The Quiet Ones

by Theresa Talbot

  ‘Our new programme addresses many of the social problems that these women face.’ Nadine the Nice was clearly a mind reader too. ‘We’re aiming to house them all in smaller units, make it more like a flat share than a prison. Prepare them for life back on the outside.’ Another set of locked doors. ‘We equip them with skills to find work, get them off the streets, encourage them back into education.’ She stopped at the end of the corridor and waited at the final set of locked doors. Oonagh had to admit to being impressed. Nadine the Nice was like the Good Fairy of the prison service. One wave of her magic wand and all ills cured.

  Oonagh could see two officers approaching them from the other side of the locked doors. They too, were rather smiley and Oonagh started to feel she was missing out on some brave new world behind bars. The female keyed in the security code from the other side, whilst the male officer used the keys to unlock first one set, then the other. She instinctively knew she’d reached the most secure section of the prison.

  ‘Thank you, Nadine.’ The female officer gave Nadine a little smile and a nod. ‘You can go now.’ And with that Nadine skipped off back down the corridor, giving them all a little wave.

  ‘Nadine, is she the…?’ Oonagh stopped before asking if Nadine was in charge. She already knew the answer.

  ‘Nadine is one of our special turnkeys. She’s earned a lot of privileges and we find her behaviour has indeed shown marked signs of improvement with the increased responsibility she’s been given.’ The female guard didn’t let on, but it was obvious they knew Oonagh had been taken for a ride.

  ‘And the no shouting policy?’

  ‘Oh, that’s real, all right,’ the guy chipped in, ‘but Nadine likes to tell people it was her idea.’

  Shit, if she was being duped by some con with a dislike for loud noises, she’d be flipping slaughtered going in to visit a serial killer. But despite Nadine bigging up her part, most of what she’d told Oonagh was the truth. Apart from the bit about them having wine with lunch. That bit was made up, but the machinations of prison life were pretty much as Nadine had described. Oonagh was still sick with nerves at the thought of meeting Hazel Andrews.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be here and her door will remain open at all times.’

  The open plan area was simply furnished, but clean and much more homely than she’d expected. There were only six inmates in this unit, with three members of staff; Oonagh hadn’t decided yet if this was a good or a bad thing. The cells were situated around the edges of the main communal area, creating a hexagonal room.

  Hazel Andrews was inside her cell, third room to the left of the security doors. The entrance to each cell, Oonagh noticed, was narrow, about half the width of a normal door. It immediately made her feel anxious, claustrophobic. Alistair – prison guard – guided her through, introducing her to Andrews.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Pictures of Andrews were easy enough to access online. Everything from her final year school picture, her happy, carefree twenty-first birthday celebrations to her police mugshot and the obligatory ones of her being led from the courts to the prison van with a blanket over her head after she’d been sentenced. The last picture had been taken over fifteen years ago. The soft brown hair was still cut short, greying slightly at the temples. She was taller than Oonagh had imagined, but then most people were tall compared to Oonagh, and she had a gentle way about her, walking softly the two or three steps it took to greet Oonagh at the doorway. She held out her hand, which Oonagh instinctively shook before taking the seat that had been placed just inside the door beside a table inside the cell. Andrews sat on the bed opposite, tucking her legs up underneath her.

  ‘So, Oonagh O’Neil, what is it you so desperately want to chat to me about?’

  ‘How well did you know Harry Nugent?’

  33

  It was dark by the time Oonagh arrived home. She didn’t bother switching on the lamp in the hall – there was enough light from the street to guide her as she punched the number into the alarm keypad on the wall before making her way through to the kitchen. Instinctively she stepped over the two floorboards at the bottom of the stairs. The ones she’d stumbled and fallen upon all those years ago when she’d been attacked. The ones that had been cleaned and scraped and sanded to remove every last trace of that night. There was a time when she’d slept with every light in the house on; she was sure the local power station had installed a special generator just to deal with her house alone. Now, this evening, walking through the house with nothing but the sodium glow from the street and headlights from the cars on the main road felt like a mini-victory. Granted, it wasn’t yet five o’clock, but this was Glasgow in November.

