Kate turned the innocuous brown rectangle over in her palm until it lay flat against her hand. Her heart jumped. It wasn’t the meandering script of her sister’s fountain pen that stared back at her, but the unmistakable tiny, precise strokes of her daughter’s hand.
‘Oh! It’s from my daughter!’
Kate didn’t know who she was shouting to, her words were almost involuntary. The joy bubbled from her throat.
‘Good for you, love,’ came the indifferent reply from a neighbouring cell.
It was only the second letter she had received from Lydia in three years. Kate had all but worn out the thin sheet of its predecessor. This precious new talisman would provide her with hours of reflection. Each word would very quickly be committed to memory, but the text and its meaning were not enough. To hold the piece of paper and trace the words that her little girl’s fingers had rested on connected her in a way that recall alone could not. To inhale the paper which revealed the vaguest hint of her daughter’s fragrance, transferred from the lightest touch to her wrist, was an indescribable pleasure. Kate read and reread the two pages at least twenty times that day. Other readings on future days would become part of her routine.
Gosh, Mum,
Nearly three years, it’s gone so quickly. Francesca’s still completely bonkers, but brilliant and reminds me a lot of you. I can see some of your traits in her and vice versa. I guess I’d never spent enough time with her before to notice. She has the same voice as you and when I first came here, if I heard her on the phone or she’d call me down to dinner, I’d get really upset. But I’m used to it now and sometimes I make out it is you downstairs cooking my tea and it makes me smile.
Kate stopped reading to mop at the tears that fogged her vision. She pictured the countless times she’d called up the stairs, ‘Supper’s ready, kids!’, to hear them thundering down either laughing or arguing. How she missed dishing up their meals, hearing their moans, watching as they tucked into their food, spilt drinks on the tablecloth and scraped their shoes against the wooden floor.
College is amazing! Learning loads and when they set me new assignments I think, oh goody! Whereas a lot of my friends just get pissed off with the workload. I think this means I love it more than them. They say I’m quite good, particularly my painting, which makes me happy!
I know I haven’t written for a long time. I start a lot of letters, but I don’t finish them. Hope I finish this one. If I don’t, then I’ll try again in a while. I find it hard, Mum, I really do. I don’t know how to write to you, if that makes any sense.
‘I know, darling, I know it’s hard, but don’t stop, Lydi. It means the world to me.’
Kate was unaware she had spoken out loud.
‘You got visitors in there, girl?’ her neighbour shrieked across the corridor.
Kate ignored her; she was talking directly to her daughter.
It’s taken me this long to realise that what happened really happened and wasn’t just a bad dream. That’s how it all felt for a long time. I’ve been seeing a kind of counsellor in York and it’s helped. (Didn’t think it would, but it has. Dom won’t go, but I think he should.) It’s helped me understand that Dad was my dad no matter what he did or didn’t do. I miss and mourn him because he was my dad and before this all happened he was a great dad. I was proud that he was the Head. It made me feel special at school. I can only remember being really happy when I was with him, never anything else. I also mourn you too, Mum. You were my ‘background noise’ – always there and always doing something, and now my world feels silent because I’ve lost you. I have lost you both.
‘No you haven’t, darling. I’m right here!’
Kate’s voice was a strained whisper, her vocal chords taut with distress.
Dom and I talk about it sometimes, not all the time as you might expect, but sometimes. It’s like we have a secret and when we discuss it we do it in a whisper. If we can work it out with dates and stuff, we will try and come down to see you at half-term.
I miss you and I love you as ever,
Lyds xx
Kate held the paper against her chest and hugged the words to her breast. She knew Lydia was right: your dad was your dad no matter what he did or didn’t do and she would never try to influence her beautiful kids one way or another. She had protected them their whole lives and she would continue to do so.
