We all laugh.
‘No way – I’m too old for that,’ Robert says, the light back in his eyes.
‘Shut up,’ Ness says. ‘You’re only a few years older than me. If you’re old, then I’m old. And I’m not old.’
‘Not a day over twenty-one,’ I say. ‘Which would make me . . .’
‘Jailbait,’ Robert cuts in.
‘Hey that’s my sister you’re talking about.’ Ness laughs. ‘Well, I’ll have something stronger even if you won’t.’
Ness pours more drinks. I know it’s time to make changes. Tonight is a new start. I’ll be more organised. More on top of things. Better able to support Robert to becoming head of the company. No more cancelling get-togethers with Ness and Mum. I’ll make time. I can be the perfect partner and surrogate parent for Robert and Emily, and still be a good sister and daughter too.
Now
Robert knows I’m alive.
I thought Robert was a tragic grieving widow. That Erica was this impossibly perfect first wife I had to live up to. I supported him. I loved him. I was worried about him. I wanted to make him happy. I gave him and Emily everything. And he used that to manipulate me.
Unless Erica lied. I know nothing about this woman. An hour ago I thought she was dead. I keep playing her words over in my mind as I walk back to the wing. With only a handful of us, we got out quickly, early. The rest of the prison hasn’t gone into Free Flow yet. I can hear classes still packing up. I need to speak to her again. I didn’t ask her how to get hold of her. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She could have been round the corner, a few miles away, and I never knew. I never asked her why she came. Though her eyes had that look, like Judith’s, looking for her child. She came for answers and she left me with nothing but questions.
I turn around, make to go back. But where am I going to go? Erica is already the other side of many locked doors. Possibly already outside, on her way home. Away from this place. The walls of Fallenbrook are tight around me, the corridor the inside of a long snake, its skin impervious to shouts. No one else has come out of the classrooms yet. If I’m fast I can make it.
In the hallway outside the library is the old wall-mounted phone booth I saw on my first night here. The induction video told us we’re only supposed to use the ones on the wing. Use of any unauthorised communication device means an automatic spell in seg. I’ve got to risk it. I pick up the handset – there’s a dial tone. I check over my shoulder and dial fast. It connects.
‘Hayworth, Morrow and Peal,’ announces the clipped voice on the other end.
‘Can I speak to Mr Peterson, please. It’s urgent,’ I say. If anyone catches me – if Ryan catches me – I’m in so much trouble. My heart’s pounding.
The library door vibrates, a seal broken somewhere else. A door opening? The corridor will be full any minute. Anyone could see me. The chattering voices of a class packing up.
‘May I ask who’s calling?’ the lady says.
‘It’s Jenna Burns,’ I say urgently. Please be there. Please.
‘Please hold,’ the voice says, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons starts up in my ear.
I can hear voices in both directions. Doors and gates being unlocked.
‘Hello. Jenna?’ Mr Peterson’s voice.
‘She’s alive – Robert’s wife. She’s alive. She could have been here. She could have done this.’
‘Whoa, slow down,’ he says.
I can’t, I glance over my shoulder.
‘Who is alive, who are you talking about?’
‘Erica Matthews. Robert’s wife – I thought she was dead. Emily thought she was dead.’
‘Hang on,’ Mr Peterson says. There’s the sound of rustling. ‘Yes, here she is. The police confirmed her alibi.’
His words take a second to register. ‘You knew? You knew she was alive?’ What kind of lawyer is he?
He sounds matter-of-fact. ‘I had no reason to suspect you didn’t.’ His words rub salt into the wound of Robert’s lie. Did everyone know but me? ‘She was in Sydney, Australia when it happened. She’s lived there for twelve years.’
Twelve years. David had contacts in Australia. He sent her there. He sent her as far away as he could. Presumably DI Langton and DS Salinsky didn’t fly out to Australia – presumably it’s easy to lie about an alibi over the phone? ‘I need to see her again,’ I say. If what she’s saying is true I have to convince her to help me. To tell the board and the social what David is like. If she’s lying she could be guilty. She could be the one that did this. She said she’d heard we were engaged – did she come back to get her family? To stop me from having them? Did she and Emily fight?
