by Marc Scott
The fiery girl with man-sized fists suddenly seemed interested. ‘I ain’t sharing it,’ she said.
Poppy shook her head. ‘No, no, you can have it. I just want to make the peace, I just want you to get off my back.’
The menacing redhead laughed out loud. ‘Not so fucking brave after all then, are you, retard?’ The girls seemed to have reached an understanding. ‘Where is it?’ Meghan asked, wasting no time at all.
‘Follow me, I will show you,’ Poppy replied, still doing her best impression of a humbled opponent. ‘It’s under Darcy Brown’s bed, I saw her hiding it.’ The girls walked side by side, much to the amazement of many of the other inmates. Could this new girl be a recruit for Meghan’s gang?
‘I hate that fucking Darcy!’ Meghan revealed. ‘She is such a dirty skank!’
Poppy nodded in agreement. ‘She is such a sneaky bitch, there is loads there too.’
Meghan smiled as the two of them entered the room where Darcy Brown slept. ‘Over there,’ Poppy said. ‘She sleeps in the corner bed.’ As Meghan moved forwards, Poppy gently closed the door behind them, so they would not be disturbed.
‘Where?’ Meghan asked. ‘Where has that bitch hidden it?’
Poppy pointed at the bed. ‘She has cut a hole underneath the mattress.’
Meghan fell to her knees and slid her arm underneath. ‘Where?’ the Welsh girl asked again.
Poppy leaned over her enemy. ‘Further over,’ she pointed out. ‘Right over there, in the corner.’
The Welsh girl was on her knees, her arm fumbling around beneath Darcy’s mattress. She had no idea what was going on inside her enemy’s head at that moment. In the blink of an eye, Poppy grabbed a firm hold of the chubby girl’s mop of bright ginger hair and pulled her head backwards. The unsuspecting inmate just about caught a glimpse of the rage in her attacker’s eyes before her face was thrust with great force directly into the metal frame supporting the bunk beds. Before she knew what was happening her head was pulled back again. She could see the lights above her spinning before Poppy smashed her head full on into the frame for a second time. Meghan cried out at her attacker. She was completely disorientated now, desperately trying to free her arm from under the mattress. Poppy was not for stopping, dragging her enemy sideways and yanking on her thick locks again. This time her skull was thrust into the corner of the radiator, the sound of bone crushing against metal was sickening. The Welsh girl’s arms were moving backwards and forwards as she desperately tried to break free. Poppy smashed her head once more into the side of the radiator. This time the force of the impact caused the Welsh girl’s nose to split open, sending a huge splatter of thick blood up the wall. Meghan’s screams now turned to a whimpering moan. She was barely moving, she had had enough, for her this fight was over. But for Poppy this was far from finished. Straddling her opponent tightly so her arms could not move anymore, she systematically pulled the flailing girl’s blood-soaked mane backwards and forwards, hitting her head on the hard floor in front of her. The Welsh girl offered no resistance now, she was completely unconscious.
Poppy never heard the alarms sounding, nor the jeers of the crowd of onlookers that had gathered in the bedroom. She did, however, feel the warder’s heavy hand strike her head, as he pulled her off her badly beaten opponent. Within seconds she was dragged to her feet and surrounded by the whole prison team. A second blow landed on the side of her cheek as the staff did their best to contain her. There was lots of shouting, even some cheering, the place was in total chaos, but her mind was in a distant place at that moment. With her arms wrapped tightly behind her back, Poppy looked down at her beaten opponent. Blood was still flowing from a wound on the side of her head, her battered face, was barely recognisable. And then she felt it again. Poppy felt that numbness, that emptiness. She stood in silence, feeling no compassion, no remorse, no fear, she just felt nothing at all. It was as if she had watched all of this unfold from a different room or on a television screen.
