On My Life

by Angela Clarke

  Gould turns her eyes on her, her face so ferocious and full of hate that I nearly run forward to shield Sara. The crowd audibly inhale. But Gould’s fierce glare breaks with a cheery ‘Sure thing, guv.’ She makes the final word sound dirty. A few women giggle, but it could be from the tension.

  Sara holds her own, signalling with her hand that Gould should go first.

  Gould walks on. Sara’s tapping boots alongside. The inharmonious jingle of the keys.

  They’ll reach us in seconds. I could run now: get me and my baby to the stairs. To our cell. To safety.

  Vina steps aside as Gould and Sara pass. I hold my breath, but she doesn’t even glance at us.

  Maybe she’s already moved on from our encounter? She presumably fights all the time; violence is an everyday occurrence for her. Maybe, just maybe, she’s forgotten about me? I pity the person who has to share her cell, though. And you can already tell it will be her cell. The one next to us is empty. Please not there. The thought of her being just the other side of the wall makes me feel sick.

  But for once things go my way. There are a few whispers from the walkways above, but people are quiet, almost reverential, as Sara stops on the ground floor to show Gould her new home. Two along from us, but two whole glorious floors below. Thank god.

  As Gould disappears inside, the room erupts into conversation.

  ‘She runs Bristol.’

  ‘She did over my Danny’s cousin. He was in hospital for six days. He never grassed, though. Too scared.’

  ‘Her kids go to that fancy school. The lad got a Boxster for his seventeenth.’

  ‘I heard she cut off a man’s cock and choked him on it. Apparently he’d cut her up on the road.’

  As I walk through the excited, chattering women, Sara comes out of the cell and the woman who identified herself as Annie walks over to it. I usually say hi to Sara, but I don’t want to hang around listening to the gory details of Gould’s life. Maybe she has forgotten about me, but it’s not worth risking getting back on her radar.

  Upstairs, Kelly is excitedly hopping about, making her bump and topknot shake. ‘Did you see her?’

  Gossip, born of boredom, is the only real currency we have left in here. I get that. But I’m not about to gush about the woman who smashed my nose in. Who put my baby at risk. I’m staying out of it. I nod, and fold myself into my bunk, hugging the blanket to me. Picking up the novel I was pretending to read earlier.

  But Kelly isn’t done. She bounds after me. ‘Did you see her trainers? And that top was lit.’ Her eyes are sparkling with excitement, as if Gould is a celebrity.

  ‘How you getting on with your book ideas?’ I want to talk about anything but this.

  Kelly squats down beside me, her bump resting against my arm. ‘You still feeling rough?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ I say, too curtly.

  She doesn’t seem to notice. ‘What do you reckon will happen with her and her man locked up, to her gang and that?’ She whispers excitedly, as if she’s sharing a secret from EastEnders, not discussing a real woman with links to drugs and prostitution. ‘Do you think there’ll be a turf war?’

  A shadow appears in the doorway, blocking the light. Kelly turns to shout at the intruder, then stiffens.

  Gould is standing there. I sit up, banging my head against the bottom of Kelly’s bunk.

  Gould smiles, lazily. ‘I think I’ll be all right running it from in here, don’t you?’ She looks at Kelly expectantly.

  Kelly squeaks. ‘Yeah, course.’ Pushes herself upright, takes a step back. Laughing nervously. ‘I wasn’t saying anything else. I mean you . . . you’re you. You can, er, do anything.’

  Gould remains, casually leaning against the door frame. Behind her, the bulk of Annie stands, scowling in at us. ‘Thought I’d familiarise myself with my new surroundings. I don’t like any unpleasant surprises.’

  Her eyes pin me to the bed. I want it to suck me under. To make me disappear. Don’t show fear.

  Slowly, I force myself to swing my legs over the side, and stand.

  Gould’s lip curls in amusement. Her skin is flawless apart from a smattering of freckles. My nose is still tender four weeks later. I feel the pressure pushing in, making it hard to breathe. Should I tell her I’m pregnant? Would it make a difference? How do you negotiate with someone like this?