‘I’m afraid I don’t have contact details for her,’ Mr Peterson is saying. The noise from the library grows louder, closer. I have to go.
‘Thank you,’ I say, and hang up.
I’ll ask Ness to find Erica. Ask her to come and see me again. Or if I had an address, I could write to her.
Inmates stream from the library. I put my head down and get moving.
My head’s spinning. Am I in shock? My skin feels cold. I need a tea, with sugar. I need to think. David blackmailed Erica, paid her to disappear. That’s what she said. I think of David’s rage at me. His threat to take my baby. I gently massage my stomach, away from the tender bruises. He is a man accustomed to getting his own way. He sent the mother of his own granddaughter away. He’s more than capable of incredible cruelty. Had he been trying to get rid of me? Had Emily stood in his way? Or what if this isn’t about me at all – what if Emily found out what he did to her mother and confronted him? If David’s temper got the better of him he could have lost it. Robert could have disturbed them. David would have had no choice but to get rid of him too. Or at least keep him quiet somewhere, hidden. A shudder runs through me. Otherwise people would find out what David did, that his daughter-in-law was an addict, not a tragic early death. That he had blackmailed her into leaving. What would he do to stop that coming out? Motive. Erica is motive. My baby kicks inside. A gentle poke, as if to remind me I’m not going through this alone.
But it only serves to remind me instead that soon she will be here, and I am no nearer to being able to prove any of this. Robert knows I’m alive. Robert had lied to me. Or Erica had. He had told me his wife was dead.
I stop suddenly in the corridor.
His wife. We were engaged. We were going to get married. Erica only knew about the engagement from the papers. Mr Peterson had said ex-wife. You don’t divorce dead people. Robert divorced her. She was telling the truth. Robert knew Erica was alive.
David must have forced Robert into it. David is dangerous, Erica knows that. I can persuade her to come forward – to tell the police and the social what he’s like. It’s supporting evidence. I just have to talk to her again. What happened to Emily can’t happen to my daughter.
I need a stamp.
I start to run, turning left away from the wing and toward the canteen.
The orderly in charge of post is Nicky. She’s still dawdling, not keen to get back into the wing. I don’t blame her. The first time we met she introduced herself as ‘Nicky – death by dangerous driving.’ As if it was an unusual surname, rather than a crime. She likes to call it like it is, that’s what she says.
‘Can I get a stamp, please?’ I say breathlessly. My bump makes it so much harder to run. I need to do more squats with Kelly. Keep strengthening up. Aside from that I sound surprisingly normal given I’ve just met my fiancé’s dead wife. ‘It’s for a legal thing.’ Erica can save my baby from David. The hope takes seed inside of me. ‘Bit of good news for a change, you know?’
Nicky fixes me with her beady eyes. ‘Good news? From what I heard, you’re not gonna be out for a long time.’ An unattractive smile spreads over her face.
What?
My arms and legs tingle. Gould. The punch had slipped my mind with everything else. How could I have been wandering around as if nothing’s happened? Nicky tells it like it is. ‘I . . .
I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t play innocent with me, madam.’ She peels the stamp off the roll with a long, yellowing nail. Presses it firmly onto the envelope. Looks up, her eyes shining. ‘Your secret’s out.’
The floor turns to jelly beneath my feet.
She knows.
Her cackling laughter chases me as I sprint toward the wing.
Now
For a moment I think Nicky’s wrong. Then I hear it.
There’s noise coming from above. Shouting. Voices. I look up. There’s a clump of people, a gathering crowd on the top floor. Outside our cell. Kelly. She’ll be out of the board presentation now. She’ll be here. Gould saw her press the alarm. She knows she did it.
I run up the stairs as fast as I can. Holding onto the rail so I don’t slip. My bum and hips forced out behind me. My breath painful squirts now.
The upper walkway is thronging with people, women, shouting and trying to see what’s going on. Why haven’t they called an end to Free Flow?
‘What is it?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘What’s going on?’
‘There’ll be trouble.’
‘Go back to your cell.’
Voices swim round me. I pass two women who are hanging back from the inner group, a mix of excitement and wariness in each of their faces.
