by Adele Parks
‘Aren’t you going to check the card?’ Connie pursues. I wish she’d let it go. I don’t want to think about the ballet tickets.
‘I don’t need to.’ I reply stiffly. She gives me a strange look, somewhere in between nosy and sympathetic. ‘Look, just forget it, can’t you.’ I snap. Connie flinches, hurt. It’s not how I wanted the day to end. Millie, upset. Connie, offended.
Me, terrified.
26
Chapter 26, Simon
Inside there was nothing but time.
Simon has been incarcerated for two years, ten months, two days. 1,036 days behind bars. People said he would get used to it, eventually. Get used to the lack of space, the lack of privacy, the lack of choice. He had not. He doubted he ever would.
People were wrong about a lot of things.
First, he had been in the police station, then in a holding prison, then here. He never applied for bail. At the time he was in the grip of going cold turkey and didn’t know or care where he would go, even if it was granted. Now, he regretted that. Saw it was a mistake. He should have tried to get home. While there still was one.
It was Millie’s birthday today. He wondered what they were doing. No one had told him.
Prison was a scary, brutal place, full of scary, brutal people. He wasn’t that. He had to believe he wasn’t that. He’d never imagined setting foot in a prison before he landed himself here. Who did?
They parcelled up the day to give the inmates a sense of order and progress, he supposed. It just made him feel as though he was in Groundhog Day. The same, unvaried routine day after day after day. Nothing could make the time go any faster: not the food, the shitty work, certainly not the conversation.
The best part of the day was when he was asleep. But even sleep was illusive, for many reasons. A lot depended on who he shared his cell with. Due to overcrowding, getting a pad to yourself was a luxury, one Simon had yet to enjoy. He’d had had four cellmates in the past three years. The first two men were serving short sentences. In and then out after some months. The next one was a full-on proper crim. Rick Dale. The two Dale Brothers headed up the most vicious and powerful gang in the prison. They operated several scams and were responsible for the distribution of everything: chocolate, fags, stamps, drugs, mobile phones, booze. Simon quickly came to understand that they were the real internal law and order system with as much, if not more, power than the guards. The punishments they dished out were dreaded far more than a couple of days in the cooler. Rick was the younger brother; on the outside he dealt with drugs and women. He ran dodgy clubs and gangs. He scared the shit out of Simon, who barely slept for the six months they shared a cell.
Dale smoked twenty, thirty fags a day. In theory Simon could have made a complaint about having to pad-up with a smoker, in reality he was unlikely to ever be able to sue the prison service over the long-term health implications of passive smoking. When Rick Dale was first put into his pad, Dale had offered Simon a cigarette.
Simon didn’t take it.
‘Don’t you smoke?’ Dale had asked.
‘No.’
‘You think it’s bad for your health, do you?’
Because Simon was still naïve, he’d nodded. Dale punched Simon in the gut, swift, hard. He’d never been punched before he came inside, well at least not since the school playground, and never with any real force. He folded, dropping onto the floor in a heap. Dale kicked him, two, three sharp kicks. It was a swift going over. A warning, a demonstration of the hierarchy and structure, delivered with cold efficiency. Simon understood the lesson. Nothing was as bad for his health as crossing the Dales. The risk the Dales and their gang presented was all-pervasive and imminent. Simon was threatened with words and without them: in the yard, in the canteen, in the shower. Luckily, a better room came up further along the corridor. Quieter. Somehow, Rick Dale managed to wrangle a move. Simon never asked how. This wasn’t a place where curiosity was rewarded. Best to keep your head down, your mouth shut.
His latest cellmate, Leon, was better. He was clean enough, decent about privacy and he didn’t steal Simon’s stuff. They sometimes traded cereal packets or a teabag for a coffee sachet. Simon had long since learnt to supress the impulse to just give someone something, it was viewed with suspicion. Everything had to be traded to keep the equilibrium.