  She slid her bag from her shoulder and dropped it onto the table. Just one drink tonight. Just enough to take the edge off this shitty day. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could do this. She pulled a postcard from beneath the fridge magnet as she reached in for the bottle; Oonagh might have promised herself just one drink, but she never bargained what size the glass would be. The picture on the card made her laugh; it was a woman in a cinema with her dog sitting on the next seat laughing at the screen. ‘I’m surprised,’ says the man behind her. ‘Your dog actually seems to be enjoying the movie.’ ‘So am I,’ replies the woman, ‘he hated the book.’ The message on the back simply said, ‘miss you’. It was from her old friend, Tom. She’d known it would be from him as soon as it had dropped on the doorstep yesterday morning. He was the only person she knew who still sent little cards and letters with the frequency of a DFS sale. Judging by the stamp and the postmark, he had arrived in upstate Virginia, halfway through his US tour.

  She glanced at the mini recorder now sitting on the table, the red light flashing to show there was at least one active file she hadn’t yet listened back to, but she didn’t know if she had the stomach for it. Not yet. Once had been enough today. With no recording equipment permitted in the prison, Oonagh had rushed outside after her meeting with Hazel Andrews and recited the conversation as far as she could remember. Like most journalists, Oonagh had a very good short-term memory for facts and had got most of the information on tape before it flitted out of her mind.

  She placed the bottle back in the fridge. This wasn’t a wine sort of night, she thought, and reached instead for the gin nestled on the shelf overhead. She poured herself as large a measure as the wine goblet would allow, leaving a tiny margin at the top to waft some tonic over.

  Andrews had been an agency nurse around the time of Nugent’s reign at Breakmire. Initially she’d acted dumb, made a play of looking up when Oonagh had asked her about him, as though she’d been trying to pluck a memory from the air. Oonagh’s hand had balled into a fist, but she’d managed to remain calm, or at least as calm as her churning stomach would allow. The cell, with its narrow door and barred windows, had threatened to trigger a panic attack. Oonagh had been great recently. Almost six months since she’d been gripped by the overwhelming, irrational fear that at one time had reduced her to her knees in tears. An irrational fear that could take control, convince her she couldn’t breathe, that she would die unless she ran away as fast as she could, yet at the same time crippled her physically, rooting her to the spot, leaving her terrified and helpless. Less than five minutes in the cell of that woman and the initial telltale signs of an attack had begun to scratch at her body. Oonagh hadn’t been able to run, to just leave. This was way too important: she needed to know what this woman knew about Nugent. It had taken every ounce of strength to fight the onslaught of an attack using the technique she’d learned. Touch five things – not easy when her possessions had been taken from her at Reception; instead she’d leaned forward and stroked the sides of her trainers, pulled a strand of hair from her ponytail, felt the soft fabric of her sweatshirt as she’d tugged the collar with both hands and run her thumbnail down the zip of her pocket. All the while counting backwards from ten. Andrews had just looked at her. Oonagh had breathed deeply through her nostrils, not trus
ting herself to speak, feeling the thin trickle of sweat make its way down her back until at last the fear had begun to subside and she’d let out a final long slow breath through pursed lips. The whole episode had only lasted a minute, if that.

  Several more seconds had ticked by until at last Andrews had said, ‘What is it you want to know?’ Oonagh had resisted the urge to heave a huge sigh of relief. Andrews had mistaken her silence as a stand-off.

  ‘What was the attraction of Breakmire?’ she’d asked. ‘Why did he devote so much of his time to there?’

  Hazel Andrews had said nothing, but a muscle twitching in her cheek had suppressed a smile. It had taken her a few seconds before she’d spoken. At first Oonagh had thought she was just going to give her a recap of what Sarah had told her. About Harry Nugent having the run of the place. But then she’d casually dropped into the conversation that, far from actually abusing the patients himself, Nugent had been peddling the most vulnerable, selling their services on to his friends in high places. Oonagh had tried not to react to this story, instead allowing Andrews to continue.