Then I reach the knot, women whooping and craning over the heads of those in front. Hands on shoulders, up on tiptoes.
I tug at the first arm I reach. ‘Out my way. Let me through!’ They peel off from those in front of them, so that I’m soon in the throng. Surrounded by green hoodies. ‘That’s my cell. Let me through,’ I shout.
A woman turns to stare at me. Steps back. And then another does the same, a look of disgust on her face. I feel my muscles tense. Someone tuts. Another clicks their tongue with disgust.
The more the space grows around me, the more the dread seeps in. They’re moving away like I’m diseased. Contagious.
They know. But how?
And then I see it.
Writ in blood-red letters, above our door, like a twisted inversion of biblical scrawl: Nonce.
I’m frozen for a second. The whispering hisses of the women around me fall away. All I can hear is the rushing blood in my ears. Nonce.
Kelly, frantic, still in her black court dress, has a wad of wet tissue in one hand and is trying to scrub at the letters. She looks up, her hair wild about her face. ‘I can’t get it off! I can’t get it off!’
I step toward her, take the tissue from her hand. Silence has descended around us, as the gathered women wait for the fireworks.
‘Why have they done this?’ Kelly cries. ‘Which one of you did this?’
‘It’s her!’ One of the women stabs toward me with an accusatory finger, her face a mask of outraged disgust.
Another, in anger, more than disgust, shouts: ‘She killed her stepdaughter!’ Too late, I see her left sleeve is rolled.
Kelly staggers backwards, away from me, her mouth open.
‘I didn’t . . .’ My words are lost under an ear-piercing whistle.
‘What the hell is all this?’ Kev’s voice booms as he bustles into the crowd.
‘Nonce!’ shouts one woman, leaping up next to her friend.
‘Paedo!’ comes the called reply.
‘Smother her in her sleep!’ shouts someone. There’s laughter.
‘Shut up, and get back to your cells – Free Flow’s over,’ yells Kev. His face is an angry red, he obviously hurried up the stairs and he found it harder than me. ‘What the hell is going on here?’
But no one moves. There’s only one of him, and so many of them. Alarm radiates through my body.
I’m holding the red-stained tissue. Kelly, a step away from me, is shaking. Looking at the floor.
Kev looks at the tissue in my hand and the words on the wall, puts two and two together and comes up with five. ‘What the hell is the meaning of this?’ He turns on me.
Why on earth would I mark myself out like this? ‘I didn’t do it!’ I say.
‘That’s it, you’re on basic,’ Kev screams.
‘But I didn’t do it!’ I say. This isn’t fair. They should be investigating this, protecting me, protecting Kelly. ‘Do you understand what that word means?’ It’s a death sentence.
‘Shut up, unless you want to end up in seg!’ he bellows. ‘Now find yourself a mop and get that muck cleaned off.’ He swivels, and the gathered women take a step back. ‘All of you! Free Flow’ll be finished any minute. Unless you want to go into lockdown!’
He stomps along the walkway, making the metal ring out. But no one pays him any heed. If people hadn’t seen before, they are looking now. Up and down the landing inquisitive heads appear, whispering faces. Below us people crane up to see. Pointing. Those who can’t read the word being told by those around them. Whispers, shouts, spreading faster than cockroaches through the cells. The Blonde Slayer. Killed her own stepdaughter. Kid was only fourteen. Murdering paedo scum.
And there, on the ground floor, in the middle of the wing, ringed by cat-calling cronies, smirking with triumphant hatred: Gould.
Now
Kelly is still staring at me. Her body shaking. Her arms wrapped around her belly. She came back from her Admissions Board session to this.
I take a step toward her. ‘Kelly . . .’
She steps back; her nostrils flare.
I swallow my hurt. The rejection. Tell myself it’s not personal. ‘Please,’ I say quietly. ‘I didn’t do this.’
‘I know you wouldn’t paint that . . . that . . . word yourself,’ she explodes. ‘What, you think I’m as thick as Kev?’ Her arms flail and she steps toward me now, like a drunk arguing with their mate outside a club. Prods two fingers into my chest. ‘Don’t you lie to me.’
