‘They were different.’
‘Did you have lapses of memory? Blackouts?’
‘I don’t remember.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t a joke. I didn’t like them.’
‘Were you ever hospitalised?’
‘I had a bit of an episode when I was at college.’ She tried to speak casually. ‘I dropped out.’
‘And you were hospitalised?’
‘Briefly. But not in a hospital. It was a kind of clinic.’ She heard the scratching of his pen once more. ‘It was years ago,’ she added.
‘Of course. Did you go back to college?’
‘No.’
‘What were you studying?’
‘Architecture.’
‘And now you’re a copy-editor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘I’m my own boss.’
‘You like being your own boss?’
‘I don’t like not being my own boss,’ she said, and he looked at her searchingly. She wanted to poke him in the eye.
‘How have you been recently?’ he asked after a pause.
Tabitha shrugged. ‘I’m like everyone. I have good days and bad days. The village can be a bit grim in winter. You know, when it gets dark at four.’
Hartson smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘I know exactly what you mean. Why did you move back to the village?’
‘I got an inheritance when my mum died. I bought this wreck of a house. It was a kind of dream I had.’
‘Interesting. How was the dream turning out in reality?’
‘I like the house. I like making it whole again. I like using my hands, making things.’
‘How was your mood in the weeks before the murder?’
‘It wasn’t really any different from usual.’
‘Up and down?’
‘Yes. Probably more up than down.’ That was a lie.
‘And on the day of the murder?’
‘What?’
‘How was your mood that day?’
Tabitha looked at his pen poised above the paper; she looked at his small, wet mouth. She didn’t want to tell this man anything at all.
‘So-so,’ she said.
‘Do you have a clear memory of it?’
‘Nope.’
‘You don’t remember the events of the day?’
‘It’s a bit of a blur.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I see.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I doubt that you see,’ said Tabitha. She knew she should curb herself. ‘It was just one of those days. One of those days to get through. Most people have days like that. Don’t you?’
‘This isn’t about me, it’s about you and your mental state.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m just saying I don’t remember much and that doesn’t mean anything. Right?’
Dr Hartson waited before replying. ‘Right,’ he said neutrally. He turned back to the form. ‘Do you have friends in the village? People you talk to about your troubles?’
‘I don’t really talk about my troubles.’
‘Did you feel that returning was a mistake?’
For a moment Tabitha found it difficult to speak. ‘Just at this moment it feels pretty much like a fucking mistake.’
He raised his eyes and looked at her. ‘I meant in the days before the murder.’
‘It was early days. I was doing up the house. I was thinking about things.’
‘What were you thinking about?’
‘What to do with my life. I think that problem has been settled for me for the time being.’
Tabitha meant that as a sour sort of joke but Dr Hartson didn’t react. He stopped writing and looked reflective.
‘I think that’s everything.’ He moved the form. There was another one underneath. ‘Would it be all right to access your medical records?’
‘Can’t you just go ahead?’
‘I need a signature.’ He rotated the form and pushed it towards her.
Tabitha took the pen he was offering and signed.
‘Does everything seem all right?’ she said.
‘It all seems straightforward enough.’
‘What are you going to say?’
‘What would you like me to say?’
‘That I couldn’t possibly have done something like this.’
He didn’t reply. He just gave the sort of smile that people give at the end of a social occasion before they say: I think I’d better be heading off. But in this case it was Tabitha who ought to be heading off. She looked around. She didn’t want to leave this room and go back into the real prison.
‘It doesn’t seem real,’ she said.
‘That’s natural.’ They both stood up. ‘Goodbye, Miss Hardy.’
‘Nobody calls me Miss Hardy. It’s Ms. Not that it matters. By the way, if I’d said that I was suicidal, what would you have done?’
Dr Hartson looked surprised by the question. ‘I would have recommended that you talk to the prison doctor.’
Tabitha was tempted to make an angry response, to say, wasn’t he a doctor? Wasn’t he supposed to help people in distress? But she knew that she needed this man on her side. She walked out from her brief encounter and met Mary Guy and saw the heavy bunch of keys dangling from her belt.
FIVE
Tabitha was in the library. It was still cold, but better than in her cell. It didn’t feel quite so much like being in prison, although through the window she could see a peeling white wall topped with barbed wire. The librarian, tall with bony hands, pale brown hair, welcomed her with a smile.
‘I haven’t seen you before.’
Tabitha nodded, suddenly unable to speak.
‘I’m Galia. I’m glad you found your way here.’
‘Tabitha.’ Her voice came out gruff.
‘And you like reading?’
‘Yes. I’ve none of my own books yet. A friend’s bringing them soon.’
Galia nodded. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. I wish more people would use the library.’
Tabitha looked round. Apart from a woman sitting at the table reading, the room was empty.
‘Can I take whatever I want?’
‘If you’re reading in here, of course. If you take books back to your cell you have to sign them out. And if there are particular titles you want, I can order them for you.’
‘Like in a real library?’
‘This is a real library.’
