I nod. I remember Ness taking me to get towels, and the humiliation I felt because none of the other girls had started.
Mum takes a big breath. ‘I found her crying in the bathroom after that, ’cause her own periods had stopped. And she told me.’
Poor Ness. Poor Mum. I know what it feels like to know you brought a devastating destructive force into the life of someone you love. If I hadn’t brought Ness into Robert’s life, Emily would still be here.
Then I realise: Mum got clean when I was nine. ‘You quit using then, didn’t you? Because of what happened to Ness?’
She nods. ‘I flushed what I had left down the toilet. Told Carl that if he ever came near me, my girls or any other kiddie again I’d cut his balls off.’
‘But you could have told me,’ I say.
‘You were still so young.’ Her voice cracks, and she clutches her hands together in her lap. ‘We wanted to protect you. Thought it was best to focus on the future.’ Her voice is barely audible as she whispers one of her twelve steps. ‘We humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.’
‘It’s okay, Mum,’ I say. No one can prepare you to deal with something like that. I swallow. ‘I was thinking we could get a plaque for her – in the memorial garden.’ There was nothing left after the fire at Fallenbrook. Nothing for us to bury.
Mum squeezes my hand. ‘I would like that.’
Me too. Even after everything she did, I want Ness to be at peace. Wherever she is.
‘I’m so sorry, Jenna.’
‘Don’t say that.’ I pull her tiny frame into me.
‘If I hadn’t been off my face – if I’d been a better mother to you girls . . .’ She sobs.
‘Shush, don’t say that.’ Life doesn’t work like that. We are all a patchwork of what’s come before. We are all a product of our past. No one action can be separated out from any other. We have to do the best with what we have.
‘I’m going to make it up to you,’ she says. Her eyes shining with tears. ‘I’m going to be there every step of the way for you and baby Kelly when she comes home.’
‘I know, Mum,’ I say, touching the charm bracelet with the little K on it I wear in the memory of the loving, bright, and brave young woman my baby girl is named after.
‘I’m going to make it up to you,’ she says again.
‘It’s not your fault,’ I say. It’s not your fault. I repeat it to myself. And we stay there holding each other for a second.
‘Come on,’ I say, pulling away and trying my best to sound bright. ‘We’ve got to get home, we need to finish that nursery.’
We walk, side by side in the low bright September sunshine, toward my flat. I moved back in when I was discharged from hospital. And Mum moved in the day after, to care for me. It hurt so badly to leave Kelly, so tiny and fragile in the incubator in the hospital, but she needed help breathing and to gain weight. Mum made it easier, she’s been there every step of the way. When Sally turned up on my doorstep and I threw her out, Mum stayed up all night with me talking. I can’t forgive Sally for rejecting me when I needed her. Not yet. Though since then she has sent several cards for me, and a tiny Babygro for Kelly, that I haven’t been able to throw out. Mum says to give it time to get better. To see how I feel. We’re going to need a lot of that: time to make it better. I already don’t care that Becky sold her story to a newspaper. Robert, under David’s influence, had already started to separate me from my friends; prison just finished the job. I keep busy. I write weekly to Vina, who’s been transferred to an open prison and is now able to take the rest of her Criminology degree. And I’m starting a new job with a charity who work with pregnant women in prison. I’ll be doing the PR to begin with, though, as I don’t think I can bring myself to go inside quite yet. Not even to visit.
As we reach the crest of my road I think for a second the journalists are back standing outside – but they’ve moved on too. Gould’s trial is coming up, and predictions over how long she will go down for following the riot dominate the front pages. Instead, I see it’s the familiar shape of Robert, diminished slightly after his ordeal, waiting by the flat entrance. Mum makes a discreet excuse about needing to pop to the shop, and waves as she retreats in the opposite direction. Robert looks unsure what to do, and gives half a wave back. I take a deep breath. Give it time and things will get better.
We greet each other with an awkward hug. He goes to kiss my cheek as I go to pull away.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble.
‘My fault,’ he says, holding his hands up.
