The Dead Ex(84)

A London cabbie might have driven off, but this one is good enough to give me specific directions. I walk along the seafront past some massive open-air swimming pool. A bird swoops down, landing in front of me to peck at a bread roll which someone has left. I go down a side street and pause briefly outside an art gallery. ‘Photographic exhibition. Free entry.’ At any other time, I’d have gone in. But I’ve got a job to do. Then I find myself in an amazing park with all these palm trees and weird-looking plants. There are quite a few people here, sitting on benches or just walking past. I scan their faces. None bears an obvious resemblance to the picture in my pocket (taken from the internet), although it is a rather old likeness. I’m passing a library now, although it could be a museum. According to the map on my phone, I’m nearly there.

But my legs are wobbling. The old doubts come back. What exactly am I going to do when I get there? It’s taken so long to achieve my goal that somehow I’ve neglected to work out a plan. So I go back into town and find a cosy coffee shop on the corner of the high street and order a peppermint tea. Then I try to think.

Yet by the time dusk is falling, I am still no clearer. I’m the only customer left. The waitress is hovering. That’s enough, I need to get on with it. So I retrace my steps but this time I force myself to take that final left and right. I stop outside a big house with a gable roof. Looking around – no one seems to be watching – I walk up the path. There’s a series of names outside the front door, suggesting the house is actually several flats with different entrances round the side. My throat tightens as I take in the first. Vicki Goudman. Aromatherapist.

Finally.





47



Vicki

4 July 2018


For the rest of the week I think of nothing else but Patrick. I’m on the gardening work party now. We’re picking carrots, which were planted earlier in the year. Many prisons grow their own produce for inmates to eat. When I was governor, I used to encourage this. It always amazes me that great things can come from small seeds. All you need are the right conditions and a certain amount of care.

By the time my solicitor visits again the following week, I am ready.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you about my baby.’

It was a wet, windy start to the new year in 2013. I was four months pregnant. So exciting and yet also daunting, given David’s unpredictable behaviour. Maybe he was scared, deep down, of being a father.

Meanwhile, Christmas had left the women with a deep sense of injustice. Whatever they’d done, surely they deserved to be with their families? I felt for them. But at the same time, as I reminded myself, each one of them had hurt someone else on the Outside, and all the victims had families too.

Ironically, visits made it worse. ‘My kids kept telling me what a great time they’d had and all the presents they’d got from my bloody ex,’ said one mother. ‘It’s like they didn’t miss me at all.’

Patrick was holding extra therapy sessions called ‘Moving On’. But the rumblings and moanings in the wings had become louder. ‘It’s like being a bloody battery hen,’ yelled one woman from inside her cell. It sounded like Zelda’s voice.

‘What does she expect?’ pointed out Jackie, not unreasonably. ‘It’s a prison.’

Mind you, I could see the women’s point of view. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being unable to breathe the outside air. No wonder they all lived for their hour’s exercise every day. But we were down on staff thanks to a flu virus that was doing the rounds, so it was suggested that the afternoon exercise walk round the courtyard outside was rescheduled for 5 p.m., when the evening officers arrived.

‘It’s dark then,’ pointed out Patrick at the morning briefing when this was announced. ‘The women need their Vitamin D intake.’

‘Then give them some bloody tablets,’ muttered one of the officers.

Patrick’s lips had tightened. ‘It’s not the same, and besides, I thought we had a budget.’

He’d turned to me for help, but what could I do? ‘It’s a question of safety,’ I replied. Dissatisfaction with the situation caused me to be abrupt. So too did my pregnancy hormone levels, which made me want to cry one minute and laugh the next. On top of that was the added anxiety about David. He hadn’t returned my calls for six days now. According to Tanya, he was still away on a US business trip, which was meant to have been a quick visit.

I could feel the odd ‘baby flutter’ now and then. I should be sharing this with my husband instead of being here.

‘How many extra staff would we need if we moved the exercise slot to 3 p.m. instead?’ I asked.

‘Two.’

‘Fine. Then I’ll help out.’

My deputy threw me a don’t-be-crazy look. ‘You’re the governor.’

‘I’ll lend a hand too,’ offered Patrick.

The deputy looked uncertain. ‘I would do the same, but Sharon …’

He stopped. We all knew that his wife was starting her chemo treatment the next day and he’d been granted temporary leave.

‘It’s fine,’ I said quickly. ‘We’ll sort it.’

It might be a good idea to show willing with the outside exercise issue, even though, as my deputy had pointed out, high-ranking staff weren’t meant to get involved at the coalface. It caused much more of a problem if one of us was taken hostage.