Tabitha looked along the shelves. It was mainly fiction but there was also a true crime section and another devoted to erotica of different kinds and tastes. She turned to the librarian.
‘Is there anything that’s not allowed?’
‘Not really. Except for true crime books about crimes committed by people who are actually in the prison at the moment.’
‘I get that,’ said Tabitha.
‘And books with maps of the local area. But I don’t suppose you want books of that kind.’
Tabitha looked back at the barred window, at the walls topped with spikes and barbed wire. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t try to escape. Anyway, I won’t be here long.’
Galia nodded. ‘I’ll leave you to have a browse.’
Alongside the novels and the pornography, there were a few classics, a large foreign language section. There was a small area devoted to gardening and to DIY, another to well-being. There were books of crosswords and Sudoku, many of which had been filled in. Tabitha found a book about Iceland, a country where she had always wanted to go. She took it over to the central table and sat opposite the other woman. She was middle-aged, with dark hair, streaked with grey and neatly cut, and she wore a skirt and a flecked turtleneck jumper. Tabitha wondered if she was another librarian. She looked at the book she was reading and the woman, noticing, held it up. It was a recipe book.
‘My guilty pleasure,’ she said. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it, to be poring over recipes when I’m stuck in here?’
; ‘Doesn’t it make things worse?’
‘I fantasise about the meals I’m going to cook when I get out. What are you reading?’
Tabitha held up her book. ‘It’s about Iceland.’
‘The same thing.’
‘I guess it is.’
To imagine whales and glaciers and wild spaces in a poky cell; Tabitha looked down at the book, sick with longing for an open sky and the salty wind in her face.
‘Why are you here?’
The woman put her head on one side. She had a curious smile on her face. ‘You mean, what did I do?’
‘Yes.’
The woman looked suddenly reflective. ‘It was stupid, really. I worked for a company that got caught up in a financial mess, and I didn’t see what was happening until it was too late. They needed a scapegoat and I was in the right place, or the wrong place. That’s my story anyway. Everyone here has a bad-luck story and everyone says they didn’t do it.’
‘I see,’ said Tabitha.
‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’
‘It’s all a mistake,’ Tabitha said. ‘I think my solicitor will sort things out soon.’
‘What’s your name? I’m Ingrid, by the way.’
‘Tabitha.’
‘All right, Tabitha, I’m going to give you some advice. I wish someone had given it to me when I first arrived. Rule number one: never ask anyone what they’re in for.’
‘Oh. Sorry! I didn’t mean… I mean I didn’t know…’ And she’d asked Michaela as well, she thought, remembering the way her cell mate’s face had closed on her.
‘I don’t mind, but lots of people do. Rule number two: if you have a problem, if you think something’s unfair, if someone’s got it in for you, don’t go to the warder.’
‘Who do I go to then?’
‘You don’t. Rule number three: the prison governor is a dreadful woman. Don’t rely on her for anything and don’t get on her bad side.’
‘These rules aren’t making me feel better about things.’
‘Rule number four: if you’re in trouble for some reason, think of what it was like in the playground.’ Tabitha grimaced. Michaela had said the same thing, and she’d had a brutal time of it in the playground. ‘You don’t get people to like you by being weak.’
She seemed to have finished.
‘Is that it?’
‘It’s advice more than a rule. Keep active. Oh, and the food here is terrible. Go veggie.’
‘I am anyway. Is the vegetarian good?’
‘It’s not good but it’s a bit less bad.’ She leaned across the table. ‘You just have to keep going, Tabitha. You’ll be all right.’
SIX
Half an hour in the exercise yard, a dingy rectangle of concrete and wired fences, and the wind was hard and cold. Tabitha didn’t have gloves and her coat was inadequate. But she was outside at least, and there was a sky above her.
Women stood in huddles, most of them with cigarettes. She didn’t try and join any of them. She tilted her face up to watch the clouds shift and took in gulps of air, like someone who had been drowning.
* * *
In the central hall, she came across the thin old woman with arthritic hands she had seen on her first day, on her way to the showers. She was saying in a loud voice, to everyone and no one, ‘I think I’ve found it. This will show them! Look.’ She fumbled through her thick bundle of papers. ‘Look here.’
Half the pages slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor. She knelt to retrieve them and then had difficulty in getting up again. People were laughing, both prisoners and warders. Tabitha went forward to help her, but one of the warders – the puffy one who had ended her call with Shona – got there first, putting his hands under her armpits and lifting her to her feet like an over-sized rag doll. He grinned across at Tabitha and screwed a fat forefinger at his temple.
She thought of giving his shin a good, hard kick but instead she smiled at the old woman and turned away.
* * *
‘Michaela,’ she said in the darkness.
There was a grunt from the bed above her, then: ‘What?’
‘I’m sorry I asked you what you’d done. I didn’t know I shouldn’t.’
No reply.
‘It’s quieter tonight.’
‘That’s because everyone’s fucking asleep except you. And now me.’
‘Sorry.’
