On My Life

by Angela Clarke

  ‘Oh.’ My lip shakes. A mix of emotions rush through me: happiness, sadness. I want my baby with me. ‘Thank you. That’s really kind.’

  ‘Bloody cops,’ the guy says, and I can imagine him shaking his head. ‘Listen, love, I’m sorry but your sister’s gone to the wholesaler’s. Can I get her to call you back? Does it work like that?’

  Not really. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll try her again later.’

  ‘She should be back by seven,’ he says.

  ‘Great. Thank you.’ We’ll be back locked in our cells by five thirty. And the next visiting slot is tomorrow. Perhaps this person is the barrister Ness mentioned, and they’ve taken the time to come and see me. I can’t turn them away. I’ll approve the request.

  ‘Listen, you keep your chin up, hey, love?’ the guy at the gym says.

  I say goodbye before my voice breaks. There are people out there who believe me. It’s enough for today.

  The arm grazes my nose as it passes my face fast, a hand planting into the wall to bar my way. The soft languorous tone at odds with the unambiguous physical threat.

  ‘Hello, Blondie, long time no see.’

  I look up into the face of Gould.

  My insides turn liquid.

  Now

  Gould is the other side of Annie’s arm. Leaning against the wall, her hands casually in her tracksuit pockets, not even bothering to check if there’s an approaching guard. Behind her the pretty freckled girl I’d passed on the stairs stands watch, ready to alert them to any incoming trouble. She must have turned round, followed me, gone and found Gould.

  As if reading my mind, Gould lets a smile stretch across her face. ‘I thought you were hiding from me?’

  I’m nothing, I’m no one. I’ll stay out of her way, if she can just let me be. I fold my arms protectively over my bump. Gould’s eyes twinkle. I find my voice. ‘I never told anyone about my cards – the lipstick.’ She attacked me, she humiliated me, she stole from me, and I haven’t grassed her up.

  ‘You haven’t told anyone?’ She sounds amused.

  ‘I don’t want any trouble.’ My voice wavering. Across the way a woman I recognise from the library is laughing with her friend. Her eye catches mine. She clocks Gould, then Annie, then Gould’s freckled scout. She looks away after that. Turns so she’s facing the other way. Give her a minute and she and her friend will be gone. No one wants to cross Gould. Where’s the guard?

  ‘How’s your young cellmate?’ Gould licks her lips.

  My stomach twists, as if my baby is trying to pull as far away from Gould as possible. My own breath rebounds onto my face from Annie’s arm. ‘She has nothing to do with this.’

  As Annie drops her arm, Gould steps toward me with a light bounce. Her face is mere centimetres from mine. ‘With this?’

  She’s still grinning. Two of her teeth on the bottom row completely overlap, like a shark’s. ‘You think this is a thing?’ She taps herself before slapping her hand against my chest.

  The hollow thud echoes round my head. Shakes my heart.

  ‘You think,’ her voice falls lower, her smile drops, ‘that I give a fuck about you, Blondie? That you are – what, some kind of threat?’

  No. No that’s not what I meant. I try to shake my head but she’s so close now I smell the spearmint on her breath.

  ‘You.’ She jabs a finger hard into my chest. Jab. Jab. Jab. Again, punctuating her words. ‘You are fucking scum.’

  My swollen breasts scream. My arms tighten over my bump, hugging myself. Protecting my daughter.

  Gould glances down, her lip curling into a deformed smile. ‘You and your filthy scum bastard child.’ My arms are pushed apart, thrust by the flat palm that grips my stomach, holds it like a melon in her hand. My baby. And she starts to squeeze.

  Images flash through my mind. The baby inside the amniotic sac on the midwife’s video. Water balloons falling from the Orchard Park estate block landings. The slow-motion shiver and shudder before they burst in mid-air on the first bounce.

  And I’m still an Orchard kid.

  Before either of us know it, my fist is up and in the side of Gould’s face.

  Her jaw gives as my knuckles force her mouth apart, spit flies out, her head shudders away. Her yell, an elongated low roar of pain and surprise, as everything slows. And I’m punching through her like Ness taught me.

