The Dead Ex(65)

He looks back at me. Hard. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘What does matter to you?’ I find myself asking.

‘Sure you’re a photographer and not a journalist?’

I laugh lightly. ‘Quite sure.’

‘Well … you should make a trip to Dartmoor. You could take some amazing shots there. Have you ever been?’

‘Where is it?’

‘In the south-west. There’s this tor – that’s like a really steep hill – with mountainous rocks at the summit. I love to climb right to the top and look down. It’s like looking down on the universe.’

‘Sounds wonderful.’ This is a lie. I can’t stand the countryside.

I glance at the pictures on the walls in chrome frames. Most look like the girl in his office – his daughter. But there’s one of an older man with a top lip so narrow that it almost isn’t there. He has eyes that stare out of the frame and a bald head.

‘Who’s that?’

‘You are a hack, aren’t you?’

I try to make light of it. ‘Like I said before, a photographer needs to be curious.’

David bends his head slightly as if conceding my point. ‘He’s my father, actually.’ His face tightens. ‘Taught me a thing or two, I can tell you.’

‘Such as?’

‘You really don’t give up! He … well, I suppose he showed me how to stand on my own two feet.’

‘Like me,’ I say. ‘My parents started off without any help but now they’re doing really well. They say we have to learn to do the same.’

‘We?’

‘I have a brother and a sister.’

‘Are you close?’

I consider. ‘Reasonably.’

He looks wistful for a moment. ‘I was an only child. Shame, really.’

His hand begins tracing the outline of my shoulders. ‘My mother died of cancer when I was twelve. That’s why I support this hospice in Oxfordshire. In fact, I’m driving down in a few weeks to open a new wing.’

That’s actually rather touching. But it’s time to stop talking now and get down to business. I make sympathetic noises and then I lean in towards him, and nibble his right lobe. He makes a low sound in his throat; I had a feeling he was an ear man. Then I press my lips to his, sucking him in and trying to ignore that soufflé breath. He seems to be waiting, not wanting to take the lead. Is this a good or bad sign?

So I trail my fingers along the inside of his thigh and I can see him getting hard. I straddle him, inviting him to slide his hand up under my bra and squeeze my nipple. It hurts but I don’t want him to stop. His breathing gets faster. Then he takes me by surprise and rips my top off altogether before flipping me on my back so that now he is on top.

I gasp as he bites my neck. His eyes are closed as if he’s in another world. I feel his hands move down my body towards my knickers.

I can’t believe it was that easy.





33



Vicki

9 May 2018


I’ve just been to the showers. There was a used tampon blocking the drain. Not the first. When I complained, the guard just said she’d ‘look into it’. No attempt was made to clear the offending item.

Now it’s 8 p.m. Lockdown. Bedtime is early in prison. Despite being here a month, I’m still not used to it. When I was a governor, this used to be my quiet hour to catch up on admin. Some prisoners have televisions in their rooms. I have chosen not to because of the flashing light, which can sometimes set me off.

Instead, I sit and read, although it’s difficult to concentrate now that they’ve moved me from solitary (for my own safety) to a double because of overcrowding. I have a cellmate. She spends her time either pacing up and down or crying.

‘Do you have kids?’ she asks me fiercely.

I shake my head.

‘Then you’ll never bloody understand.’

Patrick …

‘My three are with my mother-in-law,’ she continues.

Three? She barely looks old enough.

‘That cow has always hated me. God knows what she’s telling them about me now. My solicitor says I’ll get ten years. By the time I come out, they won’t know me,’ she sobs.

I try to comfort her. ‘They’ll be able to visit,’ I suggest.

She snarls. ‘Think I want them coming to this place? ’Sides, I’m ashamed. I should never have done what I did.’

I suspect her crime has something to do with drugs. There are needle marks all the way up her bare, sinewy arms. She reminds me of someone else. Someone I met in the mother-and-baby unit a long time ago …

It was September 2008. I’d come a long way since that incident in the sex offenders’ wing. Rather than being reprimanded, I’d made my mark. My ‘ballsy’ actions had helped me to win respect: ‘Vicki Smith,’ I overheard one officer say in the dining hall. ‘Tougher than she looks. You don’t want to mess with that one. Rising up through the ranks. One to watch.’

He was right. Several promotions followed and I was now a senior governor at a women’s prison. (There are several governor ranks leading to the very top post of Governor Number One.) When I rang to tell Dad, he was only interested in telling me about the girl next door who’d just had her third baby and had been four years below me at school.