The Dead Ex

by Jane Corry

  Instantly he snatched it away. ‘If you feel like that, don’t bother. How are we going to be good parents if we can’t trust each other?’

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked, suddenly scared.

  ‘Out. Don’t bother waiting up. I’ll be sleeping in the spare room.’

  I stop for a minute. The pain caused by the memory has winded me. ‘What happened after that?’ asks my solicitor quietly.

  ‘When I woke up in the morning, he was standing by my bedside with a mug of tea.’ I shook my head, half-laughing and half-crying. ‘ “Thought you might like this,” he said. He didn’t mention the document, and nor did I.’

  ‘You wanted to keep the peace,’ she says gently.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And you think he was buying houses with cash that he got from something illegal?’

  ‘Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? He asked me once more, but I refused. Clearly, Tanya wasn’t worried about getting into trouble though.’

  There’s a knock on the door. It’s one of the prison officers. ‘Lunchtime,’ she says.

  I am saved. For now.

  46

  Helen

  14 February 2018

  There’s still no sign of David. The office is now in a state of pure panic. The phone constantly rings with journalists wanting to know if there is any news. I try to keep my head down. But really I’m putting off something that needs to be done. Why don’t I just get on with it? I’ve waited long enough. But the weird thing is that, now I’ve got the information I’ve been looking for, I’m scared.

  It’s today’s date which makes me finally do it. Valentine’s Day. My blood boils just to think of it. Whatever happened to compassion, let alone love? Someone has to take revenge for what happened. But how? Then I get it. The following day, I call in sick. No one seems bothered. From Perdita’s panicky voice at the other end and the background chatter, it’s clear that they are only interested in David.

  ‘Still no news?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ she snaps.

  Then I head for Paddington and catch the first off-peak train, desperately hoping, as my credit card slides into the machine, that I haven’t exceeded my limit.

  Part of me wonders why David had her address in the first place. Is it possible he still has feelings for her?

  Once more I think of that woman with red hair who’d given David a mouthful on the other side of the restaurant window soon after I’d started at the Goudman Corporation. She’d seemed like a force to be reckoned with.

  The journey takes hours. Outside, the trees are bowed with the storm. The train rocks from side to side, making me feel a bit sick. So many boring fields! Mile after mile of nothing. The trolley rattles by, but everything is expensive. I make do with the bottle of tap water I’d had the foresight to bring and try to ignore my rumbling stomach.

  By mid-afternoon, we finally get there. ‘Welcome to Penzance’ says the sign at the station. My heart starts to pound in my chest. It feels unreal to be so close after all this time.

  There’s a line of taxis outside. ‘Could you tell me where this road is?’ I ask a driver, showing him the address which I’d got from David’s office.

  ‘Ten-minute walk, love. Just hop in.’

  I make an apologetic face. ‘I’m really sorry, but I can’t afford you.’

  A London cabbie might have driven off, but this one is good enough to give me specific directions. I walk along the seafront past some massive open-air swimming pool. A bird swoops down, landing in front of me to peck at a bread roll which someone has left. I go down a side street and pause briefly outside an art gallery. ‘Photographic exhibition. Free entry.’ At any other time, I’d have gone in. But I’ve got a job to do. Then I find myself in an amazing park with all these palm trees and weird-looking plants. There are quite a few people here, sitting on benches or just walking past. I scan their faces. None bears an obvious resemblance to the picture in my pocket (taken from the internet), although it is a rather old likeness. I’m passing a library now, although it could be a museum. According to the map on my phone, I’m nearly there.

  But my legs are wobbling. The old doubts come back. What exactly am I going to do when I get there? It’s taken so long to achieve my goal that somehow I’ve neglected to work out a plan. So I go back into town and find a cosy coffee shop on the corner of the high street and order a peppermint tea. Then I try to think.

  Yet by the time dusk is falling, I am still no clearer. I’m the only customer left. The waitress is hovering. That’s enough, I need to get on with it. So I retrace my steps but this time I force myself to take that final left and right. I stop outside a big house with a gable roof. Looking around – no one seems to be watching – I walk up the path. There’s a series of names outside the front door, suggesting the house is actually several flats with different entrances round the side. My throat tightens as I take in the first. Vicki Goudman. Aromatherapist.

  Finally.

  47

  Vicki

  4 July 2018

  For the rest of the week I think of nothing else but Patrick. I’m on the gardening work party now. We’re picking carrots, which were planted earlier in the year. Many prisons grow their own produce for inmates to eat. When I was governor, I used to encourage this. It always amazes me that great things can come from small seeds. All you need are the right conditions and a certain amount of care.

  By the time my solicitor visits again the following week, I am ready.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you about my baby.’

  It was a wet, windy start to the new year in 2013. I was four months pregnant. So exciting and yet also daunting, given David’s unpredictable behaviour. Maybe he was scared, deep down, of being a father.

  Meanwhile, Christmas had left the women with a deep sense of injustice. Whatever they’d done, surely they deserved to be with their families? I felt for them. But at the same time, as I reminded myself, each one of them had hurt someone else on the Outside, and all the victims had families too.