  And I’m not hiding any more. I’m hitting and kicking and clawing like I can rip my world apart from the inside. Like I can set myself free.

  But my second punch doesn’t land before Annie intercepts it. Gould bounces back like a Weeble, her neck pulling back readying for a head butt. The freckled girl is a blur when—

  The alarm sounds.

  A loud, piercing explosion of noise.

  Everyone jumps up.

  People pour from cells.

  The thud of the running guard on the landing above, from the other side of the gate. Code 3.

  We stop, fall apart, as if we were holding each other up. Turn, to see Kelly.

  Her eyes wide. Aghast. Staring at me. At my bump. Her fist against the red panic button on the wing wall.

  After that, everyone runs.

  Now

  ‘I can’t sleep!’ Kelly almost screams in frustration. Her bulk, a week from her due date, rocks the whole bunk.

  I’ve been awake for hours. A few tossed minutes, restless in the middle, Gould’s face leering toward me, her teeth multiplying till she was a mass of incisors. I’d hit her. I’d punched Gould. In the confusion of the alarm everyone had scattered. I didn’t see which way she’d gone. I just got Kelly and got out of there. Sprinting, adrenaline still wrapping round me, getting us up the stairs before the shit hit the fan. There’d been an immediate lockdown. Everyone’s cell had been spun. And no one said anything. No matter how much the screws screamed and bellowed, revealing that the camera at that end of the wing was out of order, a fact I’m sure Gould will have stored. But still, no one said who’d pressed the alarm. This should have been a good thing, but it made me fearful. You didn’t snitch. You didn’t sell people out. Because there was a different code in here. A different punishment system. I hit Gould. Kelly sounded the alarm. What the hell had I been thinking?

  ‘This is all I need!’ Kelly kicks at her covers, rocking the bunk again.

  I roll my own basketball stomach off the wafer-thin mattress. My body aches. I rub my eyes with one hand, my back with the other. Purple bruises, shaped like fingers, are starting to show on my stomach. The knuckles on my right hand are red raw. If David had seen me yesterday it would have confirmed his every last suspicion. Animal. Or rather, animalistic. She threatened my baby and something had taken over. Something that was bigger and more powerful than me. Sure, I’d known how to fight because of where I’d come from. But I’d fought because of who I am now. A mother. And I would do it again. I will fight David till my dying breath. ‘Want to get up and do some stretches?’

  Kelly harrumphs as she prepares to descend. She can’t really do it without my help now, and I worry she’ll try when I’m in the library and hurt herself. It’s not just the rubbish mattress, her size, or even the fight or the alarm that’s stopping her sleeping. Today, finally, she presents her case to the Admissions Board for a place on the Mother and Baby Unit. I quell rising panic at my own lack of date. Maybe I won’t need it. It’s six weeks till my trial. I could get out in time. But I’m no closer to proving David did this. I hoped the police would come and see me again after Mr Peterson gave them my letter, but I’ve heard nothing.

  ‘Let’s go through it again,’ Kelly says. Her face, puffier now, dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep.

  I need to be present for her now. To put all thoughts of David and Gould and alarm bells ringing out of my mind. ‘You’re going to explain that your parents are too old to look after the baby outside. That you’re in for a non-violent crime.’ I start to list the points we’ve drawn up.

  ‘That I’ve kept my nose clean since I’ve b
een inside,’ she says, blowing her nose. Then laughs.

  A clean record she almost lost yesterday because of me. Gould saw it was her who triggered the alarm. Kelly needs this. She needs to get out of here. I force a smile. Pull on my oversized hoodie that only hides my bump if I hunch forward now. I have my own visitor today. The one Ness sent. Thank god my nose isn’t plastered across my face. Or worse. Kelly stopped that. ‘You’re going to tell them you have a job that you have kept and worked hard at. And you have been supportive and caring to other inmates, and have shown great tenacity and skill by writing an informative and transformative guide for other pregnant inmates,’ I end with a flourish.

