by Simon Mayo
There were five in total: exhausted, sweaty, fearful. Three men, two women. She knew they were strutters from the way they moved – the way hands constantly shifted to the small of the back. She was used to this inside, but out here Ant saw again how the restricted, robotic nature of their actions set them apart. The strap had originally been intended as both a punishment and a tag, but it changed the wearer’s posture and gait, and had given the new prisoners their nickname. When Ant had had the plastic and steel belt fixed in place around her lower back, she swore she’d never be comfortable again. To ease the pressure on her spine, she had been forced to stand straighter, to walk taller. To strut.
Some adapted; others couldn’t. Stealing the stapler-like key that removed a strap had been the best five minutes’ work of her life. She just needed to put the strap on again before the assessor arrived. If she had the strap-key with her now, would she offer it to the others? Maybe. Would they take it? Probably not; they all had families to return to, beatings to prevent. If any of them failed to show, they knew the punishment.
They were straining towards the train, one of them actually waving it in, trying to make it come faster. Every instinct told Ant to stay separate, stay hidden in the crowd. If she recognized them, they would recognize her, but she had learned not to trust anyone. They were all strutters, all on the same side, but apart from her brother and maybe her foster parents, she had faith in no one.
All the same, she knew that she was out of time and out of options. She needed to be standing where they were standing, and if that meant five more people knew that she had been Spikeout, then so be it. As the train slowed, she joined the strutters. They turned in surprise, but the arrival of the train meant nothing was said. As it stopped, they approached the doors together. The doors slid open, and they stepped aboard together. There were seats free but they all stood. Ant noticed everyone look up as they got on, then hurriedly get back to their screens.
She glanced at her companions. They were known in Spike as collars – the member of the family group designated for outside work. It was sold as a privilege, but it was a financial necessity – too many key workers were being lost inside the prison network. This way the family were punished and the state took the salary. Any abuse, any lateness would be punished. The whole family could expect to be separated. A petite woman with a huge backpack looked close to collapse. In a previous life Ant would have offered to help, even carried her pack for her. But such generosity belonged to the past. Next to her, a lad barely older than her banged his head against the metal handrail.
We might all be strutters, thought Ant, but you’re supposed to be out and I’m not. And you get to go in the front entrance.
The tannoy broke the silence again.
‘The next stop is Caledonian Road. Alight here for the HMP London, formerly Holloway and Pentonville Prisons.’
Ant swallowed hard. So this was it. The final sprint. Like runners waiting for the gun, they crowded round the doors, leaning against each other for support as the train slowed.
‘Out of the way!’ called the headbanger, waving his arms frantically.
She glanced at his watch before she got off the train.
Ninety seconds.
The barrier was open.
The two women turned left to Holloway, the men turned right for Pentonville. Spike was dead ahead, but Ant sprinted for the side road and glanced skywards. At least the guard drones were somewhere else – presumably at the main entrances, counting in the stragglers. She was sure any footage could be ‘lost’ if necessary, but it would be one less problem.
The thirty-second siren wailed from somewhere inside the walls and dread flooded through her. She had always known that six o’clock was the cut-off, the time the assessor would visit her cell. She had to be there . . .
Security tunnel one rose in front of her, looping from the prison a thousand metres down the hill to a cavernous metal building with grooved, windowless walls. It sat like a grounded container ship looking down over a sea of dilapidated housing.
Home sweet home.
The two old prisons had effectively become a single huge prison, joined by massive walkways, vast fences and new-build construction. Ant weaved her way around the cranes and diggers. The guards’ station, all glass and concrete, was straight in front of her, surrounded by three-metre-high fencing. She saw a guard look up, frown, then smirk. From under her top she pulled a swipe card with ID attached; the photo showed a short-haired man in his twenties and the name B. MACMILLAN. She lunged for the electronic keypad, stabbing the card through the slot and picking out digits as fast as her shaking hands would allow. The gate sprang open and she tore down the rubble-strewn path that ran alongside the tunnel.
