On My Life

by Angela Clarke

  She rests her cheek on the top of my head. Strokes my hair. ‘I’m gonna sort this,’ she says.

  And then I have to sit down and watch them go. Seeing them made me feel normal, like everything might be okay. But seeing them leave is crushing. When am I going to see them again? Not till April? Another month closer to the wedding. My heart pinches.

  The whole room deflates around me as the last visitor disappears through the door, and it is locked from the other side with a loud, finite clunk. Abi looks exhausted, as if the effort of behaving happy and upbeat has drained all her reserves. Rhianna’s mum is quietly sobbing at the table next to me. And the woman behind us is reaching out absentmindedly with her hands, as if she might pull her children back and into her arms.

  Gripping the table to give myself something to hold on to, I keep thinking the same thing. I’m innocent. Let me leave. I’m innocent. Let me leave. If the police have done this I’ll prove it. And if they didn’t? I think of Robert’s parents. I imagine David sitting across from me. I need to look him in the eye.

  I need to know if it was him.

  Now

  Even with my thin pillow between my back and the wall I can feel the damp cold seeping through the bricks. Kelly has the one chair at the small bedside unit we have. Because regardless of the fact she doesn’t know I’m pregnant and my back is aching too, she is still more pregnant. An ever-expanding, ever-tense beach-ball predicting my own future shape. Rain drums against the window. Both of us working on our own projects, to the background music of prison shouts and squeals. Hundreds of tellies turned up to try to block out the emotions. Hundreds of voices raised. Kelly’s biro scratches against her pad.

  What do policemen do on the cop shows when they have a suspect? They have forensics, and specialists, and technology, and all the things that are damning me. But Langton and Salinsky must have missed something. Or I have. Something that only I would spot is wrong. That’s why they haven’t seen it yet. I need to go back over everything. Before it becomes the list of horrible accusations from Mr Peterson. When it was still just a day. I force my mind back. Back to my arrival home. No, before that.

  I left the office early, at 4.30 p.m., probably just after. I start a timeline. Write down everything I know.

  Left office: 4.35 p.m.

  I drove to Deb’s to collect Emily’s cake. They’d already left for their week in Cornwall, so I went round the back. Deb had left the key under the third terracotta plant pot, as usual. I remember looking at my watch – it was gone five. I was stressed about getting home before Emily. She was due back from swim club at 5.30 p.m. Robert and I were going to get everything set up before she arrived. Emily’s gone to swim club every Wednesday since I’ve known her. It was her favourite. She named the pop band she’d formed with her friend Phoebe after it: The Tumble Tucks. Even when she had a cold, she insisted on going, putting Vicks onto her nose clip, much to my alarm. In summer she’ll be at their holiday swim club Monday to Friday again. Would’ve been. I close my eyes and I can see all her swim medals and certificates fluttering round the edge of her pin board. But she came home unexpectedly that day. She could have disturbed David. Or maybe he arranged to meet her? She could have bunked off swim club easily enough by saying her period had started.

  I force myself not to dwell, to go back to where I was. In Deb’s kitchen: picking up the cake. She’d left it covered on the side, with a card and a present for Emily. I put the card and present in my bag, and then carried the cake back to the car.

  Once you’re out of Deb’s village, it’s mostly lanes to Robert’s house, to our house. Time was against me, and as I came round Pears’ bend, Locke’s sheep were out again. No point beeping them, it only makes it worse. It took fifteen minutes to double back on myself and come in the back entrance. I kept looking at the clock. I remember being relieved at the time that there were no other vehicles on the narrow road. No need to stop, reverse back to the last passing point, slowing me down more. No more delays in getting home. Mr Peterson said that if there had been someone on the road, someone who had remembered passing me, then there’d be someone to corroborate my timings. As it was, it was only the sheep.

  Arrive home: 5.30 p.m. The back gate was still open, so I thought Phoebe’s mum hadn’t dropped Emily off yet. She always closed it after she’d said goodbye. And I remember being elated at that. Because it meant I’d beaten them back. If I’d had even the slightest inkling then what had happened I wouldn’t have got out the car. But I had no idea at all. I picked up the cake, balancing it with one hand to unlock the door. I dropped my keys and fob on the hall side table. And then . . . then . . . then I knew something was wrong.