Still, Simon only managed five or six hours of sleep per night. He was never exhausted; the days weren’t full enough to help push him towards that longed for unconsciousness. He wished he could still drink until he passed out. Blacked out. Blocked it out. Now more than ever. But that wasn’t an option.
At 7.30 a.m. the cells were unlocked. They were given breakfast, served from a hatch. It sounded good, breakfast being served, not having to dash around a kitchen, hunting out cereal, milk, a mug, but not being given any choice as to what you might want to eat was just another punishment. He couldn’t sling a couple of rashers of bacon under the grill if he fancied a bacon butty, or wonder how he wanted his eggs that morning: scrambled, fried, poached. They ate what they were given, sitting on benches. No one spoke at breakfast. That, at least, suited him. He needed time each day to adjust. To remember why he was there.
At 8.20 they were moved to work. Simon made hairnets. He sometimes wondered whether there was a genuine market for hairnets anymore, or whether this menial job had been created to humiliate. To keep hands busy, self-esteem low. Working was classed as a Purposeful Activity. They structured the day so that there were as many hours of Purposeful Activity as possible. Library time, exercise, work, the meetings. Not that you got to pick and choose. You couldn’t drift from one thing to the other, like an after-school club or an all-inclusive holiday resort. Everything had to be applied for, granted, regimented. Everything was given and could be taken away.
Initially, Simon hadn’t applied for anything. He had been occupied dealing with the withdrawal from alcohol. All he could do was curl up on his bunk, tight like a fist and feel glad that the door was shut and locked. He’d screamed, shaken, cried, begged, sworn, kicked. When he got through that, he realised he needed to fill his days or he’d go mad. If he wasn’t already gone. He liked to think he chose to work, to apply for a library and a gym pass, but maybe they broke him. Maybe he’d been conditioned, so much so that he was unaware that even choosing to participate wasn’t his choice.
There was a period of the day that they called Association Time. This was when the inmates got to chat to one another, play pool or watch television. Some used the rowing machine or exercise bike which sat on the wing. There was also a laundry and a small shower cubicle. Simon loathed Association Time because, perversely, any sort of hint that this was free time only served to highlight that they had no such thing. It was time to kill. To smother. Extinguish. Endure.
Admittedly, it was not a particularly taxing regime, but it was far from stimulating. And it certainly wasn’t the holiday camp which some commentators would have the British middle classes believe. The area where Simon ‘associated’ was desperately cramped, uncomfortably warm. It smelt of testosterone, fear and disappointment. The smell clung to him, forced its way up his nose and into his mouth. Choking him.
The exercise yard was no better. It was a lot like a school playground but with bigger thugs. It was surrounded by high walls, topped with barbed wire. If a bird ever flew into the yard, the men would stop and stare, sometimes cluster. Grown men captivated! It was horrifying. Then the bird would get startled and fly away. Some of the men would watch it until it was a dot. They radiated longing and fury. They couldn’t do what a fucking scrap of a bird could.
Millie’s birthday. The date banged around his head. It defied logic. One day was like the next in here, and yet Millie’s birthday was remaining stubbornly important to him. He decided to spend a bit of time recalling her past birthdays. The six he had seen. It was something new to think about, at least. There was a clown at one, he remembered spinning plates. But then Simon had dropped them. Daisy had made a fuss. Said he shou
ldn’t have been joining in, he was too drunk, and that the tricks were for the kids anyway. It was an uncomfortable memory. Seared with regret and embarrassment. He thought they’d had a puppet show party once. But he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember.
