Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis in the last three months of his two-year jail stint. It’s much lauded – a love letter (of sorts) to Lord Alfred Douglas in which he alternately rails against and embraces his subject. It’s Oscar Wilde, so I daresay it has its merits (his supposed deathbed line, ‘This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do,’ is undeniably good), but he was also an educated white man, so the bar for genius isn’t set impossibly high here.
Wilde slept in a tiny cell on a bed with no mattress. He was given an hour out of his cell to exercise each day and was permanently hungry. By all accounts prison nearly broke him. He died three years after his release.
I know it’s easy to envisage me lying on a comfy bunk, seeing a games console that the tabloids seem to insist every prisoner receives immediately upon entering jail. Picturing me in a cosy sweatshirt, watching Netflix on a flatscreen, eating the Mars bar that I bought from the tuck shop with my weekly allowance. So many people imagine themselves to be liberal, open-minded, progressive. The type who might even argue across a dinner table about the merits of not punishing prisoners but instead educating them out of crime, who vaguely mentions the Nordic model without knowing what that means. But inside, in the part of their mind that they won’t admit to, they still think that those of us who end up behind bars are scum, even if that word makes them shudder when said out loud. They do. It’s the same part of a person that feels secretly sorry for women in hijabs and makes them swerve when they see a staffie in the park. Donate to Amnesty and never tell anyone that they’re glad that prison walls are solid and high, or that they executed a tiny, righteous nod when they read that the Tory government voted to extend prison sentences for first-time offenders.
And the worst part of it is, they’re not entirely wrong. Prisoners are scum. Well, from my experience of this place they are. These women are missing a few layers of the varnish of civilisation. They have bad teeth, wild eyes, a habit of yelling aggressively, despite the time. Given half the chance, they would ignore every structure put in place by the ruling classes and live by unspoken rules that you do not know. It’s fascinating to watch, but I’ll be beefing up my home security once I’m released.
Now that I’ve conceded on this, let me go back to the games consoles and comfort. There the liberal hypocrite would be wrong. Oscar Wilde’s cell, despite its lack of mattress, looks pretty similar to mine all these years later. Yes, I have a thin lumpy roll of polyester to lie on, but there’s no TV, there’s no vending machine and I still have to endure the horror of Wednesday afternoons. Like clockwork, three hours after Kelly has chowed down on the chilli con carne that gets served up on a Wednesday lunchtime (every week in prison you get served the same rota of meals, much like at school only without proper cutlery since the fork stabbing incident of 1996 that still gets talked about), she is to be found on the toilet in our tiny cell, moaning and wheezing for up to half an hour. She does not consider that perhaps chilli con carne does not agree with her. She does not consider that this traumatic performance does not agree with me.
As with Wilde, we too get one official hour for exercise each day. Most of the women here don’t bother. I use it. I need it. I set my entire day by it. In my normal life, i.e., the one where I lived in a flat filled with natural light, stocked with good wine you can’t buy at Tesco, and stuffed with books that aren’t recommended by women’s magazines, I ran every day. I ran to get rid of rage, to zone out my constant thoughts, to batter any dark moods and, let’s be honest, to stay thin. The women in here aren’t too fussed by that last point, as proved by their inexplicable eagerness for chilli con carne, and they seem to think that their rage gives them character, as shown by the regular 5 p.m. scuffles. That seems to be the exact time every day when my compadres realise that they are incarcerated. As though they were doing some mundane 9–5 and readying to go home and slump in front of the telly and then it hits them that there is no going home. That Groundhog Day moment happens every day, with nobody ever learning from experience. It’s when the walls really close in here.
