by Emmy Ellis
Her silence spoke louder than she imagined. There she was, getting on with her life, free as a bird, whereas he was in a poxy cell with some stinky bastard who snored. Gone were the raves in Landerlay, which they’d gone to every weekend, the parties he’d lived for all week, something to look forward to after five days of hard graft at work. And Jenny, he’d looked forward to being with Jenny.
He supposed, now he came to think of it—and he had a lot of time to think—he loved her. Well, cared for her more than the other women he’d been with previously. Jenny was different, with her natural red hair, her freckles, her eyes that sparkled, her laugh that tinkled. She was the only bird who didn’t get on his wick. Not until that night anyway, but she’d been filled with panic, frightened, so it was understandable she’d pissed him off with her screaming.
He’d got the arse end of the stick. Read it all so wrong. Thought she was into what he was. She’d talked about shit with him, got him thinking she was of the same mind, but when it’d come down to it…
Christ, he’d taken her words as truth, and now look where he was.
“Stop tapping the wall, you ponce,” his cellmate, Nigel Jones, grumbled from the top bunk. “Really does my nut in.”
It was something Ollie had picked up since being inside, the tapping. He knocked on the wall with one knuckle while he thought, the beat calming him. Sometimes, he did it to count down the time until dinner or recreation. “Sorry. It’s become a habit.”
“You’re telling me.” Nigel farted. “Scuse me.”
“And you say my tapping is annoying.”
“Better out than in. That’s what my mum says: Gas needs to pass.”
“She was wrong, especially when you share a small room with someone.” Ollie rolled over and faced the wall. There was a darker mark where he tapped it, and a slight crack in the paint. A lightning strike. “Do you ever wonder, if you’d taken a different route from a kid, or that you’d been brought up another way, things would be different now?”
He’d read about nurture versus nature. He reckoned he was a bit of both. You couldn’t be nurtured into wanting to kill, could you? Unless you had your mind controlled from young. And just because your mother didn’t give two shits about you for the most part, didn’t mean that set off the murder gene. Her apathy towards him had undoubtedly fostered anger, and conversely, her mean words, which had sent him inside his head, giving him ideas of bumping her off. But it must be in his nature to want to be cruel, surely.
Nigel sighed. “Christ, are you going down the psychological route again?”
“Shut your face. Do you think it’d be different?”
“Maybe. If I didn’t get in with certain lads, yeah. If I’d behaved at school. Trouble was, if you didn’t pass your exams, it didn’t matter, you just worked at the factory, so you knew you’d have a job and money. I didn’t give much of a fuck about anything other than leaving school. Fucking hated it.”
Ollie winced. He’d fucked up with his exams. He’d ended up in the factory. That was where he’d met Nigel in the first place, and it’d been a surprise to find himself bunking in with him when he’d arrived here. It had calmed his nerves, knowing someone, although he’d never admit he’d been scared the day of booking. All those procedures, the clanking doors, the jingle of keys, the weird bursts of alarms as locks were disengaged. The disembodied voice: “Stand back!”
Shit. He shouldn’t be here.
“Do you regret what you did?” Ollie asked.
“What, robbing them old dears? Nah.”
Ollie didn’t regret what he’d done either. “Why not?”
“Because they were rich and could afford to lose a few quid. Whereas I was skint and needed the dosh. Mum said that wasn’t the point, the money didn’t belong to me so wasn’t mine to take, but whatever.”
“Where’s the money now?”
“In the cemetery on The Cardigan Estate. Buried it in a steel box, didn’t I. I’ll need it when I get out, see. They were right divs, keeping so much under their mattresses. Thirty grand all told. Serves them right I took it.”
What Ollie had meant was: Do you regret getting caught? That was the only thing that bothered him, being in here. The actual crime, no.
He imagined the cemetery. He’d smoked fags and weed, knocked back cans of lager there as a teenager, perched on the base of monuments, not giving a fuck whether it was disrespectful or not. He’d even left his empty cans behind, bent in the middle from where he’d crumpled them in his fist. Not just him, but his mates an’ all. The mates who’d got him thinking it was okay to run riot, do whatever he wanted.