He could remember her being born though. When Millie was first born Daisy had struggled, not him. She’d said she felt caged. Confined. She’d complained that she couldn’t so much as go to the loo on her own anymore. She said she felt she’d lost herself. Simon had called it that. Struggling. The doctor had called it postnatal depression. Simon hadn’t liked the label, he’d thought it was too fierce, too defining, and he’d tried to protect his wife from it. She’d screamed at him that he didn’t understand, that he couldn’t protect her from anything. He’d taken time off work and managed all the childcare: nappies, bathing, soothing. Daisy did at least manage to breastfeed Millie, but she’d looked out of the window whilst doing so, seemingly ignoring their rooting, snuffling, gulping child. Rose and Connie visited, ostensibly to help out but they hadn’t been much help, not really. Rose had repeatedly tutted and muttered, ‘I don’t understand. She’s wanted a baby for so long. How can she be depressed now?’ The world was very black and white to Rose. Connie had mostly stroked a crying Daisy’s hair and murmured, ‘It’s OK, let it all out.’
Millie’s care had fallen almost exclusively to him. He hadn’t minded. Unquestionably, he would have liked it if his wife had felt well and happy, if she had been as comfortable and delighted with their child as he was, but secretly he had enjoyed how much time he got to spend with his baby daughter. He’d been longing for her too, just like Daisy. Other husbands complained that their wives excluded them when a newborn was brought home. Other wives made their husbands feel clumsy and in the way. At least he didn’t have to deal with that.
Babies came out red, wrinkled; they were largely indistinguishable from one another. That’s what he’d always thought when he’d visited their friends’ countless newborns. He thought they gathered up their looks and personality at about two or three years old. But Millie was perfection from the get-go. When she cried so hard that her back arched and her face turned puce, when she threw up on an outfit that he’d carefully coaxed her wiggling body into (for the third time that day), even when she smelt of urine or worse, she was perfection. The love he felt when he held her close and just inhaled her – all Sudocrem and baby lotion newness – cracked him open, like a nut. Left him exposed. She was so determined and alive. Whilst she was just a scrap, she was a soul, a being, a force to be reckoned with. He couldn’t get enough of her. He was the first person she smiled at. It inflated his heart, her smile. Every damn time. Really, he felt his heart swell, grow. He’d happily sit for hours just holding Millie. Breathing her in, running his fingers carefully over her sprouting, golden hair. He even sang to her. He was a tuneless bugger, didn’t do any of the songs justice but he didn’t care because Millie seemed to like his singing. Mostly he sang hits from the 90s but sometimes old tunes from the 70s that he’d grown up with. Love ballads. He liked to sing Stevie Wonder’s, ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’ as he held her close to his chest and jiggled her up and down, dancing around the room. Because she was, without a doubt. Because it was love like he’d never known.
He’d held her tight, until eventually Daisy had stretched out her arms, ready to take their baby.
The next thing he knew Millie was walking, tottering from one piece of furniture to the next. Then running, dancing, leaping. All babies seemed to grow, change and develop so rapidly. You’d blink, and that stage would be over, on to the next thing. He wondered how much he would miss in the time he was away. Would she even recognise him?
Would it matter?
He had time to think, in prison. Lots of it. He couldn’t do anything other than think. He understood everything now, it was clear. It hadn’t been the baby blues that Daisy had suffered from. It was guilt. Or perhaps grief for the man who had dumped her. He assumed the other man had dumped her or else why would she have stayed? And the beautiful baby he’d sang to? She wasn’t his daughter. When he had been drunk, he had been angry. Now he was sober, he hurt.
27
Chapter 27, Daisy
It is 7 p.m. by the time we all finish up in the restaurant, milkshakes are slurped, paper napkins are scrunched into balls and the bill is settled. When I come back from the toilets and start to try to round up the girls, get them to make a move to the station, I am met with resistance. They are flagging, exhausted. Peter had arrived for supper as promised, so he and Lucy have two cars between them.
‘I know, how about I take Luke, Auriol, Fran and Flora home. That way Connie and Lucy can drive you and your guests back to yours,’ Peter suggests, as though the idea has just occurred to him. He’s good at dissembling but I’m not fooled, it’s clear that this fact has been discussed whilst I was in the loo.
His suggestion is met with loud approval from everyone other than me. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that,’ I say, turning to Connie and Lucy. ‘We’re far too far out of your way. It will add so much time onto your journey.’ They both live in Notting Hill, just minutes away from one another, I’m North London.