  I stare at the paper. Unable to re-visit what happened next. The cold terms on Mr Peterson’s evidence list have done nothing to reduce their impact. Everything speeds up and slows down.

  Emily was still warm when I held her. I cover my mouth and breathe deeply, try not to alert Kelly. I need to stay focused. How long does a body stay warm for? I swallow. If I only had the Internet. Just two minutes and I could look this up. But I’ve got nothing and nowhere to check. I could try the library, but where would I look? I doubt very much that they keep books on decomposition. Had the murderer only just left? Was David disappearing with Robert out the other gate as I was coming in? I think of the anger between Robert and David after Emily’s school found her smoking weed. David pushes them all so hard. David and Robert could have been fighting again. Was there a struggle? Did something go badly wrong? David would know which way to go to get away without being seen. Under my jumper, I cup my stomach as if to protect my unborn child from my growing suspicions. David could have done this.

  Now

  The day after Ness and Mum visited, I applied for a library session. A week after that I was allowed a morning in the draughty, double-height room lined with panelled shelves, hundreds of books, and three humming grey plastic computers that look older than the ones they had in my naughties school. My excitement at getting online was squashed again by the librarian, Helen, a vivacious woman in her forties, with cropped bleached hair and a ready smile. She confirmed that, no, these were sadly not connected to the Internet either. It really is banned everywhere. If I was outside I’d check Milcombe Estate’s finances with Companies House. I’ve never seen any indication that David is running out of money – in fact, the opposite – but it’s often a motive, isn’t it? You read about insurance fraud and things all the time. Maybe he planted the pornographic images to try and break me and Robert up, to keep me away from the family fortune? Or to stop the wedding. And something happened and Emily ended up dead and Robert missing. Or hidden. I don’t know.

  The library has a small number of books on pregnancy, and if I sit behind the stacks at the back, it’s possible to read without being seen by anyone else. I can’t take them out because Kelly or one of the others would notice. You’re never alone in here. As far as Kelly and anyone else knows, I’m in for drug-related offences. And I am definitely not pregnant, nor the Blonde Slayer. Luckily no one seems to have recognised me, and the news has moved on.

  Each week since then I’ve been here, sitting in the corner, breathing in the dust from the hard floor, and watching March slowly thaw through the window. The faint smell of coffee is with me at all times from where I comb a thick tint of it through my hair while Kelly is at work. I wash in the sink when she’s out too. My bump is bigger, not just a little pouch at the bottom of my stomach now, but rising. It’s impossible to use the showers, which have no privacy screens, and are always busy in the short Associations we get. I’ve taken to wrapping my blanket round my shoulders, like a poncho, to hide my growing stomach and boobs. Luckily the prison is so cold nobody seems to have questioned this.

  Today is my twenty-seventh day in Fallenbrook. Nearly a whole month. According to the books, at three months my baby is 7.4 cm long. That means I should still be able to hide my pregnancy. At four months you’re bigger, and the baby begins to move around
. And I can definitely feel bubbles and flutterings in there. I think the doctor’s wrong – or I made a mistake about when we had food poisoning – and I’m more than three months gone. I can’t help but imagine my baby turning this way and that, trying to get out. Like me. We’re both locked in. Counting the days, the hours. The seconds. I’m wading through treacle. Everything is slow and hard, and seems to involve multiple forms.

  There was the form applying for my first scan appointment, which has still not come through. And the form to apply to see the doctor to chase my scan. And the form yesterday trying again, because I still haven’t heard anything. Under my blanket I cup my belly.

  I’m so sorry I haven’t had my scan yet. That I haven’t seen you and checked you’re okay. And that I haven’t been able to eat hard cheese, yoghurt, and leafy greens to get you the calcium to grow your teeth and bones. Please be okay. I’m letting you down already, baby.