I cannot run, since I refuse to do tiny laps in the sports yard like a pathetic hamster, so I do burpees, squats, star jumps, weights – anything to get my heart pumping. Anything to exhaust me enough that I’ll sleep through Kelly’s snoring. One hour of exercise a day is not enough for me in here. I must do two more in order to stay sane. I continue my regimen back in my cell when Kelly goes out to do one of her classes. Oscar Wilde doesn’t strike me as a man who spent much of his time inside wondering how to obtain a six-pack, but I’m not ashamed of my hunger for exercise in here. My arms, once sinewy and lightly toned by the yoga I did to supplement my running, are now gaining bulk. My legs, previously lean from running but without too much strength, now feel heavy and leaden – there’s no wobble anymore. The womanly softness is melting away. And I like it. This is none of that Instagram bollocks about ‘strong not skinny’ which really just hides an eating disorder in an obsessive exercise regimen – a Russian nesting doll of neuroses – I have this growing sensation of hardness, of armour, of being able to physically hurt someone with only my body and not just my wits. Men must feel this from birth. If I’d known how to use my physicality to take out my family, would I have gone a different way? Would it have been easier or more rewarding?
Other than that, I go to the mandated therapy sessions. I endure Kelly and her cohort as best I can. And these last few days, I write. We might not get battered by the guards, or starved half to death (though I would argue that the canteen offerings make deliberate starvation seem like a valid option), but I’m not sure that Oscar Wilde suffered more than he would have now, with Kelly as a cellmate, forced to do pottery workshops, talk about trauma with a group of crying women wearing rubber sandals, and sit in our cells for hours every day while those around us scream and moan because government cuts mean that there aren’t enough guards to supervise us.
Mainly, despite the popularity of TV shows about prison in recent years which seem to suggest that every minute is action packed, my stay has been dull. There are lesbian trysts, of course, there are occasional blow-up fights, but mostly it’s hours of lying down alone, counting the time in ten-minute increments, crawling towards another week, or month, or in some cases, years. I imagine you could stop counting at some point. But I cannot. To stop marking time would be to allow the possibility that I would be staying here for more of it.
Despite all of this, nobody will compare my work to De Profundis. I am not a man for a start, and I’m certainly not delusional enough to think I’m an intellectual. I write no foolish love letters from my cell. I learn no big truths from being stuck in here. But neither will I emerge half broken. I will go on living, thriving, and this period of my life will not mark me.
More than all of this, I believe I hold one further advantage over Wilde. For all that Wilde’s writing about prison is held up as the most profound example of the genre, he spends much of it wallowing in despair about a man who has wronged him. Lord Douglas was said to be spoilt, entitled, careless with the feelings of others. He left Wilde’s love letters in clothing he gave to male prostitutes. He rejected their relationship and condemned Wilde after his death. Douglas sounds just like my father. Charming, arrogant, centre of the universe. Men who turn their lights full beam on you for a few seconds and leave you chasing that artificial warmth for the rest of your life. It wrecks you and doesn’t leave a mark on them. But I learnt that early. Wilde never did. Perhaps then, he could have learnt something from me. Never yearn for the light that some men will shine on you for the briefest of moments. Snuff it out instead.
* * *
Today I ate breakfast, cleaned the kitchens and then went to meet up with Kelly and her friend Nico. I didn’t want to, but Kelly had promised to buy me cigarettes from the weekly canteen service and smoking is the best thing you can do in here. In the outside world, it’s almost entirely frowned upon now but here, fags are an effective way to make friends, curry favours, and cut through the boredom of prison. So I sat with them as we drank our tepid tea. Nico offered up something she promised was cake. Everything on offer is stodge, stodge, stodge with a side of jam. Everything is brown. It’s strange feeling my brain disengage with big picture stuff and obsessively focus on thoughts of meals I’d like to eat, clothes I’d like to wear. I want a bowl of pasta from La Bandita and I want to wear breathable fabric which ripples down my body rather than makes me worry about being anywhere near a naked flame. I think about baths at least ten times a day and I feel panic rising – my fingers scratching my collarbones – even as I try not to let this stuff overwhelm me. That’s leaning into it and I can’t let myself do that – I can’t get out of here and blink as I emerge into the light. I can’t spend time readjusting. I want to hit the ground running, not trying to get my brain back up to speed.
