Prisoner

by Ross Greenwood

  Most of the inmates are asleep, but Rose-Marie is up and staring out of her window like a Salvador Dalí painting, the bump now clearly visible. Billie is facing away from me in her cell and pumping out press-ups in a grey bra and a pair of large, light-blue knickers. Her body glistens with sweat. I count to twenty before closing the metal flap. The metal hinge makes a guilty squeak as I close it. Billie will be able to look through the gaps around the door and see who’s doing the checks as I walk about the wing.

  I try to be quiet, but jails are noisy places. The gates clang loudly as I shut them. My footsteps thud around the landings like a slow drumbeat. The sun has risen high enough to light up the dust as it floats through the air. I wipe a film of sweat off my forehead and pull the shirt from my back.

  On Zulu wing, I find myself staring into Tara’s cell. She’s naked from the waist up, with an arm hanging loosely from the bunk. Apart from the round, small, firm breast on view, she could be a beautiful, sleeping cherub. I yank my eyes away and glance up to the top bunk. Kitty is awake and stares right at me. It’s hard to pull my gaze from her, too.

  Everyone is where they are supposed to be and they appear to be breathing. I return to the hub.

  ‘You took your time,’ says the OSO. ‘Here.’

  He points at the handover sheet.

  ‘You don’t leave until seven-fifteen, so you can wait until I’ve had a crap.’

  I sit in the toilet knowing it’s going to be a long day. When I get back to the hub, Timothy has disappeared.

  ‘Where’s knobhead gone?’ I ask.

  ‘I said he could go,’ says Nasima.

  ‘I’ve got four missing and thirteen dead, so I won’t be signing the handover sheet.’

  ‘Are you okay, Dalton? You don’t seem the man who came over a week ago.’

  Christ, has it only been a week?

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I told you it’s different over here. A lot of these girls are broken and there’s very little we can do about it apart from be supportive to them during the day before we lock them up at night.’

  I sign the sheet and spin one of the office chairs around to sit opposite her. Not too close, because I don’t want her passing out from my breath.

  ‘Come on, talk to me. You came over all clean-shaven and strapping. You look like you’ve been sleeping here.’

  After a long exhale, I tell her the truth.

  ‘I think my wife has left me.’

  Nasima leans back in her seat.

  ‘I’d have thought you would know either way.’

  ‘She’s gone on holiday for two weeks to her parents’ place in Spain. They want them to stay over there.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go with them?’

  ‘I wasn’t invited.’

  ‘Ah, I see. My folks weren’t keen on my choice of partner either.’

  She looks at the clock, then turns back to me.

  ‘I came in early to type up and file the appraisals, but I’ve got ten minutes. Tell me how it came to this, if you want to, of course.’

  Everything falls out. I wonder as I’m saying it whether I’d have talked if I weren’t so hungover. Afterwards, she looks away from me and chews her lip.

  ‘Do you know what I’d do?’ she says after a pause.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Enjoy yourself. Have fun. Lie in, get drunk, although you seem to be managing all right on that front already. Go to the cinema, then leave your pants on the bathroom floor. There’s not much you can do otherwise. When was the last time you had no responsibilities? If she wants to make it work, she needs to really want it to. Maybe send her a nice email after a week, saying you miss her and the kids. No pressure, but that you’re thinking of them.’

  It seems remarkably good advice.

  ‘Okay, sounds like a plan.’

  ‘We’ve got eleven officers in today, so if you fancy being my GD, help me with the filing, then be my guest.’

  ‘Definitely. Do you want a coffee?’

  She reaches into her drawer, pulls out a tin of Kenco Millicano and plonks it on the desk.

  ‘Use that,’ she says.

  She puts her hand back in the drawer, then throws me an Extra Strong Mint.

  ‘And that.’

  I grin at her and put the sweet in my mouth. I’m just leaving when she shouts out.

