by Ruth Dugdall
‘Hey, Sam. It’s not that I mind you being here, love, but this boy has work to do. Come on, Rob. Play the game.’
I waited for him to finish his Community Payback hours for the day, seated on a broken chair in the restroom, the prospect of Douglas’s imminent release buzzing in my brain. The workshop was rowdy, with the radio competing with the shouts to Pass that hammer and Give us a hand here, mate. I felt dirty just being there. Finally, Rob was done. He picked at some jump leads under the Datsun’s bonnet, pulling one out with a yank that seemed to satisfy him. I could tell he’d made a decision.
He turned to me, and took my hand. ‘The most important thing for me is to protect my mum. He can’t come back into her life. And no one should get away with what he did to your sister. I’ll help you, Sam.’
And I kissed him, deep and long and with every beat of my weakening heart.
By the time we reached The Fold, hand in hand and heads together, Rob and I had come up with a plan. Lance was hoovering the hallway, a path of clean carpet between the graffiti-marked walls and battered doors. He grinned stupidly at Rob, his friend for life.
‘Hey, Lance. ’Sup?’ Rob high-fived him, and Lance snorted with delight.
‘Just cleaning, man.’
Once we were in Rob’s room, he started to move things around, making space on each of the shelves as he went over our plan. ‘Okay, so I’m going to write and tell Dad that he can stay here. Then we can keep an eye on him, follow him, see what he does. Keep him away from my mum and your sister.’
‘What about Mac? If he finds out your dad is here, will you be in trouble with your probation officer?’
‘Yup. He’d do his nut if he found out, and it wouldn’t look good for me. It’s in the contract: no overnight guests.’ I saw a flash of something defiant in his eyes. ‘I’ll have to get him a blow-up mattress or something.’
He pulled out some Rizla papers and baccy from a drawer, and began to roll a joint.
‘We should meet him from the train. Make sure he doesn’t wander anywhere else.’
Rob licked his paper, and sniffed. ‘Fuck that. I’ll pick him up at Bishop’s Hill. Take my Datsun.’
It wasn’t his Datsun; it belonged to Greasy Monkeys. Mac sometimes let him drive it on the disused airfield, but I doubted he’d be insured on the road. Rob inhaled his spliff, and his shoulders relaxed. After his second tug, he said, ‘I’m going to be there when he gets out on Monday.’
He took another drag, hollow cheeks as he sucked, a glow of orange at the tip, and passed it to me, touching my fingers as I took it and breathed deeply.
‘Me too.’
I felt a twinge of excitement, and went to Rob, kissing him deeply and unbuckling his jeans. Our pact, our shared goal of monitoring Douglas, drew us closer, close enough to call it love. I let him pull off my clothes and lower me to the bed, and felt his weight, like he was a part of my own body. But my thoughts were racing, thinking how close I was to seeing Douglas Campbell, to knowing if it was him I saw in the alley, standing over my broken sister.
I closed my eyes as Rob touched me, entered me, and I could almost feel the rain, almost see the hunched figure, dark slick head, and the devastating emptiness where a face belonged.
CHAPTER 24
20 January
Elsewhere on the unit, girls will be sleeping, and Birute will be in the office enjoying a magazine with lots of photos, OK! or Heat, by the light of a study lamp, relishing the peace of an uneventful night shift, flicking glossy pages with her sturdy fingers. My fingers are so pale now, almost blue, and so thin. Touching them, I think of the trick that Hansel played, offering up a chicken bone to feel so the witch would think her too skinny to eat.
I bury my head in my pillow, smothering out the past, the future I rejected, and don’t hear Birute arrive with the night-time meds until the door is open. Her hand touching my shoulder startles me; I am so lost in the past that for a second I think it’s Rob and I’m being given a second chance at being loved. But I rejected that with what I did, and have kept on rejecting it for eighteen months. He has tried to visit, many times.
Birute peers closely at me with an expression of concern.
‘What wrong, sweet? You cry, and this not like you.’
And I’m so rocked by my memories, so undone by her concern, that I tell her. ‘I’m scared. It’ll soon be February, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.’