  Gould springs forward, and I jump. But she’s only walking about, in her dancing, bouncing way. Moving round our cell, uncomfortably full with three in here. She bends and picks up Kelly’s diary. Flicks through the pages. My notes, the list of evidence against me, is face down next to my bed. Please don’t pick them up. Please. Gould sniffs. Puts Kelly’s book notes back down and turns her attention to her.

  She points at her stomach. ‘When you due?’

  Kelly swallows. ‘Two months.’

  ‘What you called?’ Gould tilts her head each time she speaks, as if her chin were jabbing at Kelly like a pointed finger.

  Kelly, nervous, speaks quickly. ‘Dunno yet, I like Brandon if it’s a boy . . .’

  ‘What’s your name, not the kid’s, muppet?’ Gould turns to Annie as if she can’t believe anyone would be this daft. Annie makes a noise like a grunting laugh. Kelly looks like she might cry.

  Anger burns inside me.

  Kelly has both her hands on her belly, as if she is covering the baby’s ears. She clears her throat. ‘Oh right, yeah. Kelly.’

  ‘Well, you make sure you watch out for yourself, oh-right-yeah-Kelly,’ Gould says, and Annie laughs again. ‘If you need anything while you’re in here you just let me know, yeah?’

  Kelly looks confused by this seemingly altruistic offer. But she nods.

  ‘I look after those that come to me,’ Gould continued.

  Oh god, it’s a recruitment drive. She wants Kelly, so I’ll be vulnerable in this cell. She hasn’t forgotten, she hasn’t moved on at all. I swallow.

  Gould steps toward her. Kelly bumps into the unit behind. Gould reaches out her hand, running it over Kelly’s stomach. Kelly looks like she’s not breathing.

  I step toward them, but Annie’s hand is hard and firm on my shoulder. Holding me down.

  Gould is still stroking Kelly’s bump. Her voice silky. ‘I can get you and your baby there some things you might need.’ She sounds almost excited, as if she is enjoying Kelly’s clear fear.

  Then she stops. Turns, looks around the cell as if imagining redecorating. ‘Make things a little bit easier in here.’

  Gould has only been on the wing for ten minutes and already she’s asserting a new order. One in which she’s at the top. My heart starts to hammer. Annie knows it, that’s why she’s acting like a henchman.

  Kelly says nothing. All the colour has gone from her cheeks. This is my fault. She should have sailed under Gould’s radar. She should have been safe just gossiping about her.

  ‘All right then,’ Gould says, as if she were a school teacher who’d invited us to read when we’d rather play in the sandpit. Disappointed, but forgiving. ‘You just give it some thought.’ She pats Kelly’s bump once more.

  She’s going to run things from in here. That’s what she said. And that means she’s going to run this place too. There’s been no offer to me. No invitation to participate. I am out in the cold. How many others would sign up?

  Gould turns, sniffs again, and strolls, hands in pockets, out. Annie follows her.

  As Gould reaches the threshold she pauses, taps the air with her finger, and purses her lips as if she’s forgotten to tell us something innocuous. Blood rushes to my ears.

  Gould turns and looks directly at me for the first time. Her eyes hard stones. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Her words are leaden with menace. ‘I’m watching you, Blondie.’

  Now

  Since Gould’s arrival over a fortnight ago I’ve spent as little time as possible out on the wing. But today I have to risk it. The money Ness sent in for me finally arrived, and I now have phone cards. They bang against my
leg as I walk quickly back to the ground-floor landing, bumping in my pocket against the new lipstick I bought Kelly. She’s been quiet since the incident in our cell, and I had to tell her Gould knew me because of my drug-taking. I’m not sure she believes me, but she hasn’t pushed the point. She’s been nothing but kind to me, and this is how I repay her: inviting someone like Gould into her life.

  I haven’t seen Gould about since then. But I’ve heard her. She talks in that lazy drawl, but her laugh is high, tinny, almost manic. I’ve learnt to move as soon as I hear it. Like an early warning system. And I’ve certainly felt her presence. Already others have joined Annie in her gang. You see them in pairs or threes during Association, passing between cells, industrious, purposeful. I don’t know what they’re running – messages, contraband, weapons? I don’t want to think about it. They have started to roll the sleeves of their tops up on one side. Just a couple of times. It’s subtle, but it’s a signifier. I’m not the only one who’s noticed. The woman who just sold me my cards checked my left sleeve before she spoke. It looks like Gould has favourites, ranks even. Annie apparently only leaves her side for meals, and there’s a small wiry woman, her left sleeve rolled, who I suspect is queuing up for all Gould’s food. She certainly isn’t deigning to queue herself, which is a relief. I can’t skip meals with the baby.

