SHADOWS OF REGRET
ROSS GREENWOOD
CONTENTS
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
1. January 2010 - Age 34
2. The First Memory - Age Five
3. Holding Cell
4. Discharged
5. The Second Memory - Age Seven
6. Cambridge
7. Imprisoned Still
8. The Third Memory - Age Eight
9. February
10. The Girls Arrive
11. March
12. Two Days Later
13. Clubbing
14. Pumpkin Time
15. Gone
16. The Fourth Memory - Age Eight
17. April
18. My First Job
19. The Fifth Memory - Age Nine
20. Work
21. Tattoo Time
22. Jan Shemanski
23. The Sixth Memory - Age Ten
24. May
25. My New Home
26. The Seventh Memory - Age Eleven
27. Back in the ‘Boro
28. We Meet Again
29. Good Times
30. The Club
31. A Poisonous Thorn
32. Dancing
33. The Eighth Memory - Age Thirteen
34. The Probation Office
35. A Week Later
36. The Ninth Memory - Age Fourteen
37. June
38. Cambridge Library
39. The Tenth Memory - Age Sixteen
40. The Shock of Seeing Bill
41. Waiting for Thorn
42. A Bottle of Mouthwash Later
43. The Eleventh Memory - Age Seventeen
44. A New Way of Thinking
45. The Seaside
46. A Week Later
47. The Twelfth Memory - Age Eighteen
48. Unfinished Business
49. Lost Heart
50. The Thirteenth Memory - Age Nineteen
51. The Truth
52. Love
53. Secrets
54. July
55. Sunday
56. Huntingdon Races
57. The Twins
58. Justin
59. Football Match
60. Charters
61. Attraction
62. Jordan’s Farm
63. Four Days Later
64. Packing
65. The Barn
66. Sunday Midday
67. The Future
About the Author
Also by Ross Greenwood
If your life was ruined, would you seek redemption or take revenge?
SHADOWS OF REGRET
Copyright © Ross Greenwood 2019
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by photocopying or any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from both the copyright owner and the publisher of the book.
All characters are fictional.
Any similarity to any actual person is purely coincidental.
The right of Ross Greenwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and any subsequent amendments thereto.
Revenge is the ultimate pleasure. But you still don’t win.
Radic.
But do you feel remorse, for that is the higher calling?
Thorn.
Life rains on us all
Irina
1
January 2010 - Age 34
Prison
It’s quiet at six a.m. for a place like this. The madness of yesterday is over, and the chaos of a new day is yet to begin. I can hear people opening the house block door and the clang of the wing gates as they shut. I recognise they are women due to the lighter step of their work boots. Even so, their strides are purposeful. The bolt locking my cell scrapes back, I hope for the last time, and light floods in.
‘It’s time, Katie.’
I stop pacing. I’ve spent years waiting for today, and now I wish it were tomorrow. One officer checks my demeanour, decides two escorts aren’t required, and leaves. I step out of what’s been my home for many years and look back. My shadow stretches into the room, and I wish I could leave it behind.
It belongs with me though, and its presence will always be felt. The people I’ve lost, the evil deed that sent me here, and the unbearable pain that followed are waiting to be re-discovered. Regret has no place within these walls, but I’m leaving now and we will depart together. The young girl who came here is long gone. A new Katie will emerge, one with hopes of a normal life.
I shove my belongings — a bag and a box are all I own in the world — onto the landing. Prison Officer Alison Wilde offers an open palm, and a raised eyebrow, but my hands need busying to prevent them from trembling. I’ll carry them myself.
‘I’m ready, Alison.’ My words crack as I speak.
‘Have you got your ID card?’
I bob my head because I lack confidence in my voice.
After taking a deep breath to compose myself, I follow her along the line of closed cell doors. Their inhabitants are listening and they chant my name. Many of them are little more than children. To some, I’ve been the mother they never had, and now another who leaves them behind.
The wing gate banging into place silences them. I can handle anything, I remind myself as tears build. I won’t cry today.
We pass officers on the way to start their shifts and a few of them nod and say good luck. One even comes over and shakes my hand. He always was formal. It’s a small gesture but a meaningful one. My new trainers squeak on the polished floor as we approach reception. It takes a long time to save up for a pair when you get paid £1 per shift. I wanted something new for a fresh beginning though, and they are worth every drawn-out hour I spent working for them.
At the doors to reception, Alison holds the last one open and smiles.
‘Good luck, Katie. You’re familiar with the way from here.’
I appreciate the comment and she’s right. I know it better than she does. Alison has only been at HMP Peterborough for six months. I transferred in when it first opened five years ago. She isn’t much older than the girls who cheered when I left the wing. Her full make-up looks unnatural here. As if she is too shiny for somewhere so dull.
