How to Kill Your Family(50)
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.