As her arms were twisted behind her back, one of the warders gave her a couple of well-aimed elbows to the side of her face to stop her from struggling. Cheering inmates shouted out her name as she was dragged along the floor in the direction of the segregation unit, many of them finally plucking up enough courage to voice their honest thoughts on the oversized Welsh bully. It seemed that Meghan’s reign of tyranny had been brought to an abrupt end.
Poppy served ten days in the segregation unit before she was hauled before the governor of Medway and a magistrate from the local court. Meghan could not attend to give her side of the story, she was still recovering in hospital. An additional four months were added to Poppy’s sentence, with no chance of any remission on her original term. Poppy served her time at Medway without any further harassment from any of her fellow inmates. In her final month there she would meet Nikita, a chance meeting that would lead to a strong friendship and mark out the path of her destiny. Meghan was transferred to a London-based youth offenders institute when she was released from hospital, her broken nose and facial scarring a permanent reminder of the time she chose to cross Poppy Jarvis.
As the clock in Manning’s office finally told her that this week’s ordeal was over, Poppy thought she might share that story with the Reverend Joe, finally give him something worthwhile to write in that folder. Maybe she would tell her probation officer what her take might be on some of those clever scriptures from that big black book, such as ‘do unto others’ and all that stuff. In Poppy’s world you live by a far different set of rules. ‘Do unto others before they do unto you, only do it fast and do it fucking hard, so fucking hard that they don’t get the chance to do it to you at all.’ Maybe Meghan Masters had learned something from Poppy’s personal bible that day at Medway.
As usual Poppy said nothing and instead listened to his usual parting comment of ‘We didn’t get very far today’ and his reminder for her to call Mrs Bishop. But this week, the overbearing, oversized probation officer made a comment which would dampen her spirits for the day and set her mind reeling back into a direction she had chosen to ignore. ‘I see it is your birthday on Friday,’ he said. ‘I hope you enjoy it, whatever you do.’
* * *
When Poppy had left his office, Joe Manning revisited her folder. There was something in that paperwork that did not sit easy with him, he needed to study it more closely. The assessment unit analysis from Bronzefield prison contained detailed reports from the three professionals who had spent time with the troubled girl. It was the findings of one of those that had captured Manning’s attention. He had to study it again, just to make sure he had read it correctly.
Professor Camilla Fitzgerald, a senior and well-respected forensic psychoanalyst who had published several books in America, was fascinated by her study of Poppy. The woman was something of a renowned expert on human behaviour patterns and had worked with many inmates on Death Row in the United States. She had met with Poppy several times and made her own findings on her state of mind very clear in her report. The whole case study was over forty pages long, but it was her summary of Poppy’s case that the probation officer found so disturbing.
In the first half of the document Ms Fitzgerald referred to her extensive research into Poppy’s ancestry. She was a big believer that the genes that cause psychotic behaviour are hereditary. The professor had found that there was a history of mental imbalances running through Poppy’s family. Her grandmother had spent more than twenty years in a psychiatric unit in Worcester, after she had locked her husband in a room in their house and set fire to the building. During her incarceration she had tried several times to take her own life before successfully slashing her own throat with the sharp edge of a lid from a tin can.
Her expert research also highlighted the actions of her father. The unexplained disappearance of his wife and two nervous breakdowns, which led to him being diagnosed with several mental disorders, covered more than five pages of th
e report.
Her extensive studies on the connection between a small number of genes and malfunctional chromosomes made her something of a leading light in this field of analysis. During her studies into the case she identified the gene that may be present in all three members of the family, a strand of MAOA-L. Her findings led her to believe that the gene was twenty times more likely to cause psychotic behaviour in females than males.
Joe Manning understood most, if not all, of the information in her report, but it was not that part of the document that concerned him. Ms Fitzgerald was asked to assess Poppy as a candidate for early release from prison. She had served nearly four years inside Bronzefield with only one noticeable incident and was now completely clean of drugs for the first time since she was fourteen years old. The panel of experts, of which Fitzgerald was one, were asked to consider if they felt she could be rehabilitated on the outside, subject to continued behavioural and drug monitoring.