  Even if my money had come in from Ness already, I haven’t seen anything suitable on canteen to buy. Kelly doesn’t seem to have any folic acid or vitamins, and I don’t want to upset her by asking about it. If it wasn’t for her and Abi, and Vina, who has taken to talking to me about the Criminology degree she’s trying to take, I wouldn’t know how anything worked. I wouldn’t be surviving. Those girls, this library, and the patch of sky I can see out the window sitting here, are keeping me going. That and my unborn child.

  There’s been no word from Ness, and without any money I can’t call her. But in the meantime Kelly has shown me how to apply for telephone numbers to be added to my approved list. It’s humiliating that I can’t just call up whoever I want, and David and Judith have rejected my application. At first I thought it was a mistake – I’d added Sally’s office number and that came back rejected as well. So did Becky’s, and Deb’s. I thought maybe I filled out the form wrong. But then none of them replied to my visitor requests either. They can’t really all think I did this. Can they? It’s like I vanished from their lives the moment I came inside.

  But two weeks have gone by and I heard this morning David and Judith have rejected it again. That could be a sign of guilt. The more I think about it, the more I think David could be capable of this. And what about Judith? What lengths would she go to for her husband? She is definitely scared of him. Vina is writing about female prisoners for one of her course modules. She told me fifty-seven per cent of women inside have a history of being abused by their partners. That there’s a lot of evidence to suggest a large number of women could have been coerced into committing their crimes. Could Judith have been coerced into helping David? Could they both be involved? It sounds mad. It feels mad. I don’t know if the amount of time I’m spending alone, inside my head, is driving me crazy. If I’m seeing things that aren’t there. I can’t discuss my suspicions with Mr Peterson till I have something more concrete. I need to speak to David and Judith to ask for money, but also to see if they are lying. I’ve realised over the last month that I don’t know them at all.

  ‘Hello, love – do you want a biscuit?’ Helen’s smiling face appears over the top of the stack, brandishing a packet of supermarket-brand biscuits. My hand lurches away from my stomach like it’s been scalded. I drop it over the book I was reading, the photo of a pregnant woman throbbing beneath my palm. I can feel a draught on my belly – is it uncovered? I daren’t look down in case Helen looks too.

  ‘Errr . . .’ My brain won’t function. Please don’t notice.

  ‘I’ve got some left over from a poetry class this morning.’ Helen glances at the book I’m covering but her face doesn’t change.

  Did she see? Has she guessed? ‘Err . . . thanks.’ I reach quickly for the biscuit – I am actually starving.

  Helen presses the packet forward. ‘Why don’t you take a couple. Keep your strength up.’

  Oh god. She knows. No, don’t panic, she’s just being kind. I manage a ‘Thanks’ as I take three and sweep my other arm up at the same time so the blanket flicks round me tight. My stomach gurgles. When I look up Helen has gone, and I hear her asking a woman who is reading legal books at the small table to the right if she’d like a snack.

  My heart’s thumping. That was too close. It’s getting harder and harder to hide. And Helen isn’t a threat. What if it was someone else, someone who is dangerous? I could bind my stomach with strips of my bed sheet. The thought makes me feel sick. That would restrict my baby. Hurt it. I have to get some money, I have to get a better lawyer, or new evidence, or prove who did this.

  I have to get out of here.

  Now

  ‘Yes!’ says Kelly, as they start unlocking the doors on the walkway below. ‘Association is go!’

  I grin. I’m feeling far more confident after unpicking the waistband from my size 18 hoodie this morning while Kelly was out at work. Now it hangs down like a giant box over my size 12 frame – hiding my bump. I should have thought of this before.

  The noise and excitement levels rise as women are released and people begin to make the most of the precious hour. Some head straight to the showers with their flip-flops, towels and shampoo, others greet and gather friends round the pool table, some queue for the yard door to be opened. That’s where I’m headed when Vina stops me.

  ‘Hey!’ she says. Today her hair is up in a plain cream calico scarf. ‘Was wondering if you’d check my latest essay? You know, for spelling and that.’ She clicks her tongue.

  ‘I’d be delighted to.’ They’re really fascinating to read, and I keep hoping I can find out if she’s come across any cases where people have been framed. And, more importantly, how they proved it.

