Fry

by Lorna Dounaeva

  Millrose switches the tape back on.

  “We’ve just spoken to your brother. He says you’ve been harassing Holly for weeks now. Ringing in the middle of the night and showing up at their house uninvited.”

  “What?”

  “He thinks you need help.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Here’s his statement. Read it for yourself.”

  I scan the document, reading with disbelief how my own brother has disowned and renounced me. One particular sentence jumps out at me:

  ‘In my opinion, my sister, Isabel Anderson is the one responsible for Holly’s assault. Her recent actions have been both bizarre and incongruous. She is clearly in desperate need of professional help.’

  “Incongruous?” I snort. “My brother doesn’t talk like that! I bet he doesn’t even know what it means! Someone’s put words in his mouth.”

  Millrose sits back in her chair. “I can assure you the only people present at his interview were DS Penney and myself.”

  This makes no sense…

  Julio should be on my side. When he saw that picture of Jody, he took me seriously. He and Holly were going to help me figure all this out. They believed me. They both believed me. What changed his mind? Or should I say, who?

  “He’s been coached,” I insist. “Blackmailed. They’ve got to him.”

  Millrose opens a brown envelope and pulls out two glossy photographs, which she sets on the table in front of me.

  “Take a look at these pictures. Take a good look.”

  It’s Holly. Her eyes are closed, her face ashen. She is covered in bandages and hooked up to all kinds of machines. I can’t believe how awful she looks, how tortured.

  Oh Holly, what have they done to you?

  “She was hit over the head with a heavy object – probably the stone statue we found in your garage.”

  Stone statue? They must be talking about that awful monstrosity Mum sent me for Christmas. I shoved it to the back of the garage so I wouldn’t have to look at it. If I had only known it would be used in such an awful way, I would never have taken delivery.

  “She also has burns on her feet and legs, as if someone set light to her. See the burn marks here…and here?”

  A single tear slides down my cheek.

  “It’s not pretty, is it?”

  I stare at the horrible images.

  “How could I possibly have done this?” I ask, trying to pull myself together.

  “I was at work when Holly went missing. You can check with my colleagues.”

  “We have. You were seen leaving the building on several occasions. Where did you go?”

  “I…I went to my car a couple of times. And I had a couple of coffee breaks with Jon the security guard. You can ask him.”

  Except for that one time, when he went to speak to the police patrol car to see if he could find out what was going on.

  “And then…well, I was in the warehouse for a while as you know. But surely you have all this on CCTV?”

  Penney sits up sharply. “We would,” he says and looks at me accusingly. “If someone hadn’t tampered with the footage.”

  “You can’t possibly think that was me! Why would I do that? That footage would have exonerated me!”

  “If you’re innocent.”

  “I am innocent.” And starting to sound like a broken record.

  “What we want to know, Isabel, is who you’re working with. You can’t have done everything yourself. Not all those fires on the same night.”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Look, we might be able to offer you a deal here. Just tell us who you’re working with. Who else is in your organisation? We need names.”

  She glances at my lawyer and he looks at me.

  “Do you need time to confer?”

  “No! I didn’t attack anyone. I didn’t set any fires, and I’m not ‘working’ with anyone!”

  “Very well then.”

  Millrose produces a second envelope and pulls out another picture.

  “Do you know this man?”

  “No.” I’m almost afraid to ask. “Who is he?”

  “Ben Palmer, local firefighter. He was badly injured three weeks ago, tackling a fire at the Be Beautiful beauty salon just outside Queensbeach. Do you know it?”

  I nod, numbly.

  That’s where I get my hair and nails done.

  “We suspect that fire was started on purpose.”

  She shows me another picture. “And this is Jill Seymour. She and her elderly mother, Ruth, suffered burns in a fire at a greengrocer’s in Sandford Dunes last year. That one was also started deliberately. They were lucky to get out alive.”

  She sets down the photos. “And these might just be the tip of the iceberg. How many fires has FRY started over the years, Isabel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Take a good, long look at the photos.”

  “It wasn’t me!” I insist. “Can’t you see how ludicrous this all is? Check my record – I’ve never even had so much as a parking ticket! And I hadn’t even heard of FRY until I met Alicia. I still don’t even know what it stands for!”

  I look at Millrose and she looks at me. As adamant as I am that I have done nothing wrong, she is equally convinced of my guilt.

  Just when I don’t think I can bear any more of these riddles, I am dismissed, banished with my lawyer to another room.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” I ask, thankful for the reprieve.

  “They could be interviewing another witness,” he guesses.

  “Alicia!” I gasp. The thought of her being just across the hall makes me want to vomit. But she doesn’t know I’m in here, does she?

  *

  Two hours later, Millrose confirms my worst fear.

  “We’ve just spoken to Alicia McBride.”

  “Have you let her go? She’s a psychopath! She tried to kill me!”

  I can feel myself getting hysterical.

  Millrose is oblivious to my anxiety. “Alicia had some very interesting things to say. For one, now that she knows the seriousness of the allegations against you, she’s retracted the false alibi she gave you before Christmas. She also said that it’s you who’s been waging a vendetta against her – because you’re jealous of her relationship with Deacon Frost.”