  It appeared that Nugent had in fact busted the scam of certain members of staff using the cottages in the grounds of Breakmire for their own benefit. Instead, he’d used them to house some of the most vulnerable patients at night. Ensuring that when his clients had come to call, they too, had had unhindered access to the girls. The thought that Harry Nugent had been abusing girls and running a brothel out of a psychiatric hospital sickened Oonagh to the core. She’d listened as Andrews had recounted Nugent’s reign there, devoid of emotion. Oonagh had gripped the edge of the chair she’d been sitting on, had felt the rounded metal frame cool on her fingers as she’d looked directly into the other woman’s eyes. She was no expert, but she knew in her heart that this was what evil looked like.

  Oonagh made her way through to the living room at the front of the house and nestled into the softness of the armchair, the huge bay window giving her an uninterrupted view of outside. Not that there was much to see. Even if it hadn’t been dark, the front of the house was elevated without even a glimpse of the street below. From where Oonagh sat, even on a light night all she’d have seen was the top of the solid, red sandstone tenements of Hyndland in the distance. The steady thrum from the passing traffic was strangely soothing, the headlights catching the mirror on the far side of the room. She held the goblet in both hands and closed her eyes, trying not to think of Hazel Andrews, and what had gone on in that warped mind.

  The buzz from her mobile jerked her awake, spilling the remainder of her drink over her sweatshirt. Shit. She jumped up, tugging the sodden material away from her skin as the phone landed on the floor. It landed screen side up and she grabbed it quickly and thumbed accept, taking her mum’s call.

  ‘Hi, darling, d’you want to meet us in the restaurant or…?’

  Shit. Oonagh glanced at the clock: almost seven. She must have dozed off and once again she’d totally forgotten about meeting her mum. ‘Yeah, Mum, that’s cool. See you there.’ She’d already begun pushing her trainers off from the heel with her toe. ‘I’m running very slightly late,’ she added, knowing that she was due there at seven-thirty. ‘Just talk among yourselves until I get there.’ She kept her voice upbeat and hung up before Fran had had a chance to reply, then bounded upstairs to get changed, taking the steps two at a time.

  *

  Oonagh got the taxi driver to drop her off on Queen Street. She fished a twenty pound note from her purse, the smallest change she had. The fare was just under eleven quid. The driver had been chatting to her the whole journey, recognised her from the telly, quizzed her about every famous person from Ant and Dec to Nelson Mandela, as though Oonagh’s stint reading the news in Scotland gave her an access-all-areas card to celebrity-land. She hated this bit, the ‘keep the change’ bit, and made a mental note to carry as many small notes as possible. She’d look like a right tight arse if she waited for her change, yet hated the thought of coming across as flash. Working class shackles were hard to shake off. The taxi driver, clearly used to the dilemma of the common-made-good, gave her the thumbs up and drove off with his 93 per cent tip without even offering to open her door.

  She tried to shake off the memory of her visit to Hazel Andrews, but that woman had got under her skin. There was something toxic about her. Images of those poor girls being abused flashed through her mind. Oonagh tried to clear the mental picture from her head as she made her way through the pedestrian precinct; the canopy of lights hanging over Royal Exchange Square lit the November sky. Every night was Christmas Eve here. She would deal with Harry Nugent again tomorrow. Tonight she needed a break.

  The familiar red and cream sign for The Rogano was visible through the sandstone archway that framed the end of the square. Her mum’s favourite restaurant; Oonagh knew some big announcement would be made tonight, and she’d been practising her ‘I’m so delighted for you both’ face since she’d got the call. And she was delighted. She’d never want her mum not to be happy, it was just… Well, she wasn’t really sure what it was exactly, but the thought of her mum marrying someone that wasn’t her dad sent a wave of sadness through her body. A sadness that she couldn’t ever see going away.

  Despite it being a mild evening, she pulled the collar of her coat up tight around her neck, edged her way past a man puffing away on a ridiculously large cigar outside and made her way into the main restaurant.

