The Dead Ex

by Jane Corry

  ‘You were telling me about growing up in the country. Was it boring?’

  ‘Not at all.’ I close my eyes. I imagine the green fields and …

  ‘Fuck,’ he says suddenly.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  He’s staring through the window. Outside is a woman. Medium height. Medium build. But it’s her hair that stands out. A mass of red corkscrew curls. She is staring back.

  Clearly they know each other.

  He leaps up. ‘Back in a minute.’

  I watch them through the glass. Suddenly he grabs one of her arms, but she shakes him off, waving her finger at him. Looks like she hates his guts. Swiftly, hands shaking, I reach into my handbag for my phone.

  When David returns to the table he is clearly edgy, rearranging the as-yet unused cutlery and making no apology for his absence. Nor does he explain who the woman was. Our next course arrives, and we each pick at our separate plates. ‘You’ve lost your appetite too,’ he comments drily.

  I nod, not mentioning it had never been there.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ I gaze around the restaurant with its crisp white tablecloths and fancy napkins in fan-shapes, trying to stay calm. ‘It’s an amazing experience. I’ve never been anywhere like this before. And I probably won’t again.’

  ‘I very much doubt that.’ He is looking at me once more. Not the dark suspicious look. The other, kinder one. ‘How about coffee? I make a great cappuccino.’

  What a sleazeball. I’ve met men like David before. They are never happy with what they have. Instead, they are constantly trying to prove themselves by going one better or, in my case, one younger. I swallow my mouthful. ‘Don’t you need to get home to your wife?’

  ‘She’s in our Kingston house tonight. I have another place round the corner from the office for when I work late. We can chat properly there.’

  It’s an offer that’s too good to refuse.

  31

  Vicki

  5 April 2018

  The key turns, disturbing my thoughts. My heart jumps.

  Then I take in the woman standing at the door and am swamped with relief.

  It’s my solicitor. A visit so soon might mean that something important has happened. When I was a governor, a woman was released before she’d even spent a night inside. New evidence had emerged which showed she was innocent.

  ‘Sit down,’ says Penny. Her face is serious. ‘I’m afraid a second witness has come forward after hearing about the case on the news.’

  Her eyes are on mine as if X-raying my insides, just as the machine had done during part of the frisking process to make sure I hadn’t secreted drugs on my person. ‘She was walking her dog in the cul-de-sac where David and Tanya’s house is. You ran past her, apparently, carrying something in your hand. She thought it might have been a chain.’

  Shit! I don’t remember seeing anyone. ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Then what was it?’

  My mouth is dry. I suddenly feel very foolish.

  ‘If you want to know, it was a Welsh love spoon that my father had given my mother. David must have taken it in the split. It didn’t belong to him. So I took it.’

  Her face expresses disbelief. ‘Weren’t you rather preoccupied to think of that?’

  ‘Why should they have it?’

  ‘So where is it now?’

  ‘The police took it from me when I was arrested. It should be with my possessions.’

  Penny sighs. ‘The thing is that, even if we can prove that, there’s been another development. Apparently, when you left the prison service, there had been a series of thefts. Equipment had been stolen. Whistles, regulation jackets, ligature knives … that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes. It was one of the reasons I’d been unpopular with some of the staff. I came down heavy on them about the thefts.’

  ‘Your key chain also went missing.’

  ‘So it did. I reported it myself.’

  ‘And you didn’t think of this earlier when we discussed it?’

  ‘It had slipped my mind.’

  ‘Really?’ She doesn’t actually say that but I sense it.

  ‘You’d signed in for it that very day, I believe.’

  ‘But I put it in my locker when I went for a shower and when I came back, it had gone. The keys weren’t on it. I’d handed those in. It was just the belt and chain.’

  ‘OK …,’ says my solicitor slowly. ‘But the trouble is that the police searched your apartment again. They went through it with a fine-tooth comb. And now they’ve found a prison belt. With a long dog-tooth metal chain.’

  ‘What?’ I go cold.

  ‘It was wrapped up in your old prison uniform in a packing crate in the cellar with other bits and pieces from your previous job, including a mobile phone which should have been handed in. The same cellar which you neglected to mention when they first took a look around.’

  To be honest, I’m surprised they hadn’t found it before. The trapdoor lies beneath a loose piece of carpet in my studio. Sometimes I forget to close it. This can be a hazard. Once I tripped over it.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a chain there. Or a phone. Honestly.’

  My solicitor gives me a doubtful look.

  ‘Unless,’ I say uncertainly, ‘it got caught up with my uniform by mistake when I left. I was in quite a state mentally at the time. And I haven’t been through that box since.’ I shiver. ‘I haven’t had the strength to do so after what happened there.’

  My solicitor sighs. ‘Even if the jury does accept this, they’re not going to take too kindly to your admission that you attacked Tanya.’

  ‘I told you. She attacked me first. I was just defending myself.’

  ‘So you say.’

  How can I, a former pillar of the justice system, be in such a hole? I hang my head in shame as Penny leaves the room. I can see Tanya’s face all too clearly in my head. Of course I’d fought her back. That was one of the first things I’d been trained to do …

  I was still a raw recruit. ‘You’re on the landing today.’ The prison officer spoke as if inviting a challenge. ‘Know what that means?’