  ‘Dalton. Remember, in many ways, it’s still the same over here as the male side. The prisoners will pick up on the fact you’re not 100 per cent, and they will seek to exploit it. Be vigilant.’

  42

  Meds goes smoothly after unlock. Billie comes out for hers and says she’s nervous about starting her new job. She also asks me if I have any suntan lotion with me. It’s hard to tell if she’s joking. Rose-Marie, who was glowing with good health before her court case, looks in worse wear than I do. Saturdays are association, where the prisoners are out of their cells, all day if we have enough staff. It’s noisy as hell on the male side, but it’s almost totally quiet over here.

  There’s one incident with the YOs. By the time I get to the landing, Ana-Maria is being held back by Tex. Peabody is pulling a screaming Mihaela away from Laimutė, who has four bright red cuts down the side of her face. Laimutė hocks a wad of phlegm up and spits it straight into the eye of Mihaela, who stops struggling for a moment, then goes ballistic. Even though she’s small, Peabody struggles to hang onto her. Trust me, you haven’t lived until someone you don’t like has spat their thick, warm, smelly spit into your face.

  I put on my severest expression, point at Laimutė, then up at her cell.

  ‘Now!’ I roar.

  Her long legs are up those steps in three big bounds. I follow her so she’s not tempted to hurl abuse over the railings. We lock the Romanians away, then take Laimutė to the block. She says nothing through the whole experience. The officers in the female block are stressed. All ten cells are full now. I can hear weeping coming from one of them and doleful singing from another. The air hangs heavy and I’m glad to leave.

  I spend the rest of the morning making officer comments on the records of those who had been involved in the fight. Then I fill in two security forms about the tensions on the wing. I’m mooching around before lunch trying to look busy when I catch Tara and Kitty mopping the floor in the hub area.

  ‘Are you helping for the day?’ I ask Kitty.

  She goes beetroot red, gives me the tiniest of looks, then drops the mop on the floor. She looks changed even from a week ago. Her hair is styled, and she seems to have lost more weight.

  ‘I’ve just got to go the toilet, Ruined,’ she says, and disappears quickly.

  ‘Okay, Broken.’

  We watch Kitty scamper away.

  ‘We’re both hub orderlies now,’ says Tara.

  ‘That’s weird, you calling each other the names that a sick woman branded you with.’

  ‘Kitty likes to hear it. She gradually fell to pieces on the out and spent all of her time with bad influences.’ She laughs. ‘Like Billie, but here, she’s found some stability. Strangely, me calling her that makes her try to function normally.’

  ‘I suppose I can understand that. Why is she scared of men?’

  ‘Her looking at you is real progress. I reckon she’s practising on you. She doesn’t consider you a threat because you’re older and work here. You also seem like you wouldn’t be easily offended and that will help put her at ease.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Let’s just say her parents are the epitome of the “c” word.’

  ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’

  ‘Yes. They were evil, twisted, and bad beyond belief. Kitty said it’s fine for me to tell you her history. But are you sure that you want to know?’

  ‘Yeah, no worries. I bet I’ve heard worse.’

  ‘Her father was a convicted sex offender, but he’d been out of prison for a few years before Kitty was born. How this type of thing goes on in this day and age is beyond me. Anyway, s
he was abused by him for a long time. Eventually one of her neighbours rang the police, then child services took Kitty away, but it was too late. You see, if she was naughty, her dad would bellow in her face, “Go to the fucking shed.”’

  ‘Right.’

  Tara stares hard at me.

  ‘It wasn’t just a swear word. It was a compound noun,’ she says.

  ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘The shed was where her uncle and father did the fucking.’

  43

  I have a relatively relaxing day, despite the hangover church bells clanging in my head. At 4 p.m., I take Tara and Kitty over to fetch the food trolleys. When we return with them, Myerscough is bringing Billie back from working with the chickens. She looks as if she’s spent the day under a sun bed. Tara points at her.