We’re not quite sure what to do with each other now. I still care for him, a huge amount. And I’ve seen him most days at the hospital – they’d let him off his ward so he could read stories to Kelly through her incubator. But I can’t go back after everything we’ve been through. I thought he was capable of murder. I brought Ness into his life. He brought David into mine. He lied to me about Erica. All trust is broken. And we’re both left holding the shattered pieces. It was a shock for him to learn what his father had done while he was missing. For him to finally face up to what kind of man his father is, what kind of man he himself might be if he doesn’t make changes. After that he put the Dower House up for sale, and plans, against his parents’ wishes, to give me and Kelly half the proceeds.
‘Tea?’ I say, holding up my key. My bracelet glinting in the light.
‘Got any biscuits?’
‘If you’re lucky,’ I say. Even after everything Robert and I discussed, I’d never quite got round to putting my flat on the market. I think I knew something wasn’t right. Robert was so desperate to find happiness away from the control of his father that, when he met me while David and Judith were travelling, he rushed everything. He wanted to believe it was real, but it was just another act. Another performance, like his parents’.
‘How you doing?’ I ask as we climb the stairs.
He’s walking better already. Getting stronger. ‘I’m okay,’ he says. ‘You?’
‘Well, I was about to build a cot, do you feel up to lending a hand?’
He beams. ‘I would love that, Jenna. Thank you.’
Robert compares the four wooden screws in his hand. ‘This one. Must be.’
It wedges firmly into the frame, and I do the same with the remaining ones. It feels sturdy, the white wood clean against the freshly painted wall. Ready for our baby to come home. ‘Perfect.’ I say, satisfied with our work.
Robert stoops and takes something wrapped in tissue paper from his bag. A white waffle blanket, which he strokes with his thumb. ‘I hope you don’t mind – I thought we could . . .’ He pauses, takes a big breath. ‘This was Emily’s when she was a baby.’
I nod. A lump forms in my throat. I walk across to the chest of drawers and take out the frame I’ve had specially made. Emily’s beautiful smiling face beams out at me. ‘I thought we could hang this on the wall?’
He smiles, tears at the corner of his eyes.
‘Kelly will always know about her amazing sister.’ I prop the photo up on the drawers.
Robert puts his arm round my shoulders and pulls me into him. ‘Thank you,’ he says into my hair. ‘Thank you.’
We hold each other like that for a moment. And I breathe him in. All the promise of what might have been. All of the pain.
And then we let go.
‘What time are you off tomorrow?’
‘Erica’s picking me up at 9 a.m.,’ he says.
Erica has been brilliant in these last few weeks. A real rock for him while he’s been in hospital. She’s found the right residential clinic and is driving him down there. Robert will have a permanent scar on his forehead from where he should have had stitches. And a deeper, unseen one: addiction. The doctors say he would have been hooked after just two weeks on the dosage of diazepam Ness was feeding him, and he had five months’ worth in that basement. Once I would have been jealous of Erica, but that time has passed.
‘Me and Kelly will come and see you on that first Saturday,’
I say.
‘Promise?’ He looks panicked for a moment, his eyebrows more pronounced on his drawn face.
I take his hands in mine. ‘You’re her dad. You’re a huge part of her life, whether you want it or not.’
‘I do,’ he says. ‘I do.’ And for a second I think of our wedding that never happened. And how it is better this way. How we can all start to move on.
Erica’s blue Mini arrives with a toot of the horn. She waves. Robert climbs into the front with a grin, and I wonder if Erica and he might get back together. They’ve grown close again, leaning on each other to mourn Emily. Perhaps they would never have split up without David’s interference and Robert’s weakness. I won’t see David. I’ve made that clear to everyone. But I’ve written to Judith and told her I want Kelly to know her grandmother. And that she is always welcome here, should she ever need a place to stay.
The Mini drives off, and I’m back outside waiting for my taxi when the car draws up.
DI Langton gets out.
‘I can’t stop,’ I explain, and hold up the empty car seat.