  Sure. The landing was where the men slept. Sometimes there was a second community lounge up there too. Visitors weren’t allowed in this area. But it was my first day on the job and I wasn’t meant to be doing high-risk work yet.

  ‘You’ve got to make sure they stay in their pads. Don’t take any shit about how they need to see the nurse.’

  ‘Who’s my partner?’

  ‘Off sick. Just you today.’

  He was grinning. Testing me. Just like Dad had said they would.

  There was nothing for it but to go up the stairs. They were broad and modern with open struts just wide enough to see through to the floor beneath. Along the walls on the landing itself were rows of doors like a cheap hotel. Men were banging them. ‘I need my meds, for fuck’s sake,’ one was shouting.

  This was inhuman.

  ‘Thank God I’m out of here,’ said an officer, walking past me on the stairs. ‘I’ve been on all night and they haven’t let up. Still that’s what you get with perverts.’

  I felt my stomach dipping down with fear. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Didn’t they tell you, love? This is the sex offenders’ wing.’

  What? I stared at the officer. Surely there’d been a mistake. No one had said. Then I recalled the nudges and the winks when I’d started that morning. Someone had set me up. Or else I was being tested to show my mettle.

  ‘Never been in one before, Smith? Good luck.’

  By 11.30, my head was ringing with the shouts, pleas and threats.

  ‘Officer, I need a crap, and there’s no fucking toilet paper in here.’

  ‘Get me out of here, I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘What about my human rights? I’m going to get my solicitor to sort out you bastards.’

  This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be.

  ‘Miss, do something. PLE
ASE.’

  This was after I’d made the mistake of talking back to one of them through a closed door. Instantly, they’d seized on the fact that I was a woman.

  Even worse, I needed a pee myself, but there was no one to keep watch while I went. Surely this was against employment regulations.

  At last! A loud bell sounded accompanied by a metallic click. Each door opened at the same time. How was I going to manage all these men?

  ‘Stay in line,’ I shouted as they pushed past me, jostling down the stairs. So much for an ‘orderly fashion’.

  ‘Fuck that, miss,’ retorted a man with a closely shaved head. ‘I’m bleeding starving. You need more bloody staff. Going to talk to the IMB, I am.’

  The Independent Monitoring Board is a panel of volunteers from the public who visit prisoners to make sure that the proper standards of care and decency are being observed. An inmate, for example, might complain about the temperature of the cells or that the food portions are too small. The IMB then forwards this to higher authorities. It’s a good system in my view. Frankly, I had some sympathy for the man with the shaved head. As I was beginning to learn, staff shortages caused huge problems for all of us.

  There were just two men left now. One walked with hunched shoulders, revealing a large red dragon tattooed on his neck. Another was loitering at his door as if he didn’t want to leave, despite the fuss he’d been making earlier.

  ‘I need to show you summat, miss,’ he said in a soft voice.

  Male prisoners often called women staff ‘miss’, regardless of marital status. That was something else we’d been taught.

  ‘Look.’

  He was beckoning inside.

  Never go into a pad unless someone knows your whereabouts. That’s what our training manual had said.

  Hesitantly, I put my head round the door.

  ‘Look at my bloody toilet. It’s fucking bunged up.’

  I walked over to inspect. That was when I felt his hand on my head, tugging at my roots and pushing me towards the faeces which were rising up over the bowl.

  Dad’s words rang round my head. ‘They’ll eat you alive.’

  No bloody way.

  ‘TAKE YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF ME.’

  There was a horrible clunking sound as his head hit the radiator. Oh my God. I’ve killed him!

  Then he got up and lunged towards me.

  Swiftly, I twisted his arm behind his back in the ‘holding’ position while shouting for help. ‘Make as much noise as possible,’ the self-defence instructor had told us. ‘Then others will be aware of your location.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ yelled two officers bursting in.

  ‘She bloody assaulted me!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I panted, wiping the sweat from my face. ‘Everything’s under control.’

  If only I could say the same all these years later. But one thing is clear. If a jury hears about my self-defence training, each one of those twelve might well assume I am capable of inflicting serious harm on someone else. And they’d be right.

  32

  Helen

  I’ve seen fancy loft conversions like this in magazines. You could put five other flats plus mine in this open space and still have room for more. There’s even an L-shaped white leather sofa by the huge paned windows overlooking the city, seven floors below. The security system downstairs was something! David had to enter a code on the alarm pad before we could get into the lift. Talk about Fort Knox.

  The enormous bed, with loads of cushions all over it, is at the other end of the room with a black-and-white frieze behind it, showing famous London silhouettes like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. There are no dividing walls apart from a door which leads into the bathroom, as I discover when I need the loo. It has automatic lighting and taps. Neat.

  When I come out, David is opening a bottle. The cork seems to be a bit of a struggle. But eventually it pops open. ‘My first wife always said I was handy with both a corkscrew and the coffee machine. One of my few pluses, apparently!’

  He sounds rather bitter. ‘So, what do you think of my place?’ he says, handing me a glass.

