, then I was cuffed inside a white security van, and now I am here. I don’t know how long it has been, a couple of days perhaps; time has stopped working inside my head, I don’t know how to tell it anymore. They said I could use the telephone, but I didn’t know who to call. I have got myself a lawyer though, a good one. He’s handled a lot of high-profile cases over the last few years, and he seems to know what he’s doing. I told him I didn’t do it, and when I asked if he believed me, he just smiled and said it didn’t matter. His answer keeps replaying on a loop inside my head: “What I believe is irrelevant; it’s what I can make others believe that dictates the future.” It’s as though his words might have been written for me.
I pull on the green prison-issue top and jogging bottoms I’ve been told to wear, and every inch of my skin starts to itch. The feeling makes me want to scratch myself out. I catch a glimpse of a strange-looking woman in the mirror; she doesn’t look like me. When you dig down, deep enough inside your own despair, you usually meet the you that you used to be, but I don’t remember her. It feels as if I have to be someone different now, someone strong and brave, a role I’m not sure how to play.
I’ve never been inside a prison before. It’s a lot like how you might expect: high exterior walls topped with barbed wire, a lot of doors, a lot of locks. The place feels cold, and everything seems to look grayish green. The people I see don’t tend to smile too much. I follow another guard as he locks yet another gate behind us, before opening the next with the enormous bunch of keys attached to the belt of his uniform.
The keys remind me of Maggie, and the set she used to carry around the shop. I’ve thought about her a lot since I was arrested. It’s as though someone hit my reset button when I wasn’t looking, and I feel like a little girl again, a little girl who was taught never to trust or talk to the police. The only person I’ve spoken to since they took me away is my lawyer, a complete stranger.
I think he thinks I did it.
I’ve retreated as far inside myself as it is possible to go, and locked my own door with a key I thought I’d thrown away. I look at the other women I pass and can’t help thinking that I am not like them, that I do not belong in here.
But what if I do?
We walk across a yard and I see a series of buildings, all with barbed wire on the walls and bars on the windows, to keep the bad people in, not out. The guard unlocks another door with another key, and we enter one of the smaller buildings; the sign says BLOCK A. I wait while he locks the door behind us, then we walk in communal silence, up some stairs and along another corridor, past endless closed metal doors with tiny windows. I’m starting to think that life is little more than a series of doors: every day we have to choose which ones to open, which to walk through, and which to close behind us, leaving them forever locked.
What if I did do what they’re accusing me of?
It seems increasingly difficult to prove that I didn’t, even to myself. What surprises me the most is my grief. My husband is dead, not just missing anymore, but dead. Gone. Forever. And I feel nothing, except sorrow for myself and for the child I know I’ll never have now. Perhaps they’re right, with all their doctors’ reports and theories about my memory and mental state.
Maybe there is something wrong with me.
“Here we are then, home sweet home for now,” says the guard. He unlocks a blue metal door and pushes it open, introducing me to my future. I step forward, just a little, and peer inside. The cell is tiny. There is a bunk bed on the far right, and just in front of that is a dirty-looking curtain, barely hiding the stained toilet bowl and small sink behind it. On the left is a desk, with what looks like a computer, which surprises me. There’s also a small cupboard covered in someone else’s things: a can of baked beans, some books, some clothes, a toothbrush, and a kettle.
“There is someone in this cell already,” I say, turning back to the guard.
He is old and weary looking, with dark circles beneath his beady eyes, and an overfed belly hanging over his belt. His crooked teeth are too big for his small mouth. He has a substantial gathering of dandruff on his shoulders, and an impressive collection of gray hairs protrude from his nostrils, which flare in my general direction.
“I’m afraid the penthouse suite was already booked, along with all the single-occupancy guest rooms, so you’ll have to share. Don’t worry, Hilary is very friendly, and you’ll only be here until your court appearance, then they’ll find you a more permanent home.” He ushers me inside.
“I didn’t kill my husband.” I hate the pathetic sound of my voice.
“Tell it to someone who cares.” He swings the cell door closed with a loud bang.
Forty-nine
Essex, 2017
Maggie decides to celebrate Aimee’s incarceration with a curry.
It’s been three years since she had her gastric band fitted, and that little silicone belt changed everything. She had let herself go in her thirties; it was a difficult time. She’d given up on life ever being what she’d hoped it might be, and she turned to food for comfort in the absence of anything else. But then, in her forties, she found Aimee.
The best thing to ever happen as a result of joining all those dating websites was finding her again after all those years. What a surprise that was. Aimee’s face might have changed a little, but Maggie would have recognized it anywhere; she saw those eyes whenever she closed her own. That’s when she started her self-improvements. The NHS paid for her gastric band, but she’s paid for all the other work herself, not that she minds; Maggie thinks investing in yourself is the smartest use of a person’s assets.