The officers held a collection for me as I’d been here so long and bought me a box of cosmetics. It remains unused with my things as I rarely wear any. However, that kind thought is important and so is Alison’s light tone. They are slim layers of gloss for my fragile self-esteem.
I still can’t trust myself to speak and, despite her tender years, she understands. She gives me a brief hug and sends me on my way. Prison will always be a place of surprises.
The staff member processing releases has been here from the beginning. He is one of many ex-forces I’ve met on both sides of the bars, but Prison Officer Grant lost something during his spell in the military. Perhaps, he never possessed humanity. Over the years, in various establishments, I’ve been molested and spat on, ridiculed and pawed, but he is the only person who succeeds in making me feel truly worthless.
Grant doesn’t waste his precious oxygen by talking; instead he beckons me over using a slow finger. With a clatter, he empties all my belongings onto the desk. They look pathetic and are a shocking reminder of how far I will need to travel i
n life. Some say the sentence is the easy part, and the hard work only begins when you leave.
He ticks my things off against the property card. There’s a pause and a grin.
‘Most of this stuff isn’t on your list.’
He smirks and uses his pencil to lift a pair of frayed, grey knickers off the pile. They aren’t bloomers but embarrassing, nonetheless. Leaning back, he holds them aloft as though toxic. My strained nerves snap.
‘You prick. Did you think I’d still have the same underwear after sixteen years?’
I bark the insult, but a hot flush burns my face as I remember that I did indeed have that item near the start. To my credit, they were whiter then.
‘If it’s not named on here, it stays in the prison.’
‘Everything I’m wearing is unlikely to be on there apart from my footwear which I signed for a few weeks ago. Shall I take my clothes off and leave naked?’
A squint of an eye indicates what he thinks of that idea. I could slam my fist into his chin and he’d never know what hit him. That said, I plan to avoid violence, so it would be a poor start to my new life.
I swore not to hurt anyone again when I was put away. But jails the world over don’t allow that. I began my sentence at Holloway: a hard place overflowing with despair and anger. I learned shows of strength were necessary, and that inevitably meant hurting someone else because it was them or me. Over time, different people needed new lessons. It was a circle of pain.
The overriding emotion here at Peterborough is sadness, but there’s also hope. That’s a vast improvement on living amongst fear. I won’t allow Grant to upset me this morning, so I will be defiant if nothing else. ‘You believe you’re better than me, but today I win.’
‘How so?’ He sweats despite the early chill, and for the first time I wonder if the bravado he shows hides his own worries. Why have I never considered that he may have a cheating wife or sick child at home? Perhaps he’s always stressed or exhausted. Maybe he is as scared as we are.
A senior officer walks past.
‘Let her have it, Grant.’
Grant scrunches my carefully ironed clothes into a ball and wedges them in the large, plastic prison bag. He hurls the rest of my knick-knacks into the box. The last item, my one and only photo of my parents in a cheap wooden frame, he holds for a second too long. Before I can react, his chubby fingers have squeezed and cracked the thin glass.
‘Oops.’ Cold eyes yearn for a reaction.
He won’t get to me, not today. ‘I win because I’m leaving. There’s no end to your sentence in this hole. Pointless, desperate, cold and pitiful is how prison is best defined, and it also describes you.’
I snatch my possessions off the desk so he can’t damage anything else and smile at his angry scowl.
‘You’ll be back.’
‘If I get recalled, I’ll kill you when I return.’
I know it’s childish, but his shocked face is worth it.
The senior officer directs me to the holding cell. They used to search us all the time; arriving, transfers, hospital appointments, and so on, but things change. They can’t do internals anymore, or even look in our bras without good reason, so they might as well not bother at all. Nevertheless, the man is all business, and his face is stone.
‘Need anything?’
‘How many of us are there, guv?’
‘Only you and Rada leaving this morning.’ He pronounces it in the same way as you would the car — Lada.
He locks me in, which seems a strange thing to do on my last day. I’m hardly an escape risk. The holding cell is a big, bright room with large Perspex windows so there’s no hiding. Many brutal fights occur in here, although they’re usually between those whose journeys in this place are just beginning.
The other lucky soul on this icy morning shrinks in the far corner, as if she’d rather not be noticed. I’m aware of her, have chatted to her, but can’t say I know her. She’s been in the system for years. I’ve only heard her called Radar. I thought it was a nickname because she says nothing but hears everything, not that anybody worries about bad pronunciation here. She’s foreign but I couldn’t tell you which country she’s from.
I recall her story and it’s distressing. She must be in pain. For her to last as long as she has is a triumph over adversity. It’s something I don’t think I could have done. There are no secrets in jail. Everyone knew of her crime, and she was treated accordingly but I suspect the harshest criticism came from within.