Nico is easier to listen to than Kelly, with a voice that doesn’t veer towards the nasal. She’s in here for something interesting too – she killed her mother’s abusive partner with a hammer last year. I’ve never asked her directly about it, I know better than to raise someone’s crime before they do, but she mentions it often. She talks with pride about how her mum is getting counselling and how she’s studying to be a counsellor too now. Nico calls her twice a week, and often cries quietly as she listens to her. I like Nico. I wouldn’t go near her on the outside, damaged and wild-eyed as she is, but I respect what she did for her mother. It wasn’t as well executed as my revenge plan, but the impulse must have called for speed over design. Unfortunately the lack of thought that went into her actions meant she was still standing next to him when the police turned up ten minutes later. Nico didn’t have a hope in hell of a credible alibi, and will be in here for another twelve years. Her mother is 60. By the time Nico gets out the woman will be 72. She’s given up her youth for a pensioner. It’s love. But it’s also patent stupidity.
Today, Nico and Kelly are discussing their boobs. Kelly has ambitious plans for a body revamp when she gets out of prison, and has read up on breast augmentation with all the focus of a research scientist working towards their first Nobel Prize. Turkey is the place to go apparently, half the price and you get a free holiday after the operation. Clint will pay. Or perhaps she’ll blackmail some poor fucker more successfully next time and they’ll stump up. Nico is worried about general anaesthesia and has heard of a treatment where you can get an extra cup size added on through injections alone. Kelly looks disdainful at this idea. ‘Injectables for the face, babe, the tits need a little more work.’
They both turn to look at me. ‘What would you get done, Grace?’ Nico asks me, as they both assess my face before lowering their eyes to my chest. I’ve never minded the idea of surgery. I don’t want any part of the modern puffed-up plastic face phenomenon, but in general, a few tiny tweaks don’t make me outraged. I don’t think its mutilation, or an affront to feminism. If you hate something that you have to live with every day, then change it. I like my tits actually. They’re small, which means I can wear whatever I like without looking like a school matron from the Fifties. I like most of myself. Not in a desperately empowering millennial way, where stretch marks are rebranded as ‘warrior stripes’ and cellulite is referred to as ‘celluLIT’, but I know I’m nice looking. One day I’ll be as rough and wrinkled as everyone else, but right now, I have a cosmetic advantage. I use it to full effect. People cut me slack that others don’t get, why would I not acknowledge that? Energy spent on examining my every inadequacy would have been such a waste of my time.
And yet having said all that, I hate my nose. It’s a good nose by anyone else’s standards. I’ve been complimented by other women for its straight and clean line. But it’s an Artemis nose and that’s all I can see in the mirror. Marie used to rub it with her thumb when I was being naughty and tell me I had my father’s will. The rest of my face is all from her. Sometimes, not long after she’d died, I used to sit in front of the bathroom mirror at Helene’s flat, hovering so that I could only see my eyes staring back at me. I felt like I could see my mother in those moments. I would look into them, remembering all the times I’d looked up at her and felt safe. When my legs started to wobble from being bent in a precarious position, I’d have to stand up straight and the rest of my face would hove into view. The little comfort would be snatched away.
Bryony had her mother’s nose. Cute, small, tweaked a little bit by a surgeon. Identikit. If I didn’t see Simon in the mirror, I’d be grateful for my strong profile, proud to have a nose which didn’t adhere so strictly to rigid beauty standards. But as it was, I would have it changed in a second. I’ve consulted top-class surgeons before, I’ve seen what I could look like with a few tiny swipes of a blade. Cut the Artemis out entirely. The only reason I haven’t done it yet is because I wanted my father to recognise me as I stood over him and told him who I was.
I look up from the mug of tea in front of me, Kelly and Nico having completed their assessment of my face and body and are now waiting to see how my answer lines up with their suggestions. ‘Nothing,’ I say, taking a swig of the tepid water. ‘I don’t agree with surgery really.’