‘Well, Sophie is staying at yours and I’d have had to pick her up tomorrow anyway,’ points out Connie. ‘How about I stay over at yours too. I can borrow some pyjamas, pick up a toothbrush. I can help out with this lot tonight.’ She nods towards Millie’s guests. ‘I’ll make hot chocolate.’ The six youngest girls are jumping up and down on the spot now, clapping their hands in glee at the idea of more treats to come.
‘Oh, an adult sleepover, fun,’ chips in Lucy. Her tone leaves me utterly confused as to whether she thinks a sleepover is heaven or hell, and most worryingly, whether she is planning on joining Connie and stopping over too. I throw Rose a desperate look but she just shrugs.
‘It will be a struggle with all of them on the train and tube, it’s a sensible plan,’ she says. Her practicality always overrules any emotional impulse. Sometimes I wonder whether we are related at all.
Connie proposes that she takes Sophie, Millie and India and that I travel with Lucy and the other three little girls. I really could do without having to make small talk with Lucy for the next few hours, but Connie’s plan makes sense and I realise that refusing would be beyond rude. Besides, I can’t expect the three girls to travel with Cruella de Vil without either me or the birthday girl for company, and I know Millie will refuse to be separated from her two besties. I feel hustled, but I can’t stem the tide of these proposed logistics. That’s the way it is if you are part of a big gang of friends, sometimes you must go with the flow, even if you’d rather pluck out your own eyes.
The girls climb into the back of Lucy’s incredibly smart Jag. It’s a people carrier, even though they are only a family of three and probably don’t need a vehicle this size. It’s like a tank, a very comfortable one. We’re up above the rest of the world, more powerful. More protected. I’m grateful for that at least. I feel nervous. I know Connie is a careful driver, but I wish Millie was travelling with me. Truthfully, I’d like her at my side always. I force myself to fight that instinct on a constant basis because I know it’s unhealthy. The girls giggle, impressed at the clean, soft, leather interior. Lucy’s car is immaculate, it looks as though it’s just been driven out of the showroom. It’s quite a contrast to how ours always looks. It’s constantly littered with crisp packets, library books, school permission slips, loose coins and banana skins.
Lucy drives carefully, fastidiously keeping within the speed limits. ‘There are cameras everywhere on the roads,’ she comments. ‘I don’t want a ticket. It’s so inconvenient.’ I’ve never imagined Lucy to be the sort of person to care about limits, she doesn’t seem to accept that rules apply to her too. Lucy and I are never alone together. If we see each other, it’s in a group, usually Connie glues us together. I’d like to sit in silence, but Lucy has other ideas. Her irrepressible confidence means she’s
never been one for small talk. She cuts to the chase.
‘How’s Simon?’
I shift uncomfortably. ‘Fine.’ I’m too honest for my own good so I find myself adding, ‘I imagine.’
Lucy raises an immaculately plucked eyebrow. Her brow wrinkles just enough for me to realise she is not having Botox, however she is aging beautifully. The woman has always had all the luck. Lucy is tall and slim, with enormous green eyes that are framed by thick lashes. I used to think her long, swooshy hair was her greatest asset but she looks stunning with her new elfin crop. So maybe it’s her large breasts or her thin waist that are her best assets.
‘You imagine? But you don’t know? You’re still not visiting him?’ she probes.
I glance in the mirror to see if Millie’s friends are listening in to our conversation. They’re not. One is already asleep, the other two are wearing headphones and listening to their own music, or maybe an audio book, I think hopefully. ‘Correct. I’m not visiting him.’
‘Wow, you sure can hold a grudge.’ There’s a smile in her voice. I think that she’s referring to the grudge I hold against her as well as my relationship with Simon. I shoot her a look that is designed to silence. It would probably terrify any other person; it certainly quells the kids in my class – and their parents – when necessary. Lucy doesn’t take her eyes off the road and doesn’t notice it at all. She seems to think my anger is quirky, endearing.