She calls ahead to place her order, so that she doesn’t have to wait when she gets to the Indian restaurant. She doesn’t like the way they look at her in there sometimes, like she is some kind of loser. Maggie is not a loser. She proves it by correcting the man with the Indian accent on the other end of the phone when he says the total cost of her meal will be £11.75. She has already calculated that the amount should be £11.25, according to the prices listed on the current takeaway menu. The man agrees that her maths is correct without an argument. It might only be fifty pence, but it’s her fifty pence, and Maggie does not like thieves.
Maggie thinks that all immigrants are illegal and crooks. She reads stories about them in the newspapers, and it makes her worry about the future of th
is country. She is Irish by birth, but does not consider herself to be an immigrant, even though some people might say that she is. She is not like them.
She puts on her coat, ties a giant silk scarf around her head, securing it tightly under her chin and tucking it into her collar, until she is sufficiently wrapped up to be seen by others. She pulls on her boots and picks up her keys. She has quite a large collection of them, all different shapes and sizes, but they are not all her own. Most of them are for the houses of the deceased that she has been commissioned to clear—keys to unlock the secrets people think they’ll never have to share.
Her food is ready when she arrives to collect it.
“Chicken Madras, plain rice, garlic naan, and chips?” says the man behind the counter as soon as she walks through the door, as though that were her name. He sounds the same as the man she spoke to on the phone, but she can never be sure, and he looks so much younger than she imagined, little more than a boy.
“Beef Madras. It should be beef, not chicken.” Her voice sounds strange, deeper than it should.
“It’s beef, yes, sorry. Beef Madras.” He hands her the flimsy white plastic bag containing her celebration supper. She tuts, mumbles that she can’t eat chicken, then shakes her head at the boy’s accent while he continues to apologize for his mistake. Maggie wonders why nobody taught the boy to speak proper English. She pays the £11.25 using the exact change, so that there can be no further confusion.
She watches the news while she eats, hoping to see something about Aimee’s arrest on the television. She records it, pressing the red button on the remote, just in case. Sometimes she talks at the screen, maybe because there is nobody else to talk to. Maggie has never had much luck meeting the right people, even with the help of dating websites.
She still remembers the first time she came across Ben Bailey. She didn’t think much of him initially, had no idea of the role he was going to play in her life and the story of Aimee Sinclair. Sometimes, at our lowest moments, life lends us a signpost, and Maggie was smart enough to follow its directions, once she’d thought the journey through and realized where it might lead. She’s glad that she did, very glad indeed.
Ben Bailey was the kind of guy who kept himself to himself. Didn’t have any family or friends to speak of, at least none that Maggie could find after trawling the internet. His house was a mess. Shame really. Neglectful even, given its value and location on a nice street in Notting Hill. She thought it was strange that he didn’t tidy up after himself a bit more, didn’t seem to mind that people would see all his clutter when they came to the house, but then, there are some strange folk out there, people who are actually comfortable wearing the skin they were born in.
Ben Bailey’s garden was the biggest travesty of all. It had the potential to be a beautiful, secluded oasis, in the middle of an overpopulated city. But instead, it was a jungle of overgrown grass, dirty white plastic chairs, and an ugly patio. Maggie had always been keen on gardening and right from the start thought decking would be much easier on the eye.
It was obvious that Ben Bailey was a clever man; there were lots of fancy-looking books on his shelves. Most of them looked as if they’d actually been read, too, not like when you visit some people’s homes and you can tell it’s all for show. He didn’t have a single photo on display, not one. She still sometimes wonders what he did to push everyone around him so far away that he seemed to be completely alone in the world. But she tried her hardest not to think ill of the man; he had helped her in ways she had never previously dared dream possible.
The planning had to be meticulous: one mistake and the game would have been over before it ever began. It was so hard keeping it all to herself the whole time, but she knew she couldn’t tell anyone what she was doing if she wanted the plan to work. And Ben Bailey couldn’t tell a soul either.
He’d lost his job.
Gross misconduct the letter on his desk had said. She felt bad reading it, as though she were intruding during that first visit to his house. But then she figured he’d left it out knowing it would be read, as though he wanted her to see it. She’d googled gross misconduct when she got home that night; she had felt embarrassed to not really know what it meant. She didn’t enjoy feeling as if she knew less than other people just because she didn’t have a fancy education and hadn’t been to university.
Maggie had worked hard for everything she had; she might not have a degree, but she was smart in ways that couldn’t be learned in any school. Anything she didn’t understand, she taught herself, with the help of the internet.