‘Cutting it fine again, Ant!’ called the guard, laughing. She just had time to give him the finger before crashing into a security door.
Day 788
My favourite things RIGHT NOW:
Drawing pictures with Gina.
Found a butterfly on 4. Flew off.
Also hot again and I’m invisible. Went 1hr 38m without anyone seeing me.
Ant seems mad again.
Things I want: games, wifi, friends.
It was only a minute after six when Ant reached the ‘family annexe’ of the new, sprawling HMP London. It had soon been nicknamed ‘Spike’, the name often given to Victorian workhouses. A prison within a prison, the midpoint between the requisitioned Holloway and Pentonville was now Britain’s first family prison. The vast hollow shell now housed eight levels of accommodation, stacked on top of each other like decks of a ship. On the top level, a locked and gated bridge linked it to the prison offices. Elaborate scaffolding and metallic walkways, sometimes called the spirals, framed and connected the eight floors, each holding ten portakabins – the family cells of the annexe. They had originally been considered temporary holding areas, but two years on there was no sign of any upgrade.
Forty-three families and twenty solos served their time here, with sentences varying from five years to thirty. Electronic boards outside each cell showed the names of the inmates, the heritage crime they had been found guilty of and their punishment. If you tapped the screen, it displayed your case history, details of the offences your parents or grandparents committed and how they had escaped punishment. If you tapped again, it ran a film called Paying the Price, which explained how the last global Depression had devastated whole countries. How an ‘undeserving few’ had survived – but had now been caught and were no longer part of the ‘national community’.
No one tapped.
Drenched with sweat, Ant barely noticed the greenhouse-like heat she had returned to. Continuous summer sunshine heated the prison like an oven, the extensive use of fans and de-humidifiers on every floor ineffective against the radiating metal walls.
It was 6.01. One miserable minute out, one Sean-the-bullying-schoolboy minute out.
Please, Grey, go somewhere else first. And please take your time, she thought.
Ant stopped in a stairwell, breathlessly listening to the sound of the Assessor and his team giving a family a lecture. They’d reached the cell at the far end of the first floor. The two youngest children spilled out onto the deck in tears. They caught sight of Ant and she swiftly put her finger to her lips; they got the message. They were only ten and eight but had learned that Ant was usually on their side, gave the assessor a hard time and could get them stuff. She waved them back into their cell and they understood. A distraction was needed.
As the high-pitched whine that the little girl had made her speciality filled the annexe, Ant dashed up the steps. She was exhausted but still fast. At sixteen, she was short for her age, but wiry and strong and well used to darting around the levels unnoticed. The screws knew, but the screws got paid. Ant ran the length of the deck, bent double. She reached the steps to the second and third floors, adrenalin and fear powering her weary muscles.
Cell 33. The fifteen-metre-long cabin ran lengthways along the third d
eck, its door open for assessment as the rules dictated. Through one window she could see her brother Mattie, and Dan, her foster father, sitting quite still, apparently not talking. She caught a glimpse of Gina peering round the door; her foster mother, attention caught, nodded briefly – relief flashing across her face – and spoke into the cell. Mattie and Dan jumped up – Ant knew what was happening now. She looked briefly at the other cells, counted to four, and ran.
‘They’re thirty seconds behind me,’ she exhaled in a whisper as she leaped through the door. Gina was poised with the strap held in both hands, her face taut with concentration. Ant’s little brother looked happy and cross at the same time; Dan, she knew, would be furious, so she didn’t look at him at all. She had already turned her back to Gina, pulling her hoodie and soaked T-shirt up above her waist. She watched the doorway as she felt the three-part strap snap into place. Gina wasn’t as fast as Mattie at re-strapping, but now wasn’t the time to mention that.
Ringing, clanging footsteps on the stairs.
‘They’re coming! Lock it in!’ hissed Ant. She felt Gina push and twist; then the end clamps tightened into her flesh.