‘I think it will be okay. You are a good girl, Sam. They will see.’ She notices the Black Magic box, the photos clasped in my fist. ‘All this you are doing with Clive is upsetting, yes?’ She sits next to me, her hand stroking the bumps of my spine.
‘Look at this,’ she says, shaking the small plastic cup in her hand, showing me an oblong white horse-pill and a small round one, sugar-coated. There’s a new pill, diamond-shaped and blue, which has started appearing in the pot.
‘These can help you get better. But this’ – she pokes with her index finger at my temple – ‘this is the most important of all. My mother, when she was sent to Siberia, she was just a little girl. I don’t know how my grandmother kept her alive, but she manage. Is possible, always, to live. But what I see, with all you girls, you want so very much to die. And this is something I don’t understand.’ She shakes her head sadly, blows her fringe from her face so I can see her eyes more clearly. ‘My grandmother had no food; she was starved and cold. But Stalin did this to her. You, all you girls, do it to yourself.’
When I first came here, I would hide the pills under my tongue and spit them into my hand once her back was turned, but now I’ll swallow them all, even the blue one. I won’t even ask what it is for.
‘I do want to get better, Birute. I’m just not sure I can.’
‘You can.’ She sniffs and fixes her clear eyes on me. ‘My grandmother, she was not afraid of Stalin when she came home. She kept his picture, to show her that he is just a man. Maybe visiting the past with your special box of photos is medicine you really need, so you are no longer afraid.’
I sleep fitfully, but the next morning I feel something has woken inside, a tentative faith that carries me through the day as I think about what to tell Clive at our next meeting. I decide to be like Birute’s grandmother, and face my fear.
At the scheduled hour, Clive sits in his usual chair, hands clasped together, waiting for me to begin.
Okay, Clive, here we go.
I was about to meet Douglas Campbell. It’s time for you to meet him too.
Monday 20 June, eight weeks since the attack. To be at the prison for eight in the morning, we had to leave Ipswich by seven fifteen, latest. It was five past already, but I was still in the bath. Cold water, a soap-scum ring round the edge. Wedged the wrong way, my back against one side and my feet on the other, knees to chin. My stomach ached with hunger, and the water wasn’t helping. Felt dirty, and the soap wasn’t helping either.
My head was scrambled with what I knew and what was missing. I didn’t want to think about Jena, but she was there anyway. This was all for her, so I could positively identify her attacker, and give Penny the evidence she needed. If Douglas was convicted, it would mean justice for Jena, and safety for Sonia. Rob and me, both heroes.
Mum rapped on the bathroom door with her knuckle. ‘You’ve been in there ages. Hurry up! I need the loo.’
I stood, a wave of cold air making my flesh pimple, water falling off me like a shed skin. My stomach cramped in on itself, and I sat on the toilet, dripping. Then I turned round and retched into the bowl. Trying to empty myself of what hurt inside, to rid myself of hunger so I could focus on what was important.
‘Sam!’
She sounded narked, and I instinctively touched my cheek, the round scab that had started to peel, revealing baby skin underneath, pink and raw.
Then, through the window, I heard the frustrated sound of a car horn.
‘Who’s that in the car outside, beeping?’ Mum asked.
I flushed the toilet, rinsed
my mouth at the tap, and grabbed a towel, rubbing my arms and chest so hard the skin reddened.
Mum banged harder on the door.
I opened up, and she stood there, arms crossed, glaring at me.
‘Where are you going so early anyway?’
‘Just for a drive.’
‘Where?’
‘Pleasurepark.’ We got a free annual pass, a small compensation for the crap pay Dad and Jena received, so it was believable.
I shuffled past to the bedroom, where I pulled on jeans, sticky on my damp legs, baseball boots and the T-shirt I slept in. I felt better covered up, but Mum was still on guard in the hallway.
‘You better not be lying to me. Again.’
That subject of the photo of Douglas Campbell, and my showing it to Jena, wasn’t closed, and we both knew it. Suddenly, I wanted to kiss her, for her to love me, more than anything in the world; wanted to tell her the truth and stay at home, safe. But it felt too late for that.
