Blood Sisters(37)

Low risk enough for someone to be stabbed in one of my classes.

But right now I have a job to do. I must put my fears and that awful scene at Kitty’s home out of my mind. This new student in front of me is – I sense – really interested in art. I’m right. No sooner do I give Martin permission to sit down in the studio than he picks up the crayons. He handles them lovingly, as though he’s been starved of their company. I suggest that he colours in the outline I’ve given him of a parrot. It might sound odd but I’ve found that animals go down well in my classes. Grown men who have committed headline crimes appear to enjoy reverting to their childhoods. Maybe it makes them feel they have a clean slate, so to speak. My new student works, head bowed, over his sheet.

It’s silent. Not a bad silence. A good one. Almost like the golden hour when I used to get up early to do some work before life interrupted. Since taking on my prison job, I haven’t been able to do this.

I decide to start my own picture too, sketching the view outside the window. The other Portakabins. The fields behind. The birds that wheel in the sky overhead.

‘Want to look?’

I’ve been so engrossed that I had almost forgotten my student was there.

But he’s standing in front of me now. Holding out his picture. The parrot outline is really good. He’s taken great care with the individual feathers.

‘Have you done this kind of thing before?’ I ask.

‘Only in the last nick. But not when I was free. Never had time until I got banged up.’ He looks at me nervously. ‘Is my picture rubbish, then?’

‘Not at all,’ I say hastily. ‘It shows a great eye.’

Eye. The very word makes me wince. A vision of Grandad’s bloody face jumps up before me. Hastily, I brush it away.

‘You’re not just saying it cos of my scars?’ His eyes are narrowing. ‘I get that from some officers. They’re sorry for me so they say things that aren’t true to make me feel good.’

‘No,’ I begin, but he interrupts.

‘Some bloke did it to me in the first nick I got sent to. Sugar and boiling water. You can’t get it off the skin.’

I’m reminded of how Angela told me about this terrible practice when I first started the job. But now I have the results standing before me. It must have been agonizing. It’s certainly not pleasant to look at.

Perhaps that’s why he speaks in a jokey kind of way – to hide his embarrassment.

I don’t quite know what to say. ‘Let’s try some sketching now, shall we?’

We start by copying a photograph I’ve brought in. It’s a daffodil. Most of my men just draw a circle with a line down for the stem. But this man has caught its bell-like shape perfectly. I can see in his face the same intensity I feel myself when drawing. Just like the expression in Kitty’s before the accident.

‘Brilliant,’ I say.

That scarred face looks up at me. ‘Do you think so?’

‘I do.’

For an instant, there’s a connection between us. The type a teacher experiences when discovering a student who’s a natural artist but whose talent has been boycotted for one reason or another. It’s like discovering a pearl after a series of empty shells.

It’s almost enough to blank out everything else that’s going on. Kitty, the messages. I’M GOING TO GET YOU. The Christmas card. The nightmares I keep having about the accident. Vanessa dead on the road with blood oozing from her head. And, of course, Clive. Or rather Lead Man.

For some reason, even though everything else is terrible, I can’t stop thinking about him.

The last time I felt this way was when I was eighteen. And look what happened then.





27


April 2001


Ali


In 2001 I was studying for my A levels. Or trying to. Kitty was a constant distraction. If she and Vanessa weren’t playing loud music in their bedroom, they were thundering up and down the stairs, squealing with excitement.

‘I need some peace,’ I’d tell Mum.

But Kitty never listened to anyone. Apart from Vanessa. ‘Don’t you get bored, studying all the time?’ my sister’s friend would say with that knowing look on her face.

Vanessa reminded me of a spoilt kitten: constantly preening itself. My sister wanted to be just like her. ‘Twins’, they called themselves. Just because their birthdays were four days apart.

It wasn’t long after the Wrights moved into our road that Kitty spilt coffee all over my French essay.

‘You shouldn’t have left it on the kitchen table,’ she retorted.

I’d only put it there for a second while coming down to get a glass of water.

‘You could at least say sorry.’

‘Why?’ Vanessa butted in, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar as if she was part of the family, which, in a way, she was. She and Kitty had met as babies and were always in and out of each other’s houses. ‘Like she said, it was your fault.’

Then the two of them started rabbiting on about the new boy, Crispin Wright, who was apparently really good at art – my sister’s favourite subject. ‘He’s already got a picture accepted for the school exhibition,’ she cooed. You’d think from the way she spoke that he was a contemporary. In fact, he was in my year – not hers.