Even murder.
Although they hadn’t taken that step, just talked about it. Hadn’t given in to the voice inside them that said it would be a right old laugh to stab someone. Maybe because they were better than him after all, had more morals, and realised if you got caught, you ended up sharing a cell with blokes like Farty Nigel.
“What will you do when you’re out?” Ollie rolled over to his other side so he faced the sink. He wished Nigel had been put away for a lengthy stretch like him. They could have seen out their sentences together so long as neither of them were transferred. Instead, Nigel was on parole next month. He’d only been here for three years on account of the firearm being a toy. He’d got the minimum five-year sentence and played the part of a model prisoner, hence being let out early.
Ollie ought to do the same. Be good. Give them no reason not to let him out.
“Dunno. Find a bird. Settle down.” Nigel got up and paced beside the bunk. “With the money, I can get a nice gaff. You know, put a deposit down, pay a few months’ rent in advance. Go back to the factory if they’ll have me. That old duffer, what’s-his-name, Devlin or whatever. He had a record and still worked there.”
Ollie watched him. Nigel had a funny way of walking, one foot sticking out to the side more than the other. If he hadn’t threatened the old grannies with that fake gun, he wouldn’t even be in this prison wing with the bad guys. Yeah, a definite stroke of luck they’d ended up together, Nigel showing Ollie the ropes, plus if Jenny did decide to visit, she wouldn’t have far to travel. She could get on a bus and be here inside forty minutes.
Ollie felt a bit bad; when he’d worked in the factory, he’d barely given Nigel the time of day. Nigel wasn’t the sort of man Ollie would have associated himself with. The fella was a bit of a pleb. Now, they were best mates. If his time inside had taught him anything so far, it was not to judge a book by its cover.
“Can you keep an eye on Jenny for me when you’re out?” Ollie asked.
“Yeah, course I can.”
“I don’t want her to know, though.”
“No problem. Call me Mr Invisible.”
“Tell me what she’s doing, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Write to me.”
“I will.”
Ollie reckoned he would, too. Nigel knew what it was like to not get many letters, and when he did get one from his mum, it was like Christmas. His face lit up, and he sometimes had a cry. He read those letters over and over. He must know them off by heart.
What must it be like to get one?
Ollie didn’t receive fuck all. Every time the post came round he dared to hope, and every time he didn’t get mail, he went downhill. His mother had disowned him, not that Ollie was surprised. She was a right snob, and what he’d done would have tainted her. Messed with her standing in the community, one she’d built up when she’d split with Dad. His crime had people looking at her funny. Of course, she’d found some way to distance herself from it, telling people he took after his useless father, washing her hands of Ollie in order to maintain friendships, which had always been the most important thing to her.
Fucking hell. She’d always been more bothered about appearances than love and togetherness. Than her son.
Maybe it was her fault he’d turned out the way he had. He’d been desperate to be noticed all his life after he was about fi
ve, he could admit that. Have someone pleased to see him. Like Jenny. Maybe he’d done what he had to impress his little redhead. Show her they could share an interest. Build their relationship on mutual secrets.
Stop thinking.
“I wonder what she’s up to,” Nigel said. “I mean, it’s rank how she dumped you like that.” He paused pacing, a hand to his chin in thought, attention on the ceiling. “Some girlfriends and wives do, though, don’t they. I mean, they’d have to really love their bloke to be prepared to wait twenty years.”
At one time, Ollie would have walloped him for that, but he knew what he meant, how he’d said it. Pondering out loud.
They did that a lot.
“That’s a long time to go without getting married and having kids.” Nigel leant on the opposite wall to do some leg stretches. “By the time you get out, she’ll be in the danger zone.”
“The danger zone?”
“Yeah. Her biological clock will be slowing down.”
“Right.”
Nigel read a lot of books in here. He must have filed some snippet away. “Maybe she just needs time to come to terms with it. You know, the conviction, then she’ll ask for a visiting order to come and see you.”