  “But that’s not true!”

  “Are you jealous, Isabel?”

  The colour creeps into my cheeks before I can do anything about it.

  “Alicia’s only with him to get at me.”

  “She said she’s tried to be your friend, but you’ve been acting increasingly irrationally. She said she’s been avoiding you lately because you’ve been behaving so oddly.”

  “Avoiding me!” I burst out. “She hounds me day and night! Lurks outside my house with her sister, watching my every move! And…and…she’s the one with the word ‘FRY’ branded into her back!”

  Explain that one, Alicia.

  “Yes, that came up. She said you did it.”

  “What?”

  “She said you assaulted her with a branding iron, years back, when she was just a kid at Camp Windylake.”

  “That’s just not true! Why would I do that?”

  “She said you tried to recruit her to work for you, and you didn’t like it when she said no.”

  “Recruit her to do what? She was only ten!”

  “To break into houses and set light to them. She said you needed a child, someone who could fit through small windows.”

  “What? That’s complete fiction, a fairytale! She always was full of crap!”

  And yet, there’s something distinctly familiar about this story. I feel like I’ve heard it before. I think hard, trying to catch the disjointed bits of memory before they go up in smoke. I know there’s something in there, hidden away. I feel like Alicia’s just given me a clue.

  “This was ten years ago, Isabel. Just how long have you been taking money to set fires?”

 
I shake my head.

  “I haven’t.”

  At least, I don’t think I have.

  What is wrong with me? Am I starting to doubt myself?

  A little later, some kind of meal is served, but I can barely look at what’s put in front of me. The image of Holly, badly injured and burned sits heavy on my conscience and in my stomach. And what about those other people – the ones who were hurt? They can’t possibly have any connection to me. Can they? I have this incredible crushing sensation in my chest, like my insides are caving in. It’s not just fear anymore, it’s something else. But what? Guilt?

  Can I have done this? Can I have broken into houses and set them alight for money? Is it possible I’m so crazy, that I’ve been leading a double life all along?

  No, that’s ridiculous!

  But if I’m so innocent, then why do I feel so guilty?

  A spark of something blazes a trail through my mind. I don’t know what it is. The room turns red. I feel as if I am seeing everything through a red-tinted lens, as though I am trapped in Alicia’s painting - the one she did when she was ten. Everything looks ghoulish, blood-splattered. Tainted with death and destruction.

  This is not real. It can’t be…

  I squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them, all the red has gone.

  I’m sitting in a different seat now, and there’s a custody officer standing in front of me. I realise that something important is happening and yet I struggle to focus. Penney starts speaking, but I hear his words as if I’m not really there, but floating high above them, my brain completely disconnected from my body.

  “Isabel Victoria Anderson, you are charged with the abduction and attempted murder of Holly Handsworth, plus multiple counts of arson.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  And so I languish in prison.

  Due to the seriousness of the charges against me, I am denied bail and transferred to the notorious Gillmore women’s prison; a place I had previously only heard of from newspapers and TV. A place synonymous with riots and serial killers. And if I had imagined myself waiting it out in solitude, maybe getting a little reading done, I’d have been horribly mistaken.

  Setting foot in Gillmore is one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do. Every fibre of my body screams at me to turn around and run, but the place is too heavily guarded. There is no way out.

  “I’ll be watching you, fire-starter!” jeers one of the prison guards, as I’m herded into the admissions area – a small, confined room with a number of other prisoners. A huge lump builds up in my throat as I realise what’s coming:

  “We’re going to be strip searched!” the woman in front of me hisses. I get the feeling most of them have been here before.

  Salt tingles on my tongue.

  I will not cry.

  The prison guard watches impatiently as I wriggle out of my jumper, T-shirt, jeans and socks.

  “And the rest! Come on, don’t be shy.”

  Warily, I undo my bra and fold my arms over my chest.

  “We haven’t got all day, Princess!”

  I let my knickers drop to the floor.

  The prison guards have already made up their minds about me. I am every bit a criminal. I do not have the luxury of a cell all to myself as I did at the police station. I have to share. And the truth is, I am terrified of my fellow prisoners, even though most of the ones I come into contact with have yet to be convicted. But they wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t been accused of some terrible crime, would they? And a little part of me thinks there must be some grain of truth to the allegations against them. There’s no smoke without fire – isn’t that what they say? And yet, I find myself in the same position, counting down the days until my trial. Wondering if I will ever be vindicated, or if this is just the beginning of a terrible new life.

  Gillmore is four hours from Queensbeach – far from everyone I know and love. My heart aches for my home, my friends, for my old comfortable routine, for Fluffy. For much of the time, I am cooped up in my cell, forced to perform the daily rituals of washing, dressing and even using the toilet, in front of a constantly changing stream of cellmates and the ever-watchful eyes of the prison guards, who peep blatantly through the Judas hole. I am allowed out for a short spell in the exercise yard each day, but even this is high risk. I am terrified of who I might encounter.