One sentence burned brighter than any other: ‘we will try and come down to see you at half-term’. The very idea of seeing the kids made her feel giddy. Her stomach muscles clenched with anticipation. She was allowed two sixty-minute visits every four weeks. She had only ever had two, one from a court-appointed chaplain and one last year from Francesca, who had travelled the length of the country to sit for an hour in the strained confines of the visiting room. Kate had assured her that her time would be better spent in Hallton, making things as comfortable as possible for Dom and Lydi. The hour had passed in minutes and the two had grasped each other’s hands awkwardly and whispered inadequate goodbyes through their tears. It had been horrible.
Four weeks passed, then six, then eight. Kate stopped counting. They weren’t coming.
Kate now accepted that the more time passed, the less likely they were to visit. It was as if the cavern they would have to cross grew wider and more treacherous with each passing day. The only visitor she could rely upon was her best friend, Natasha, whose first trip to Marlham was one that she would never forget. It had been some weeks into her sentence, when she was alerted by the particular squeak of the guard’s rubber soles.
‘You’ve got a visitor, Kate.’
‘What?’
She had heard perfectly, but was so stunned by the words, she wanted them repeated for confirmation. The warder pushed open her cell door. Kate was momentarily confused. It was so rare for her to have a visitor she had forgotten the drill. She felt a split-second flicker of dismay that her reading was about to be disrupted; Paulo Coelho would just have to wait. Her heart beat loudly in her chest, her mouth went dry.
Lydia, Dominic, or both: who had finally decided to come? Oh please let it be both, she prayed. Her hands shook inside her smock pocket. She teased her fringe with her fingertips as she paced the corridor, impervious to the fact that the state of her hair would be the least of her children’s worries.
The visiting room was functional and austere, smaller than she had imagined. Square tables and plastic chairs like the ones in the Mountbriers school hall sat uniformly in three rows of four. Security cameras blinked from every corner. The linoleum floor had been polished to a high shine. God help anyone in socks, thought Kate as she peered through the safety glass at the top of the door.
The visitors were already in situ, with some of her fellow inmates seated opposite them. It was fascinating for Kate to see the women she lived with interacting with their families and friends. A brassy, blonde scrapper called Moll was crying as she squinted at a photograph. Not such a tough nut after all.
Jojo, a neighbour of Kate’s, was wearing a vest, her wasted addict’s muscles on full display. She was slouched in a chair across from a woman who was unmistakably her mother, decked out in pearls and wearing a flashy watch. The older woman sat with lips pursed, eyes darting continually to the clock on the wall, disapproval and disappointment dripping from every pore.
Kate scanned the rest of the tables. Where are you, where are you?
Her eyes lighted on a familiar face. It was Natasha, the art teacher at Mountbriers and Kate’s one and only friend. She smiled widely to hide her disappointment. Not her children, not today.
Natasha sat cleaning and admiring her nails, before twisting the beads on her chunky bangle to best show off their pattern. She surveyed the decor as though she were rendezvousing in Costa Coffee on a sunny day rather than visiting her jailbird friend. Natasha looked as if she had stepped from a pavement cafe in St Tropez. Her skin held the burnish of a recent tan. Silver and diamante clips attempted to hold her unruly hair at bay, which she had gro
wn to shoulder length. Her vest sat snugly over her slender, bra-less form and a multi-coloured patchwork skirt pooled in a fan around her chair. Kate knew it would not have occurred to her friend to opt for demure or depressed.
Kate took the seat opposite Natasha and worried momentarily how they would start. But Natasha hardly blinked, as though it had been a few minutes and not many months since they had last seen each other.
‘Okay, so I once stole a bottle of Panda Pop when I was twelve, but was too scared to repeat the exercise, so I gave up thievery there and then. Every time there was an early-evening knock at the door I thought it was the police coming to get me! I used to hide, sweating under the duvet until my dad sent them away.’
Kate shook her head, trying to pick up the thread.
