‘I’ll get to the point,’ he says. I shuffle in my seat, making my body taller and straighter to show I really have nothing to hide. ‘You were friends with Tina Wynard, weren’t you?’ he says. ‘I believe you shared a cell for a while.’
‘Yes, we were roommates,’ I say. ‘And we’re still friends.’
‘When did you last speak to her?’ Tina has escaped. That’s the only thing it could be – although I’m surprised it’s not the Old Bill questioning me. I can’t believe she’s done it. Or how she’s done it. She is so straight-laced, a totally by-the-rules person. ‘Know de rules an’ stick to dem,’ she told me when she was still hiding behind her ‘Jamaican’ accent. ‘Den, you work out how to divert attention away from de rules you no wanna keep, y’know. But you so good in every udder way, dem not tink it you at-all-at-all-at-all.’
‘I don’t know, a few weeks maybe. She wrote to me just after I got out. I keep meaning to reply. Why all the questions? What’s happened?’
‘Tina had her meeting with the parole board last week.’
‘Oh, yeah. She mentioned it was coming up in her letter. I didn’t know when, though.’ I meant to reply but I was hanging on, hoping I’d be able to tell her that Serena had confessed. That it had finally worked and I could clear my name, that I had finally managed the ultimate rescue and saved myself.
He shifts in his seat, clears his throat, tries to moisten his lips. ‘Her application was unsuccessful.’
‘But why?’ I ask, my voice rising a notch or two in indignation. ‘She was the model prisoner. She was polite, she never got into fights, and she was always looking after new prisoners. I can’t think of a person more suited to parole than she was. She even admitted and showed remorse for her crime, for God’s sake; you don’t get much more suitable than that.’
‘It was felt that although she was a very strong candidate for parole and, as you said, she admitted her crime and showed great remorse, there was a real danger that she would fall back into drugs and prostitution.’
‘She’d knocked all that on the head before she got sent down,’ I say. ‘And she was a grown woman, not the naïve youngster she was when she got into all that.’ If I race ahead, if I skip to nearer the end of this conversation, I can hazard a guess at what is coming, what is waiting for me. But I am not going to race ahead, I am going to see where I am being led, because it is possible I might have it all wrong.
‘Maybe so, but the board felt—’
‘They hadn’t quite got their pound of flesh from her yet?’ I say, then mentally snap the air, trying to bite those words back into my mouth. I have to be careful – this man could make my life not only difficult but impossible. He is one of them after all. He is nice, he treats me with respect and kindness, he helped me out with a job and spoke up for me with the board, but he is, at the end of the day, a screw in a suit. His keys are his pen and paper, the tools with which he could get me locked up again. If I am not careful, he could have me sent back.
Mr Fitch bristles, but not overly so. ‘They were just doing what they felt was right for her, Poppy. Not everyone is out to hurt prisoners, you know. We do care about what happens to them. And it was genuinely felt that Tina could become a danger to herself or the public if she were allowed to fall into the habits she had in the past.’
‘If she was going to go back to drugs, don’t you think she would have done so in the last twenty-five years?’
‘She has been in prison for the past twenty-five years.’
‘Exactly. It’s easier to get drugs inside than it is outside and there are more reasons to turn to drugs inside than outside.’
‘I don’t think you’re right there, Poppy.’ The official denial of the drugs problem inside is a beautiful, full and rounded creature. Most people in charge from the Big Luv right down to the everyday screws seem to have the attitude that if they pretend drugs aren’t a huge problem inside then they aren’t. They have their searches and policies, after all – there is no way drugs could get in, is there?
‘Whatever you say, Mr F,’ I say to him. ‘How is Tina doing? It must have been a blow to her.’
His hands move papers around the desk; shuffle, shuffle, go the white sheets in my file, which he has open but has hardly glanced at since I sat down, but he now seems very engrossed in. There is a pale patch of skin showing through the fine covering of his mousey-brown hair on the top of his head. Slowly he raises his head and meets my eye. ‘Were you aware that Tina suffered from depression?’ he says.
I want to clamp my hands over my ears and scream ‘Lalalalalalalalala’ at the top of my voice. If I can’t hear him, this won’t happen.
‘Everyone suffers from depression inside,’ I say. ‘Everyone sane suffers from depression.’ In my head, I am still screaming ‘Lalalalalalaalalalalalala’; my hands are still clamped over my ears. In my head I am protected from what he is about to say.
‘I’m sorry, Poppy,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Tina took her own life on Saturday night.’
Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.
‘She became very depressed after the board’s decision.’
Lalalalalalalalalaalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.
‘But we believe she might have been thinking about it for a while because she used sleeping pills that she had obviously not swallowed when they were given to her in the infirmary, and she’d been storing up.’
Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.
He fumbles in his drawer and pulls out one of the clear plastic bags they put prison belongings in. Embossed all over it are the words HMP Colfrane. Wrapped up in the bag is a Good News Bible. ‘In the note she left, she said she wanted you to have this.’ He holds it out to me but I cannot move to take it. I cannot move to breathe. He eventually places it on the area of desk in front of me. ‘She left you a note inside.’