“Hmm.” Ollie had a way to get her to come and see him; he had an earring stashed away at his mother’s in the loft, plus that Polaroid of her. But he wanted her to visit because she wanted to, not because she was forced.
If she came of her own accord, it meant she loved him.
Nigel got on the floor to do some push-ups. “What if I get her chatting when I catch up with her. See if she opens up about you. Then I can see where the land lies.”
Ollie wasn’t sure about that. What if Jenny took a liking to Nigel? He’d said he wanted to find a bird and settle down. “So long as you keep your hands off her.”
“I won’t touch her, promise.”
“Okay then.”
“Oh, and Ollie?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop fucking knocking!”
Chapter Three
Jenny danced in The Roxy nightclub, the stresses of working life drifting away, sloughing off her body with every twist and turn. She loved it here, all that music and alcohol, the smiling faces, the hugs when you were so drunk you didn’t mind that a stranger had grabbed your tit—well, you only minded a little bit. Everyone became friends after a few voddies, didn’t they, and your life story sometimes spilt out; how boring it was, how you’d thought as a kid that being an adult was more than this, how it was all work and only two nights of play, Fridays and Saturdays, same as with school. Sometimes, she extended her partying to Sundays by going to festivals, beer flowing freely in bar marquees, chips, burgers, and hot dogs the only dinner available, along with a squirt of tomato sauce and a dollop of yellow mustard.
She loved her weekends.
It was Friday night, and she’d come here with a couple of friends. They’d copped off with men, had disappeared in the crowd, but Jenny didn’t mind. She was too busy dancing, trying to catch Ollie’s eye. Everyone fancied him, but no one had managed to snag him for more than a night. Jenny had long since imagined getting him to go steady, choosing her above all the pretty girls. She was kidding herself, she knew that, but it didn’t hurt to have fantasies, did it.
He glanced her way while he gyrated to a dance song, his hands in the air, wafting about. It was rave hour, and he looked like he’d dropped an E. She sidled closer, and he made eye contact. Jenny waited for the inevitable brush-off, the turning of his back like so many men did to her. She wasn’t a girl blokes tended to want—maybe they assumed her red hair meant she had a fiery temper, that her freckles were unattractive, childish. Or maybe her figure just wasn’t sexy enough. Or maybe—and she was sure about this one—she wasn’t pretty enough.
But he didn’t turn his back, and she wasn’t sure what to do now. She wasn’t exactly a femme fatale, well-versed in the art of seduction. He grabbed her hand and led her to the bar. No talking, which seemed odd. He bought her a drink, and they stood sipping, him appraising her, Jenny feeling all kinds of awkward.
He leant forward to speak in her ear, or more like shout. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
She jerked back in surprise. Maybe she was the pity date, the joke, his mates daring him to ask her out. She had a low opinion of herself; a previous boyfriend had shattered her self-esteem, not that it was high to begin with, perhaps fair to middling. “Me?”
“I’m not talking to anyone else, am I, Jenny.”
Oh God, he knew her name.
“Um, I was just going to come here,” she shouted.
He tugged her closer, his mouth by her ear again. “Got two tickets to a rave in Landerlay. Want to come? We can stay over. Got some digs down there. A bedsit.”
She’d wanted to go to a Landerlay rave for ages but had never snagged any tickets. They always sold out fast, and besides, you had to queue at the ticket office, and she couldn’t be doing with that, taking time off work.
“All right,” she said, boldness creeping out from somewhere. Maybe the booze had given her courage. “When and where shall we meet?”
* * * *
Saturday morning, bright and early at six o’clock, a tired, hungover Jenny waited outside The Flag, where Ollie had said to come. She’d only had three hours’ sleep. Summer raged, even at this time of day, so she’d put on a pair of jean shorts, a bright-pink halter-neck top, and high-heeled pink sandals. That might have been a stupid move, the heels, especially as the Landerlay raves were held in a field. Still, she could always take them off and pop them in her backpack, dance barefoot on the grass. Mind you, she had flip-flops in her overnight bag.
