'You won't get a home visit until you've done three quarters of your time inside,' a skinny, Afro-Caribbean girl warned me. 'You won't get to work outside the prison until you've had the visit either.'
Ah well. It still beat Cookham Wood. I'd take a prison that looks like a stately home over a prison that looks like a prison any day of the week. As soon as I had got the introductions out of the way, I headed off to the dining room to get myself some food. I had arrived just in time for dinner and a day of travelling had given me quite an appetite.
The food was a huge improvement on the slop that Cookham Wood had served. It still wasn't a patch on Mum's but then again, not much really is. Most of the other inmates seemed to have been in the jail for quite a while and chatted loudly to one another as they ate but one girl sat in total silence with her eyes fixed firmly on her meal. She was a delicate little Chinese thing, who barely seemed old enough to watch a fifteen-rated movie, let alone do anything worthy of being sent to prison for.
'Are you all right there?' I asked her.
She looked up at me with a blank expression on her face. I knew how hard it was to be a prisoner in a foreign land so I slowly repeated the question and enunciated my words more clearly so that she would understand. She nodded her head, looking nervous, as if she wasn't used to people making the effort to communicate with her.
'I no speak English so good.'
'You speak it better than I speak Chinese,' I laughed. 'My name's Terry. I just got in today. And yours is?'
'Chan. I in for fraud and money launder.'
She might not have known much English but she had still proven that she was familiar with the standard prison conversation. The next question after, 'What's your name?' was always, 'What are you in for?'
Chan seemed very innocent compared to the other girls in the prison and had an endearing vulnerability to her. Talking to her reminded me of the conversations that I'd had with Mama Rosa because neither of us had a clue what the other one was on about but I still enjoyed her company.
'I'll tell you what,' I said. 'I'll make it my mission to teach you English whilst you're here. It'll give me something to do and you'll find it a lot easier to fit in when you know what everyone else is saying.'
'OK I like,' she nodded. 'I like a lot.'
Over the course of the next few weeks, Chan and I spent every evening together, going through useful words and phrases. Teaching her made me feel as if I had a sense of purpose. Life inside is very boring and monotonous so any goal that you can work towards is guaranteed to make your time less soul-destroying. She picked the language up very quickly and could soon speak enough to get by.
I also enrolled in classes of my own in the hope that it would count in my favour when the government made the final decision as to whether or not I was going to get my pardon. I did maths, first aid, health and safety and a course called CLAIT, which stands for Computer Literacy and Internet Technology. Learning new things was fun and I got to stand outside and have a fag with one of the English teachers during the break. It was nice to speak to somebody intelligent for a change. Her name was Louise and she was well spoken, polite and always had something interesting to say.
I had hoped that all the good work that I was doing would speed along the process so that I'd get out before Kelly had her baby but alas, it wasn't meant to be. On 5 August 2007, I received the news that her waters had broken and she had been rushed to hospital. Later that day, I rang home to check on her progress and was told that she had given birth to a beautiful baby boy. He weighed a whopping 8 pounds and was as healthy as could be. I was disappointed that I had missed out on yet another important chapter in the Daniels family history but also over the moon that we now had another new addition to the clan.
That night I thanked God for the precious gift that he had given us and prayed that I would be able to see the baby soon. I knew that East Sutton was the last prison that I would be in before I was granted my freedom and couldn't wait to hold my little nephew in my arms. I just wished that the government would hurry up and make their decision.
As the days went by, I became increasingly impatient. Seeing the other inmates going out to work was a constant reminder of the outside world. In English prisons you do half of your sentence inside and the other half on license so it would only be another couple of months before I got my home visit but I still wasn't sure that I could wait that long.
The only thing that I enjoyed about being inside was seeing Chan's English getting better and better. She progressed from hardly saying a word to being able to casually chat away to the other prisoners within the space of a few weeks. It was amazing how fast she could learn vocabulary. She would have probably ended up one hundred per cent fluent if she hadn't been deported part way through her sentence. We were in the middle of a study session when it happened and neither of us had any idea what was going on. One minute we were going through some phrases and the next thing she was being cuffed up and escorted out of the door.
Poor little Chan had tears streaming down her face as she was ordered into the back of a prison van. The authorities had given no prior warning that they were going to come for her. I was going to miss her terribly. I just hoped that she had a safe journey to China and enjoyed her life back home.
In the days that followed the deportation, I grew increasingly lethargic and spent more and more time in bed. It's difficult to gain the motivation to prise yourself from under the duvet when you know that there's nothing productive available for you to do. I was still doing my classes but they were only a couple of days a week, which gave me an excess of spare time to fill. Prison life was so boring that it was hardly worth waking up in the morning – although if I had known what was about to happen next, I would have relished the lack of eventfulness. Sometimes things can get a little bit too interesting.
