I looked up at Ryan. Nicotine has made marble veins on his teeth. How much of this is withdrawal, fear at what I’ve seen, payback for the bollocking he received at the hospital. ‘She’s not doing any harm,’ I say quietly.
His grin widens. ‘Do you know what we do with these?’ He flexes his foot on the bottle and a bit of creamy liquid escapes.
A sour taste fills my mouth.
His voice is full of delight now. ‘We throw the disgusting muck away.’
Kelly makes a noise like a mewling cat.
No.
‘Playtime’s over.’ Ryan reaches for her.
‘No! Don’t touch her.’ I jump up, try to grab his arm. But my bulk unbalances me and I tip forward, two hands up, into him. Ryan throws his own arms up to break his fall, but not before his face connects with the side of the metal bunk. A chunk of whitened tooth flies out like spit.
‘You bitch!’ comes a scream from the doorway.
‘Fight!’ roars another voice.
‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’
‘Fucking hell.’ Ryan spits and wipes his face with the back of his hand.
Christ. I hadn’t meant to hurt him. ‘I just wanted you to stop . . .’
His training kicks in. He swings round. I step back. Arms up.
Protect the baby. Protect the baby.
He swings at me. I fold over my belly.
‘She’s pregnant!’ someone shouts.
Ryan’s radio crackles. An alarm squeals from it. He grabs me, roughly turning me.
‘Don’t resist!’ a woman screams.
‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’
‘I’m pregnant!’ My baby!
His hands force my arms up behind my back. The floor looms up. He is going to put me down on my stomach. Like they had Gould.
‘I’m pregnant!’ Panic vibrates through my every nerve ending.
But he rights me, pulling my arms tighter, higher behind me. A rip at the top of my chest. Muscle. Tendon.
He is yelling, shouting. ‘Get the fuck out the way!’
Another voice. Kev. ‘Move it! Back to your cells. Now.’
My arms are screaming, my belly thrust forward. A target. Kelly? I can’t see her. A blur of faces.
Ryan’s eyes next to mine. Spittle on my face.
‘You’re going to seg, prisoner!’
Now
It’s not like it is in the movies. The dirty dark cell with the one lone voice, coaxing you into madness. The cells are no more or less clean than the normal ones. But they’re smaller. And they smell. Of fear. And the noise is constant. Because seg isn’t just where you go for seven days after you accidentally attack an officer. It’s where you go if you’re not very well. There’s no infirmary. This isn’t Harry Potter. If you are having a mental health episode and you are a danger to others or to yourself they put you here. Here where the lights are always on, where there’s nothing but a bare bed and your own thoughts.
Someone framed me. Someone who had access to my house. Someone who had access to my laptop. Someone who wore gloves. Someone who planted child pornography on my computer. Someone who expected Emily to not be in. Someone who knew our routines. Someone who killed her and tried to make it look like I did it. Someone who made it look like I’d sent an incriminating message to Sally.
David is controlling, he clashed with Emily, he was angry she wouldn’t conform to his expectations. Angry she would turn out like her mother, an embarrassment to the Milcombe name. He wanted to start again, wipe the slate clean. He wants my baby.
Judith is frightened and snobby. She would do anything for David. She’s bought into the lifestyle, upholding the perfect-family myth at all costs. She’s completely under David’s control.
Erica is alive. She colluded in the faking of her own death, abandoned her child, her husband, and allowed herself to be paid off to leave. She’s an addict. A damaged woman. I suspect the spare key is hidden in the same place it always was. Or she could still have her own key. She could be jealous, revengeful, she could think I replaced her.
And Robert. Robert knew where everyone was supposed to be and when. Robert, who wants to both please and overthrow the man who has spent his whole life controlling him. Robert, who lied about his former wife being dead to his own child, to me. Robert, who is so like his father. He could have planted the images to get rid of me. Killing Emily must have been an accident. I think of him shaking her shoulders. A moment of anger. Or maybe it was the other way around? Maybe he and Emily fought again, he lost his temper, lashed out. And to cover up what he’d done he implicated me. Or David or Judith did it after he’d fled. And now he’s in the wind. The cherished son, gone, until I’m convicted.
