London, 2017
I sit on the lower bunk inside the cell and don’t touch a thing. I’ve done some bad things in my life, so perhaps I deserve to be locked away. Maybe this is where I belong: a place where I might finally fit. There is no clock on the gray walls, I have no idea what time it is or what happens next, so all I can do is wait.
I wait a long time.
The light through the tiny, barred window diminishes, until the cell is almost completely dark. I close my eyes and try to shut it all out, switch myself off. I perform an exorcism of the truth and a curfew of the mind, and it works, for a little while at least. I’m exhausted but I daren’t sleep, and when I hear the jingle of a set of keys outside the door, I don’t move. The light switches on, it is blindingly bright, and I shield my eyes.
“Jesus Christ, you scared the crap out of me! Who the fuck are you?” asks a squat middle-aged woman, as the cell door slams back closed behind her. The sturdy shape of her body is clearly visible beneath the strained waistband of her green prison jogging bottoms. She resembles a lump of white Play-Doh that has been dropped from a great height. Her head is partially shaved at the bottom, and scraped back into a short shiny black ponytail on top. Her hands have balled into fists by her sides, and she has tattoos on each of her fingers. I don’t wish to judge an intimidating book by its cover, but I’m so scared I think I might be sick.
“S-sorry,” I stutter, then the rest of my words come out all at once in a rush. “They put me in here, I haven’t touched anything or moved any of your things.”
She looks around the cell, as though conducting a silent inventory, before staring back down at me. I don’t know whether I should stand up. I feel small and vulnerable sitting on the bunk. A little bit cornered, a lot trapped. My indecision paralyzes me, and before I can decide what to do, she crosses the cell with three strides and leans down, her face within spitting distance of my own. Her piggy eyes stare hard, focusing first on my left eye, then my right, then back again, as though she can’t decide which one to look at. She opens her mouth and I get an unpleasant whiff of garlic.
“I know who you are.”
I swear I stop breathing altogether.
My mind conjures up an image of this woman sending me anonymous notes written on vintage postcards, but the picture is crooked and refuses to straighten out. It can’t have been her, I’m quite certain we’ve never met.
She waits for a reaction I’m determined not to give. Then she stands back up straight and starts looking through her tiny cupboard, as though still checking I haven’t stolen something from her. “You’re the actress that killed her husband, shot him in the head, and buried him in the garden.” She continues to rummage about, then turns and smiles. “I’ve read about you!” She thrusts a notepad and pen in my direction. “Give us your autograph.” The experience is slightly surreal, but I do as she asks and sign my name. She looks at it, seems pleased, then turns the paper to reveal a blank page underneath. “And again.”
“Why?”
“They’re not for me—what would I want with your paw print? They’re for eBay, so I can sell them when I get out. Maybe sell my story, too, about how I had to share my cell with a dangerous celebrity murderer. How much do you reckon a newspaper would give me for that? You must know how these things work—”
“I didn’t kill my husband.”
“Doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do, it only matters what they think you did. And this ain’t Shawshank. You don’t want to walk around here saying you’re innocent. Best to let people think they ought to be a little bit afraid of you. I’m Hilary, by the way.” Her tone suggests that she thinks badly of me for not inquiring about her name already.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“Me? Nothing as exciting as you. Online fraud. This time. I’m guessing this is your first time inside?” I nod. “Thought so. It really ain’t as bad as it seems, you get used to it. It normally takes at least twenty-four hours for them to set you up on the system.” She turns on the computer screen. “They give you your code yet?” I shake my head. “Thought not. Once you get your code, you just type it in like this.” She uses the same index finger to slowly type each letter. “Then you get this menu, so that you can apply to do a class: art, computers, hairdressing—that’s really popular, long waiting list for that one—we even have yoga now too. You can watch a TV show or whatever film they are streaming. You can join the library. That’s one I’d recommend, the guard who runs it is one of the good guys around here. It’s also how you book your meals, tell them what food you want, and they deliver it to the cell at mealtimes. A bit like doing an online Tesco shop, or, I guess, Waitrose for someone like you. I’ll tell you now, there’s never any fruit or salads. You’ll get a ten-pound credit on the system once a week for extras, a little gift from the government to help make sure you don’t starve.”
“You don’t eat in a canteen?”
“Hell no! There are some mean bitches in here, but the thing that starts most of the fights is always food. I guess some people just don’t understand the concept of queuing, and I’ve never seen folks get so crazy violent as they do about someone else getting more mashed potatoes on their plastic plate. Canteens are too dangerous when women are hangry.”
“Hangry?”
She smiles again. “Yeah, hangry. Ain’t you never heard that expression? It means when you’re so hungry you get angry. Speaking of which, when did you last eat? I don’t want you attacking me in my sleep.” I think about the question for a while and realize I don’t remember. “You want some baked beans?” She holds up a tin but doesn’t wait for a response. “I can heat them up for you, and you can just owe me a tin when you get your own allowance.”
I watch with peculiar fascination as she boils the little travel kettle and opens the tin can. Just seeing the Heinz logo makes me think of Maggie. Even if I’m not guilty of killing my husband, I have killed before. I just never got caught.
Hilary tears off a square of cling film from a battered-looking box, spoons half a tin of beans into the middle, then twists the bundle to seal it, before dropping it inside the kettle.
“Does that really work?” I ask.
“I guess you’ll find out.”
Five minutes later, she serves me my first prison meal in a chipped Wonder Woman mug with a plastic teaspoon. It tastes like something resembling home, and for just a moment I close my eyes and remember what it’s like to feel safe. I notice a new notch on her face, masquerading as a smile, and I feel so grateful for the kindness she has shown me.
“You’re pretty—without the makeup, I mean,” she says, and I remember what a mess I must look. I haven’t had a shower or washed my hair, or even brushed my teeth for at least forty-eight hours. “You look different in real life to how you look on the internet.”
“Can you search the internet on this?” I point at the computer in the cell.
“Don’t be daft. This is prison, we’re not allowed internet in our cells or anywhere else.”
“How then?”
“I get it on my iPhone.”
“You’re allowed iPhones in prison?”
“Of course not. Are you thick or something?” She reaches down inside the front of her trousers, and it looks as if she removes a phone from her knickers. “I like to make friends with people. I do something for them, they do something for me. Being in here isn’t so different from life on the outside. This prison is just a little smaller than the one you’re used to, that’s all. The modern world has made prisoners of us all, only fools think they are free. There’s 4G in the corner of Building D, that’s why so many people sign up to do the art classes, so they can get internet. It sure ain’t about wanting to paint pretty pictures. I can’t refresh the page in here, but look, here’s you on the TBN website.” She holds out the phone for me to see. I’m reluctant to touch it at first, knowing where it has been, but I soon forget all about that when I see the pictures on the screen. “There’s you on the left, wearing all your makeup with your hair all fancy, and there’s your husband on the right. Why did you kill him?”
I don’t answer. I’m too busy staring at the photo that is captioned Ben Bailey, husband and victim.
My hands are shaking so badly, I’m scared I might drop the phone. I hold it tight, not willing to give it back yet, then sit down on the bunk, unable to articulate or process what my eyes have just seen.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
If I could answer, it would be no.
I look at the faces on the screen again, but nothing has changed. I barely recognize myself, but I don’t know the man pictured next to me at all.
I don’t recognize the man they claim I killed, because the man in the picture is not my husband. It isn’t Ben.