Prisoner number A6868RX. That’s my name nowadays. Well, it’s not really, obviously. I’m still Amber Ryan, somewhere deep inside. But A6868RX is the number that was assigned to me when I first arrived here at HM Prison Downhall, and it’s how I prefer to think of myself now, most of the time. It’s easier, somehow. The person I once was, reduced to a string of numbers and letters. Dehumanised. That’s how I feel here; not quite human anymore. A shadow. A ghost.
I’ve been inside for nearly nine months now. Inside. The word almost makes me smile. I don’t think I’d ever heard it outside TV dramas until I came here.
’E’s inside, ain’t ’e? Banged up.
Nine months. Three on remand in another prison while I waited for my trial, and six months ‘banged up’ here. I got a life sentence, with a minimum term of fifteen years to serve before I’ll be eligible for parole. Me, Amber Ryan. How? It all seems like a bad dream now, that final day in court; a blurred sequence of one horrendous event after another, my sense of shock and disbelief and terror at what was happening rendering me almost zombie-like.
I remember it in flashes – pictures, sounds, sensations. The cold, hard steel of the handcuffs around my wrists; the smell of sweat and stale clothing in the van to Downhall; the roughness of the hands that searched my body in a hot little room, a flickering strip light overhead making my skin look green.
My early weeks here are a blur too: the noise; the rigid daily timetable of cell unlocking, meals, and activities; the first excruciating visit from my mother, white-faced and tight-lipped, dissolving into tears every few minutes as she sat across from me, hands clasped so tightly together her carefully painted fingernails dug into her skin.
‘I can’t believe I’m having to do this… I can’t believe you’re here…’ she whispered, over and over again.
I can’t believe I’m here either. But then, I hear so many of the women saying the very same thing.
I didn’t do it.
They’ve got the wrong girl.
I was framed…
I scream it internally, every single day. But I don’t say it out loud, not anymore. What’s the point? Nobody believes me, not even my own legal team. Not my mother, nor any of my friends. Nobody. And how can I blame them? I’m not even certain myself. Did I do what they said I did, in some sort of temporary psychotic state, a moment of previously undiagnosed madness or mental illness? And yet, that makes no sense either, because apparently most of what I did was planned – planned for weeks, months. Planned meticulously. It’s gone round and round in my head for so long now that sometimes I don’t know what’s real anymore. There are days when I feel so confused I barely remember my own name. I always remember my number though. A6868RX.
‘A’right, Ambs?’
Lost in thought, I jump as my cellmate, Stacey, walks into the room and flings herself onto her bed, a narrow bunk along the wall opposite. She’s been down in Education, doing her computer course, this afternoon. I’ve just got back from my current prison job as library orderly, and I’m lying on my bed too, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling. In a few minutes, at five o’clock, it’ll be time for our evening meal. On the outside, I never used to eat until at least eight, but I’ve got used to it. I’ve got used to all of it, because I have to. This is my life now, for years to come.
‘I’m OK, Stace. How was it today?’ I reply, and she grunts something non-committal, pulling her hairband off to release her high ponytail and running her fingers through her long, dark hair. She’s OK, Stacey Lottes.
‘Quite appropriate, my name. Did Lottes of bad shit back in the day, but I’m nice really,’ she said when we first met.
She’s been in and out of prison since her teens, but now she’s here for what they call ‘aggravated vehicle taking’. She got fourteen years for stealing a car while drunk, and driving it into a shop front, badly injuring a passer-by who died two weeks later. But she is nice; a reformed character, I think. We’re very different people, but we rub along pretty well. She’s relentlessly perky, which lifts me up when I’m having a bad day, and even though I snap at her sometimes, she never seems to take offence.
‘Chill, Ambs. Could be worse,’ is one of her frequent responses, and even though I’m not sure how much worse it could possibly be than this, her attitude is a good one, I think, and so I always apologise, and she shrugs and grins.
‘Water off a duck’s back, mate,’ she always says, then adds: ‘Don’t do it again, mind,’ and winks.
I spend a lot of time wishing I’d said and done things differently.
I should never have got involved with Jack Shannon.
I should have listened to Heather, when she tried to warn me about him.
I should have reached out to her when it all happened.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing; that’s a saying, isn’t it? And ‘you regret the things you don’t do in life far more than the things you do’. That’s true too. And now it’s too late. I didn’t do the things I should have done, and I did the things I shouldn’t have done. And now I’m here, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.