Last night in The Roxy, they hadn’t done a lot of talking once they’d arranged today, which was weird but a relief at the same time. She hadn’t known what to say to him anyway, how to act—if she’d been her usual self, he’d have run a mile. Ollie had dragged her back to the dance floor, and it was odd; they were together but not. She could have been dancing alone, like before he’d taken her to the bar, but there had been a sense of her being ‘with him’ for the last couple of hours. His, in a way. Like he’d chosen her.
Or that could have been her wishful thinking.
She’d expected him to ask her back to his place after, but he hadn’t—not because she thought she was pretty or whatever, definitely not that, but because that’s what he usually did. She should know, she’d watched him enough—not in a stalker way, just quietly observing. At least she hoped it’d come across as that. The amount of times she’d seen girls cop off with him, walking out holding his hand or staggering and lurching into him, depending how pissed up they were. It didn’t take much to know what they got up to once the nightclub door banged shut behind them, especially if he had a hand on their arse.
The fact the same hadn’t happened for her further reinforced her suspicion that she wasn’t attractive. He didn’t want her in that way. Still, he’d asked her to Landerlay, and so she’d heard, he never took girls there. Maybe he just wanted a friend. Or like she’d thought before, she was the pity date. It didn’t matter. If it meant going to the seaside with him, going to a rave, then sleeping at his bedsit, she’d do it. Anything to spend time with him, even if it meant sleeping on the floor, because he wouldn’t want to share a bed. Not with her.
With the birds chattering in the hedges, she stared over at the corner where women still stood in a cluster, their jobs not at an end even though dawn had poked her bright head out. How sad that they had to do what they did for a living. Everyone on the estate knew who they were, why they were there, and some had complained to the council. It had been in the newspaper and everything. To stand there until the early hours must mean they were desperate. Jenny couldn’t imagine being forced into that lifestyle, needing money that badly, bills, hunger, or drugs sending them out into the night to sell themselves.
What corners had they turned in life to end up on that one?
One woman glared at her, a skinny blonde, and Jenny looked away, her face heating. Did she think Jenny thought they were gross? Far from it. She wished she could help them somehow.
Shame boiled her cheeks. Why had she stared at them so blatantly? God.
Jenny faced left. That could be deemed as her literally turning her back on the women and their troubles, but it was better than the alternative, wasn’t it? Better that they didn’t feel uncomfortable under her scrutiny, which wasn’t even scrutiny, but… Oh, bloody hell, she needed to stop overthinking things.
A red Fiat trundled up the street, pretty new, shining beneath the morning sun. Was it a punter, coming for some fun before he went to work? It drew up to the kerb, and Jenny’s heartbeat ramped up. Maybe he thought she was a corner woman. She pressed herself to the wall of the pub beside the window so the ladies didn’t think she was taking their custom.
The driver wound the window down and smiled, calling out to her, “Hop in then.”
Relief and happiness whipped through her, and she felt sick with excitement. Ollie had come, he was taking her to a rave tonight, and she wouldn’t be left standing outside the pub like a wally. She dashed to the passenger side, almost twisting her ankle in her rush, and paused with her fingers beneath the door handle.
Someone shouted, “Oi, you can’t steal blokes from our patch!”
Ollie poked his head out. “She’s not a fucking slapper, you stupid whore.” He seemed so angry, his face bunched like that. Didn’t he feel sorry for them? They had to make a living like the next person, so what was his problem?
Jenny felt so guilty, so bad for what he’d said, and she opened her mouth to say so then clamped it shut. It was understandable the shouter had got the wrong idea. Jenny had lots of makeup on, skimpy clothes, and high heels, like them. It appeared as though she’d stepped on their territory, and the women weren’t to know any different. She didn’t say anything to Ollie, though, when she got into the car. She put her head down while he drove away, and just as he passed the crowd on the corner, he stuck two fingers up, his arm out of the window.