The first sign that there was something wrong came when I looked out of the window and saw an ambulance and a squad car pulling up in the car park. The police came to the prison to question people every now and again so I thought nothing of it until a copper jumped out with a roll of yellow tape and started cordoning off the grounds. I had seen them doing this before on CSI Miami; it was what they did when there had been a murder.
Within seconds, everybody in the prison was discussing what might have happened and speculating as to who could have been killed. It reminded me of the morning after the supposed suicide in Soto. There was the same frantic, tension-driven atmosphere, with everybody gossiping and whispering to one another.
An hour and a half later, the prison governor came in to give a harrowing announcement.
'I'm sorry to have to be the one that breaks the news to you but earlier today, a member of the teaching staff lost her life in the prison car park.'
I just prayed that it was no one that I knew.
'Ms Evan's death is being treated as suspicious…'
Oh God. Not Louise. I had been laughing and joking with her just the other day. She was the nicest, kindest person that you could imagine. I might have expected something like this to happen at Holloway or Cookham Wood but East Sutton was meant to be a minimum-security prison. It was hardly the type of place where you would expect anyone to get killed.
'The police have requested that everybody remains locked in the prison until they finish gathering evidence. You will also all be questioned at some point. I know that this is likely to be a difficult time for all of us. Louise was a popular teacher and I'm just as shocked and upset as anyone.'
It was as if drama followed me wherever I went. The scary thing was that for all I knew, it could have been one of the girls from my dorm that was responsible. I felt as if I had stumbled into a scene from the film, Scream. The other inmates all looked absolutely mortified. Some of them were crying and others were holding their heads in their hands. One thing was certain: if the murderer was a prisoner then she wasn't going to be very popular when the police solved the case. Louise was a much-loved figure and we were all gutted
that her life had been cut short in such tragic circumstances.
We spent the remainder of the evening glued to the window, trying to figure out exactly what had happened. By this stage, there were so many police there that we could hardly see for blue. It wasn't long before the press were on the scene either. They managed to conceal themselves in a hedge and were just getting ready to take pictures of us when I spotted them. I had accidentally put my top on back to front that morning and prayed to God they hadn't got a snap of me. The last thing that I wanted was for the image of me wearing a topsy-turvy jumper to be plastered all over the papers.
'Over there,' I shouted, pointing a quivering finger towards the hedge. 'Get them out of here.'
The guards were on the scene in seconds, chasing the cheeky buggers around the grounds. It would have been quite an amusing scene if the presence of the paparazzi hadn't demonstrated how easy it was for outsiders to get close to the prison. If the murderer was still nearby then he would have no problem striking for a second time. I just hoped they caught him as soon as possible so that my heartbeat could return to its normal strength and speed.
The footage of the screws shooing the cameramen out of the prison was broadcast on the news later that night.
'East Sutton Park was regarded as a model prison up until this evening,' the newsreader announced. 'Then, as she walked to her car after a day of teaching English to the prisoners, forty-eight-year-old Louise Evans was stabbed forty-three times and left to bleed to death. There were no witnesses and no CCTV cameras.'
This was all too much. It was like something out of a slasher flick. Some of the inmates sobbed quietly to themselves and others sat expressionless in a state of shock. My heart went out to Louise's family. It couldn't have been easy for them to hear that their relative had died in such a nasty way.
I was glad that I was in a dorm and not a single cell that night because I wouldn't have slept a wink if I was in on my own. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw images of crazed knifemen hiding in hedges. I kept thinking about Louise as well. The news report had said that she had two daughters. If my mum had died like that, it would have no doubt haunted me until my dying day. I said a silent prayer for all Louise's friends and relatives and asked God to look after them in their time of need.
The following morning, we were taken out of the dorms one by one and interrogated by the police. They didn't bother driving us to the station; they just interviewed us on a bench outside the prison, which I didn't think was very professional. The officer who questioned me talked down to me as if I was a lower form of life because I was a prisoner. It was the last thing I needed after hearing that somebody I knew had died and had me on the verge of tears.
The police have an amazing knack for making you feel guilty even though you are one hundred per cent innocent. I went back to the wing thinking, 'Damn, I must be a really bad person for him to have treated me like that.' The copper doing the interview had been completely insensitive and seemed more interested in upsetting people than he was in doing his job.
We spent the rest of the day cooped up in our dorms because there were still forensic investigators milling around outside. Every time the news came on, the room fell silent and we listened intently for updates on the case. The newsreaders repeated the same details during the first few bulletins but then, later that evening, the identity of the murderer was finally revealed.
'Police are looking to question Keith Prest, the ex-boyfriend of murdered teacher Louise Evans, who was stabbed to death in the grounds of HMP East Sutton Park in Sutton Valance near Maidstone yesterday evening. Officers have warned that he should not be approached under any circumstances, as he may be a danger to himself or others.'