‘It was more of a dare and not my thing at all. Oh, and I also sneaked a look at your notebook once, when you left it on the kitchen table at Mountbriers. I read a list of chores, all quite standard, and saw a picture of a flower that you had scrawled, which wasn’t very good, your perspective was all wrong. I remember thinking, God, I hope this is a bloody code for something deviant and exciting – no one’s life can be this boring! And finally, drum roll please, I did have a teeny tiny crush on Cattermole, the school chaplain. I think I saw myself in some Thornbirdsesque illicit love affair, with the poor chap caught between his devotion to the church and his lust for me.’
Natasha raised one of her elegantly arched eyebrows and flashed Kate a wicked grin.
‘So, there we have it, Kate, my confession to you; things I didn’t share but probably should have, knowing that you wouldn’t have judged me and that you’d have loved and helped me no matter what. Now it’s your turn!’
Kate laughed until the tears gathered.
‘Oh, Tash, I never told anyone. I couldn’t.’
‘I’m teasing you, honey. We’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘I guess we do. I hated pretending to you, to everyone, but especially you. I reached a point where I just couldn’t do it any more.’
‘Do you know what, mate? I knew something wasn’t right. He was a pig of a man in a number of ways, but I had no idea of the extent of your suffering. I guessed at a bit of bullying, but when I heard the full detail…’ Natasha paused to compose herself. ‘I think you are a remarkable woman, Kate. Stronger than anyone I know, to have shouldered what you did just to keep it secret from the kids. I admire you greatly.’
‘I didn’t feel like a strong person, quite the opposite, even now.’
‘Well you should. Most people would not have been able to function, let alone put on that brave face and make things “normal” for everyone else. You are amazing.’
Kate smiled, unused to discussing her feelings in this way, let alone taking a compliment.
‘How are you doing now?’ Natasha looked concerned.
‘I’m…’ How was she? It was hard to phrase.
‘I’m okay. I like the peace I have in here, I can read. But obviously I miss… I’ve had a couple of letters from Lyd, but I haven’t heard from Dom. She said they might… I thought they might…’ Kate’s eyes stung, her nose ran, and her mouth twisted into the ugly angle of one in distress.
‘I’ve seen them.’
Her friend’s words cut and soothed in equal measure.
‘Oh! Oh, Tash!’
She had so many questions that bubbled on top of the jealous bile that rose in her throat. They are my kids, my kids! How come you’ve seen them and not me?
‘They are alternately angry and confused, as you would expect, but they are doing great. Lydia is expressing her thoughts through her art and is very centred, determined; she has your strength. Dominic is more of a loose cannon, but then he always was.’
Both women thought briefly of their time at Mountbriers.
‘It will not always be this way, Kate, and your sister is doing a great job. She keeps you present every day in little ways – the odd comment, and an easy patter about your childhood, that sort of thing.’
This was good to hear. ‘Thank you.’
Her words slid between mucus-smeared lips. Her heart ached with longing. My babies, my children…
* * *
Kate fixed her smile and entered the classroom. Eighteen months into her sentence and with a record of model behaviour, she had been asked to run an English Literature class for her fellow inmates. Incarcerated English graduates who were willing to teach were thin on the ground.
Her fellow convicts were a varied bunch, but largely came from backgrounds that were quite alien to Kate. Over eighty per cent were addicts, jailed for crimes they’d committed to feed their habits. These women often wanted to tell her their stories. They ranged in age from eighteen to sixty, but their tales were remarkably similar. All spoke of the vice-like grip of addiction that meant scoring the next hit took precedence over every aspect of their lives. They would sell anything, including themselves, and stop at nothing to get their hands on their drug of choice. Most had been in and out of prison so many times they may as well have fitted a revolving door with heroin or crack on one side and their cell on the other. Prison seemed to give them the respite they needed, enabling them to think clearly and make promises they knew they would be unlikely to keep.
Kate felt especially sad for the younger women, most of whom seemed to have been dealt a losing hand. She felt certain that with a little more direction and a lot more kindness, they could have been heading off to study art or design hotels like her own children, rather than watching mind-numbing TV for twelve hours a day and sneering at their lookalikes from the other side of the room.
