On My Life Read online

  O’Brien’s podgy hand opens to reveal the red lipstick I bought for Kelly. Gould takes it. ‘A present. For me?’ She looks at it. ‘I usually don’t use cheap slut shit like this.’

  There’s a gathering crowd around us now. Eyes peering, glassy, expectant. A groan comes from the cell Gould came out of. People are whispering. Watching. Wanting to see who has pissed off who. Waiting to see if it’s going to kick off.

  ‘That’s mine.’ I reach for the lipstick with my free arm, but O’Brien grabs that too and twists it behind my back. ‘Ow! Let go.’

  ‘Now, now, Blondie. Did your mother never teach you it’s rude to snatch?’ Gould takes the lid off, turns it so the smooth red lipstick rises. ‘If you want to share, you just have to ask.’

  She steps toward me. My nose pulsates with the memory of the attack. I struggle, but O’Brien grabs both my arms and uses her doughy bulk to hold me still. My stomach feels exposed, vulnerable.

  Please don’t let my bump be visible. Please don’t let them see. ‘Please!’

  Gould’s hand comes up and silences my cry. She squeezes my chin like a vice, pulling me forward, holding me still. My top hangs down straight from my breasts. Her grip is so tight my jaw hurts, and my lips are smooshed together. Her face has the same excited look it did when she touched Kelly. I must look terrified. I feel shame burn over me as she presses the lipstick into my face. People are just standing watching, like it’s a sick sideshow.

  I catch Vina’s eye – her mouth frozen in an exclamation oh of horror. Some people are whispering, pointing. More are coming over. Vina makes a move toward us, but her roommate stops her. No one is going to say anything. No one is going to help me.

  Humiliation flowers through me and I feel my bladder contract. Gould presses the lipstick harder into my face, I feel the oily product split, spread against my cheek. Gould jabs with the end. In. In. In. Like she’s punching holes in paper.

  Please don’t hurt my baby. And I close my eyes against it all as she draws what feels like a jagged joker smile, her breath heavy. Fevered. Fear trickles through me.

  What is she going to do when she has finished with my face?

  Now

  ‘Roll-call!’

  I have never been so pleased to hear Ryan’s voice.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he yells, as those who’d gathered around us scatter. Gould and O’Brien release me at the same time, Gould casually putting the lid back on the lipstick and dropping it in her pocket.

  I take my chance and run.

  ‘Whoa there.’ Ryan puts his hands up as I nearly careen into him. ‘What the fuck is that on your face?’ His plucked eyebrows rise in disgust.

  Behind me Gould and O’Brien have melted into the crowd.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ My voice is shaking. My legs are jelly. I just want to disappear.

  People are staring at me.

  ‘Get that crap cleaned off,’ he says. And booms: ‘Roll-call!’

  I pull my hood up. Scrub at my cheeks with the back of my hand. I need water to wash it off. I feel dirty. Soiled. All around me people are looking and pointing. Rhianna’s mum is smirking to her friend. Vina steps toward me. I can’t look at her. I run. I have to get away. I have to get out.

  But there’s nowhere to go. My heart smacks against my ribcage like a trapped bird against a window. I haul myself, my thighs screaming, up the stairs.

  Women push past, trying not to laugh.

  ‘You all right?’ A long-nailed hand reaches for me, but I can’t talk. My skin burns with shame. I have to get away. I have to get to my cell. I have to hide.

  ‘Roll-call!’ Ryan screams again, as I make it onto our landing. And see Kelly, aghast, as I lurch toward her and into position.

  ‘What the fuck?’ she hisses under her breath. ‘What happened?’

  But I can’t answer, I can’t speak. I look at my sad prison trainers and blink back the tears as Ryan does the head count.

  Of course, today they let us out to collect our lunch bags. I don’t go. Kelly comes back from an afternoon session at the library at dinnertime with two trays of what looks like chilli.

  ‘Here,’ she says quietly. ‘I told them you weren’t feeling well.’

  I keep the covers tight round me. ‘Thanks.’ Everyone – apart from Gould, it seems – is supposed to collect their own meals. Apparently it’s to stop theft of food, or contamination. By which they mean people might spit in it. Or worse. But I suspect it’s another way to check we’re where we’re supposed to be. An unofficial head count.