  You see, I am surrounded by broken, damaged people; many of them drug addicts, hungry as vampires for their next fix. Volatile and unstable, these are not the type of people I want to be around. I suppose I make a few friends, but I have no intention of seeing any of them again – if I ever get out, that is. Fights break out daily, usually over the distribution of drugs, but anything can set them off; the slightest gesture, a comment, even an ill-advised glance. A packet of cigarettes is swiped off me the first time I set foot in the yard, but I move on, act like it never happened.

  The first few nights, I find it impossible to sleep, but after that I get used to it – the constant banging on the bars, the yells, the shrieks and the moans. It all seems to blend into the background. It becomes almost…normal. Prison cures my insomnia. I suppose that’s the one good thing to come out of all this.

  *

  One day, I’m standing in the lunch queue, waiting for pudding to be slopped onto my tray, when the inmate next to me suddenly turns on the woman serving:

  “What are you looking at, bitch?”

  I jump back quickly as she flings scorching hot coffee in her face. My reflexes are sharp these days. They have to be. The woman screams in agony. I feel sorry for her, but I leave it to the prison officers to cart her off to the healthcare wing. I do not want to get involved.

  “Hey, Princess!” calls Patty, the prison officer who singled me out when I arrived. “Did you see what happened?”

  “No.”

  Patty is always on my back, wanting me to tell her who did what to whom. But I’m no snitch. I keep myself to myself and keep my nose out of other people’s business.

  “You think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you, Princess?”

  “No.”

  But deep down, maybe I do.

  The only time I can really relax is when I’m with my lawyer, churning over the facts of my case. But in my third week at Gillmore, the man who comes to see me is not the lawyer I was assigned.

  “Isabel?”

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  “Brian Crawford. I’m your new lawyer.”

  “I can’t afford a new lawyer!”

  Not one who wears this season’s Gucci suits, anyway.

  Actually, he looks kind of familiar. I think I saw him on TV a few weeks ago, defending a politician who everyone said was guilty as sin. If I remember rightly, I think he won.

  “You’re not to worry about the cost,” Brian says, opening his briefcase.

  “Your friend’s going to take care of that.”

  “What friend?”

  I only have one friend who could possibly afford a swanky new lawyer - Deacon.

  Can I let him do this?

  I swallow. I’ve always prided myself on my independence. I’m not the sort of woman who likes to think of herself as ‘kept’ in any way. I’m not even comfortable with letting a man pay for my dinner, unless I’m planning on returning the favour. And yet…

  Can I afford not to?

  With the odds stacked against me as they are, there’s a very strong chance I will go to jail for a long time. The man sitting opposite me is probably my only chance of freedom, or, at the very least, a lighter sentence. Like it or not, I don’t have much choice but to accept.

  Brian is meticulous in his search for the facts. It’s quite exhausting, going over everything, again and again.

  “I already explained all this to the other lawyer,” I say, as he quizzes me about the fire at Robertson’s again. “Didn’t he give you his notes?”

  “I know it’s a pain, but I need to hear it from you. I need to be sure he asked all the right questions. There
might be something he missed. I need every little detail, no matter how tiny. In a case like this, we need to be extremely thorough.”

  Throughout it all, my main hope is that Holly will come round and tell everyone that this has all been a terrible mistake - that I’m innocent and they should let me go. But poor Holly lies in a coma, stuck in the passageway between life and death. The more time passes, the more unlikely it becomes that she will ever recover.

  “Is there any news of Holly?” I ask, each time I see Brian.

  But the answer is always the same.

  “Sorry, no change.”

  *

  I steel myself as a prison officer walks up to me at the end of lunch one afternoon.

  “You’ve got a visitor.”

  A visitor?

  I’ve been so alone, so disconnected that I was beginning to think the whole world had forgotten about me. I’m sure my friends would have liked to come and see me, but it’s such a long drive from Queensbeach and they’d have to take a day off work.

  The prison officer escorts me down to the visitor’s area, leaving me with Patty, who lingers longer than strictly necessary over the mandatory checks and searches. I glance anxiously at the clock on the wall.

  Come on! Visiting time is almost over…

  But Patty takes a sadistic delight in holding me up. By the time I am allowed to step into the visitor’s room, there are only 20 minutes left. Still, I can’t wait to find out who’s waiting for me:

  “Deacon!”

  It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the night of the fire. It seems unnatural not to run up and hug him, but the prison rules keep us at a platonic distance. He returns my smile but looks distracted, like his mind is on many other things. His demeanour betrays little emotion. He is brisk and businesslike as he goes over my case, my options, and my chances. He doesn’t talk about us and he certainly doesn’t talk about Alicia. I’m going to have to be the one to ask.

  “Have you seen her?”

  “No. She was gone when I came home from the hospital. Rhett didn’t even see her leave.”

  “Do you think she’ll come back?”

  “Don’t worry about that right now. We have to concentrate on getting you out of here.”

  “But what if she comes back? She could set light to the house, or…or…anything!”