‘Hi, you.’
She’s here, lowering herself onto the chair on the opposite side of the small table I’ve been sitting at self-consciously for the past three minutes, fiddling with my hair and repeatedly wiping my damp palms on my jeans, unable to keep still.
It’s Amber. She’s here.
It’s been a while, admittedly, but she looks very different. Thinner. Older. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, the ends scraggy and in need of a trim. Although she’s always been pale, today her skin looks ghostly white, almost translucent. She’s wearing a bright green prison bib over a blue sweatshirt, and has no make-up on. I immediately feel overdressed and over-made-up in my navy blazer and red lipstick. I wriggle uncomfortably in my seat as she settles herself in hers, pulling it a little closer to the table and clasping her hands loosely in front of her.
For a few moments we just stare at each other.
This is nuts.
I can’t believe I’m here, in a shabby, noisy prison visitor hall with a woman I’ve known since childhood; a woman I grew up with, lived with, loved like a sister. How does she cope in this place? How do any of them cope? There are hundreds of women locked up here and it’s horrible, even for visitors. Just to get as far as this room I’ve had to have a pat-down search, been sniffed by a drugs dog, been made to put my bag into a locker and been marked on the hand with an ultra-violet stamp (‘Just so we know you’re a real visitor, and not one of that lot pretending to be one and trying to walk out,’ I was told when I asked why, although I can’t imagine how often that happens – there seem to be guards everywhere). But at least I can walk out again, and we only have an hour to talk before I do – if we can manage that without another row. So, here goes. I clear my throat.
‘Thanks for seeing me. How… how are you? What’s it like in here?’ I say hesitantly.
She shrugs and gives me a hint of a smile.
‘Not great,’ she says. ‘I never shower without flip-flops, my mattress is about as thick as a yoga mat, and I’ve never eaten so many potatoes in my life. On the plus side, I’ve got a job in the library and I probably read more books than you do now.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say. Her smile widens a little, and something inside me shifts.
She’s still there, I think. The old Amber. Maybe this will be OK after all…
‘So, why? Why now? After… everything. Why are you here?’ she asks.
I glance around the room, seeing dozens of green bibs now. The low buzz of conversation gets steadily louder, but nobody seems to be looking at us. There’s a guard sitting on a small platform against the far wall, and two more walk slowly up and down, one winking as he passes a wide-eyed little boy at the table closest to ours. The child – he looks about three years old – is sitting on a young woman’s knee, a man in a grey tracksuit opposite them. The man’s clearly trying to get the little boy’s attention, making faces at him across the table, but the child seems more interested in the pacing prison officers and the small play area at the other end of the room where there’s a rainbow painted on the wall above a checkerboard mat with a few toys scattered across it.
‘There, Mummy. There,’ he says, squirming in her lap and pointing. I turn back to Amber.
‘Where do I even start?’ I say quietly. ‘OK, so… I met someone. A woman called Felicity Dixon. I think you know her brother, Nathan? He worked for Jack.’
‘Nathan?’
She frowns, then nods.
‘Yeah, I met him a few times. He was nice. But what’s he got to do with anything?’
‘I’ll tell you, but… Oh, Amber! Look, I know we fell out, but I’m so sorry I didn’t get in touch, you know, when you were arrested and everything…’
She’s shaking her head.
‘I should have called you. You warned me about Jack, and I wouldn’t listen, and then… I don’t know, I just felt so stupid, and ashamed of the things I said to you. You were right. I should never have gone there, and now I’m stuck in this nightmare.’
Her eyes fill with tears, and I automatically stretch a hand across the table, reaching for hers.
‘No touching!’ one of the guards barks at me from across the room, and I snatch my hand back.
‘Shit. This is awful. Amber, don’t cry, please. I’m here now. It’s OK,’ I whisper, and she nods, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers back.
We lock eyes for a few seconds, and something unspoken seems to pass between us. For some reason we both smile.
‘Before I tell you about Felicity and Nathan, can you just tell me what happened? What really happened?’ I ask. ‘I know what the court heard. But, is that really how it went down? Because it seemed so… It sounded like there was just so much evidence against you. But you pleaded not guilty. So did it really happen like they said it did?’
She shrugs.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I know that doesn’t make sense, but I just… I don’t know. Sometimes I think it was me, you know? Because all that evidence, all that stuff the police found… That can’t lie, can it? Maybe I did do it, or some of it? Maybe I was ill? Maybe I had some sort of breakdown? But honestly, Heather…’
She pauses, and the desperate look in her eyes makes my heart twist. She looks broken, defeated, so different from the strong, vibrant woman I remember.