It is two weeks until my trial. Two weeks until I have to convince the jury it wasn’t me. And if I can’t? In seven weeks my daughter is due. In seven weeks they will take her away like they took away Kelly’s son. And I’m trapped in here. Unable to speak to anyone. Unable to do anything but cry.
The woman next to me has been throwing herself repeatedly against her door for over ten hours. At least I think it’s that long – they took my watch off me. But I can see through the hatch into the cavernous double-height wing, and I’ve watched the light brighten and fade. Evidence that the sun rose and fell. And she’s still going. It must be her because the bed is screwed down. Again and again and again. A regular drum beat of bones against metal. So desperate to escape her own mind she’s trying to break out of her own skin.
Food comes under the door on a tray. No cutlery. At least here I don’t need to worry about bugs or glass. It’s a tiny consolation in the pool of darkness that I float in. The noise does that to you. The continuous clamour cushions you, pushes you out of yourself. Some people scream abuse. Some cry. And some, like the woman in the next cell, try to break themselves apart.
Closing my eyes doesn’t bring sleep but faces. Emily. Robert. Mum. Ness. David. Judith. Becky. Deb. Sally. Erica. Mr Peterson. DI Langton. There is an artwork by Tracey Emin listing all the people she ever slept with. I saw it at the Tate. This metal box is an artwork to all the people I’ve failed. All those I’ve let down. I hope they told Ness and Mum not to come. I hope they didn’t travel all this way to be told no. I hope Kelly is okay. I hope she is eating.
‘Tobacco! It makes me happy!’ Someone starts to sing, then laugh, then cry. Is it me? The noise outside has merged with the noise inside. White noise like the lights in here. Burning into me. Nowhere to hide.
My name is Jenna Burns. I’m not guilty. Someone killed my stepdaughter. Someone who came into my house, who used my laptop, who knew things about us. About me. Someone framed me. But I didn’t do it.
I didn’t do it.
I’m innocent.
I’m innocent.
I’m pregnant.
I’m innocent.
The words match the rhythm of the woman’s pained throws.
I’m innocent.
And somewhere, deep inside, my body says enough. A core survival technique, not for me, but for my unborn child. The baby it is my job to grow and protect and deliver safe into the world. And it is as if two small hands close over my eyes and then my ears.
And finally, sleep takes me.
Now
My shoulders begin to relax as we leave the bangs and howls of seg behind. I never thought it would feel spacious in here. That I would be so grateful for the custard-coloured walls surrounding me. If I stretched out both my arms there would be metres till I hit the wall. I could run between them. Muscle memory urges me to do it, to jog, to skip through this place. Thank god I am out of there. Though the smell lingers in my nostrils. Half a whiff on the still air to drag me back. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. But that smells of it too. The antiseptic, metallic smell of fear. I need a shower. Though showers are risky.
Kev opens the gate into our wing and I almost cry with relief at seeing other faces. Half the cells are unlocked, Association is early today. I pass Vina with her breakfast box. Feel the eyes of the others on
me.
‘Blonde Slayer,’ someone hisses.
But I don’t care. It’s human interaction, albeit hostile. At least I can move, walk, breathe.
The regular clunk-click of the doors being opened – opened! – makes me want to dance. Click my fingers like it’s a song.
There’s a shout from above. Different. Distinct. Not the normal banter. Kev freezes next to me. He felt it too. We look up. Suddenly the alarm sounds. High-pitched and piercing. Like before. Another mistake? Faces appear, some with toothbrushes still in hands. Foam mouths open, asking ‘What’s happening?’
Kev’s radio explodes into crackles of sound. The words punching between static sizzles, desperate to be heard.
‘Code . . . Oh god . . . the door’s barricaded . . . I can see blood . . . Not a drill. Code Red! Red! Red!’
And Kev is running.
‘Suicide,’ says a woman near me. And people turn to look at her. Nodding. Pale.
‘Code Red!’ The radio is still screaming. ‘Cell eight.’
No.