‘I was coming to return this.’ She holds out a small plastic evidence bag. My engagement ring. ‘It was recovered from the undamaged part of Fallenbrook,’ she says.
The final remnants of my old life. I’ll give it back to Robert. I don’t want it any more. ‘Thank you.’
‘They’re rebuilding the wing, new cells. Bigger apparently,’ she says.
I shudder at the thought. And, noticing, she changes the subject. ‘Why don’t I give you a lift?’ she says. ‘I’m headed that way. Won’t take me two minutes.’
I don’t really want to get in the car with her, but my taxi is running late. ‘Sure. Thanks,’ I say. She’s just a person. A normal person. And she did believe you. She did keep looking for Robert. She did keep searching for the truth, you just didn’t know. I wonder if she feels bad about what happened to me.
From the car window I watch the honey-yellow stone houses pass in the setting sun. And think of all the secrets people carry behind those walls.
DI Langton signals to turn left.
I clear my throat. ‘Am I allowed to ask things about the case?’ They have no one to press charges against now. There’ll be an enquiry, I’m sure, but that will be it.
‘What things?’ she says, without taking her eyes from the road.
‘About the text message sent to Sally? The one that looked like a confession.’
‘It was sent from your iPad,’ DI Langton says, matter-of-fact.
I’d guessed as much. That whoever had sent that had used a synced device. I was just looking in the wrong direction. Oh Ness.
‘And my jumper – the Sweaty Betty one – what happened to it?’ The one they found in the washing machine soaked in blood.
DI Langton slows for the roundabout. The blue sign pointing the way. ‘We believe your sister was either wearing it, or she used it to try and stem the flow of blood from Emily.’
She might have been trying to help her. I close my eyes for a second. If she’d just called an ambulance. If she’d just asked for help before things went that far everything could have been different. In the heat of the moment we can all make the wrong choice. I touch my bracelet, and think of Kelly.
‘We’ll never know for sure,’ DI Langton says.
‘No, we won’t.’
The DI makes smalltalk the rest of the way.
As soon as she pulls the car into the car park, I’m halfway out the door, pulling the car seat behind me. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. The thing I feared I’d never see happen.
‘Good luck!’ DI Langton calls.
But I’m already racing toward the maternity unit to bring her home. Her tiny pink face, the way her mouth puckers into a perfect circle when she sleeps, the scent and tickle of her fine dusting of hair. My little girl and me.
Together we can survive anything.
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Author’s Note
Jenna’s story and her time in HMP Fallenbrook is a work of fiction, but I have drawn on multiple real-life sources to ensure it reflects the genuine issues expectant and new mothers (and other inmates) face in prisons in the UK today. The books Mothering Justice: Working with Mothers in Criminal and Social Justice Settings, edited by Lucy Baldwin, and The Little Book of Prison: A Beginners Guide by Frankie Owens have been particularly useful. Interviews with Royal College of Midwives Fellow Dr Laura Abbott, senior lecturer in midwifery, Hertfordshire University, and her doctoral thesis, ‘The incarcerated pregnancy: An ethnographic study of perinatal women in English prisons’, have provided complex and unbeatable insights into what it’s like to be expecting, or to have, a baby in prison. I have also made use of the informative website www.birthcompanions.org.uk and their Birth Charter, which forms their recommendations and guidelines of how these vulnerable women and their children should be cared for.
There are a lot of misconceptions as to the type of people who are in prison, the type of crimes they (the majority) have committed, and what exactly the prisons are like. When I first visited a prison (male category B), I was apprehensive. Security confiscated the paperclips I had used to sort my notes. I immediately panicked, thinking a prisoner could have hurt me with the seemingly innocuous stationery. While I was silently freaking out, the officer was chatting away, explaining: ‘They can use this to harm themselves.’ In that one moment, I learnt how we need to flip our perceptions about prisoners and prisons. With a clean, healthy, supportive, and educative system we can reduce our reoffending rates and help people escape a life of crime. We know what works. We are not doing it.