People handle long sentences in their own way. Her method was to shut down. She became a person on life-support. One with a minimal amount of function to get her through a horrible experience. I worked in the segregation unit as an orderly for six months, and I was resident there upon her arrival. They placed her on suicide watch, but I never caught a sound from her cell. In fact, I’ve barely heard her talk since then, and I was on her wing for two years.
Before, I didn’t care. My own cross was heavy. Thinking about it now, I would guess her to be one of the many young girls shunted through fifteen countries in three days. Raped at every port and addicted upon arrival. Their lives are tough to contemplate. Some break away from what isn’t even living, few escape those memories. I know that better than most.
Again, why am I considering others? Am I waking from a long dream? I’m a human being that’s slept for over a decade and a half. Rada’s eyes follow me as I approach the breakfast cereal and bowls in the corner. The things stay untouched. There’s no way I could eat anything either. It will take more than coffee, cornflakes and daylight to release fear’s grip from my throat.
They can’t discharge until nine, so we have hours to burn. If you have too much of something, it becomes worthless. That’s what time means to people like us. I was relatively uneducated when I arrived here, as are most, but I wasn’t stupid. I asked others in the same predicament how they coped at the beginning. Drugs seemed to be the answer. If you can survive a year, even if you spend it out of your mind, then you can deal with another. And then one more. Until the end.
That’s what I did. Although I waited until I’d discovered how to get them without burying myself in debt and favours. For those initial few weeks, I wracked my brain for answers. I never slept. If I ate, I don’t recall doing so.
I made a friend in the early days who was obsessed with other people’s first memories. She believed hers was being loved and lying in a warm cot staring up at a branch bending with juicy apples. Too many cider adverts under the influence, I suspected. She was crazy as hell. Every few weeks, she would cover herself in her own shit and fight with the staff, but it got me thinking.
I wrote a list of the events in my life that had led me to a hopeless future. I began as far back as I could remember, and when I stopped there were a dozen that defined me. They are the twelve memories of a broken heart. They are my shadows of regret.
Some people slide down to the depths of despair, descending under the weight of a thousand wrong choices. They live a gradual horror, getting used to every new, spirit-crushing day. Each one being a little worse than the last.
For others, such as me, luck played a part. A trap door opened under my life and I plunged below. I remember nothing before that defining moment. It’s as though that incident became my ground zero and creation. I’ve had good experiences since then, but most were bad. My first recollection was a distressing thing to recall but, as my memories go, perhaps not the worst. For a child though, it was the end of the world.
2
The First Memory - Age Five
I deemed it necessary to line them up in pairs, the big dollies at the front with ones of equal height and so on. I must have got it from how children walk when they went on a school trip. A little girl, whose name I have long forgotten, helped me. We beamed at each other when they were ready. I grabbed my favourite dolly of them all and prepared to lead the way. Reception class had drifted by in a pleasant haze, but it came to a juddering halt on that distressing day.
Our teacher was a gruff old woman. She petrified me, but I felt safe with her, if that makes any sense. She wasn’t one for emotion, so I knew something terrible had happened when she appeared at my side with tears pouring down her face.
‘Katie, can you come with me, please?’
I stood and smiled hesitantly. My friend began to cry next to me which made me more confused. The teacher placed her arm over my shoulder and guided me out of the classroom.
‘Do I need my coat?’
‘We have all your things, dear.’
‘I still have dolly.’
Kind eyes implored me to hang on to her. We entered a large office which contained the headmistress and a youthful woman in smart clothing. They both had blotchy faces.
‘Sit there, please.’
I did, and waited for something to happen. My left leg jiggled, and I stifled a laugh. The younger lady’s shoulders shook. She rose, sat next to me and took my hand. Hers cocooned mine in warmth. I can feel them when I recall that time. Why was I the only one not crying?
‘My name is Bethany, Katie. I’m a social worker. There’s been an awful accident. We’re waiting for your uncle to arrive. Try not to worry, we’ll look after you. It will all be okay.’
‘Uncle Jack is coming here?’ It had to be him because I only had one uncle.
‘That’s right.’
‘I like him, but he smells funny.’
At that moment, he arrived with a policewoman. Bethany vacated her seat so my uncle could take it. He put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head as he often did. He still smelled odd. I looked up into his eyes and saw him struggle with a poor smile. Then, he glanced at the policewoman and nodded.
What she said was complicated for a five-year-old, but I understood. There had been a fire. A fast-moving, ferocious one that consumed our house, its contents, and the inhabitants before anyone could be saved. I was all alone in the world, except for Uncle Jack and Auntie Gwyn.
It would not be okay at all.
SHADOWS OF REGRET: If your life was ruined, would you seek redemption or take revenge? Page 1