There’s a whoosh of movement, like everything is racing away from me in a blur. And I am running too, one hand to steady my bump. We all are. Toward the noise. Toward the screams. Toward my cell.
A clump of women have stopped down the gangway and I can’t see.
‘Let me through!’ I half push, half weave through them. Their bodies soft, hard, warm. Someone’s tea splashes against my arm but I barely feel it.
They’ve stopped at a discreet distance. Kev is already there. And the guard from the crackling radio message. They’re outside. The wrong side. And it takes me a moment to work it out. Kelly’s barricaded herself in.
‘We need the big red key,’ Kev is screaming into the radio.
‘Hold on, love, hold on,’ the radio guard is shouting. Pulling at the door.
The group of women behind me are quiet, or I’ve blocked them out. Blood whooshes into my ears. Round and round my head.
No.
I run forwards. Throw my shoulder against the door. Push with the radio guard.
‘Kelly! Can you hear me! Kelly!’ The noise is coming from me.
I flip open the viewing panel. Something is blocking it. The bed is end up. But I can see feet. And a red smear on the floor.
Behind us Ryan pushes through with a hand-held battering ram. It’s absurd. Red. Coloured-in like a child’s toy.
A sob comes from someone. From me.
‘Kelly!’ I scream.
The radio guard’s hands are on my arms, pulling me back. I’ve not seen him before. That’s what’s going through my mind. I don’t know his face or his name. He must have started while I was in seg. But it doesn’t matter.
The thought interrupted as they swing the battering ram at the door. The noise echoes through the wing. No one speaks. No one breathes. Bang. Bang. Bang.
On the third attempt the door gives, there’s a scrape, a crash. The radio guard’s grip tightens on my arms. I hear his breath shorten. Kev pushes past Ryan. Pushes the bed frame that’s been leant against the door aside.
The radio guard’s fingernails pierce my skin.
On the floor lies a sharpened toothbrush, next to the tiny, crumpled body of Kelly. Open next to her is her book on pregnancy in prison, the handwriting disappearing in her pooling blood.
Now
If I hadn’t been in seg.
If I’d been here . . .
If I’d tried harder.
If.
Oh Kelly.
Kelly’s parents are coming to Fallenbrook today. To the memorial. Her friends are to show them the places their daughter worked, lived, if you can call it that. Before she passed away. As if she had happy times in here. The exaggerated pout. The tinkle of laughter. The blush at her writing. The fear on her face when she pressed that alarm. The panic at the word scrawled on our door. The empty shell that came back from the hospital. Guilt has spread through me, filling every cell of my body until it’s all I can feel and see and breathe.
Abi has been chosen to meet them. They’ve put me in a different cell. Next door. I asked to be close. So I can imagine she’s just the other side of the wall. I’m on my own for the time being. I don’t know what happened to the pretty freckled girl. I don’t care.
My stuff is untouched in a box Vina brought for me. My food comes via one of the guards. They eye my stomach like an unexploded bomb. The priest and the imam tried to talk to me, but there are no words. I watched the police visit through the door hatch. Forensics, as they deconstructed and took away the final parts of Kelly’s world in clear plastic bags. And I thought of Emily and Robert. Of how everyone I care about gets hurt. There’s no special clean-up team in here. Vina, her hair in a calico wrap, her sleeves rolled up, arrived with another inmate with a bucket and mop. They cleaned Kelly’s blood from the floor and walls. The other woman crying, Vina reciting prayers. I run my hand over the rough, cool bricks.
I see her when I close my eyes. Curled on the floor. Like Emily. Sometimes they’re curled together. The yin and yang of my pain.
The spiky burble of the wing dips outside. They’re here. Kelly’s parents.
And suddenly I have to tell them how special she was.
I lever myself up. Open the door.
It’s like stepping into a vacuum. The women are all standing as if it’s roll-call, but with heads bowed, hands clasped, like a funeral procession is passing. Because that’s what this is. I can hear the sniffs and snuffles of tears. Kelly’s work friends, women from the antenatal classes, people she chatted to in the wing. We won’t be allowed to attend the real funeral. We won’t be allowed to say goodbye properly. To the girl I slept next to for the last four months. The girl whose breathing I heard last thing at night and first thing in the morning. The girl who kept me going in here.