  The wing is busy, as ever. Some women are just sitting around chatting, some are playing pool or table tennis. A group near me are plotting how to make a banoffee pie.

  ‘Luce, you get the bananas from your mate in the kitchen. Sandy, you’re owed a packet of biscuits, right? Kay, you and Fran club together for the condensed milk. I’ll heat it.’

  ‘How ya gonna do that?’

  ‘It’s easy. Stick the tin in a bowl of water, strip the plug off the kettle, get your two wires and: buzzzzz! You electrocute it and it turns into Dulce de Leche.’

  ‘What’s Dulce la doobery?’

  ‘Like a caramel sauce. What do they teach you kids at school nowadays?’

  They all laugh.

  No sign of Gould or any of her goons though. They’re probably in one of the cells. I need to move quickly.

  There are eight telephones in the wing. Sprinkled, two at a time, throughout the ground-floor landing. They have a mere suggestion of a cover for the illusion of privacy, like each handset is wearing a large plastic deerstalker hat. Everyone can hear everything. And, like everything in here, half of them are broken. The first two, the furthest from Gould’s cell, are both missing their handsets, the wires hanging down like tails of stray dogs. One of the next two is the same. The other has an out-of-order sign hanging off it. One of the wall-mounted units of the next pair is hanging off. Four women wait at the one that is in use, behind a woman who is crying softly into the receiver, mumbling in what sounds like Polish.

  Which leaves the two closest to Gould’s cell. They are both occupied, and a line of three has formed behind them. But I can’t wait – Association will be over before you know it. It’s my best option. I pull my hood up, hunching my shoulders so I disappear as much as possible into it. Rounding my back to try and counter my ever-growing bump. Turning myself inside out.

  It takes twenty minutes to get to the front of the queue, to get hold of Ness at work, and get her to call me back (like Kelly taught me to – it saves money). And now I can’t believe what she’s saying.

  ‘They got their lawyer on me.’ Ness is raging at the other end.

  ‘What?’ Why do they have a lawyer? Surely that implies guilt?

  ‘I did what you said and tried calling them. They screened the call and next thing I know I get a call from some stuck-up woman telling me I have to cease and fucking desist or whatever.’ Ness sounds far away, like she’s screaming from the end of a tunnel.

  Panic rises in me. David and Judith won’t talk to Ness. They believe what the police have said. Or they’re hiding something. They did this. Behind me there are already four more people waiting to use the phone. One of them I recognise as Rhianna’s mum from the visiting room. Another, a pretty Asian lady, is reading a book while she waits. They are all pretending not to listen to me, but there’s little else to do. I have to watch my words. But if they won’t even talk to Ness then I have no choice.

  ‘I haven’t got long,’ I say. I turn my back toward the woman tapping her watch pointedly behind me, and try and curl my whole body round the phone. ‘Ness, I need you not to freak out, okay?’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Her voice moves from righteous indignation at David’s lawyer being set on her, to concern. I can picture her gripping the phone in her hand so tight it creaks.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, but . . .’ I lower my voice to a whisper. Please don’t let anyone else hear. Please don’t let Gould hear. I think of her hand on Kelly’s stomach, on her baby. The sound her voice made.

  ‘What is it, Jenna?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I whisper.

  There’s silence on the other end. Did I say it too quiet? I should be shouting it joyously from the rooftops. This is all wrong.

  ‘Ness, you still there? Did you hear?’

  I hear her swallow. ‘Pregnant? Is it his?’

  The words slash at me. ‘Of course it’s his! How can you even say that?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I thought maybe . . . Look, it doesn’t matter. Wow. This is a lot to take in,’ she says.

  The floor feels like it’s opened beneath my feet, and I’m hanging by a thread. ‘What did you think? You said, “I thought” then you stopped.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ Ness says. ‘It’s just a shock.’

  The thread stretches thinner. I fight to keep my voice calm. ‘You think I’d sleep with someone else?’