She stared into the thick darkness while Michaela moved restlessly above her and then fell silent again. She heard her breathing. She heard herself breathing. This was her fourth night; in twenty-six days, she would go to court and her case would be thrown out. Four nights out of thirty, two-fifteenths, in percentage terms, that was 13.333 recurring. Tomorrow, Shona would come with clothes and books and pen and paper. She could do this, she could get through it. It would become like a bad dream, the kind that made her lurch awake at night with sweat on her forehead. But just a dream. It wouldn’t be true anymore.
Yet still, it was so cold and so dark, and in the darkness thoughts and memories came like an ill wind blowing through her, so that her heart hammered and her breath felt shallow and hard to find. She could suffocate in herself.
She thought about how the doctor had asked her about her moods, the drugs she took, the time she had spent in hospital. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him about it, or to the solicitor, because talking made it seem so decisive and clear-cut, whereas to Tabitha being depressed was like being in a swamp. A colourless, featureless swamp with no horizon, no sunlight, no way out.
That day, the one that had led to this cell that tonight felt like a coffin, she had been in the swamp. She barely remembered it, just the immense effort of hauling herself out of bed, her body as heavy and useless as a sack of wet earth; of trudging to the shop; of making herself go for a swim because that was her pledge. And now she was here and she couldn’t swim in the sea or chop wood or walk in the cold rain. She knew she mustn’t let herself be pulled back into the dreary horror of herself, but she was hanging on by her fingertips.
SEVEN
‘They took everything away.’
Shona was slightly out of breath. She sat down opposite Tabitha but her eyes were darting this way and that, taking everything in with an expression that was both nervous and excited. She had put on a blue satin shirt and large earrings, her bobbed chestnut hair shone under the sour lighting. Tabitha could smell her perfume. She looked fresh and pretty and out of place. Faced with her, Tabitha felt small, shabby, plain and grimy. She couldn’t remember when she had last washed her hair, and it hadn’t been cut for months. However thoroughly she brushed her teeth, the inside of her mouth felt furry. There was a cold sore on the edge of her lips: she needed fresh air, crisp apples, green salad, nourishing vegetable soup.
‘They’ll need to go through them all. Did you manage to get everything?’
Shona nodded. Her earrings swung. ‘I think so.’
‘It’s so kind of you.’
Shona took a little piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it in front of her.
‘I wrote down how much it cost. Is that OK? Things are really difficult for me right now.’
You weren’t allowed cash in prison. Tabitha thought hard.
‘Talk to Andy,’ she said. ‘Andy Kane. I gave him some money for building supplies. He should be able to pay you.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Shona bit her full underlip and Tabitha had a memory, as clear as yesterday, of standing in a queue with her outside the swimming pool in town. They must have been about twelve. She couldn’t remember why they had been there together; they hadn’t really been friends at school. But she could remember the heat of the day and she could even remember that Shona had been wearing a cropped, short-sleeved jumper whose tightness emphasised her developing breasts.
‘There are two types of skin,’ Shona had said with high seriousness. ‘Oily or dry. What’s yours.’
Twelve-year-old Tabitha put her fingers to her cheek. ‘I don’t know.’
> ‘I’m oily,’ said Shona. ‘That means I’ll have more spots but won’t get all wrinkly when I’m old.’ She leaned in and examined Tabitha’s face. ‘Dry,’ she said.
Tabitha looked at Shona’s skin now, eighteen years later. It was smooth and lustrous.
‘Tabitha?’
‘Sorry. What were you saying?’
‘I feel really bad about asking for the money back.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘I was worried I’d be late. It took me longer to get here than I thought. It’s only about forty miles away but the roads are narrow and there was this huge lorry in front of me almost all the way.’
‘It’s kind of you,’ said Tabitha. She could feel her familiar impatience building up inside her.
‘I’ve got a few phone numbers,’ said Shona, and she took another piece of paper from her pocket. ‘Andy’s and Terry’s. I didn’t know who you wanted. And I got the vicar’s number as well.’
‘The vicar’s?’
‘I thought you might want it.’
‘Right.’
They stared at each other.
‘How are you?’ asked Shona eventually. ‘I mean, how are you? You must be… I mean, just, well, I couldn’t believe it.’ She stopped. Her brown eyes suddenly filled up with tears. Tabitha had the horrible feeling she was about to lean across and give her a long, perfumy hug.
‘Nor me,’ she said and sat back, out of reach.
‘Is it awful in here?’
‘It’s not great.’ She didn’t want to talk about that. She took a deep breath. ‘People know I didn’t do it, right? That this is just a dreadful mistake.’
‘Well, I know.’
‘What about other people?’
‘You know what villages are like.’
‘What are they like? I’ve only been back in this one for a few weeks.’
‘People like to gossip. Even little things can seem exciting. And this – well, nothing like this has ever happened in Okeham. My God, on the day, well, you can’t imagine!’
‘You were there?’
Shona frowned. ‘Don’t you remember? I was supposed to be at work but I got stuck because of the tree coming down. It was terrible timing – two of my mums were expecting.’ Shona was a community midwife. ‘Anyway, it’s still all anyone is talking about.’
House of Correction Page 3