Blood Sisters(107)
That’s simple. Marriage means total honesty.
And there’s one thing Robin still doesn’t know about me.
Once I read somewhere (I can’t remember where) that sometimes a secret has to be told in order to stop another from slipping out. I’ve told most of mine.
But I’ve kept just one in reserve.
A few months before I took the prison job I’d had a letter. (The one that I’d hidden in my bedside table.) It was from the lawyer who had represented us when Crispin was originally convicted. The letter informed me that Mr Wright was soon to be moved to an open prison. HMP Archville. A place I already lived near to. Since receiving the letter I’d been keeping my eye out for an opportunity, and when I’d spotted the job advert in the college – advertising a post in the very prison Crispin was being moved to – it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Fate playing its hand.
Yes, I did need the money. I really was broke. But I also wanted revenge. Crispin, as I later discovered, might have thought he was luring me in. Yet what he didn’t realize was that I chose to go inside to follow my own agenda. That’s why I had to hang on to my job until I could get my revenge.
At first I told myself I just wanted to see him. To have my say. A prison sentence is all very well, but it doesn’t allow a victim to confront the offender. I wanted to yell at him. Let all the anger out about the rape.
Besides, in my mind, he hadn’t suffered enough.
Then, when I finally met Crispin in ‘my’ prison, I realized – or so I thought – that he didn’t recognize me. It occurred to me that I could pretend not to recognize him too. So when he’d claimed never to have done art on the Out, I went along with it – even though I knew this had been his strength at school. If he could lie, so could I. About bigger things too.
As Angela once said, when you work in dark places, you find that same darkness creeping into your soul too. It’s catching. You need to be on your guard. But sometimes you can’t stop yourself. And after Crispin arrived, I could feel the blackness sucking me in.
What if, one day, I happened to be in a classroom with just one prisoner?
My old enemy.
What if I pretended that Crispin had attacked me by claiming he had tried to strangle me with my scarf – my trademark dress signature. What if I actually tightened the scarf myself to make it look as though he was responsible? Then he would surely get another sentence and have to stay in for even longer.
Of course, none of this could be achieved without danger to myself. But what if – and this is the big one – I happened to be carrying a shard of glass with me, which I could use in self-defence?
Yet there was one big flaw. I hadn’t banked on Stefan rushing in to save me. Or on him grabbing the glass from where it had fallen. Or on Crispin killing him.
Through some awful ironic twist of fate, I am responsible for my own father’s death. Another to add to my list of crimes.
You can see why I can’t tell Robin. Now my only hope is that there is some redemption in the next generation.
‘Hold my hand,’ Vanessa says to my daughter. Her tone startles me. It sounds bossy instead of kindly. ‘And hurry up, or we’re going to be late.’
It’s as though she’s in charge and I’m not here at all.
Together we walk along the narrow lane. Two little girls. One taller than the other. Both with blonde plaits. Both wearing the same smart navy blue uniform. Both chatting away, nineteen to the dozen.
Mum isn’t your real mum, I can hear my daughter saying.
What do you mean? asks my sister’s child.
Your mum is really in a home for loonies.
Stop it, I tell myself. Remember what Sarah told you. You can’t keep imagining the worst any more.
‘Excited?’ I ask them.
Vanessa nods her head. Her violin case is thumping against her legs. Florence wants lessons too.
Then, holding hands, we stand at the traffic lights, waiting to cross the road.
Squeaky-clean school shoes.
Shoulder bags bobbing.
Blonde plaits flapping.
Two pairs of feet. One slightly larger.
‘Come on. We’re going to be late.’
There. Safe.
For now.