Blood Sisters(89)

I think with longing of the set-up in my old prison. Only now do I really appreciate why my men had said they could finally breathe when they got to a Cat D. Here, there is no walking from one hut to another. Instead, you are let out of the closed wing once a day to go to Education or Chapel (a large number turn to God just to get a change of view, apparently) or the gym (dodgy, because some of the other women use it to ‘eye up the candy’ as Angela puts it).

This walk from one part of the prison to another is known as freeflow. There is always an officer in charge. You are herded along like sheep. There is no respect. We do not deserve any. That is why we are here. This is the message that is drummed into us day after day.

There’s a desperation on faces like I’ve never seen before. Many of my new acquaintances have been separated from their children. My cellmate weeps at night and I cry with her, remembering my lost sister. Offences are mainly drug-related. There are several ‘mules’ here. Plus a sweet-faced woman who decapitated the boyfriend who abused her daughter. The other day in the pod, I spotted her dipping a used tampon into a mug of coffee which she then offered to an unsuspecting mother of three, in for heroin dealing. I should have said something, but you learn to pick your friends in this place.

It’s really weird – almost funny – to be an inmate instead of staff. Each of us has our own job. Mine is cleaning the loos. I have to be careful to call them toilets. My language and accent have already been mercilessly torn to bits by some of the women. I’m lucky that I have Angela to look after me. I should feel resentful towards her but I don’t. You have to be practical in a place like this.

The darkness is the worst. That one night in HMP Archville was child’s play compared with the stifling claustrophobia which now squeezes my throat after the 8 p.m. lockdown when we all have to be in our cells. Sometimes, when the wind whips up from the hills, I fancy I hear someone tapping on the window. Stefan’s ghost, perhaps? Occasionally I try out the word ‘father’ for size. It’s becoming more familiar.

Actually, I’m wrong. It’s not the nights that are the worst. It is the lack of communication. Kitty has had a baby. That’s why Mum had to leave the court so fast. A little girl. Mum told me during the brief phone call which I was allowed to make when I arrived here. ‘Are you all right?’ she’d added, almost as an afterthought.

Kitty’s news had come first. Always Kitty.

Even when my prison phone card arrived, allowing me to make calls, I decided to ring Mum just once a month. When you’re using the prison phone there’s always someone eavesdropping on your conversation. So Mum writes instead. Every week. Yet her tone is cool: she simply describes her life. Doing odd cleaning jobs in the village because she had to give up her job to look after Kitty and the baby. Selling the odd painting. Her letters are signed with a ‘love’ but no kiss.

And no wonder, after the court case. If it was not for me, both Kitty and Vanessa would still be here in one piece. And Crispin’s mother too.

As for Crispin, his case – or so I’ve read in the papers – has been reviewed. His conviction for causing death by dangerous driving was quashed because his mother had been behind the wheel. He was given eight years for perverting the course of justice by pretending to be the driver and another twenty-five for murdering Stefan. The jury hadn’t bought the self-defence bit. The sixteen years he’d already served was taken off but, even so, Crispin could be out soon after me although this doesn’t take ‘good behaviour’ into account. But it won’t make up for the loss of his mother. Or his father, who had died a broken man, his wife and son both torn from him.

Unlike Archville, where letters were handed out through an open window from the admin office, the post here is put into labelled cubbyholes, having gone through security. Mine is full of messages. I am trying to gather the courage to read them.

I scoop up my letters and take them back to my cell. I recognize the handwriting on most of them. Mum. Robin. I put the latter in the bin. What can they possibly say to make things better? One is internal mail. It is a Visit Permission form from the admin department. Someone on the outside wants to see me. I look at the name and then I walk to the window. There’s a bird out there. It has been joined by another. Together, they are pecking at something in the ground. Husband and wife? Brother and sister? Suddenly they begin to attack each other, furiously fighting over a worm.

They must be sisters.

Slowly, I go back to my desk and tick the ‘yes’ box.





69


October 2017


Kitty


‘Kitty, love,’ whispered Friday Mum. ‘Are you awake? The baby wants feeding.’

‘Fuck off. I’m tired.’

‘It’s too much for her to cope with, poor kid,’ whispered someone else.

‘You look sleepy, love. I’m sorry to bother you but listen! Little one needs you.’

‘Shut up. Both of you.’ The baby, thought Kitty, through half-closed eyes, was all right when it wasn’t crying. But this yelling noise was drilling through her skull.

‘Don’t bang your head like that on the chair, love. You’ll hurt it.’

Not as much as the car had hurt when it had hit her. Don’t think of that now. Block it out. Sometimes, thought Kitty, it had been better when she hadn’t been able to remember anything. Just after Baby had been born, she’d managed to blank it. But now it kept coming back. Not just during the day but in her nightmares too. Last night she’d dreamed that Vanessa was chasing Half a Sister with a violin. It seemed silly now, but in her sleep it had been terrifying.