by Cerys du Lys
First on her list was Danny Taylor.
§
Most people go through life oblivious to how thin a veneer of civilized comfort we cling to. That monthly salary, the comforts of heating and power and supermarkets full of fresh food – or restaurants and bars for those nights when we really can’t be bothered. But beneath that veneer it is a jungle, where sometimes mere survival is all we can ever hope to achieve.
Most people barely give all that a single thought.
But when reality rears up in your face it suddenly becomes clear just how precarious these comforts are, how easy it is to topple and fall and lose everything.
That is what happened to Eleanor Dryton almost two years ago, and now... now Eleanor had nothing.
Now, she stepped out through the prison doors into the damp morning air, a chilly drizzle drifting down, and the sky a steely gray. Cars rushed by, a red double-decker, a couple of black cabs; the lights of the newsagent across the street glowed eerily bright in the dreary morning gloom.
She was snatched out of her reverie when another cab sped past, kicking up an arc of dirty spray in her direction.
Welcome back to real life.
Two years ago she’d lived in a six-bedroom mock-Tudor home backing onto a golf course in commuter-belt Surrey. She’d worked three days a week in financial consultancy for a portfolio of charities. She would meet with friends for lunch and sometimes that lunch would extend to another bottle of fizz and an afternoon by the river. She dressed in Stella McCartney and Helmut Lang and had an account at Harvey Nichols.
She had a husband.
Now: she stood in the rain and all she had in the world were the contents of her shoulder bag and the pockets of her old Muubaa black leather jacket, and the plastic monitoring tag, like a chunky watch around her left ankle. At least the tag was black, like the rest of her outfit.
Wasn’t this where some old friend should roll up in a clapped-out car, all forgiven, ready to help you get back on your feet? Only in the films and TV dramas.
El – she’d shortened her name when she was inside to help her stand out less – had a purse with about fifty pounds in it, a cheap watch, and a stick of lip balm in one pocket of her Muubaa. She had her wedding and engagement rings tucked into a pouch in her bag; along with the jacket and her Michael Kors boots, they’d been taken into safe-keeping when she went down and she was amazed they hadn’t vanished at some point in the last twenty months. She had a wash bag with a few cheap toiletries, and some of the clothes she’d worn inside – t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, joggers and underwear – and that was about it.
A life stripped bare.
She reached up, teased the bobble out of her hair and shook her shoulder-length copper locks free. Jeremy had always said her hair was like a halo of flame. She’d kept it raked back and tied up when she was inside, another attempt to stand out less.
She tipped her head back and felt that soft rain on her cheeks. Now the day was no longer oppressive and gray. Suddenly she felt as if she could breathe for the first time in months.
She was free.
Outside.
§
She was out and she was surrounded by people and she’d never known panic like this before...
Other kinds of panic, yes. The panic of climbing out of the prison van, of entering prison for the first time. The looks as you pass officers and other inmates. The moment when it strikes you that this really is your reality now. The first time your cell door is shut on you and you really are banged up.
But now...
She had been given an Oyster card carrying a few pounds’ credit, but had never used one before. When the bus came she hung back, even though she was at the head of the queue. She watched as others stepped on board, casually swiping wallets and purses across the reader and then she stepped back into the line, climbed on, and swiped her card in its little plastic wallet. Nothing happened, but then nothing had happened for the other people either – they’d just swiped and found a seat.
She found a place to sit, one of the last double seats that were unoccupied.
She sat by the window and stared out into the gray morning.
Moments later a big black guy took the seat next to her, and his bulk overflowed into her space, meaty thigh and arm pressing against her.
What do you do when that happens? Is it rude to edge away? Do you say something? How do you not keep over-thinking every tiny thing?
She shuffled in her seat, but still he pressed against her.
She felt sick.
Her heart was pounding so hard that surely everyone could hear it, even over the sound of the engine.
She couldn’t even swallow, her throat suddenly dry.
She closed her eyes.
She just had to get through this. Each second, each minute survived was victory, a small step on the way to the only thing left for her.
Revenge.
§
She shut herself in her room, sat on the narrow bed, and hugged her knees to her chest.
She was out. She was free. And all she wanted was to shut that door so she could be alone in a room that was barely any bigger than her old cell.
It was evening now, and the guy who had come to install the electronic tag’s base station had finally gone. He’d been friendly enough, but El hadn’t been able to tell if he was just chatting to cover awkward silences or if he’d been pressing for something more. She knew many people found her attractive: she was young – still not thirty – and slim with a bit of curve. The guy knew this was her first day out: she must be gagging for it, he was probably thinking.
Or maybe not. Her social radar was out; it was as if she’d forgotten how to read people’s intentions. Prison had changed how she saw people. She seemed to have lost the ability to assume the good in anybody. When you’re inside, it’s a given that everybody wants something and everyone lies.