  ‘There’s enough space,’ I reply, not wanting to flatter him. I suspect he gets enough of that.

  He nods. ‘I have a phobia about being cooped up in small places.’

  ‘Why?’

  He turns away. ‘Reminds me of the army.’

  ‘It must have been scary,’ I say gently, in case he wants to tell me more.

  He looks back at me. Hard. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What does matter to you?’ I find myself asking.

  ‘Sure you’re a photographer and not a journalist?’

  I laugh lightly. ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Well … you should make a trip to Dartmoor. You could take some amazing shots there. Have you ever been?’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In the south-west. There’s this tor – that’s like a really steep hill – with mountainous rocks at the summit. I love to climb right to the top and look down. It’s like looking down on the universe.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful.’ This is a lie. I can’t stand the countryside.

  I glance at the pictures on the walls in chrome frames. Most look like the girl in his office – his daughter. But there’s one of an older man with a top lip so narrow that it almost isn’t there. He has eyes that stare out of the frame and a bald head.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘You are a hack, aren’t you?’

  I try to make light of it. ‘Like I said before, a photographer needs to be curious.’

  David bends his head slightly as if conceding my point. ‘He’s my father, actually.’ His face tightens. ‘Taught me a thing or two, I can tell you.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You really don’t give up! He … well, I suppose he showed me how to stand on my own two feet.’

  ‘Like me,’ I say. ‘My parents started off without any help but now they’re doing really well. They say we have to learn to do the same.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I have a brother and a sister.’

  ‘Are you close?’

  I consider. ‘Reasonably.’

  He looks wistful for a moment. ‘I was an only child. Shame, really.’

  His hand begins tracing the outline of my shoulders. ‘My mother died of cancer when I was twelve. That’s why I support this hospice in Oxfordshire. In fact, I’m driving down in a few weeks to open a new wing.’

  That’s actually rather touching. But it’s time to stop talking now and get down to business. I make sympathetic noises and then I lean in towards him, and nibble his right lobe. He makes a low sound in his throat; I had a feeling he was an ear man. Then I press my lips to his, sucking him in and trying to ignore that soufflé breath. He seems to be waiting, not wanting to take the lead. Is this a good or bad sign?

  So I trail my fingers along the inside of his thigh and I can see him getting hard. I straddle him, inviting him to slide his hand up under my bra and squeeze my nipple. It hurts but I don’t want him to stop. His breathing gets faster. Then he takes me by surprise and rips my top off altogether before flipping me on my back so that now he is on top.

  I gasp as he bites my neck. His eyes are closed as if he’s in another world. I feel his hands move down my body towards my knickers.

  I can’t believe it was that easy.

  33

  Vicki

  9 May 2018

  I’ve just been to the showers. There was a used tampon blocking the drain. Not the first. When I complained, the guard just said she’d ‘look into it’. No attempt was made to clear the offending item.

  Now it’s 8 p.m. Lockdown. Bedtime is early in prison. Despite being here a month, I’m still not used to it. When I was a governor, this used to be my quiet hour to catch up on admin. Some prisoners have televisions in their rooms. I have chosen not to because of the flashing light, which can sometimes set me off.

  Instead, I sit and r
ead, although it’s difficult to concentrate now that they’ve moved me from solitary (for my own safety) to a double because of overcrowding. I have a cellmate. She spends her time either pacing up and down or crying.

  ‘Do you have kids?’ she asks me fiercely.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Then you’ll never bloody understand.’

  Patrick …

  ‘My three are with my mother-in-law,’ she continues.

  Three? She barely looks old enough.

  ‘That cow has always hated me. God knows what she’s telling them about me now. My solicitor says I’ll get ten years. By the time I come out, they won’t know me,’ she sobs.

  I try to comfort her. ‘They’ll be able to visit,’ I suggest.

  She snarls. ‘Think I want them coming to this place? ’Sides, I’m ashamed. I should never have done what I did.’

  I suspect her crime has something to do with drugs. There are needle marks all the way up her bare, sinewy arms. She reminds me of someone else. Someone I met in the mother-and-baby unit a long time ago …

  It was September 2008. I’d come a long way since that incident in the sex offenders’ wing. Rather than being reprimanded, I’d made my mark. My ‘ballsy’ actions had helped me to win respect: ‘Vicki Smith,’ I overheard one officer say in the dining hall. ‘Tougher than she looks. You don’t want to mess with that one. Rising up through the ranks. One to watch.’

  He was right. Several promotions followed and I was now a senior governor at a women’s prison. (There are several governor ranks leading to the very top post of Governor Number One.) When I rang to tell Dad, he was only interested in telling me about the girl next door who’d just had her third baby and had been four years below me at school.

  ‘Don’t leave it too late, lass. I’d like to be a grandad one day.’

  To be honest, I had never felt much of a maternal stirring. But then, at the new prison, I discovered the MBU. The mother-and-baby unit.

  Of course, we’d covered this in my training. Women prisoners were allowed to keep their babies until they were eighteen months old. After that, they were either brought up by a member of the family or fostered or adopted according to the stark, easy-to-revise lines which had been part of the written exam.