  Preserved in time like amber, the restaurant bore the hallmark of the finest art-deco design. Its 1930s ambience gave Oonagh a sense of comfort. Her mum and Owen were already seated and Owen stood up when he saw Oonagh walk through the bar to join them. He even had decent manners. Was there anything wrong with this man? As long as he didn’t expect to be called Dad she’d maybe just get away with it. Fran was like an excited teenager – probably a bad example, as teenagers, from what Oonagh remembered, rarely displayed excitement. Oonagh glanced at her mum’s hand: no ring. Yet. She’d feign surprise. Didn’t want to steal their thunder.

  She was about to sit down when the waiter took her by surprise and moved her chair towards her, bumping it against the backs of her thighs, forcing her down quicker than she’d intended. ‘Thanks,’ she said, glancing up at him, willing him to beat it.

  ‘So?’ She grinned and looked at her mum then to Owen, waiting for them to break the news. She hoped to God her smile was working and didn’t look as sad as she felt. ‘What’s the big announcement, then?’ She realised she was hamming it up slightly and pulled back. Gave her mum a chance to take the floor.

  Fran reached across and laid her hand on Owen’s. ‘No big announcement, as such.’ She gave Owen’s hand a little squeeze as she looked at Oonagh. ‘It’s Owen’s birthday next week and we’re going away for the weekend, so I thought it’d be nice if we went somewhere special for dinner first.’

  ‘Oh.’ Oonagh felt somewhat crestfallen. ‘I thought you said you had news for me?’

  ‘Well, I do have some news too.’ Fran gave Owen’s hand another little squeeze.

  ‘Which is?’ Oonagh was trying not to lose her rag, but her mum wasn’t half dragging this out. She already had a nightmare vision of being bridesmaid and forced to wear some hideous creation that made her look like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

  ‘I’m going back to university.’

  The comment came from left field and caught Oonagh off guard somewhat. ‘Whoa. Can we rewind here a second? You’re what?’ An uninvited pang of disappointment stung her chest, and suddenly she was mourning the loss of the pink organza bridesmaid dress that she’d now decided, in the right light, would look quite fetching.

  ‘I’m going back to uni.’ Fran was grinning like the Cheshire Cat; Owen wasn’t much better; Oonagh was just confused, as she hadn’t realised her mum had ever actually left uni in the first place, which was usually a pre-requisite for going back. But Fran was on a roll. ‘I’ve been accepted to do my masters in creative writing and after that, well, who know
s—?’

  Oonagh cut in. ‘You can do a masters in creative writing?’ She struggled to keep the surprise and even a note of jealousy out of her voice. When she’d been a student the only courses available had been bog-standard boring old crap ones that she’d bunked off from so often she’d struggled to get a second-class honours.

  ‘How’s your book coming along, Oonagh?’ There wasn’t a trace of malice in Owen’s voice, and he had no idea how much she dreaded that question.

  ‘It’s not, Owen. I decided to shelve that project for now.’ Oonagh’s foray into novel writing had ended before it began. To her eternal shame she’d paid back the rather paltry advance from the publishing house, citing all sorts of excuses as to why she needed to put this one on the back burner. Even she hadn’t had the balls to say that she’d realised when she said she’d wanted to write a book she meant she wished she’d written a book. Two very different things. Owen gave what she took as a knowing smile, and thankfully dropped the subject. She’d arranged in advance for a bottle of champagne to be brought to the table, although this now seemed a bit over the top, she was glad of the distraction when the waiter laid out three fluted glasses.

  ‘I should have told you to bring your friend along,’ her mum said, holding her glass up.

  ‘My who?’ She wasn’t sure to whom Fran was referring and held the stem of her glass as the waiter eased the cork from the bottle.

  ‘That nice girl I saw you with at Central Station.’

  Oh, dear God. Her mum thought Sarah Nugent was her girlfriend. ‘Mum, I was on a story. I hardly know her.’ Oonagh wasn’t quite sure how to feel about her mum’s assumption that she was gay, but had to admit to a feeling of pride that Fran would be cool about it.