Gross misconduct is behavior, on the part of an employee, that is so bad that it destroys the employer/employee relationship.
The definition reminded her of Aimee straightaway. Aimee had behaved badly and destroyed their relationship. Aimee and Ben were both guilty of gross misconduct in Maggie’s eyes, the only difference being that Ben had been punished for his behavior, and Aimee had got away scot-free. Until now.
Maggie couldn’t stop thinking about Ben Bailey those first few days; it was like an obsession, and she wanted to know everything about him. She visited the building where he had worked as a journalist and took one of his shirts home with her after her second visit to his house. She wore it in bed that night, thinking about him and everything he was going to help her do to teach Aimee a lesson she’d never forget.
Maggie puts down her knife and fork, feeling very uncomfortable now that she has eaten everything on her plate. She should not have ordered rice and chips. She turns off the television, disappointed that there was no mention of Aimee or Ben, and makes a mental note to watch the later bulletin on a different channel, hoping they might have better news judgment.
When she cannot wait any longer, she walks to the bathroom and vomits up her dinner. All of it. Thanks to the gastric band, she doesn’t even have to stick her fingers down her throat. She feels much better afterwards. She knows she can’t eat a big meal like that anymore, but she did it anyway. It’s okay to sometimes do the wrong thing in life, so long as you accept the consequences, that’s what Maggie believes. You do something bad, you pay the price, them’s the rules. Maggie has done some very bad things, but she doesn’t regret any of them, not a single one.
Fifty
London, 2017
I sit on the lower bunk inside the cell and don’t touch a thing. I’ve done some bad things in my life, so perhaps I deserve to be locked away. Maybe this is where I belong: a place where I might finally fit. There is no clock on the gray walls, I have no idea what time it is or what happens next, so all I can do is wait.
I wait a long time.
The light through the tiny, barred window diminishes, until the cell is almost completely dark. I close my eyes and try to shut it all out, switch myself off. I perform an exorcism of the truth and a curfew of the mind, and it works, for a little while at least. I’m exhausted but I daren’t sleep, and when I hear the jingle of a set of keys outside the door, I don’t move. The light switches on, it is blindingly bright, and I shield my eyes.
“Jesus Christ, you scared the crap out of me! Who the fuck are you?” asks a squat middle-aged woman, as the cell door slams back closed behind her. The sturdy shape of her body is clearly visible beneath the strained waistband of her green prison jogging bottoms. She resembles a lump of white Play-Doh that has been dropped from a great height. Her head is partially shaved at the bottom, and scraped back into a short shiny black ponytail on top. Her hands have balled into fists by her sides, and she has tattoos on each of her fingers. I don’t wish to judge an intimidating book by its cover, but I’m so scared I think I might be sick.
“S-sorry,” I stutter, then the rest of my words come out all at once in a rush. “They put me in here, I haven’t touched anything or moved any of your things.”
She looks around the cell, as though conducting a silent inventory, before staring back down at me. I don’t know whether I should stand up. I feel small and vulnerable sitting on the bunk. A litt
le bit cornered, a lot trapped. My indecision paralyzes me, and before I can decide what to do, she crosses the cell with three strides and leans down, her face within spitting distance of my own. Her piggy eyes stare hard, focusing first on my left eye, then my right, then back again, as though she can’t decide which one to look at. She opens her mouth and I get an unpleasant whiff of garlic.
“I know who you are.”
I swear I stop breathing altogether.
My mind conjures up an image of this woman sending me anonymous notes written on vintage postcards, but the picture is crooked and refuses to straighten out. It can’t have been her, I’m quite certain we’ve never met.
She waits for a reaction I’m determined not to give. Then she stands back up straight and starts looking through her tiny cupboard, as though still checking I haven’t stolen something from her. “You’re the actress that killed her husband, shot him in the head, and buried him in the garden.” She continues to rummage about, then turns and smiles. “I’ve read about you!” She thrusts a notepad and pen in my direction. “Give us your autograph.” The experience is slightly surreal, but I do as she asks and sign my name. She looks at it, seems pleased, then turns the paper to reveal a blank page underneath. “And again.”
“Why?”
“They’re not for me—what would I want with your paw print? They’re for eBay, so I can sell them when I get out. Maybe sell my story, too, about how I had to share my cell with a dangerous celebrity murderer. How much do you reckon a newspaper would give me for that? You must know how these things work—”
“I didn’t kill my husband.”
“Doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do, it only matters what they think you did. And this ain’t Shawshank. You don’t want to walk around here saying you’re innocent. Best to let people think they ought to be a little bit afraid of you. I’m Hilary, by the way.” Her tone suggests that she thinks badly of me for not inquiring about her name already.