  ‘No. Course not. I just mean, like, accidents happen. You know? People make mistakes.’

  ‘I would never cheat on Robert.’ How could she think that? Then I realise. And the thread snaps. I’m falling. ‘You think that’s what this is about? You think that’s what happened.’ My own sister suspects me. ‘What do you think, that we had a fight or something? Fucking hell, Ness.’

  ‘No. No. No. I just meant if there was someone else then they’d be a suspect, you know?’ Her words slippery like dirty wet bin bags.

  My own sister thinks I’m capable of this.

  Ness is back-pedalling. ‘You said someone set you up. That would be a motive, wouldn’t it? If you were having an affair?’

  I want to scream at her. ‘I’m not. I haven’t. You’re supposed to be helping me!’ For the last few years it’s been me who’s bailed Ness out. Bailed – the irony! I’ve lent her money when she couldn’t make rent. When she couldn’t pay off her credit card. When she wanted to get a boob job.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m trying,’ she says. ‘This is a lot to get my head round.’

  Behind me the woman tapping her watch coughs. ‘Your time’s up.’

  I nod. Hold my finger up for one more minute. Swallow my rage. ‘Ness, you need to tell Robert’s parents. This is their grandchild. They’ll have to talk to me then.’ I think about Judith massaging her wrist. I need to look them in the eye. It’s the only way I’ll know if they’re involved.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she sighs. I imagine her rubbing her hand across her face. Pushing her fingers into her eyes like she does when she’s tired. It’s not just me who’s struggling to come to terms with this. ‘Jenna?’ Her voice is smaller, fragile.

  ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘Look after yourself, yeah?’ she says.

  ‘Sure.’ The receiver is heavy like my heart, as I replace it onto the cradle.

  Now

  I feel guilty as soon as I walk away from the phone. Ness is struggling to deal with this insane situation too. And it’s not her fault she’s needed to borrow a bit of cash here and there. I got to go to uni, I got to get a graduate role. Ness never had that. Times are tougher for everyone. Everything is getting more expensive, and even with Ness’s increased responsibility at the gym, wages
haven’t gone up. And I’ve been shielded from it by Robert. I’ve been lucky. Until now.

  Someone steps out in front of me, and I pull up sharp. A woman. Broad shoulders, broad hips. A mass in a black tracksuit. I wasn’t paying attention. I should have been alert. Her left sleeve is rolled. Too late.

  ‘Hello, Blondie.’ Gould is leaning against a doorway to a cell. Behind her, a lank-haired sinewy woman who has the recognisable concave look of an addict is bent double, clutching her stomach. Annie looms over her.

  Did Gould hear me on the phone? Does she know about my baby?

  Black tracksuit woman leers at me.

  ‘Why do you keep covering up your hair?’ Gould’s voice is velvety, her dark eyes twinkling malevolently, as she reaches up and pulls the hood of my jumper down.

  Every muscle in me clenches.

  ‘It’s almost like she don’t want to be recognised, isn’t it, O’Brien?’

  O’Brien, the woman in the black tracksuit, lets out a laugh. Has Gould told her what I’m accused of? Do they know? No. It would be out. I would have been . . . I would know.

  I swallow. In the corner of my eye I see Vina watching us.

  Don’t show fear.

  ‘Not very chatty today are we, Blondie?’ Gould says, circling round me. Each time she calls me that she lingers on the ‘Blonde’, drawing it out, threatening to add ‘Slayer’ to the end.

  I grip my phone card tighter.

  Gould notices. ‘What’s that you got there?’ She grabs my wrist, her hand cold, and yanks it out to see. A few more people on the wing are watching now. ‘A phone card? You obviously been talking to someone. But not me.’ She pushes her freckled face into mine, twisting my wrist. ‘Why’s that then? Am I too old for you?’

  No, no, no.

  ‘Please,’ I whisper.

  She laughs, pulls the card from my hand. ‘What else you got, hey? O’Brien.’ She signals with her head.

  Gould still has my wrist in her claw. O’Brien thrusts her fat hands into my pockets. Pulls out my other telephone card. My only means of communication with Ness.

  ‘I’ll have that.’ Gould pockets it, her eyes taunting. Daring me to object. She grins.