Three of the panel thought that Poppy would be a good candidate, providing she adhered to a strict period of either probation or wearing an electronic tag after her release. Camilla Fizgerald was not as enthusiastic. Her final summary of Poppy’s state of mind was something that Manning found most alarming:
* * *
‘I have spent more than four months working with Poppy Jarvis and have found her to be one of the most interesting case studies in my forty-plus years in this field.
Poppy has an extremely low empathic nature and finds it hard to relate to other people. It is well documented that she has shown psychotic traits from a very early age, some reports suggest ten years old. I believe them to have been there from early childhood. Many of the carers at the fifty or so foster homes and child care institutions where she was housed have put her violent outbursts down to ADHD or having come from a dysfunctional family background. It amazes me that in all that time, she was never recommended for psychological analysis.
Since the age of sixteen, Poppy has spent around eighty percent of her life inside prisons and reform institutions without receiving any professional evaluations relating to the state of her mental health. She has simply been branded ‘The girl with the violent temper’ without anyone ever wanting to find out the reasons for her pent-up anger.
She has shown no remorse whatsoever for her crimes and in truth I found her not to have any remote sense of conscience whatsoever when it comes to her victim or his family. She seems to be completely immune to any kind of compassion.
I made several breakthroughs with Poppy, mainly with the anger suppressant schemes involving colour-safe recognitions. It showed that Ms Jarvis can indeed control some of the psychotic tendencies that she has.
However, I would warn the committee that releasing Poppy into society at this stage would be premature to say the least. In my opinion she needs extensive psychotherapy sessions to help unlock the demons still present in her head. The level of psychiatric care needed to help her with this is not available at this prison or indeed many others. There are, however, several institutions around the country that cater for this type of treatment. I fully recommend that Poppy spends the remainder of her sentence at one of those establishments.’
Before inviting his next visitor into his office, Manning wiped his glasses and pondered on that uncomfortable reading. It didn’t shock him, he knew all along that there was something not right with the girl who never gave him straight answers. But it wasn’t the thought that he might never be able to break down the barriers that the troubled girl put up in his presence that concerned him. No, Manning was asking himself if Poppy Jarvis should really be free at all.
* * *
Poppy sat stone-faced in her car. She was halfway through her second cigarette. Why did Manning have to say that? she thought. Why did he have to remind her? She never celebrated her birthday. Friday would just be another day, like a Tuesday or a Thursday. This Friday would be just another day. But he had reminded her. She knew now that she would be turning twenty-six this week. It was exactly twenty years ago exactly that she had that party. Poppy was in deep thought, the images of her mother waltzing around their old living room sporting two black eyes and a bloodied nose, swigging from that bottle of vodka in her hand. The laughter of her schoolfriends, the looks on all their faces. She could not remember any of their names, but those laughing faces still haunted her. To top it all, her parents had bought her a rabbit, a big pure white rabbit, like the one in Alice in Wonderland.
A rabbit! A fucking rabbit! She hated rabbits! She didn’t like animals! Why the hell couldn’t she have had a games console or the Hello Kitty backpack she had asked for. No! That was too much trouble for them. Buy her a rabbit, give it a silly name and shove it in a cage at the back of the garden, that will keep her quiet! But even the rabbit didn’t want to live there, not with all the shouting and screaming. Even ‘Snowball’ the bloody rabbit left her!
Poppy was angry with her probation officer now. Why did the Reverend Joe have to open his bloody mouth and ruin her day? She had intended to have a rummage through the charity shops that morning, but now felt sick inside. She needed to talk to someone, not Cameron, she thought, he would neither care nor understand. She finished her cigarette and made her way to Chez Blanc, hoping Danny would say something crazy that would make her laugh and take her mind off things. She needed to forget what Joe had said, forget about her birthday, it wasn’t her birthday this coming Friday or any other day for that matter.