  ‘I never thought I’d come to prison and get lobster,’ says Tara.

  Kitty, Tara and I laugh our heads off.

  ‘The jobs have to be done whatever the weather,’ Myerscough replies without humour.

  Billie also looks subdued.

  ‘I can take her back to the wing,’ I offer.

  ‘Okay, let the officers know.’

  I open the gate to Whisky wing and Billie trudges in.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘You don’t look that happy.’

  ‘The chicken screw is a bit weird, that’s all. I did the whole day, too, because the other girl was sick. You know what? There were times it was as though I was free out there.’

  I can see Tex and Sheraton are supervising outside the servery.

  ‘One on,’ I shout to them. ‘I’ll change your role in the book and hub.’

  Tex gives me a thumbs up.

  Billie follows me to the office, where I update the observation book with her return.

  ‘You looked very chummy with Tara,’ she says.

  ‘They make me laugh, those two. It’s amazing how they can still be so funny after their upbringing. Tara was telling me how they ended up in that children’s home and how that weird woman stroked their hair at night.’

  ‘Do you fancy her? Everyone does.’

  ‘No, not everything has to be about sex, Billie. You can just enjoy other people’s company without it progressing to anything else.’

  ‘Well, that’s not my experience of life. Did she tell you why I was there and what happened when the stroking stopped?’

  I detect a sudden tension and the hairs go up on the back of my neck. Billie fixes me with her piercing blue stare.

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘She said that was your story to tell.’

  ‘Here it is, then. Let’s see if you think it’s funny. My mum was useless. She was one of those who blamed everyone else when the shitty decisions she made came back to bite her on the arse. I actually quite liked her. She was funny, really pretty, and – now what was the word Tara used to describe her? – haphazard. She traded on her looks, and it was all about what she could get. What people owed her. What she deserved. Even though she never put any effort in to deserve anything. When she got fired from her latest job, it was because her bosses were a bunch of cunts, and nothing to do with her being late most days, if she showed up at all.’

  ‘That must have been tough for you.’

  ‘Yep. We were always skint, but she always looked fine. There was bugger all for breakfast, but she had the cash to cane twenty fags a day. She met some guy with a load of dough when I was ten and fucked off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yep. I came in from school and found my dad smashing the place up. She’d nicked his wallet, packed a bag, took her jewellery and gone. I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘I still can’t get my head around it now.’

  ‘Was it just you and your dad after she left?’

  ‘Well, as you can imagine, he was no superhero. He knew nothing about me, or my school, who I hung out with, where I went ‘til late at night, or how to run a home, or, it seems, anything at all, apart from how to wank his giro on booze.’

  Billie wipes a stray tear away with the back of her hand and grits her teeth.

  ‘After a few weeks of me not turning up to class, my teacher rocked up at my house. She was really old, sixty at least, and meant well. Anyway, she arrived the day before he got his income support, so he was skint but sober. He told her the truth. Same bollocks as my mother. Poor him, not his fault, all that jazz. I went to a rough school, and the teacher had heard it before and so gets the social involved.’

  Billie wipes her face again, but she’s struggling to keep up with the flow and the tears course down her cheeks.

  ‘They turn up the next day, unfortunately mid-afternoon this time, so he’s slaughtered. They threaten him with removing me from the house and having to put me in a foster home. I was listening when they told him, more or less, to buck his ideas up. Do you know what his reply was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said he couldn’t do it. That I was too much for him. Says if they look after me for a bit, he’ll get his shit together and have me back.’

  ‘And he didn’t?’

  ‘Well, that was ten years ago, and I’m still waiting.’

  ‘So you ended up with, what was her name, Lavinia?’

  ‘Yep. I was in a right old mess. All that rejection shot my self-worth to nothing. But I thought Lavinia was lovely. I reckoned she was how a real mum should be. She made me feel wanted. When I turned up, Kitty was already there. She said the girl before me had killed herself. I thought she must have been bonkers, because it was a nice little home. Just the couple who owned it in one room and three more bedrooms. I liked Kitty, even though she really was broken. I got my period aged twelve and these bad boys popped up overnight.’