‘You’re done!’ whispered Gina. ‘Lose the hoodie.’ It had served its purpose of disguise, but now, in the sweltering conditions of the prison, it looked ridiculous – a red flag to the authorities – and Ant threw it on her bunk. ‘Table, next to Mattie,’ said Gina, pulling Ant’s T-shirt back over her strap. ‘You’ve been working on German verbs, geben and essen. Go!’ and she pushed Ant towards the open textbooks, just as Assessor Grey, short and stiff, with wire-framed glasses, appeared at the top of the stairs. He glanced quickly at the ten cells, narrowed his eyes and chose the family in cell 31 to visit first.
Ant, Mattie, Gina and Dan all breathed a sigh of relief.
‘OK, we have a few minutes,’ said Gina. ‘But once he’s come and asked his stupid questions, let’s get him out as soon as we can. We don’t argue, we are not difficult, we don’t swear.’
‘Why do I get the feeling that was aimed at me?’ muttered Ant, writing as many German sentences as she could think of in her book.
Dan leaned over from the other side of the table. ‘Capital M for Mittag. And we’ll talk about what happened today once Grey and his lot have gone.’
Ant carried on writing and said nothing.
Mattie hooked his arm through Ant’s and she ruffled his thick curly hair without looking up. ‘We were worried,’ he said. ‘Where were you?’
‘It’s like you’re my fifth parent,’ she said. ‘And you’re eleven years old.’
‘But I didn’t know!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘If you hadn’t come back . . .’ His voice caught and he buried his face in Ant’s neck. She put her pen down and hugged him.
‘Mwen sonje’w,’ he whispered, resorting to the Creole slang their mother had taught them. Originally they had used it to keep secrets from their father; in prison they used it to keep secrets from everyone.
‘Mwen mem too,’ she whispered back. ‘I missed you too. But I came back and I was doing good stuff.’ She glanced at Dan. ‘Honest.’
Mattie let her go. ‘Your “good stuff” is usually bad,’ he said, but he was smiling. Ant grinned back. ‘Thought so,’ he muttered.
There was a tense silence in the cell as they waited for the assessor and his team to finish in 31. Dan polished and repolished his glasses, Gina played endlessly with a strand of brown hair until Ant inhaled sharply.
‘Look busy, Death-breath on his way.’
In a few steps Assessor Grey was outside the cell, his staff of two deputies and two guards hovering just behind. He was wearing his usual ‘casual wear’ of black polo-neck and black pressed trousers, though Ant knew from her unauthorized visits to his office that he also had a traditional black gown. The deputies were stern-faced as they looked at their tablets, the guards bull-like and twitchy.
Gina stepped forward to greet their visitors. ‘Mr Grey. Gentlemen.’ She nodded at the entourage. ‘All is well here – please come in.’
Grey strode to the door, pausing as he always did to read the electronic board. His rich Edinburgh vowels filled the cell. ‘Dan Norton, working teacher, ten years, fraud, extortion. Gina Norton, eight years, fraud and embezzlement. Abigail and Matthew Norton Turner, serving, until they are eighteen, at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Children of (disappeared) Kyle and Shola Turner, GBH, fraud, armed robbery.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Quite a family. Quite a crime list. In fact you’re really our celebrity family – if anyone needs convincing about heritage crime, all they need to do is check the crime list for cell thirty-three, eh, Gina?’
‘And none committed by us, as you well know,’ said Gina wearily. ‘Do we have to do this every time?’
‘Yes,’ snapped Grey. ‘Absolutely. If it helps you remember why you are all here . . .’ He smiled thinly. ‘If it helps you remember the debt you owe society. You and your kind poisoned this country. We’ve just taken back what you took from us, that is all. You have a son on the outside?’ Gina winced and nodded. A deputy held a screen in front of Grey. ‘Yes, of course. Max Norton. You should be grateful he reached adulthood before your sentencing.’ He leaned towards Gina. ‘I do hope he’s being careful,’ he said softly.
She said nothing but stepped aside. The assessor came in and leaned over the table to look at Mattie’s work.