* * *
Matt was on the telephone when she entered the restaurant. He turned his back as if to say his conversation was private and not for her ears. Danny was sitting at a large table in the dining area, a laptop, a calculator and a bundle of paperwork in front of him. ‘Fucking VAT!’ he said, as she approached. ‘I hate the fucking VAT man!’ Poppy realised that it was not a good time to disturb him, but as she turned away Danny could sense that his waitress was slightly uneasy. ‘Did the Reverend Joe give you a hard time this morning, love?’ he asked. She turned back and nodded. ‘Just a bit.’
Danny gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Get Matt to make you some coffee and croissants, you will feel better after that. We can catch up and have a chat later.’ Poppy nodded and made her way to the kitchen area. Danny was wrong, coffee and croissants would not change her mood today, the shrieks of those giggling schoolchildren were still being played out in her head.
As she made her way towards the kitchen, Matt grabbed her by the waist and tried to kiss her on the cheek. ‘Fuck off, Matt!’ she said as she pushed past him.
He could tell by her tone of voice that she was not for playing with at that moment. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, genuinely concerned.
‘Just leave me alone today, Matt.’
‘Fuck, Poppy, you can be one moody bitch sometimes. What have I done wrong?’
‘Nothing, Matt. I just want you to leave me alone, is that too much to ask?’
Matt shook his head and carried on with his preparations for the lunchtime sitting. Poppy helped herself to some toast and coffee and sat in the corner, pretending to be busy checking texts on her phone, hoping that Matt would not disturb her.
The lunchtime shift came and went. Little was seen of Danny, although his shouts of despair could clearly be heard bellowing out from his small office next to the toilets. The ‘fucking VAT man’ had now been replaced with a more damning description, much to the amusement of Matt, who laughed loudly each time the ‘C’ word was heard.
Chantelle joined them for the evening session. The restaurant had over twenty covers booked, a good number for a Wednesday. The evening seemed to fly by. This was good for Poppy, it gave her less time to hold court with her demons. She pocketed a cash tip of £10 for herself when Chantelle was on one of her many toilet breaks, feeling fully justified that she did not share it.
By half past nine there were only six diners left in the restaurant and Poppy was planning on an early exit.
She was angry at the antics of Matt and the ditzy waitress. They had spent most of the evening throwing food at each other and playing childish pranks. The highlight of the unlikely duo’s evening had been the invention of a new game they had called ‘Danny’s Cunt Counter’. In simple terms every time they heard the word bellow out from his tiny office next to the storeroom, they would add the number to a chart on the wall and take a sip of wine. Poppy was no fan of the new waitress, feeling that the skinny waif would seize any opportunity to skive for the evening. When Chantelle wasn’t checking her social media accounts on her phone or calling her friends, she would encourage the chef to join her in an array of childish antics. Matt, being Matt, always played along. Their immature behaviour irritated Poppy but not enough for her to complain to her boss. Danny had enough on his plate with the upcoming VAT inspection, she thought, the last thing he needed was her bleating about the behaviour of his staff.
The final count on the ‘Cuntometer’ was seventeen, probably not a world record for a five-hour shift. Danny’s ex-wife, however, would not have been impressed to know that his not so affectionate comment was used in reference to her absence in at least three of the final tally. Fortunately, the unknown VAT man had received the rest.
As it was more than likely that they would all be finishing earlier than usual that night, Poppy was half hoping that Matt would invite her back to his flat. She was not in the mood for another sexual encounter, she simply wanted the pleasure of turning him down. But Matt had been far from impressed with her constant mood swings that day and had said little to her, preferring to follow the childish instructions of his new sidekick.
Poppy drove back to her flat and parked beneath her window. Lighting up a cigarette, she stared at the dark silhouettes dancing on her curtains. She could hear some music blaring out from the television. Cameron would be in there, as usual, sprawled out like a zombie on the sofa. Was he asleep? She hoped so.