The moment I saw Prest's photo, I knew straightaway that he was guilty. He had the same cold, uncaring look in his eyes that I had seen on the faces of the wrong 'uns on the wing in Cookham Wood. I was relieved that none of the prisoners had played a part in the killing, but at the same time furious that a man who had once claimed he loved Louise thought he had the right to commit such a horrific act of violence just because she had the common sense to try and distance herself from him.
The police eventually apprehended Prest and charged him with Louise's murder. The spineless rat attempted to kill himself but unfortunately survived and was sentenced to a minimum of seventeen years in prison. He had been stalking and harassing Louise in the build-up to the killing and thought that if he couldn't have her, nobody should be able to. The detective in charge of the case described him as a 'nasty, vindictive, controlling beast of a man', which I thought was very apt. I hoped that his time inside would be just as depressing and soul-destroying as mine had been.
Louise's death took away what little motivation I had left to get out of bed in the morning. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of my home visit and even that was a constant source of worry. Lots of girls went off the rails after getting their first taste of freedom. They couldn't handle it and ended up absconding and getting sent back to closed conditions. I just hoped that I would have more self-control.
A month after the murder, I was told that I was eligible to schedule my first trip back home. I felt excited but scared at the same time because I knew that I would be classed as an absconder if I was five minutes late returning to the jail and transferred to a high-security prison. I still had to wait a couple of weeks whilst the prison finalised the visit, which gave me just enough time to work myself up into a state of panic. What if the car broke down on the way back to the clink? It might destroy my chances of getting the pardon. Then there was the demon drink to think about. Would I be OK if I had a glass of wine with my meal or would it set me off on another epic bender? This was really my most serious concern because I would be gutted if I became an alcoholic again after everything that drink and drugs had put me through. I wanted to get a second opinion so I booked myself an appointment with the prison drink and drug counsellor to see if she thought I should risk it.
The counsellor advised me that a single drink could very easily topple me.
'It's against the prison rules to consume alcohol whilst you're on home leave but that's got nothing to do with me,' she said. 'I've seen hundreds of girls go out with the intention of just having the one and come back hardly able to walk though. You need to think about your priorities, Terry. Is it really worth chancing it?'
She was right as well. There had been evenings when I convinced myself that I was only stopping by the pub for half an hour and ended up spending all night there. This time things would be different though. I wasn't going to put my sobriety on the line for the sake of a measly glass of wine. I made a pact with myself never to have another drink again. Up until this point I had assumed that I could revert back to being a recreational drinker but the counsellor made me realise that once you have crossed the line and become an alcoholic, there is no such thing as having a quiet drink with friends. It's usually all or nothing so it made sense to stay one hundred per cent booze free.
Now that I knew I wasn't going to lapse back into drunkenness the minute I got home, I started to feel a little less anxious. Despite my nerves, I was still made up at the prospect of being able to go to sleep in my own bed. It was all that I could think about in the days leading up to my visit. I had just about managed to mentally prepare myself and clear my head of negativity when the prison governor called me into his office to tell me that he had some bad news for me.
'I know how much this visit means to you but I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel it.'
I felt as if he had punched me in the face. How could he casually cancel something as important as that at such short notice? It was like the visit at Soto all over again.
'The media have got word of it and it's getting too much attention. Unfortunately prison protocol states that in these circumstances, it would be impractical to grant you temporary release.'
I knew he didn't make the rules but couldn't help but feel angry with him. It wasn't my fau
lt that the press were interested in my case. Why couldn't anything ever be straightforward? A random complication always seemed to get thrown into the mix whenever things were looking up.
'Don't worry, we can reschedule it for next week,' the governor continued, attempting to placate me. 'We'll keep it quiet so that nobody knows about it. It hasn't been cancelled to punish you, you know Terry? It's for your own safety.'
I couldn't understand his logic. How was the media taking a few photos of me going to endanger me? A week is an eternity to wait when you are that hyped up about something. The date change also meant that I would be on tenterhooks, wondering whether or not the visit was actually going to happen.
The next seven days were fraught with tension and unease. What if the media got wind of the new date? I wasn't sure if I could handle any more disappointment. Every night before I went to bed I closed my eyes and prayed the visit would go ahead without a hitch.
When the day finally arrived, I felt so nervous that I thought that I was going to throw up. It was looking as if it was definitely on but I was now in such a state that I was playing through every possible way that my trip home could end up going badly in my head. I kept imagining being late back and getting dragged off to serve the rest of my sentence in some grim maximum-security prison. I had spent enough time in those places in Spain and didn't fancy landing in one over here.
Passport To Hell: How I Survived Sadistic Prison Guards and Hardened Criminals in Spain's Toughest Prisons Page 27