As he spoke, Ant mimed his words with well-rehearsed timing. ‘And what have you done today?’ he said, his voice light, unconcerned. Mattie said nothing – didn’t even look up – just spun his exercise book round till the open pages faced the assessor. Grey looked at the lines of neat writing, flicking over the pages till he found the end. He nodded and turned to look at Ant. She had learned to conceal her revulsion, but as he stepped closer, her insides squirmed.
‘So. Abigail’ – Grey always refused to use her post-fostering nickname – ‘what have you done today?’ His tone had hardened, expecting trouble. He waited for his answer, smile fixed.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’ Ant smiled back.
Dan stepped forward. ‘Don’t waste the assessor’s time, Ant—’
‘German verbs,’ she said quickly. ‘Look.’ She turned her work to show Grey, but he ignored it, just kept looking at Ant, his face blank.
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ he said, his voice getting quieter with every word.
‘Sure,’ said Ant. ‘Schlagen, schlug, geschlagen. That kind of thing.’ One of the deputies typed furiously into his tablet, then held up the screen.
‘To hit, I was hitting, I have hit,’ he read from the translation page. ‘You have a gift,’ he said eventually. ‘And a modern languages teacher on hand at all times for the extra vocab.’ He glared at Dan. ‘How useful . . . And German.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Always German.’
‘Yes,’ said Ant. ‘I also know scheissen, schiss and geschissen . . .’
Grey’s hand whipped across her face hard, first one way, then the other.
Gina swallowed a cry, Mattie screamed.
The assessor pushed away his deputy’s tablet. ‘I don’t need that translated, you idiot.’ He looked at Ant’s reddening face, then at Gina and Dan. He smoothed out the roll of his polo-neck. ‘You instil some discipline and respect in this girl or you’ll all be in isolation cells before you know what’s hit you.’ He leaned forward, his mouth so close to Gina’s she could see his stained teeth. ‘You should know,’ he said, ‘that from my observation, eleven-year-olds don’t fare too well in the Single Housing Unit.’ He turned to Dan. ‘And you are allowed to be a collar so that you can repay society more quickly. I can stop that. I can also transfer you to Pentonville for a few days if this nonsense carries on.’
Grey swept from the cell, his guards and deputies following behind.
Ant let out a sigh of relief. A smack was a small price to pay, but it could have been so much worse. Need to be smarter. Quicker. She glanced at her brother. More careful.
Dan put his finger to hi
s lips as they listened to the muffled exchanges in the next cell. ‘Just keep on with the German,’ he whispered. ‘He might not be finished with us.’
‘Abschaum,’ obliged Ant. Maybe not that careful.
Gina slid in next to her husband and tried to inspect Ant’s face, but she pulled away.
‘I’m fine.’
Gina mouthed her opinion of the assessor with one word; Ant and Mattie both snorted. Alarmed, Dan made shushing motions, his eyes wide. They all froze, but there was no break in the sound of the assessor’s examination of cell 35, no pause to suggest anyone had overheard the stifled laughter from 33.
Eventually, as the sound of footsteps on metal stairs disappeared into the echoey noise of prison life, they felt they could speak. They all spoke at once.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘That was way, way too close.’
‘What does schiss mean?’
‘We’ll be separated next!’
‘Can’t we pay him off like the others?’
The barrage of words was interrupted by the appearance of a small, slight woman dressed in the thin cotton Spike shirt issued to non-working adult strutters. Gina wore one too, but it didn’t swamp her the way it did the other woman. Dan called her Frail Mary, and it was easy to see why. Her face was a study in stress – pale skin, deep-set eyes and lined, furrowed forehead. Her grey hair was pulled back from her face and held by a rubber band. She hesitated in the doorway.
‘Come in, Mary!’ called Gina, and stood as Mary stepped inside. ‘What’s up?’
Mary sighed heavily before speaking. She held onto the door-frame for support. ‘It’s not Grey this time – though God knows he’s bad enough. No, it’s – it’s everything else. Out there.’ She gestured vaguely in the direction of the Holloway, women-only cells. ‘I had to go there this morning.’
‘You went to the Castle? said Dan, astonished. ‘Thought they didn’t allow that any more.’