  Kelly sits down next to me, and starts to eat. After a while she says, ‘We started a new design today. Beaded. Going to be big this season. Apparently.’

  I nod. Force myself to lift the plastic fork to my mouth. My hand shaking.

  ‘Looks like bronze is gonna be big too. Bronze beads, bronze fabric, bronze clasps . . .’ She trails off.

  I can’t bring myself to look at her, to see judgement, or worse, pity, in her eyes.

  Kelly sighs, rests her fork against the stale roll on her tray. ‘What did you do to piss her off?’

  I can’t tell her the truth: that Gould believes I’m a child killer. That she seems to be enjoying toying with me. I keep chewing.

  ‘I mean, one of the Spice Goblins downstairs owes her money and they just got turned over.’ Kelly phrases it like a question. ‘They didn’t get – that, whatever that was. She signals at my face, and the towel next to my bunk which still bears smudges of red lipstick.

  I swallow a particularly dry mouthful of bread. ‘I think she was improvising.’ I try and smile.

  Kelly’s not buying it. Her brows still knitted in concern. ‘Hmm.’ She picks her fork back up. Pokes a bit of cheese into the chilli. ‘You got to find a way to make this better.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not really sure Charlie Gould is the type to sit down for a friendly debate and shake hands after,’ I say.

  Kelly gives half a smile. ‘No. I guess she’s not.’

  It’s awful, and true, and I am stuck, but I still feel a tiny bit better from having made Kelly smile.

  ‘Kel, is there any other way I can get a message outside if I haven’t got any phone credit?’ I’ve been playing it over all afternoon in my mind, along with what happened. Going round and round on the same things. I need to know how Ness gets on. I need to tell her to make another transfer, if she can manage it. Explain why all the money she sent has already gone.

  ‘You can send a letter.’ She talks with her mouth full. ‘Yous get two free stamps a week on remand. Drops to one after.’

  ‘Do I?’ No one told me I can write to Ness. I won’t be overheard that way. I can tell her I made a mistake with my money. That I need some more. ‘And can people write back?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she says, chewing. ‘They read them and stuff, so you can’t have anything dodgy in them, like.’

  I’ll tell Ness to reply that way. To tell me what Robert’s parents say.

  As soon as I finish my dinner I start to write. Kelly returns my tray, seemingly pleased to see me at least upright in bed.

  In the end the return letter doesn’t come. There’s no message from Ness. But there is a visiting order.

  David and Judith Milcombe are coming to see me.

  Now

  The voice wakes me. A woman’s voice. She’s downstairs, must be the floor beneath us.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?’

  It sounds like she’s out of her cell, but how could she be? Like she’s looking for someone. Someone must come soon. Her cries sound pitiful, painful.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?’

  It sounds like it’s getting closer. I sit up, my hand against the wall. It’s wet. Sticky. Something’s wrong.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’

  The voice is nearer now. More urgent. More insistent.

  I try to swing my legs off the bed. But there’s no floor. And I see what made the noise. A trapdoor in the floor. A rope hanging down.

  The woman star
ts to scream, desperate cries. ‘My baby! My baby!’ I need to help her, but I can’t get off the bed. And the walls are running wet with blood. And they’re closing in on me, tighter and tighter, crushing the edges of the bed. The metal buckling, screaming. The woman is crying. And the blood is pouring over me. Emily’s blood. The walls are pressing against me. I must save my baby. I must stop them from coming.

  I wake with a start. Slick with sweat. My blankets piled on top of me. No one is screaming. It’s a dream. Another one. They’ve been coming for days now, taking savage chunks out of my nights.

  ‘You all right?’ Kelly mumbles sleepily from above.

  ‘Bad dream.’ My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. My heartbeat going like a train. My baby. What if I can’t do this? What if I’m not a good mother? What if what happened in my childhood – all that chaos from Mum’s addiction, the times I found her covered in sick, unconscious, the times she let strange men into our flat, the time she sold all the furniture for drugs – what if that’s in me? Like a genetic code. What happens if I fail my child?