Outside was the Datsun, with its rusted doors and botched paintwork, ramped up on the kerb, vibrating to Kiss FM. Rob had both hands on the padded steering wheel.
‘Morning, Sam. Got your camera, I see? What about a shot of me driving this beauty?’
‘Later. Let’s go.’
As the car pulled away, I saw Mrs Read, looking down at us from her bedroom window, make a note in her book.
Forty-five minutes of cars beeping, second-hand smoke and Kiss FM. The sickness hadn’t eased, even with the windows down. Fresh air wasn’t enough to settle my feeling of dread, but I didn’t ask Rob to pull over.
He stroked my hand. ‘You all right, babe?’
‘Yeah.’ I felt panicky, weird, but best to keep it in; just try and keep breathing.
Finally, we had arrived at Bishop’s Hill Prison.
I could see two guards opening the oversized steel doorway to release a white van with blacked-out windows.
‘That’ll be on its way to some courthouse,’ smirked Rob. ‘Some scally’ll be getting the return trip.’ He’d been like this the whole journey, mouthy with a fidgety energy. Deep down, he would be as scared as I was.
There was a wall either side of the gate, grey concrete with barbed wire on top. The gate closed and a prison officer, schoolboy-formal in black trousers and white shirt, came out of the door within the gate. He whistled his way across the car park. Other cars were parked up with people waiting, just like us. A woman in a flowery dress held a toddler as he did a wee on the grass; he struggled in a shirt and trousers, stuffy in the June sun. The woman had tried her best.
I flashed back to the newspaper article, when Douglas was about to be sentenced for rape, and recalled the picture of Sonia, walking side by side with Douglas to the courthouse, crying. Not because she was thinking of the thirteen-year-old rape victim, but because she was thinking of herself.
The woman called, ‘Morning! Lovely day, isn’t it?’ to the prison officer, but he didn’t even look up. Her special day, this release day, was just another shift for him.
Rob clicked his fingers, hummed, filling the heavy silence before his dad appeared. He held my hand, and our fingers slid together, clammy but still comforting; we were united in our purpose.
The prison gate opened, and a man stepped out. A man with a shorn head, wearing a plain blue T-shirt and badly fitting jeans, carrying a white sack with H M PRISON stamped on it. He scratched his head, and dug into his sloppy jeans’ pocket, bringing out a packet of chewing gum.
‘That’s him,’ said Rob, his voice bringing me back to the present.
How could he be so ordinary? Just a worn-out version of the young man in the picture.
Douglas Campbell put his sack on the floor while he popped some gum in his mouth, then he gathered the bag at the neck and hoisted it over his shoulder, walking out of the car park with the loping gait that the patients had at Minsmere Unit, the ones who’d been there a long time and had no reason to hurry.
Rob scrambled out, calling to his dad. Douglas turned, surprise then pleasure registering on his face. He reached to hug Rob, who held back, forcing his dad to cup his head and pull him forward so he could kiss his forehead.
When they arrived at the Datsun, Douglas bent down to look at me.
‘Don’t mind if I take the front seat, do ya love? Only I’m an old man, see. Arthritis is a killer, y’know.’
His Scots accent still had a blur of Ipswich yokel mixed in, like there was a bit of gravel in his throat.
I squeezed myself between the seats, to the back. When Douglas climbed into the car, I saw him properly, for the first time. I held my breath, and waited to see this rapist and violent man, hoping it would adjust my memory of the attack into sharp focus, but nothing happened. He wasn’t that old, mid-forties, but his skin hung heavy on his bones. His lips were cracked.
He saw me too, and I wondered if he could see in me a likeness to Jena, his victim twice over. I stared right back at his sad, ordinary face, willing myself to remember him, to know beyond doubt that I had seen him before, but nothing came.
He turned towards the front, chewing the gum with his mouth open. I could see him in profile, the lines around his mouth, his eye narrowing when he chewed. His large knuckles were blue with tattoo stains and a silver cross gleamed at his neck.
‘That’s Sam,’ Rob said, proud like I was a prize he’d won.