  ‘This module will be eighteen credits.’ She almost smiles.

  ‘Any news on funding?’ Vina has applied to take the full degree while she’s inside, but apparently competition for funding is fierce. I know she’s been sentenced, because she’s been at Fallenbrook for two years, but I don’t know how long she’s got. I don’t know what she did. Some of the women tell you, and some don’t. Vina is one of the private ones. Kelly said she heard it was death by dangerous driving, but I think you can’t tell what’s gossip and what’s not.

  A raucous round of laughter explodes from a cell behind us. Vina shoots them a dirty look, clicks her tongue again. ‘Hooch,’ she says.

  What? ‘Alcohol?’ I breathe. ‘Where did they get that from?’ Someone must have smuggled it in.

  ‘Made it,’ Vina says. ‘You never wonder why it’s so hard to get fruit in here? That’s what they make it out of.’

  I shake my head, astounded, yet again, at the ingenuity of the women. ‘Don’t the screws know?’ I whisper, checking that the officer is well out of earshot.

  Vina checks where Kev is herself before replying. ‘They brew it in the sanitary bins – the guards never check there.’ She winks.

  ‘Oh my god!’ The disgust must show on my face, because Vina does laugh at this.

  Then her smile freezes into a rictus grimace. She stares past me. Others have stopped talking as well, and are turning toward the gate.

  Oh god. I thought it was okay. I let my guard down.

  Hushed panicked whispers burn the word through the wing lightning fast. I feel the name before I hear it: Gould. My nose prickles at the memory of the pain.

  I have to get out of here. Our cell is all the way upstairs. I can’t cross the now silent room to reach the metal stairway. The voice of someone blissfully unaware and singing in the shower, the run of water, floats through the unnatural silence. People are coming out of their cells to see what’s happening. The singing stops abruptly. Gould is here.

  Why haven’t I put my hood up? Why haven’t I kept my face covered? I don’t want to turn around. Don’t want this to be real. I try to make eye contact with Vina, as if to will her to understand that whatever Gould might say – I didn’t do it. But Vina, like everyone else, is looking behind me.

  I hear the squeak of Gould’s trainers on the ground. And other steps. Clipped. She’s not alone.

&
nbsp; Sara calls out, ‘All right, ladies, stop your gawking.’

  The relief at hearing her voice reduces my fear enough for me to turn, albeit while tucking myself as much out of sight behind Vina as possible.

  Gould isn’t wearing the regulation sweatshirt and joggies I’ve been assigned. Instead she’s managed to get hold of new clothes: civilian. It’s still a tracksuit, but it’s red. For danger. Designer, you can tell. She obviously wasn’t waiting for her canteen to come in. But then she’s been inside before, according to the papers. She knows how things work. She probably has an ongoing account here. I would laugh if I wasn’t too busy holding my hands together behind my back trying to stop them shaking.

  She walks with that same relaxed bounce that makes her look like she’s strolling onto a dance floor, not walking into the UK’s largest female prison wing. Sara, by contrast, has a tense efficiency to her gait. Her eyes roam quickly back and forth across the room as if she’s waiting for something to happen.

  Gould stops, and, not expecting it, Sara has to take two half-steps backwards to keep alongside her. Gould, her dark eyes laconic, inspects four women who are sitting round a table, plastic cups of tea in front of them.

  I’m not the only one holding my breath.

  ‘I know you?’ Gould points at one woman, whose ginger hair springs away from her head in an unfortunate manner that resembles a kid’s clown.

  The woman stands as if she’s been called to attention by a sergeant major. ‘Annie.’ She delivers her name like it’s roll-call.

  ‘Clive’s sister.’ Gould nods.

  ‘Who’s Clive?’ someone whispers behind us.

  ‘Don’t know,’ comes the hissed response.

  ‘Good man, Clive.’ Gould is inspecting Annie like she’s thinking about buying her. Perhaps she is.

  ‘I haven’t got all day.’ Sara taps her foot. ‘Let’s get you settled in, please.’