I step back. Hold my arms wide. I don’t want to fight her. She’s heavily pregnant. I’m slightly less heavily pregnant, for god’s sake. I want to cry. ‘I didn’t do what they said. I didn’t do it. It’s a set-up.’
Kelly’s face is still twisted in anger. Behind me, doors creak. People are watching, listening. There is no privacy in here. No secrets.
I step toward the edge of the landing, my arms still open, offering myself like a sacrifice. I raise my voice. ‘I was framed. Someone set me up. I didn’t do it.’ David, Erica, and Robert’s faces swim through my mind.
People say it all the time. I was set up. I didn’t do it. Nicky’s blunt up-front admittance a way to dispense with the questions, the doubt, the worry. Can you ever really trust anyone in here? Can I trust anyone on the outside? People laugh. Jeer. The whispers rumble on. Lying bitch. Right now I only need one person to believe me.
I turn back toward Kelly, whose arms are back down by her sides. Her breath is still ragged, and her lips are parted, but the rage has gone from her face. We’ve shared some things in here. Softly I say, ‘I promise, on my baby’s life, I didn’t do those horrible things.’
I’m still holding my arms out, my chest heaving from the exertion of the last few minutes.
Kelly sighs. Tugs at her dress where it’s ruched round her belly. ‘I’ll see if I can get a broom,’ she says. ‘We can get it off with that.’
I want to hug her. I want to cry. I want to thank her for having faith in me. Instead I walk into the cell and run the tap into the kettle, my hands shaking the whole time.
Now
It takes several minutes and several refreshes of the tiny kettle to get the word off, even with the broom moving in time with the clunk of the doors being locked below, one cell at a time, working up toward us. The silence between us only broken when Kelly turns and snarls at the clumps of women grouped not far from us.
‘What you looking at – get out of it!’ she says. But they only laugh and jeer. Tell her not to get her knickers knotted. I daren’t look away from the wall long enough to see if they have rolled left sleeves or not. But now, it isn’t just them I have to be fearful of. No
w everyone knows.
Kelly, clearly thinking the same, says, ‘They’ll be up here in a second. I’ll take the broom back. You get inside and make a cuppa, yeah?’
‘How did the hearing go?’ With everything that’s happened this is the first opportunity I’ve had to ask.
She bites her bottom lip. ‘All right. I think. My mum came – said her and Dad weren’t fit enough to have a kiddie, though they would have if they could. And that I should be allowed to keep him.’
I nod. There isn’t really anything else to say.
Kelly straightens up. ‘I’m supposed to be told the verdict within twenty-four hours – but you know what this place is like.’ She looks at her watch. ‘They’ll bring lunch round after this, I reckon. You stay put.’
Today’s events have given Kelly a new efficient tone. Perhaps it is donning the court dress rather than these pyjama stand-ins. Perhaps outside she was always getting on with things. Which begs the question, which one is the closest to the real Kelly? The decisive pro, or the child-like anxious thing that snaps when cornered? A bit of both, probably. We all reveal different sides of ourselves to different people. Like David. Like Robert.
After lunch I make my excuses and lie down with my eyes closed, the adrenaline dribbling out of me with the remainder of my energy. Nonce. Has my situation got a whole lot worse? Or am I just panicking? I think of the whispered looks. The jeers. The rumours might die down. Something else might save me. Tomorrow is the day the prison goes no smoking! That will distract people. People aren’t happy about it, with the possible exception of Gould, who is nicely placed to capitalise on the new market.
And then there is Erica. Erica, who is very much alive. Mr Peterson said the police had checked her alibi, but the woman had fooled everyone into thinking she was dead for twelve years. Surely she could get someone to simply give her a false alibi? How long has she really been back for? And did Emily know? Did Robert know? Every time my thoughts turn to Robert, my insides writhe like they are full of black mist. I am angry. Angry at him for lying to me. To his daughter. And frightened. We’d fallen in love fast, hard, quickly. But was it too quickly? Was Robert trying to replace Erica while his parents were away? Had we rushed into this? How well do I really know him if he could lie to me about something like this? How much can I really trust him?
On My Life Page 23