  I feel Kelly roll over above me. ‘Hate those,’ she says. Her breathing slowing rhythmically again. I don’t go back to sleep. Instead I stare up and out the window as the cold night slowly cracks and fades into the dawn. Finally, when Kelly begins to stir more frequently, I roll over and pull the papers out from where they’re hidden under the bedside table. A photo of Emily in her school uniform that was published in the newspaper grins at me. It’s an older one – they obviously wanted to make her look as young as possible to up the horror of the story – but it’s the only one I have. Under that is my list of evidence the police have on me. I add another pen scratch to the tally of days I’ve been in here. Not that I need to write it down. I carry it with me all the time. The numbers are better than the memories. Today is my forty-eighth day in Fallenbrook. Forty-eight. Keep breathing. Overcast April days make shadows in the chipped brick over the door, a grinning devil’s face. This time last year Robert and I met. We had our picnic outside in the evening sunshine. We’re supposed to be getting married in two months. The doctor is definitely wrong – I am too big for three months. And I still haven’t had a scan. The one date I had booked was cancelled when Kev was off sick. Short-staffed. I’ve started chasing with the forms again to get it rearranged but no one seems to care. Keep breathing. It’s okay. Because today I can finally do something about it. Today I can take my first solid steps to getting out of here. Because today is the day David and Judith visit.

  I wait until Free Flow is properly underway before I come down from our cell. This is my life now, fearfully peering round corners and over landings to check for Gould or anyone with a rolled-up left sleeve. If the coast is clear I dart out, head down, walking as quickly as I can without drawing attention to myself. I haven’t visited the library since the attack. And, though I feel sick at the prospect of seeing Judith and David, and even worse at the prospect of seeing Gould, I can’t help but feel relief for being out of our stale cell. It’s not only in my dreams that the walls have started to close in on me.

  I’m hyper-alert the whole way to the visitors’ room. But no one gives me a second glance. I hear snippets of conversation as I pass.

  ‘They’re bringing in the smoking ban. Nationwide. All prisons.’

  ‘They ain’t stopping me.’

  ‘It’s everyone, even the screws.’

  ‘The number-one governor said we’ll be getting patches, and we can buy vape.’

  ‘Fucking stupid idea.’

  ‘What about our rights?’

  I’ve obviously missed a serious development in prison policy while I’ve been hiding away. Can they really be banning smoking inside? Yeah, I’m pleased to stop breathing in second-hand smoke and worrying about the damage to my baby. But what about the damage from a pissed-off lag going through withdrawal? Does Gould smoke? This is what everyone is talking about now. They have moved on from me and the lipstick incident.

  Sara is on duty in the visitors’ room. Her shirt crisp and white, her hair up in an intricate plaited number. She gives me a smile and a wink as she hands me what looks like not a bad tabard.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She nods and I move along the line. As we wait to file in I see Rhianna’s mum is in front of me again. Her hair clean, and fresh lipstick on. ‘Hey? Your little girl coming in today?’

  Her lip curls and she looks at me with undisguised disgust. It’s then that I see her left sleeve is rolled.

  ‘Here we go, girls,’ Sara calls.

  I swallow the panic down as we file in. Roll your shoulders, pull your stomach in. I tug at my tabard so it balloons out away from me.

  Rhianna’s mum purposefully picks a table away from me. Does she know what I’ve been accused of, or is she just demonstrating her loyalty to Gould? There’s no time to worry before the door at the other end of the room is unlocked and I see them.

  Judith’s delicately coloured bob is shaped like a helmet round her head, as if protecting her from her environment. She has expensive hair. Ness always jokes we have Croydon hair. Fine, flyaway, split ends. The kind that collapses against your head no matter how expensive the blow-dry.

  David has his arms around Judith, as if shielding her from this reality. I can see they have tried to dress down. He’s gone all gin and tonics at the country club, and she for a simple cotton dress, but they have that unmistakable air that comes with the super-rich. It’s in their private health-maintained posture, Judith’s subtly nipped and tucked skin, their cruise-liner tan, the way they hold themselves confidently, as if they belong everywhere. Except, of course, they don’t belong here. They’re attracting looks from the other visitors. An elderly gent in a cream blazer, blue shirt, and slacks, who has been seated by Kev already, is watching them keenly. Then there are myriad jeans and puffa jackets, striped track pants, children in tatty Disney dresses and superhero jumpers. And us, the prisoners, in our regulation tabards.