The first time Kate taught a class, she felt an overwhelming sense of achievement. It wasn’t quite the environment she had envisaged when she qualified twenty-odd years ago, but nevertheless, she was now a teacher, she was finally a somebody. Her class had grown in popularity and was now at full capacity. She entered the room with gusto.
‘Right, girls, Hamlet beckons! If you would like to turn to where we left off last week, where Ophelia is very sadly starting to lose her marbles, we can crack on!’
The assembled ‘girls’ all had a thirst for learning and escape, needs that Kate understood only too well.
‘What do we think of Ophelia? Do we think she is mad? Or is there something else going on here?’
‘I think she’s mad, yeah – to put up with all Hamlet’s shit!’
This succinct summing-up caused a ripple of laughter around the room.
Kate laughed too; there were no right or wrong answers in here, only sound opinion.
‘I like that, Kelly. You are right, of course. Ophelia seems to be at the mercy of all the male figures in her life; she’s a victim. Hamlet himself uses her to wreak revenge. I think she suffers because of how the men in the play view women; even her father and brother rule her life. Do we think it’s the guilt she feels at Hamlet’s supposed madness and her father’s murder that sends her insane?’
Kate paused and looked around the room, her palms upturned, inviting interaction.
Jojo sat forward. ‘I can’t believe that even in the olden days, like Hamlet time, women were still treated like dirt. It’s like nothing has changed in hundreds of years.’ She shook her head.
Kelly was not going to accept this. ‘Speak for yourself, Jojo. I’ve never put up with shit from a bloke. It’s weak, man. If a bloke treated me badly, I’d leave, every time. Ophelia should have done a runner.’
Kate was used to this, the meandering from the text in hand to real life and back again. She could never have envisaged such rich and current debate. It was wonderful.
‘Every time, Kelly?’ she prompted. ‘What if there are circumstances that stop her leaving, other factors?’
‘Like what? There’s nothing that would make me stay with some fucking shit-head bastard, nothing.’
‘Okay, let’s try and cut the language a bit – although Shakespeare was a big lover of cussing! I guess we are talking about two differe
nt things. Ophelia was trapped both by the time in which she lived and by her circumstances and you are saying that in today’s world you wouldn’t have to put up with that level of oppression, is that right?’
‘Yep.’ Kelly nodded. That was exactly what she was saying.
‘What I’m asking you to think about, Kelly, is what if you had reasons to stay, whether others thought those reasons were valid or not. They could be self-imposed reasons, like guilt or duty. Or practical reasons: nowhere else to go, poverty, no roof over your head…’
The girls stared at her. Kate realised that many if not all of them had themselves faced poverty and homelessness; these aspects of life were accepted, to be expected, even. The bar was set so low. She decided to change tack.
‘What if you had kids; what if you needed to stay to take care of them?’ She pictured Lydia and Dominic at seven and eight, tucking them into bed, kissing their foreheads, switching on their night lights.
‘You’d have to be some sort of moron to have kids with a bloke that’s no good in the first place!’ Kelly wasn’t done.
Jojo piped up, looking directly at Kelly. ‘I had kids with someone like that. Trouble was he was all right at first, suckered me right in, but he turned out to be a really bad man, class A shit, a liar, total bastard.’ Jojo instinctively wrapped her arms around her torso, administering a self-soothing hug.
Kate smiled at Jojo. They had more in common than the girl could ever have guessed. She thought she might have found a kindred spirit.
‘Did you stay because of the kids?’
‘No, I stayed because of the drugs. My kids were in care within a year of him moving in. I don’t see them no more.’
Jojo spewed out her words with bravado. But Kate saw the flash behind her pupils and the flush in her cheeks at the mention of her children. She had noticed the way Jojo unconsciously and momentarily cupped the left breast that had fed those children. It told her she would have loved to have been a good mum had circumstances been a little kinder.
What Have I Done? Page 3