I put the phone down and walk slowly back along the corridor to my cell, foreboding prickling my skin. I’ve just had my planned Sunday evening phone call from Heather, and although she didn’t – couldn’t – say, not directly, I know there’s something wrong. She sounded tense, and didn’t stay on the line for long, saying she was heading out for a drink with Felicity, and that she didn’t really have any news, other than that she wasn’t sure how much longer her relationship with her ‘new boyfriend’ was going to last. I took that to mean that maybe this thing is close to its conclusion now, and I felt a surge of excitement. But when I asked how the weekend had gone, she became diffident.
It’s something to do with Rhona, Jack’s housekeeper, that’s got her flustered, I think.
‘She’s a bit… two-faced,’ she said, and I frowned, trying to understand what she was telling me.
Two-faced? So, not what she seems? But what does that mean?
We ended the call with me none the wiser. Heather’s low mood was contagious. Now I find myself walking more and more slowly, dragging my feet along the grubby, worn floor. I don’t want to go back and sit in that dreary cell. I want to go outside. I want to go for a Sunday afternoon stroll on Hampstead Heath. I want to pop into a pub for a steak-and-ale pie. I’m still having moments of sheer panic, but the last couple of weeks have given me too much hope, maybe, that something like that may ever be possible for me again. But now…
I feel tears springing to my eyes. Something’s wrong. I can feel it. As I reach my cell door and stumble inside, I feel the old fear rising.
Maybe this is how it’s meant to be, because I do deserve to be here. A crime is still a crime, even if you don’t remember committing it, after all. A hazy memory is no excuse. And yet, what if I am innocent? And if what Heather’s attempting doesn’t work, how can I endure this? How can I stay here, for years to come? How?
The cell is empty. Stacey’s obviously off doing something she probably told me about earlier but I currently can’t remember, and I slump onto my bunk and howl. Suddenly, completely irrationally, I yearn for superhuman strength. I want to rip the bars off the window, barge my way past the guards, and smash through doors.
I want to get. Out. Of. Here.
I let myself cry for several minutes, my shoulders shaking, my breath coming in gasps. Then I stand up and wipe my tears away furiously. Enough. Enough, now. It’s going to be OK. And if it’s not, then, I’ll survive, won’t I? I’ve made it this far. One day at a time. One hour at a time.
I walk out of my cell again and start pacing up and down the corridor, ignoring the curious glances of some of the other women. If only I could get more exercise, more fresh air. The gym is small, the equipment dated, and it’s vastly over-subscribed; if we’re lucky, we each get a short session twice a week. I do it, but I’m not a gym bunny; I used to run and go for long walks on the Heath or in Trent Country Park, and I’m increasingly craving the outdoors, even in the coldest, wettest weather. We get an hour a day, and while prison exercise yards look vast on TV, ours certainly is not. It’s a small rectangle of cracked concrete and it takes approximately one minute to complete a single slow lap, everyone ambling around it in an anti-clockwise direction.
‘Why do we always walk that way? Are we allowed to go the other way round?’ I asked Stacey, who arrived two months before I did, on one of my first days here. She shrugged.
‘Dunno. Just the way it is, mate,’ she replied.
I stopped questioning or wondering after a while. There’s just a certain way things are done here, I realised. No point in arguing about it, or rebelling against it. We’re all just numbers, after all. Well, letters and numbers. A6868RX reporting for duty.
And so now I pace the corridor.
Up and down. Up and down.
I think about Heather, and I pray, to whom or what I have no idea.
Please. Please. Please.