She’d done it again, she’d broken one of the Commandments she held so dear, she had broken the First Commandment: thou shalt not kill, again. But this time she had accomplices. This time she’d been egged on by a whole group of people sitting around a table debating what was best for her life.
‘We don’t think she suffered,’ he says, to be kind because he is kind. He does try. But we both know that is a lie. Of course she suffered. She suffered and suffered and suffered. Tina had paid her debt to society, I don’t care what anyone says. She wasn’t a danger to anyone.
‘I’ll give you a few minutes,’ he says and excuses himself, shutting the glass door behind himself.
The inside cover of the bible bears the inscription, A gift to Betina Wynard from the nuns at St Angela’s Convent School, 1981. The note is tucked in between the inside cover and the first page of the Bible. It is sealed, but the lack of my name on the front of the envelope tells me that it has been opened and checked as per the rules. Even in death a prisoner has no privacy. Even in death those in charge need to know everything. If she had put something incriminating in there, I would not have seen this, I’m sure.
Don’t be angry with me, Ice Cream Girl, (she has written in her neat, rounded handwriting.) I’m tired. Just plain old worn-out. If I had been allowed to go then maybe this story would have turned out different but, either way, I had to leave here. I could not see another Christmas or New Year behind these bars. I sometimes wonder if I was ever meant for anything more than this? But then I remember you and how you weren’t stupid and I think, I hope, that you were my reason. Looking after you kept me here longer than I would have otherwise stayed. So you looked after me, too. You did know about rescuing people. Make me proud, Ice Cream Girl. Live your life well. Live your life in peace and happiness. Live your life in the best way you know how.
Love, Tina.
P.S. I hope God will forgive me. I think He will. (John 3:16).
My fingers flick through the pages of the Bible until I come to the passage she has quoted. ‘For God
loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.’
The words float in the tears in my eyes. I wish I had her faith. I wish I could believe what she believed, then it would not hurt. I would read those words and I would feel comfort, I would feel sure that she is safe and happy. I would feel something other than this. It is pain, it is loss, it is anger. I refold the note, slip it back in its envelope, slip it back in its place in the Bible.
It was not meant to be like this.
We were meant to have our happy ending; we were meant to start our lives again together. I have not had one drink of alcohol because I have been waiting for her. Waiting for us to sit outside a pub and have our first proper drink together, like those young professionals I always see relaxing without a care in the world, outside Brighton pubs and bars. She was meant to coach me to stop smoking while taking blatant drags from the fags I’d lit. We were meant to talk about the men we met and ask each other’s opinions on whether they were good enough. We were meant to be friends on the outside too. We were meant . . .
I close my eyes and call up her slender face, her short Afro hair, her big insightful eyes, her soft voice, her gentle spirit, the smile that was never far away from her lips. ‘Tell me what it’s like out there,’ she’d written in her last letter to me. ‘Tell me if I’ll like it.’
I cover my face with my hands, trying to hold back my gushing tears.
I don’t know if you’d like it, Tine, I say in my head. I know that I’m not liking it. I’m not liking it at all.
serena
‘Don’t hang up,’ Mez says. She has blocked her number from my work’s caller ID, knowing that I would have to pick up the phone. ‘It’s me, but please don’t hang up.’ I don’t know why, but I’ve always been able to tell my sisters apart on the phone. Mez’s voice is ever so slightly higher, with a slight lift at the end; Faye’s is a fraction deeper and stays much more close to her normal register even when she is asking a question.
‘Verity called me; she’s worried about you.’
‘What’s she worried about?’ I ask, for the sake of my daughter. I thought I had reassured her last night, but obviously not. And Evan has failed to convince them things will be fine, too.
‘She said you’d moved out. She’s worried that you’re not taking care of yourself. She said you told her to call one of us if she couldn’t talk to you.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I said I’d call you to find out how you really are.’
‘Tell her I’m fine.’
‘And are you? Are you fine?’
I say nothing. I am not fine. How can I be when I have destroyed my life? When my husband won’t speak to me, my daughter and son are living apart from me and I hate myself for the choices I’ve made, how can I possibly be fine?
I also do not say anything because I do not want to talk to Mez. It’s all too hard, too difficult for me at the moment. I do not know the right thing to do any more. I do not know how to fix my family. I ruined it and I do not know how to fix it. But I do know I cannot pretend that I don’t know what they think I am.
‘What can I do to help?’ she asks.
Get my husband to talk to me. Help me rewrite history. Believe in me. ‘Just be there for Verity if she needs you.’
‘Are you and Evan going to be OK?’
‘I don’t know. He thinks I’m a murderer and he hates me for lying to him, and he won’t tell me if he wants to divorce me. So I don’t know.’
‘Sez, about what Adrian told you—’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘But—’
‘I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. It.’
‘OK, OK,’ she says. ‘We won’t talk about it. But I love you, little sister.’