‘… I don’t think I did it. Any of it,’ she says quietly. ‘I told them that. I told everyone that. My mum, my lawyers, everyone. But I couldn’t make them believe me. My legal team told me the prosecution case was too strong, and that I’d have to plead guilty if I was to have any chance of a more lenient sentence. And I actually thought about doing that for a while, because I was so scared, you know? I was just so terrified of being locked up. I thought I’d die. But in the end, I couldn’t. I refused. I insisted on pleading not guilty and they weren’t happy about that at all. But the whole time, I just kept thinking something would happen. That somebody would appear and save me, you know? I thought someone would suddenly realise it was all a terrible misunderstanding. I thought the person who’d really done it would be found. But they weren’t, and it’s gone round and round in my head so many times now and I still don’t know. I can’t understand. I mean, I was there that night, but I just don’t know how…’
The tears have returned, and I ache to reach over to her again and hold her hand. She sounds so distressed. So sincere.
‘Please don’t cry. Amber, it’s going to be all right. Look, who knows you better than anyone? Better than your mother, even? Me, right? So, listen to me,’ I say gently. ‘Shall I get us a coffee? And some biscuits? And then we’ll talk?’
She nods and rubs her damp cheeks with her thin hands, the nails short, the cuticles ragged.
‘Chocolate, please,’ she says, and I roll my eyes.
‘Well, obviously,’ I reply, as I stand up. ‘Once a chocoholic, always a chocoholic.’
I’m rewarded with the ghost of a smile.
Surprised to find that my legs feel a little rubbery, I head towards the counter just inside the door, at which a small queue of visitors has formed. There’s a coffee machine and a tea urn and baskets stacked with a dozen or so different varieties of biscuits and chocolate bars. As I wait my turn I glance back at Amber, but she’s not looking in my direction. Her gaze is fixed on her hands which are clasped in front of her now, and her shoulders are slumped. My head is buzzing. This place, seeing her again in such an emotional state…
What am I getting myself into?
And yet… it’s Amber. My best friend for so many years. I can’t just leave her here to rot. Not if there’s a chance, any chance at all…
The queue is moving slowly and I shuffle forwards a few steps and then stop again, my mind drifting back to my conversations with Nathan and Felicity, that crazy line still bouncing around my brain.
A crime that never even happened…
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spent hours online rereading the newspaper articles about Amber, trying to make sense of it all. All the papers covered the story, each headline more lurid than the last. The words danced before my eyes as I tried to replace the stark facts presented to the jury with Nathan’s version of events. I’m still struggling to make it fit.
Amber Ryan, the woman who stole a valuable jewellery collection from her wealthy businessman boyfriend and then viciously attacked him when he discovered her crime, was jailed for life today…
That was The Mirror, and the comments below it were full of vitriol.
Money-grabbing bitch, said one.
Absolute sicko, said another. What’s wrong with women nowadays? Poor guy gives her everything and she does that to him?
I couldn’t blame them for thinking like that, not really. It was exactly how Jack and Amber’s relationship had been portrayed by the prosecution: the generous, loving man who’d showered his partner with gifts and given her the run of his stunning riverside home, only to be bitterly betrayed.
‘I know you say the crime never happened, but it was all there, all the proof,’ I said to Nathan. ‘The huge jewellery theft, that horrific assault. All the details of her plans to take the jewellery and sell it on. How she pulled out a knife and stabbed him, multiple times. We all saw the stab wounds, the photos—’
‘Yes, we did,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘And I’m not saying nothing illegal happened here. Jack was obviously stabbed. I’m just saying that what Amber’s been convicted of never happened. It’s fake.’
‘So what are you saying? Who stabbed him then? You’re surely not implying Jack did that to himself? Who stabs themselves?’
‘Or he got someone else to do it,’ Nathan replied. ‘To frame her. He paid someone to attack him. Think about that.’
I did. I did think about it, and about everything else he told me, but I also thought about the court case. The facts seemed so clear. The jury was told that Amber had stolen over half a million pounds’ worth of jewellery from Jack, beautiful pieces he’d inherited from his late mother. Then, in a confrontation in his home office, she carried out a frenzied attack, stabbing him in the stomach, the arm and the right hand before making her escape. None of the injuries had been life-threatening, but the wound to his hand had been serious, damaging a tendon and nerves and leaving him with partial paralysis despite several surgeries. Would anyone really inflict that sort of injury on himself?
The news reports said that Amber had appeared shell-shocked in the dock, sometimes white-faced and silent, sometimes bursting into tears. She didn’t give evidence herself; clearly, her legal team had persuaded her against that, at least. But on the final day of the trial, she broke down as the verdict was read out, screaming that she was innocent, that this was all a terrible mistake.