I knew Kelly’s parents were too old to take on her son, but seeing them underlines it. Her dad is bent over two sticks. Wisps of hair cling to his hollow face, his lips suck over his teeth. Despite the July heat, her mum is in a thick black woollen suit and high-necked white blouse. She shuffles, her feet barely lifting off the ground. It will have taken them an age to get up the stairs. Behind them, the governor, stiff in his uniform, buttons gleaming, stands solemnly. I can’t stop staring at him.
This is your fault. You could have prevented this. You had a duty of care. You headed the Admissions Board. How can you take a baby from someone and offer them no counselling? No support?
Who cares about funding and budgets and all this crap when you’re talking about people’s lives?
The baby kicks hard inside me and I grip my stomach. An ooof of air escaping. People look.
‘Cellmate,’ someone says.
Kelly’s dad’s bottom lip trembles.
I step forward. ‘Mr and Mrs Allen, I’m so sorry for your loss.’ I try to choke back the tears.
‘You,’ her mum hisses, pulling herself upright, her face tight with suffering, her mouth seeping anger. ‘You did this.’
It’s like being slapped. ‘What?’
Some of the women behind murmur. The governor’s usually hangdog face has unfurled in shock.
Kelly’s mum steps toward me, stabbing a finger in the air. ‘It’s all right for you, with your money and your fancy lawyers.’
I want to tell her she’s wrong but I’m too horrified to speak. I clutch my stomach with my hand.
‘You people get away with murder.’ She spits the word. ‘You filled her head with a load of nonsense. Told her she’d get to keep her baby. You lied to her.’
‘No,’ I say.
The governor jolts into action. The threat of an imminent PR disaster plays distastefully across his face. ‘Try not to upset yourself any further, Mrs Allen,’ he soothes.
She rounds on him. ‘We’ve lost everything. Our grandson. Our daughter.’ She breaks down.
Her husband reaches an arm round her. ‘It’s all right, Mavis,’ he says.
‘My baby,’ Mrs Allen howls, doubl
ing over. Her pain echoes off the walls.
The governor takes her by the other arm, and they move, slowly, shuffling, away.
The other women stare at me. Their eyes accusatory.
‘She did this on purpose,’ someone whispers.
‘Drove her to it.’
‘Blonde Slayer.’
‘Who gave her the weapon, hey?’
The murmurs rise and swell into vivid, painful white noise.
I stumble back into the cell. Force the door closed. The box catches under my foot, spilling its contents. Among my things are Kelly’s magazines, splashed with blood. I grope for the bed. Pull myself into it. Her mum’s wail still coursing through me.
I lied to Kelly. I told her she would get to keep him. That she would get out of here. That it would be okay. I gave her hope. I killed her.
I close my eyes as Kelly and Emily spin like they’re turning in the pool. Over and over each other, laughing, crying, screaming. And the water turns red.
Now
‘She wouldn’t want you sat in here torturing yourself.’ Sara puts the tray next to me on my bunk.
‘Thanks for the food.’ I don’t look up. My eyes are gritty from lack of sleep. My limbs cement.
‘You may as well be in seg still.’ She shakes her head in exasperation.
The irony hasn’t escaped me. Punishment for sins.
Sara rocks back on the heels of her prison boots. Makes a show of looking round my cell. ‘I’m guessing your family don’t live that close?’
My stomach twinges, as if my daughter is reaching for a hug.
She squats down on her haunches, her uniform trousers turning shiny where the fabric pulls tight. I don’t meet her eye. ‘You can’t let the other women get to you,’ she says, quietly.
But this isn’t secondary school, and I don’t get to go home when the bell rings.
She places a hand on my knee and I flinch. But she pats it, and my disloyal skin relaxes under the touch. No one has touched me kindly since . . . since Kelly hugged me.
‘It’s a pack mentality in here,’ she says. ‘We both know that. But we also know people say stupid things when they’re scared. But not because they believe them.’
On My Life Page 26