My solicitor comes to see me this afternoon, which is a rare chance to see someone other than Kelly or the stodgy, unsmiling guards who, honestly, I’m glad work here and not in one of the caring professions. Some of these women, I imagine, had a fork in the road where they might’ve become nurses, teachers, or therapists. Given their reaction when faced with mental illness, physical ailments, and even just scared young girls wanting a moment of reassurance, I can only say that they chose well to avoid those areas of expertise. At 11 a.m., I am led into the visitors’ room where George Thorpe is already waiting for me. His suit today is typically beautiful. A light navy wool, befitting the recent warmer days, and just a flash of a dull terracotta lining as he stands up. I do not look at his shoes. I, by contrast, am wearing a grey tracksuit. I wonder whether a stranger who walked into this room would pick me out as different, whether my demeanour or my posture would speak of a life so different to that of the other women in here. I have always recognised wealth in others, education in strangers, refinement in deportment. It’s a particularly British thing to know exactly where someone falls in the class system without a word being spoken, isn’t it? Some people claim not to notice, but they’re the same tiresome people who claim not to see race, and that’s almost always because they’re white and don’t ever have cause to. But the grey tracksuit is a great leveller. It’s hard to signal that you’re not like these others in an outfit made from flammable material that will be rotting in landfill for a hundred years. Even the earth doesn’t want it.
Despite George Thorpe being fully aware of my background, and despite the enormous fee I pay him by the hour, I still feel the ridiculous desire to show him that I am not like these other prisoners. That I am better. And I learnt how to do this very easily while working my way up the Artemis ladder. The only way to do it is to treat him like shit.
He stands up to greet me and extends his hand. I ignore it and sit down. ‘I know we’re already on the clock, George, so why don’t you catch me up with what’s happening.’
Good manners are drilled into men like George Thorpe. Public school, Oxbridge, their nannies who raise them and leave them with mother complexes that they take out on their wives – all of these structures hammer home the need for politeness, etiquette, and the right way of doing things. I have disturbed the order. He stumbles slightly as he sits, and I make a point of looking impatient as he opens his briefcase and pulls out some notes.
‘Right well, um, so …’ he trails off as he puts his glasses on and I wonder, not for the first time, whether this man is a shark. I want a shark. I need a shark. When this shit show started to play out, I researched lawyers obsessively and I was told by almost everyone I cared to ask that he was the real deal, with the added benefit of looking like several members of his family ran the British empire at some point. He’s won too many cases to list, he’s got people off on appeal (bad people, people who really should be locked up for life and they walk free because he works every technicality, every weakness in an overworked, tired police officer’s statement, every wavering jury member who is scared of having to live with putting someone in jail). So he’s the best. But this sharkier part of him? Well, he’s doing a good job of hiding it and I need for him to taste blood.
George Thorpe goes through the appeal process with me again, reassuring me that we’re on track for the final decision next week. There is a reason that those true crime documentaries eke out the crime part and fade away when it comes to the resulting legal process – it’s complex, boring, demoralising, and mainly consists of waiting around for months. We filed an appeal on day three of my sentence. We filed for bail pending appeal and that went nowhere, I suspect because of the publicity surrounding my case. So now I’ve been in this place for over a year, waiting and festering. There wouldn’t be much tension for the reader picturing me lying on this bed, desperately trying to avoid more group therapy classes where one person tearfully talks about horrific sexual abuse and then three other women accuse her of taking up all the attention.
I haven’t told you much about why I’m in here, have I? That’s because I resent having to. It’s not the injustice of it that holds me back – it’d be fairly moronic to spend my time railing at the unfairness of it all when what I’ve got away with is so much worse – no, it’s the utter banality of it. The motive ascribed to me was pathetic. The act I allegedly committed is one I’d have had to carry out in a fit of rage, with a lack of planning I’d have hated. I’m not Nico. But you can’t use that as a defence, can you? ‘Sorry, m’lud, but when I murder people, I do it with a little more precision, you see.’ Instead I have had to grit my teeth and get through an entire legal process, dragged out for months and months – at great expense. What’s that saying? You make plans and God laughs. I made plans to murder seven people and ended up in jail for the death of someone I didn’t even touch. God would be having a hernia.