And then, of course, came the horror of her life sentence. She was convicted of both the jewellery theft and of grievous bodily harm with intent. Even if she’s released at some point many years into the future, she’ll remain on licence for the rest of her life, and if it’s ever thought she’s of any risk to the public she’ll be immediately recalled to prison, even if she never commits another offence. Although she was of previous good character with no criminal record, the judge said her crimes showed a significant degree of premeditation and planning, and that she’d clearly gone to Jack’s home that night intending to attack him.
The knife has never been found, and nor has the jewellery – Amber’s denial of any wrongdoing and therefore her refusal to say what she’d done with these things further contributed to the severity of her sentence. But even without these crucial exhibits, the combination of Jack’s testimony, his injuries and all the other evidence presented by the prosecution quickly sealed her fate. There were dozens of emails sent and then deleted from her account, discussing the jewellery with potential buyers. There was her arrival at and hurried departure from his home on the night of the attack, captured on CCTV. There was his blood on her clothes and hands and in her car. It was all so convincing, so impossible to argue against. The jury reached a guilty verdict in less than a day of deliberations.
I’m still thinking about it as I sit down opposite her again, sliding a cardboard mug of milky coffee and two mini-packs of chocolate digestives across the table.
‘Thanks,’ she says, and immediately rips open one of the packets, snapping off a piece of biscuit and popping it into her mouth.
‘It’s the little things in here,’ she mumbles, then swallows. ‘Chocolate never tasted so good. So, go on. While I stuff my face, hit me. I’m intrigued.’
I can see she’s perked up a little, and there’s a spark of interest in her eyes now.
And so, I tell her.
In a hushed voice, and falling silent every time a guard passes, I describe my curious first meeting with Felicity and subsequent shocking chats with her brother. I run through what he’s told me about what he believes really happened to her, and about Rose too, and she listens with rapt attention, her coffee cooling on the table. Even the biscuits are temporarily forgotten. She’s silent throughout, her eyes wide, as if she can’t quite take in what she’s hearing. But when I get to the bit about me potentially trying to help, which would mean getting involved with Jack again, she gasps.
‘Are you serious? You’d consider doing that? For me? After everything? Heather, are you sure?’
I hesitate.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ I say. ‘Nathan was convincing, but I need to hear your side of it. If Jack really has done the things Nathan says he has, then somebody has to do something. But… honestly, I’m not sure yet if that’s going to be me. That’s all I can say for now.’
She nods, her eyes shiny with unshed tears.
‘That’s enough. Just the fact that you’ve come here. It’s been so awful, Heather. When I was arrested, the trial… I mean, a few friends write the odd letter, but most of them don’t want to know me anymore. If I had a sister, or a brother, maybe that would have helped, but I don’t of course, and since Dad died…’
She takes in a shuddery breath, and I feel another sharp pang of sympathy. Amber and her dad had been close, but he’d passed away not long after we first moved to London together. She and her mum had always had a more volatile relationship. Mrs Ryan is a peevish, prickly woman who was by and large civil with me as her daughter’s best friend but who I’d by no means describe as warm or supportive. She’s the sort of person who worries constantly about what the neighbours think, and about ‘making a good impression’. I can only imagine her reaction to her only child being sentenced to life in prison.
‘Mum does come to see me, but not often,’ Amber says. ‘And she just tells me it’s time I face up to what I’ve done. I’d given up, you know? Stopped hoping I might one day get out of here. What’s the point? And so this… this is like some sort of crazy miracle.’
Yet again, tears are rolling down her pale cheeks.
‘Well, let’s not jump the gun,’ I say hastily. ‘I need to hear it all from you first, OK?’
‘Sorry. Of course.’
She picks up her cup and takes a sip of coffee, grimacing as she puts it down again.
‘Cold,’ she says. ‘Never mind. Right, so… I get confused sometimes, that’s the only thing. Jack… well, you know. He messes with your head. But OK. I’ll start at the beginning.’
Now it’s my turn to sit and stare, by turns bemused and astonished as she relates her version of the events of last summer. With my handbag sitting in a locker outside the visitor room, I don’t have a notebook and pen with me, or any other way of taking notes, but I have a good memory and I’m making a mental list, filing it all away in my head.
It doesn’t add up. Not all of it. Her recollection of the stabbing is particularly hazy. Even so, her story is mostly convincing, and when she’s finished, I lean back in my seat and exhale heavily.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘If it’s all true, what is wrong with Jack Shannon? He’s an absolute fruitcake. Sick, sick bastard.’
‘I think we both knew that anyway, right?’ she replies, and I roll my eyes and nod.
‘So what do you think?’ she says, and I can hear fear in her voice. ‘Can you… Do you want to…? Will you…?’
I tap my forehead.
‘Give me a day or so to think about it. But it’s not a no. Right now, it’s a definite maybe.’