  Ironically, visits made it worse. ‘My kids kept telling me what a great time they’d had and all the presents they’d got from my bloody ex,’ said one mother. ‘It’s like they didn’t miss me at all.’

  Patrick was holding extra therapy sessions called ‘Moving On’. But the rumblings and moanings in the wings had become louder. ‘It’s like being a bloody battery hen,’ yelled one woman from inside her cell. It sounded like Zelda’s voice.

  ‘What does she expect?’ pointed out Jackie, not unreasonably. ‘It’s a prison.’

  Mind you, I could see the women’s point of view. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being unable to breathe the outside air. No wonder they all lived for their hour’s exercise every day. But we were down on staff thanks to a flu virus that was doing the rounds, so it was suggested that the afternoon exercise walk round the courtyard outside was rescheduled for 5 p.m., when the evening officers arrived.

  ‘It’s dark then,’ pointed out Patrick at the morning briefing when this was announced. ‘The women need their Vitamin D intake.’

  ‘Then give them some bloody tablets,’ muttered one of the officers.

  Patrick’s lips had tightened. ‘It’s not the same, and besides, I thought we had a budget.’

  He’d turned to me for help, but what could I do? ‘It’s a question of safety,’ I replied. Dissatisfaction with the situation caused me to be abrupt. So too did my pregnancy hormone levels, which made me want to cry one minute and laugh the next. On top of that was the added anxiety about David. He hadn’t returned my calls for six days now. According to Tanya, he was still away on a US business trip, which was meant to have been a quick visit.

  I could feel the odd ‘baby flutter’ now and then. I should be sharing this with my husband instead of being here.

  ‘How many extra staff would we need if we moved the exercise slot to 3 p.m. instead?’ I asked.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Fine. Th
en I’ll help out.’

  My deputy threw me a don’t-be-crazy look. ‘You’re the governor.’

  ‘I’ll lend a hand too,’ offered Patrick.

  The deputy looked uncertain. ‘I would do the same, but Sharon …’

  He stopped. We all knew that his wife was starting her chemo treatment the next day and he’d been granted temporary leave.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said quickly. ‘We’ll sort it.’

  It might be a good idea to show willing with the outside exercise issue, even though, as my deputy had pointed out, high-ranking staff weren’t meant to get involved at the coalface. It caused much more of a problem if one of us was taken hostage.

  When I got back to my office, there was a message on the answerphone. David! ‘Sorry. The trip is taking longer than I thought. Expect you’re in another meeting or sorting out some emergency. Love you.’

  Immediately I rang back, but his mobile went through to voice message. How frustrating! I was going to be tied up for the rest of the day and the evening too. Still, with any luck, we might be able to catch up tomorrow.

  Meanwhile, word had got round that the exercise slot was being moved to later in the day. It would be done in strict rotation for half an hour instead of a full hour. So even though I’d slotted it during daylight hours, the inmates were still angry.

  Zelda was furious at being left in the last group. ‘It’s not bloody fair,’ she yelled while being shepherded out of her wing towards the series of double-locked doors towards the courtyard.

  ‘Stop moaning,’ snapped Jackie, who’d also volunteered for extra duty. ‘If it wasn’t for the guv, you wouldn’t be going out at all.’

  ‘That’s cos she had no choice. It’s against my human rights to stay in all day.’

  Oh!

  ‘You all right, Guv?’ asked Frances, who was there too.

  I held my hand against my stomach. Another flutter. ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘When are you due, Guv?’ called out one of the women.

  ‘Early summer,’ I said. No point in keeping it quiet. Nearly everyone knew now.

  ‘At least you get to keep your kid,’ snarled Zelda.

  Not again! I’d tried to be understanding, but now I’d had enough. Something inside me snapped.

  ‘Look,’ I said, going right up to her and staring her in the face. ‘I’m sorry that you can’t be with your daughter. But actions have consequences. You did something wrong and you have to pay for it. Maybe you should have thought a bit more about your kid before you broke the law.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry you said that,’ hissed Zelda. Her hard eyes locked with mine. ‘I’ve warned you before but now I mean it.’

  ‘How dare you threaten me.’ I was livid. ‘You can go inside right now.’

  Zelda laughed. ‘Make me. You haven’t got enough back-up, have you?’

  An icy chill ran down my spine. I looked around for Patrick, but he was further down the line. It was cold, and the afternoon light was fading fast.

  For a moment Zelda just stared at me. I forgot to breathe.

  Then she turned and started running back towards the building.

  ‘Walking only,’ roared one of the officers.

  The last few stragglers passed me.

  ‘Back in now!’ shouted Jackie from up ahead.

  ‘You’ve cut us short,’ I heard Zelda shout. ‘Just cos we’re the last group.’

  ‘I don’t mind coming in,’ shivered another woman in front of me. ‘It’s cold.’

  It was too. I pulled my heavy-duty jacket closer around me and followed her. As we came into the building, the lights flickered. ‘Circuit playing up again,’ mumbled one of the officers. This often happened in bad weather. The electricians were meant to have sorted it by now. I made a mental note to chase them.