A few facts from the www.PrisonReformTrust.org.uk Bromley Briefings Summer 2017:
In 2016, nearly 68,000 people were sent to prison in the UK.
71% had committed a non-violent offence.
20,995 people (nearly a quarter of the prison population) were held in overcrowded accommodation in 2015–16. The majority were doubling up in cells designed for one.
There were 113 self-inflicted deaths in prisons in the year up to March 2017.
There were 40,161 incidents of self-harm in 2016.
The number of frontline operational staff employed in the public prison estate has fallen by over a quarter (26%) in the last seven years. There are now fewer staff looking after more prisoners: 6,428 fewer staff looking after over 300 more people.
Nearly a quarter of prison officers (24%) have been in post for two years or less. The proportion of experienced staff is also declining: currently only three in five officers have ten years of experience or more. Over a quarter (27%) of frontline operational staff quit before two years in the role – and the rate at which they are leaving has accelerated significantly in the last three years.
The number of women in prison has more than doubled since 1993. There are now nearly 2,300 more women in prison today than there were in 1993.
84% of women in prison are in for non-violent crime.
53% of women in prison reported experiencing emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child.
8,447 women were sent to prison in the year to December 2016, either on remand or to serve a sentence.
Women account for a disproportionate number of self-harm incidents in prison – despite making up only 5% of the total prison population.
12 female prisoners took their own lives in 2016. The highest number since 2004. A recent, rapid and very concerning increase.
Above everything else, this book has been shaped by those I have met inside while visiting and teaching creative writing in UK prisons. Thank you to the men and women of Thameside, Pentonville, Askham Grange, and Downview, who generously gave me their observations, wisdom, tips and tricks for survival, and a full breakdown of day-to-day life in a UK prison. I hope to never see any of you (inside) again.
Acknowledgements
This book would not exist were it not for the big-hearted generosity and practi
cal guidance of Helen Cadbury, who first broke me into prison. A hilarious potty-mouth, an advocate for all who are marginalised within society, a natural storyteller. She was taken from us too soon. Wherever you are, I know you’ll be enjoying the library. Rest in peace, doll.
As ever I need to thank my agent Diana Beaumont, the expert hand at my tiller, guiding me through book land. A mentor, a colleague, a friend. I owe you more drinks than we could ever consume. But I’m willing to give it a good go. Thank you also to Guy Herbert and Sandra Sawicka, Phil Patterson and all those at Marjacq agency for their time, assistance, and skill. I’m lucky to be part of such a great team.
My heartfelt gratitude goes to my awe-inspiring iconic editor Ruth Tross, who took a punt on me and Jenna. It’s been a great joy and an incredible privilege to work with someone so discerning, talented and dedicated to elevating this novel to the best it could be (plus she has easy access to the best cheese straws on the planet). I can’t wait to see what we achieve next! Special thanks should also go to Hannah Bond, whose assistant editorial skills have been above and beyond, and whose cheerful and go-getting demeanour is a total pleasure to work with. Thank you also to Joanna Kaliszewska, Joanne Myler, Lewis Csizmazia, Lydia Seleska, my magical copy editor Helen Parham and all the masterful team at Mulholland and Hodder & Stoughton. So excited to be part of the squad.
Special thanks must go to Dr Kathy Weston from www.Keystone-Aspire.com who quite rightly assumed I would find a talk by the Birth Companions at the St Albans’ Soroptimists interesting and planted the seed of Jenna’s story. From there I must shower Dr Laura Abbott, senior lecturer in midwifery, Hertfordshire University, with gratitude: she repeatedly let me pick her brain and her thesis. And the Birth Companions themselves, who do vital humane work advocating for and providing support for pregnant women and new mothers in prison. Do please go give them a few quid: www.birthcompanions.org.uk
Thank you to Neil White, Steve Cavanagh and Nick Ramage for their guidance on legal matters, in particular court and remand proceedings. If there are any errors rest assured they’re mine and nothing to do with these fine upstanding gentlemen of the law.
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