  My hair is a muddy brown from the coffee granules, and I only have my tent hoodie to wear, but I’ve tried to make myself as presentable as possible. The shocked look on Judith’s face tells me it’s not been wholly successful. David does a double-take, as if he were about to walk past me.

  Up close, Judith looks pale under her make-up. The recent events have shaved layers off her, leaving her seemingly translucent. You can almost see her anxious heartbeat pulsing through her veins. Her pain reflects my own back at me. I can’t do this. I can’t breathe. David looks stoic, his jaw set, as if he’s about to enter a board meeting. He guides Judith through the tables, and out of the way when a child that’s clearly missing its nap time flops from its gran’s hand and falls at her feet. David wrinkles his nose, as if he’s just avoided treading in something nasty. He’s a bully and a snob. Judith hasn’t taken her eyes from me. I want to stand, but I can’t till they reach me.

  David tries to pull out a chair for Judith, but it’s chained to the floor. Judith looks astonished.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ I’m up now. Will it look weird if I don’t hug them? I hover. Reach my arms up.

  David makes a noise like an elegant grunt. Judith looks alarmed. I let my arms drop. Sit down. Heat flushes my cheeks.

  David takes out a cotton handkerchief and wipes the seats before they sit. Folds his hanky carefully over on the contamination. Puts it on the table.

  Judith’s mouth is slightly agape. She’s leaning back in her seat, staring at me. They don’t speak.

  I study David’s face for clues, look at his hands as if they might be bloodstained, but all I can feel is their judgement of me. I wish I had something other than my joggies and shapeless hoodie to wear. I wish I was in my own clothes. I wish we were meeting in private. I wish this wasn’t happening at all.

  I’ve been rehearsing what to say for days. How I’m going to test him. Test her. Look for lies. Discrepancies. Make them reveal what they know. Make them help me. But now they’re here, the words churn in my mouth.r />
  David and I go to speak at the same time.

  ‘I needed to—’

  ‘I didn’t want Judith to come.’ He folds his hands in his lap.

  ‘Is there any news on Robert?’ He could have been found – unconscious, suffering from amnesia or something – and no one thought to tell me. He might not know about Emily. ‘I’m so sorry about . . .’ I can’t say her name out loud. ‘For your loss.’

  Judith looks startled. Her eyes dart from me, my hoodie, my hair, round the room, back again. David squeezes her shoulder.

  ‘You didn’t give us a choice,’ he says.

  A chill spreads over my skin. No news of Robert. Judith is raw with grief, it pours from her, but David is suppressed, curled, like a waiting snake. His voice is dangerous. I force myself to push on. I wasn’t raised to discuss money in public. ‘I appreciate this must be hard for you.’

  David scoffs.

  ‘Just tell us where he is – please?’ Judith’s words spill out in a high-pitched cry. She clutches for the table, for my hands. Her eyes are wild. Scared.

  She thinks I hurt Robert. Unless it’s an act . . .

  ‘I don’t know. I promise you, I didn’t do this.’

  David’s face is a tense scowl. He gently pulls Judith back, as if he’s holding her together. Maybe he is.

  Bile sloshes through my stomach, and I imagine it curling, hissing round my baby. I shake my head. I have to make them believe me. ‘I could never hurt Robert. I could never hurt Emily.’ Her name crumbles into dust in my mouth.

  ‘Is it his?’ Judith stares at my stomach.

  The second person to ask me that. I hold the anger down this time. ‘The baby is Robert’s.’

  Judith looks up at David. Panic in her eyes. ‘It can’t stay here.’

  Yes. This is my way in. ‘I need your help. I need money. Just a loan. If I can get a decent lawyer I can get them to listen to me.’ I think about telling them about the files, or that I think I’m being framed, and then I think about David bending Judith’s wrist back. Of him arguing with Emily. Of him using my laptop without my permission. He could have done this. He could have put me here.