  Right now I needed to concentrate on getting this lot back through the doors to the rest area and then up the stairs. Jackie was running past to check the others. ‘I want to see Zelda Darling in my office as soon as we’ve got them all locked up,’ I called out.

  ‘Sure. Anything wrong?’

  ‘Tell you later.’

  ‘Keep moving,’ called out Frances. Patrick was somewhere here, although it was difficult to see where, with the lights flickering.

  ‘Stay together,’ yelled another officer. There was a note of urgency in his tone. Then suddenly we were plunged into blackness. Fuck.

  I waited for the lights to come on. Nothing.

  ‘Into your cells, everyone.’

  The officers’ torches were scattered like glow worms. I fumbled for my own, but the battery was fading. Why hadn’t I checked earlier?

  ‘This is fun,’ called out someone.

  Another was giving a wolf-whistle.

  The smell of fear and excitement was tangible. The women were acting like schoolkids who had been let loose unexpectedly. Then, suddenly, the mood changed to one of mass fear.

  ‘I can’t find the handrail,’ whimpered a voice.

  ‘It’s not fucking fair. If I couldn’t keep my kid, why should she?’

  Footsteps. Running.

  Face your attacker. That’s what the self-defence refresher course had taught us.

  But it was dark.

  There was a sudden blinding pain in my head.

  I reached out for the handrail, clutching instead at empty space. And then I fell.

  ‘Vicki, Vicki. Are you all right?’

  David’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance.

  The ache between my legs – like a terrible period pain – made it hard to think straight.

  ‘You’re here,’ I murmured, struggling to open my eyes. I was in hospital, judging from the drip in my arm and the white uniforms around me.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  My head hurt. I could barely talk. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You were attacked. One of the women hit you.’

  It was coming back now. Outside exercise. The stairs. The agonizing, searing pain.

  ‘The baby.’ David was sobbing. ‘You’ve lost our baby.’

  ‘No!’ I screamed.

  A nurse took my hand. David was now standing up, moving away from the bed as if he wanted to distance himself from me. There was a policeman too, I suddenly noticed. Awkwardly, he came forward.

  ‘Unfortunately, Mrs Goudman, the power failure took out the CCTV as well as the lights. But we found a snooker ball in a sock in one of the prisoners’ cells. It matches the injury to your head.’

  I tried to absorb this. The snooker table in the leisure area had been my idea. Lots of prisons have them, I’d argued when one of the officers had suggested that the balls could be ‘misused’.

  I struggled to sit up. ‘Which prisoner?’ I hissed.

  ‘Does it matter?’ wept David. ‘We’ve lost our son.’

  ‘It was a boy?’ We’d chosen not to know at the scan. I pummelled the bed with my fists, tears streaming down my face.

  ‘We had to put you under, dear, while we got him out,’ said the nurse. ‘You were haemorrhaging badly and –’

  ‘I want to see my son!’

  The nurse glanced at David. ‘Your husband thought it was best if he was taken away …’

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘How could you?’ he roared. His eyes were red. Furious. ‘If you’d transferred to a less dangerous prison when I said, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘That’s not true. You never suggested that.’

  ‘Yes I did.’

  This wasn’t the first time David had sworn he’d said something when he hadn’t.

  ‘Whose cell did you find the snooker ball in?’ I demanded.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Tell me!’ I screamed.

  ‘Zelda Darling,’ said the policeman quietly. ‘She’s under arrest.’

  Penny is holding my hand as if she’s a friend rather than my solicitor. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier about this?’

  I pull my han
d away. ‘Because it’s too painful to talk about.’

  ‘I get that.’

  Has she lost a child, I wonder. It strikes me that I know very little about the personal life of the woman who is trying to stop me getting life myself.

  ‘Do you know where Zelda is now?’ my solicitor asks.

  ‘Still in prison, serving time for her attack on me. They extended her sentence.’

  Penny writes something down.

  ‘You think this is relevant?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She continues writing. ‘I need to look into it.’

  48

  Helen

  I’m about to knock when I hear footsteps coming towards the door from the inside. It wasn’t meant to be this way round. I’m the one who’s meant to be calling the shots by summoning her, rather than Vicki Goudman discovering me on her doorstep. Of course, it doesn’t matter – not really – but it throws me. So I run back down the path and over the road. There’s a stone wall. I sit on it, pretending to fiddle with the laces on my ankle boots. When I look up, I see her making her way towards the promenade. I follow at a discreet distance. There are others between us, so it doesn’t look obvious.

  Vicki seems a bit unstable. Twice she stops to grip the railings as if she’s trying to get a hold on herself. On each occasion, I have to stop too and hang back. The waves are angrier than they were when I walked past a few minutes ago, as if they can sense the tension.

  My fists tighten into a ball. I could easily kill this woman.

  Then she stops again to hang on to the railings. Once more I do the same, but someone behind bumps into me. It’s a woman with a small white dog. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says even though it’s my fault for halting so abruptly.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say in a low voice. But the dog begins to yap as if in protest at having its walk interrupted. Vicki Goudman hears the commotion and looks back. Her eyes lock with mine.

  She can’t know who I am. Yet I sense her wondering if she’s seen me before. I watch her take in my face. There’s a flicker of recognition.