She’d felt that panic again, as he’d fussed about and joked about the weather – the rain had become heavier as the day went on. When he finally went, she’d stood with her back against the door, breathing as if she’d just run a marathon.
And now she sat on the bed in a sparsely furnished room in a hostel run by a prisoners’ rehabilitation organization.
She just had to get through this.
Six weeks on home detention curfew, electronically tagged to ensure she stayed in this room between the hours of seven in the evening and seven the next morning. She would go to the Job Centre to look for work – there was no chance of returning to her old role advising charities on their finances, given her record. She would check in regularly with her parole officer. She would recover what remained of her old belongings, put into storage somewhere by an aunt who no longer wanted anything to do with her; and then she would take great relish in getting rid of those awful jeans and joggers she’d worn inside. She must not leave the country, or travel anywhere that would take her too far away to get back to her room in time for curfew. She must not make contact with anyone associated with her case.
Six weeks.
She had endured far worse.
Six weeks before she could hunt down Danny Taylor.
She just had to get through.
2
Free.
She’d been six weeks on the outside and now, at last, she was untagged.
The panic attacks were not so bad these days. She had learned techniques to keep them under control. She had acclimatized herself to crowds and open spaces, to talking to strangers when she had to in shops and banks, to working shifts at a local supermarket, filling shelves or collecting stray trolleys in the sprawling car park.
She had got through, she had broken none of the rules governing her early release, and now she could track down Danny.
§
Danny Taylor.
Danny was a gym bunny, one of those guys you see in the free weights area, grunting and sweating with the others, all of them that broad-shouldered, no-neck shape. Every exposed part of
his body was covered in tattoos, an eclectic, unplanned mix of St George’s flags, lions and dragons, and sweeping Maori tribal markings.
He was the total opposite of Jeremy, which was why their friendship had always struck her as odd.
Jeremy... even now, two years on, she found it hard to think about him; there were too many complicated, mixed emotions there, even when it was only a case of thinking about someone who embodied all that he was not.
Such an empty life now. But she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on all that she had lost. That way lay ruin and yet more heartbreak.
The phone box was the kind that was only partially shielded from the elements – not much more than a clear plastic hood around the phone – but still it smelled of urine. Hookers’ cards were stuck to every available surface. Busty Belinda, Strictly Sue, Schoolgirl Sally. They all seemed to follow the same pattern of alliteration tying a name to a particular kink, and each was accompanied by a glamour model photo no doubt culled from the internet.
She picked up the handset and keyed in Danny’s number.
He answered on the third ring, just as she thought it was going to go to voicemail.
“Yo, Danny here, what you wanting?”
He was so Jeremy’s opposite.
“Hey, Danny,” she said, surprised at how easy it was to keep her voice calm and friendly when she’d feared she might dry up altogether. “It’s El... Eleanor – Jeremy’s wife.” His widow. “It’s been a long time.”
There was a slight pause, then: “Hey, hey, hey! How you doing? Hey, how’s things? I heard about... well, you know. Good you’re back in circulation.”
“Things are ... well, they’re getting better. Listen, Danny, I’m trying to get my life back on track again and you were close to Jeremy. I just thought it’d be good to catch up. I’m sure there’s stuff to go through.”
She’d rehearsed this call so many times in her head. The right level of couldn’t care less; just the right little girl lost tone to bring out all that testosterone in him. Just a hint of vulnerability and need, mixed through with a subtext of responsibilities to old friends.
“How you finding it?” he asked. “Must get lonely, coming out. I know what it’s like getting out of stir.”
“You... you’ve done time, too?”
“Couple of stretches. Nothing major. You know how it is.”
“It’d be good to have someone to talk to, Danny. Someone who understands what it’s like.” Laying it on just a little more heavily now. “I feel so alone out here.”
“You fancy a drink some time?”
He couldn’t have made it much easier for her even if he’d had a clue what was going on.
§
She’d learned how to do cheap and trashy. She’d learned a lot in her time inside.
She got to the bar ahead of Danny, and perched herself on a bar stool so he couldn’t help but pause in the doorway and let his eyes track the line of her long, stockinged legs, the mesh a fine fishnet, the dark tops just showing beneath the hem of her little black skirt. Cheap black stilettos, a black t-shirt and her Muubaa leather jacket completed the outfit, complemented by plenty of mascara, teal eye shadow and lips painted a glossy bronze to pick out the darker tones in her fiery hair.
So maybe she brought a little class to cheap and trashy, but she was sure this was the kind of thing to catch Danny Taylor’s eye.
He arrived a few minutes after El. He paused in the doorway, spotted her, and then he did a double take and his eyes roamed up and down her length, before finally he approached.
She’d forgotten that swagger in his walk. The gym thing again: thighs too pumped to swing easily past each other, heavily muscled arms unable to hang vertically against a broad, inverted triangle chest. He was wearing faded jeans with rips across the thighs, Adidas trainers, and a football shirt she knew she should recognize. His hair was buzz-cut short, not much more than dark stubble, and his eyes always made you double-take and wonder why they were so startling until you realized that one was blue and the other green.