  Kelly blushes. And though I want the day to hurry up, more so than ever now, I try not to think what it will be like when she goes. They will take her straight to the Mother and Baby Unit from hospital. I won’t get to see her or the baby, unless I get to join her there. And that’s not likely. Either Ness will have my baby or I will be out. I can no longer work out which is my best chance.

  I help Kelly apply her make-up and do her hair while she deep-breathes and re-reads her notes. She can just about get into the black dress she has for court, though it does look a little tight over her boobs. Then I focus on tidying myself up for my own visit.

  Kelly is pacing by the time we hear the unlock starting downstairs. It takes nearly forty minutes for them to get up to our cells.

  ‘I can’t do this.’ She tugs at her hair.

  I don’t know if she’s thinking about the alarm and Gould. How she denied her her prey: me. But I behave as if she’s not. ‘You can. You’ve prepared. You’ve got a brilliant case, it’s going to be fine.’ There’s not much room for me to move with her prowling like a cat, so I ease myself onto the one plastic chair we have.

  ‘Promise?’ Her eyes are wide, pleading. Sometimes she reminds me so much of Emily it hurts.

  ‘Everything is going to be okay. I promise.’ I smile.

  Something twinges in my lower back. A small spasm. Did I once promise Emily the same thing? I quash the feeling as the bolt on our door slides across. ‘Good luck!’ I call, and we slide straight out. Kelly with her head held high as the new guard escorts her, me trying to melt into the crowd, unseen, on my way to the visitors’ room.

  Now

  The visitors’ room is only half full. Most people attend the afternoon session – it gives visitors longer to get here. By the time I passed the library it was comparatively quiet, only Ryan giving me his now customary scowl as he filed the handful of us in. It meant I could get my favoured table. Over to one side, next to the outer wall. The opposite corner to the door, the opposite end to the kids’ play area. Away from Ryan, who’s joined Sara by the entrance. It’s as close to privacy as you can get in this glorified school hall. It also means I can see who else is there. I’d known an ex-SAS guy who liked to sit with his back against the wall, where he could see all the exits, when we went out. I’ve adopted the same strategy. But there is no Gould, no Annie, no one with a rolled left sleeve. I flex my bruised knuckles. If anyone recognises me as being involved in the alarm punch yesterday, their faces don’t register it. The few other prisoners present don’t look my way at all, all caught up in their own anticipation for visitors. Their own excitement.

  Ryan circles once more, checking we are all in position. Sedate. He winks at two of the women, who then shoot evils at each other. The bell rings and the visitors start to file in. An older man with sea-captain white whiskers, encased in a brown suit, is walking toward my corner. Is this Ness’s contact? He looks a little eccentric to be a lawyer, but perhaps he’s a private investigator, or someone else who can shed some light on who put me here. Ness said it was someone she knew from work. He looks a little old to be going to a gym, but his shoulders are broad enough to suggest he still keeps in good shape.

  I smile, and he gives me a funny look, then stops at the table three rows in front of me. The woman he is meeting turns and glares at me. Great, now they think I was coming on to him or something.

  I’m still staring at my hands when a shadow falls between me and the strip lighting overhead.

  ‘Jenna?’

  A woman.

  But this can’t be.

  Oxygen expands my chest, but doesn’t manage to get any higher.

  I know her face straight away. Those eyes.

  I jerk backwards in my chair, the tether reminding me where I am. That this is reality. This is happening. The oxygen tries to push its way up my throat, but my body doesn’t seem to want to respond to basic instructions. Neither does my brain. It’s as if everything is suspended in that one breath. And we are both floating. The image of a photo on a bedside table colliding with the flesh and blood before me. I am looking at a ghost.

  In front of me stands Emily’s mother.

  Now

  Did she have a sister I didn’t know about? Another relative who looked just like the photo Emily kept? My eyes rake over her for clues. She is a small, pale woman, her face pushed tight into her skin. Lines that hadn’t been in the smiling photograph. I always thought Emily had been the spit of Robert, but now I see their daughter held herself in the same way as her mother, the slight tilt of one hip. And she had her mother’s eyes. I would have recognised those eyes anywhere.