‘Please take care of Verity if she needs you again. And please be convincing when you tell her I’m fine. I don’t want her or Con to worry too much.’
‘Will do.’
‘And I love you, too.’
That’s my problem, isn’t it? I’ve always found room in my heart to love the people who hurt me.
poppy
Every day I get out this slip of paper and I try to make those calls.
I long to talk to Bella and Logan, but what if the feeling isn’t mutual? How would I feel about talking to a person who I’ve been brought up to believe is evil personified?
I run my fingers over the lines of their names before I carefully refold the piece of paper and slip it back in my pocket.
I’ll do it another day. Today is not the day for using the phone.
serena
I probably shouldn’t keep meeting her.
Especially since she – her release – has precipitated what has been the decimation of my life, but I can’t really help myself. I could pretend it’s because I’m scared of what she might do, if she’ll show up at school one day and tell the kids. Or that I’m scared of her – that she’ll do something to me if I don’t show up or if I turn her down. I have seen the rage in her.
The aggression she keeps flashing at me is simply the surface of what she is feeling. It is a cover for the true anger that burns like a volcanic fire deep inside her. She is going to explode one day if she does not find an outlet for it. She is going to erupt and could destroy herself and all those around her if she does not find a way to let it out in little chunks. That is part of the reason – the real reason – I meet her. I fear for her. I feel sorry for her and the state she is in: what she has probably endured in prison, what she is probably putting up with now that she is out. I feel for her as one human being feels for another, as an acquaintance might feel for someone they once upon time knew. I don’t like her, but I feel for her.
The main reason, the main real reason I feel for her, is that I feel responsible. Since that night, since what happened, I have felt a weight of responsibility about the choices I made, and it burns like Poppy’s volcanic rage. That responsibility, culpability – guilt – created the conscience that mocks and ridicules me, it makes me lightheaded and woozy. It, I’m sure, causes the memory lapses and the moments of hyperventilation.
I feel guilty for so many little things, and I feel responsible for the big things. I feel responsible for what happened to Poppy. And, of course, I feel guilty for his death. I feel guilty about why he died, how he died, that . . .
Poppy enters the café and she reminds me again how different she is from the girl I knew. She walks slower, almost as though dragging her feet will stop her from getting where she is going. Her shoulders are slightly hunched, as if ready for attack. Whenever she enters somewhere, I have noticed, her eyes dart around, taking in the scene, checking where everyone and everything is, almost as though she needs to know where the exits are, where the most potentially dangerous people are, where she needs to be should something happen. Prison has done that to her.
She saunters over to me, pulls out a chair and sits down – after a quick look around to see how the environment has changed since she entered. She tugs off her brown leatherette cap and shakes out her hair, running her fingers through it. It’s growing back: the waves are starting to be seen.
‘Serena,’ she says, formally.
‘Poppy,’ I reply.
‘Now we’re sure of who we are, let’s get down to business,’ she says.
‘You mean, you’re finally going to tell me what you want?’ I say. Her aggression is disconcerting. Not scary, per se. I think it’s the absence of any other emotion in her speech sometimes, as if she doesn’t know how to be anything other than this angry, that unsettles me. Sometimes all that Poppy sounds is angry.
‘You know what I want,’ she says and sits back, puts her head to one side as she sizes me up. She’s wondering if she can take me. Wondering if she leapt at me across the table and started a grappling match on the grubby black and white lino tiles beneath our feet which one of us would gain the upper hand most quickly.
&nb
sp; She is prison-tough, I’ll give her that. But doesn’t know what I am like in a fight between equals, what I am capable of. She’s never known, that’s why she found it easy to be with my boyfriend. She thought I would walk away. That I could walk away. It didn’t occur to her that I had been so brainwashed and demeaned, so broken and damaged, that – until that night – walking away was not an option.
‘If I did, I wouldn’t have said that.’
‘You need to tell the truth about what happened. What you did.’
‘I did tell the truth, Poppy. I told the police, who tried to twist it. I told the court, who found me innocent. I told the people who mattered.’
She sits forwards, leans across the table and hisses, ‘You killed him. Admit it, you killed him.’
The guilt flames up inside me. ‘I didn’t,’ I say calmly, even though inside I am shaking. Trembling, and woozy; the palpitations – the latest element to how I’ve been feeling – start up. I place my hand on the centre of my chest and try to breathe. It’s nigh on impossible with the guilt flaming up inside. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Stop lying!’ she continues to hiss. ‘Stop lying!’
‘If you carry on like this,’ I pause, trying to quell the fire inside, ‘I’ll leave. I don’t have to come here, you know.’
‘Yes, you do,’ she says with a smug snarl that stops her from erupting. ‘If you don’t, I’ll tell your darling hubby all about you and me and the murder.’
‘He already knows,’ I reply, relieved to be taking that card away from her.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ she says, looking unsure, unsettled and a little afraid.
‘He does.’
‘And, what, he’s been loving and supportive and believes in you one hundred per cent? Pull the other one, Serena, it’s got bells on.’