What she had not expected was the complexity of her response to him.
Danny had always set off lots of triggers for her. He came from such a different world, and for the longest time she had struggled to see what it was that tied him to Jeremy. He made her feel like a snob for reacting as she did. Perhaps it was only prison that had corrected her of that guilt: on the inside she had encountered women from so many different backgrounds, if she was a snob then surely it would show up when she was inside? But they were mostly just ordinary women, regardless of their crimes and their backgrounds.
So now she was confident that her reaction was not due to snobbery, yet still she’d always felt antagonized by his cocky, wide-boy presence. A jealousy thing, perhaps? That Jeremy had seen things in Danny that she had not? It wasn’t until much later that she’d come to understand a bit more clearly about her husband’s criminal double life.
Now, though... Now Danny set off a whole bunch of other triggers, too, ones she hadn’t anticipated. Alongside that antagonism there was an unexpected lift in her heart when she saw him. This was the first time in... in how long? The first time she had seen someone from her old life who didn’t appear to be loaded down with judgment and distaste for her.
And more than that, he was a link with her late husband. He had been a part of Jeremy’s life, and somehow she found herself able to think in these terms and not feel that agonizing pain of loss. Was this what had been missing, all that time she had been forced to grieve alone? Perhaps grief must be shared before it can transform into something else, something more manageable.
“Hey, hey,” he said, spreading his arms as if to embrace her, then letting them drop as she hesitated – an unexpected show of sensitivity on his part.
“Sorry,” she said, feeling the need to explain. “I... I’m still re-learning how to be on the outside, you know?”
He nodded. “I know how it is,” he said. “Been there, seen it, done it.”
He pulled a bar stool closer to her and sat. “Get you a drink?”
“Vodka,” she said.
“Something in it?”
“I guess.”
They laughed, and he ordered drinks, a pint of Stella for himself and a vodka and tonic for her.
The bar was starting to fill up with the early evening crowd now. El peered around, feeling that sense of panic rising a little. Even six weeks after her release she found this happening: crowds, confined spaces, wide open spaces...
“It never leaves you,” said Danny. “Not once you’ve been inside a cell and they shut that door on you. Never goes.”
Bastard.
How was it that Danny Taylor, of all people, suddenly had a sensitive, insightful side? Had the world really changed that much while she’d been locked away?
§
“I never understood how you and Jeremy became friends.”
She was on her third vodka now, and she knew she’d have to be careful. She had never been able to hold her drink well, but now she was completely out of practice.
Danny barked a short laugh, then said, “It was only ever work, Eleanor.” It was the first time he’d used her name tonight. “Can I call you that?”
She nodded, and said, “But I didn’t know then that you worked with him. I didn’t have any idea what he was involved in.”
“I didn’t either,” said Danny. “I was never much more than the errand boy. I just did what I was told, and knew what I needed to know. You know how what I mean?”
She’d never been aware of any of it, until things started to unravel and she’d done what she could to cover Jeremy’s back. All she’d ever tried to do was protect him, and hold her life together.
She looked down into her drink. “I miss him.”
When she looked up Danny was studying her closely. “He made his choices,” he said. “Like I say, I only ever knew what I had to. I wish I could tell you more. You look like you need a bit of closure.”
/>
That damned sensitivity again. It wasn’t meant to be like this.
“Do you know who killed him?”
“It was an accident. It was all investigated at the time. You know that.”
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
It was Danny’s turn to look down into his drink.
“It won’t do any good,” he said.
“You were right, Danny. I need closure. I need answers. I know my husband had a whole other life that he kept from me until the end. I just need to know.”
“I don’t have those kind of answers, babe... Eleanor. I told you: I only know what I need to know, and Jerry–”
“He only ever knew what he needed to know, right?”
Danny shrugged.
“That’s what they kept pressing me for,” she said. “The police. The prosecuting barrister in my trial. They wanted to know where Jeremy fitted into the chain. Who gave him his orders. Who pulled the strings. It’s stuck in my head ever since. Someone gave Jeremy his orders, and that day that same person gave orders to someone else to kill my husband rather than let him go to trial.”
“I only know what I know.”
She reached out and put her hand on the wrist of the hand holding his beer. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to... It’s just so hard.”
He looked up and she saw understanding in those mismatched eyes.
Please don’t do sensitive!
For a moment she flashed back to that tagging guy the first night she was out. The way he’d chatted and flirted and how she was sure there was a running subtext of how she must be gagging for it after all that time inside.
The thought had repelled her then. But now... this was the first time in so long that anyone had shown her any kind of sympathy or attempt to understand. The first time she’d felt any kind of connection, even superficial.
Those eyes, blue and green, were studying her now, as if he was trying to work out what was going on in her head.
Sensitive had been bad enough, but now he was doing cute, too, and it was just too much.