Douglas turned to look again, making me feel hot and trapped as I wondered why his face meant nothing to me. Why it didn’t fill the gap in my memory. After a moment, he said, ‘She’s pretty.’ He released his gnarly hand from his rollie and pushed it through the gap.
‘Pleasure to meet you, Sam.’
Because he didn’t know who I was, he had no idea that it was my sister he’d raped and then attacked, that I had a plan to send him right back to the place he’d left, if only I could get something on him, something concrete.
I steeled myself, and touched his hand. The skin was loose and his grip was soggy. I pulled my fingers free.
Rob and I exchanged a look, a secret promise. He wouldn’t give me away; he’d chosen water over blood. He turned the key, and the car staggered out of the car park, Douglas giving a final one-finger salute to the gate.
Rob revved so fast the car made a whirring protest on every sharp corner; he slammed the dashboard to the beat of the music until Douglas turned the radio off.
‘So, Dad. What’s your plan now?’ asked Rob.
Douglas glanced at Rob, then addressed the window. ‘One thing about being locked up for a few weeks, it gives you space to think.’ He touched the silver cross at his neck. ‘God told me, when I was released from that bullshit sentence years ago, to go home to Scotland and make a fresh life, that coming back to Suffolk wouldn’t be the right thing for me. But eight weeks ago, I was pulled back to this fucking county; the past caught up with me. Now I think God is telling me something different: that I can’t run. I have some sorting out to do and it involves your mum.’
Rob said quietly, but with menace, ‘You leave her be, Dad. She’s been fine without you.’ His hands moved too much on the wheel, his foot kept peddling the accelerator.
‘You should slow down, boy,’ Douglas warned. ‘An old banger like this attracts attention. Is it even taxed? You don’t want to get stopped by the cops.’
Rob’s hands fisted on the steering wheel in response.
Douglas asked him, ‘How is she really?’
‘Fine. Which is why you need to leave her be.’
‘Stop repeating that same bullshit, son. I heard she was into some bad shit?’
‘That’s in the past. She’s been clean for four months.’
There was a silence for a beat, and I knew Rob was remembering the last time we saw her, how she’d stank of booze and her eyes were like dinner plates.
‘Your mum was always weak. If she’d been tougher, she could have kept hold of the business when I was sent down. She could have campaigned for me, organised an appeal, got the papers to
cover it. Anything, just so long as she got me out.’
Rob’s leg started to wiggle up and down. ‘Look, Dad, she just needed to get on with her life, you know? I mean, I was only a kid, so she had enough on her plate. Let it go already. And you shouldn’t go and see her. You can stay with me.’
Douglas seemed to think about this, as if he had several options to choose from.
‘I’d like that, son. I’d like a chance to get to know you, catch up on all the years I’ve missed. The police, the courts, they set me up, and I’ve let them get away with it. And as for letting it go, well I tried that. I’m not gonna let them stitch me up a second time, like they did to that American guy on the Netflix show. I’m back in Ipswich, and I need to sort this bullshit out once and for all.’
Douglas wound the window down, breathing in fresh air like a dog, the silver chain around his neck catching the sun. I swallowed a mouthful of bile, sick of hearing his lies. I needed air, needed to leave the car.
As Rob pulled the Datsun into a side road near The Fold and came to halt, I opened the car door and spewed watery puke on to the grass.
At The Fold, we sneaked past the office, mercifully empty. It would have been obvious from Douglas’s bag that this wasn’t just a quick visit. Rob sent Lance into the staff area, to check the coast was clear, while his dad waited outside.
‘Everything okay?’
Lance nodded. ‘Yup. The staff are still in their meeting.’
‘You didn’t see Mac?’
Lance shook his head, his eye weeping with the effort.
‘This is our secret, okay? Don’t go telling anyone that you saw me, or anyone else.’
‘Our secret,’ Lance echoed.
Douglas paced the small square of Rob’s room, touching this and lifting that, kicking a jumper that lay on the floor.
‘This it, then?’
I was tempted to say, No, we just came here for fun. His flat is the penthouse suite. Jerk. It couldn’t be worse than a prison cell.
‘I’m only on an apprenticeship, Dad. I haven’t got the money to buy nice stuff.’