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  If she is surprised by this her face doesn’t register it. Her eyes – Emily’s eyes – pick over me intensely. With a sickened jolt, she takes in my bump.

  I pull my jumper out to try and hide its rounded shape, as if it were obscene. It is, in the face of another mother’s loss. Another of Robert’s children. Robert who thought his wife was dead.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Ryan calls, as he turns into our row.

  Still clutching her bag with both hands, as if she might throw it forwards at any moment, Erica Matthews sits without looking away. E. Matthews.

  ‘You killed my baby.’ The words are reedy hisses from her thin lips.

  A wave of anger rises in me. I loved Emily. The girl who thought her real mother was dead. ‘I would never have done anything to hurt her. You – you’re supposed to be dead.’

  The pressure of her eyes, Emily’s eyes, bore into me. The bubble of air in my chest begins to hurt.

  We stare at each other, as if neither can believe the other is there.

  Then the bubble pops. ‘You look like her.’ A tear slides over my cheek.

  Her face crumples, the fine lines a well-worn path into anguish. Her whole body vibrates with a shudder of pain.

  She isn’t making any noise, and no tears come, but she is crying. I recognise the shell of someone wrung dry from emotion. When the pain is still there but you have nothing more to give. Grief has shaken her dry. And I understand that. We share that. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper.

  ‘I didn’t know if you would see me.’ Her voice is shrill, teetering on the edge of hysteria.

  ‘I didn’t know you were alive.’ This is madness. I’ve fallen into another world, where everything is flipped. Instinct tells me to comfort this broken woman, but I also want to grab her, shake her till answers come out. I settle for practicalities instead. ‘I’m not allowed to get up.’ The shame at the words pinches my cheeks. ‘But they do hot drinks – tea, a sugary one, might make you feel better?’

  Her face looks even more hollowed out, but she stops shaking. ‘Nothing will make me feel better.’

  I know that feeling. ‘I thought you were dead.’ If I keep saying it, it might make sense. ‘Emily thought you were dead.’

  She flinches at that.

  I give her a moment. Fight the urge to scream for an explanation. The happy burble of visitors and prisoners drift around us. A child giggles in the background.

  Erica Matthews seems to be struggling herself, her fingers tighter still on her bag. I can see the grooves in her knuckles through her skin. ‘When is it due?’

  The familiar guilt floods through me. As if I asked for this. One moment of hope i
n the whole quagmire. ‘Seven weeks.’

  She doesn’t respond.

  ‘I didn’t know until I arrived here. I haven’t been able to tell Robert.’

  ‘A replacement for my daughter?’

  ‘She would have been a sister for Emily.’ Emily is irreplaceable. How could you rob her of her mother? How could you ever hurt her? How could anyone?

  She is still staring at me, as if I might metamorphose into a different version of the truth. But she abandoned Emily. How many nights had Emily cried over her dead mother? And Robert over his dead wife. Something niggles at the back of my mind. An irritating fly. I remember the case of the canoeing guy in the news a few years ago – how he and his wife faked their own deaths. Lied to their own children. It was an insurance scam, wasn’t it? Money. It was about money. ‘Why does everyone think you’re dead? It’s cruel. Despicable.’

  Her hand flies to the locket that dangles from her neck. ‘It was for the best. For Emily.’

  How can she trot out such glib responses? After everything she has done to the people I loved. ‘You didn’t even know her – how do you know what was best for her?’

  Her hand wraps tighter around the necklace, holding it against her chest. ‘I knew he would get to you.’

  The floor shifts. He would get to me? Robert? Did Robert know she was alive? No, surely not. ‘Who?’ He would have said. He wouldn’t have lied. The fly buzzes inside my head. ‘What do you mean?’ My words hang in the air, beckoning the thoughts I never want to entertain. Never want to let in. Emily is dead. Emily’s mum isn’t. Did Robert know? Had he lied to me? Had he lied to his daughter? To our Emily. If he had, then I didn’t know him at all. And worse, if he was capable of that, what else was he capable of? We’ve found traces of his blood. But no body.

  Where is Robert?

  Then

  I hear the front door slam from the kitchen. Robert’s voice a fraction after it.