  She honks her breasts for emphasis.

  ‘Lavinia’s husband left her, and the stroking turned to fondling. The massaging hands became probing fingers, in every hole I have. Messed up, isn’t it? But she was all I had. I didn’t want her to hate me, so I just put up with it. If I’m honest, I came to enjoy it. That makes me feel dirty now, but there you go. Went on for years too.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I say, stunned.

  Tex’s voice bellows from the servery.

  ‘Billie, come get your sandwich.’

  Billie attempts to give me a sweet grin.

  ‘Anyway, that was yonks ago. Lavinia left after a while, and the new couple really were lovely, although we’d all gone wild by that point, so they had a tough time.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Forget it. I have. Things are looking up now, though. I’ve got a great job in the outdoors, and I have you to thank.’

  With that, she steps forward, rises up on her tiptoes and kisses me gently on the lips. I freeze.

  ‘I can smell alcohol,’ she says. ‘I quite like it.’

  She reaches up again and touches my lips with her fingers, ever so softly, then quickly leaves. I clench my fists.

  I should have told her to stop. But I didn’t want her to.

  44

  I have a restless night and feel exhausted in the morning. In my half-dreams, my children’s faces become intermingled with those of the prisoners on my wing. I’m tempted to drive in to work, but when I check the car, the puddle of oil has grown. My neighbour comes out at the same time and throws a bag of rubbish in his bin. I don’t think I’ve seen him outside at seven o’clock before. He wanders over, eyes glazed.

  ‘Problem?’ he asks.

  I point at the edge of the spill, which is visible without getting under the vehicle.

  ‘Nasty. Do you want me to have a look at it for ya?’

  I’ve had a lot of surprises lately, but this is the biggest.

  ‘Are you a mechanic?’

  ‘Used to be. I had a motorbike accident, messed my back up. Pain medication doesn’t work either.’

  ‘Well, that would be great, but sure you won’t hurt yo
urself?’

  ‘No, it hurts all the time anyway, so you don’t need to worry about that. It’s probably something simple, like warped seals or loose bolts. Are you going to work?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got to head off soon.’

  ‘Good on yer. That’s a tough job you’ve got. Leave us your keys. If I can fix it, I will do. Obviously, the engine could be knackered, which would make this scrap. When did you last get it serviced and MOT’d?’

  ‘MOT was January, service, ermm, 2017 ish.’

  He laughs. ‘I’m Gary.’

  I drop the keys into his hand. ‘Jim. Will it cost much?’

  ‘If I need parts, you can pay for them, but my hourly rate is zero. I’m pretty bored most of the time, stuck in the house. My wife nags like hell, too.’

  I give him a conspiratorial smile.

  Gary’s kindness gives me a lift and I cycle to work with enthusiasm even though I’ve only had one day off in the last fortnight. I have an early tomorrow and then a whole day off. It’s not until I reach the female houseblocks that I remember the kiss. It’s probably best if I just forget it and hope that she doesn’t try to do it again.

  It’s Sheraton and me on duty. He’s brought Men’s Fitness magazine in and takes my jibes about him enjoying looking at oiled men and women with good grace. Billie ignores me at breakfast. She reminds me of a schoolgirl who has slipped the boy she fancies a note yesterday and doesn’t know what to do with herself today. She has a blue shirt on and a pair of sensible shorts, both of which drown her. Perhaps she’s trying to cover up out in the sun.

  Myerscough rings the wing to say the other girl’s still ill, so Billie can do a full day. I keep an eye out for when she comes back at lunch and make sure I’m elsewhere. I get Sheraton to open the doors when we do roll count, while I just fill in the tally board, so I don’t even need to look at her.