Jessie Keane: Jail Bird

‘Now,’ he went on, crossing to the inner door. One of the bruisers, the one who had told her to shut up on the joyride over here, was standing there. Nick turned back to Lily. ‘Keep out of Si’s way. And if you see Freddy coming, for the love of God leg it fast in the opposite direction. Okay?’

Lily nodded slowly, although she knew that she was planning to do only one of those things.

‘Nige’ll drive you,’ said Nick, looking expectantly at her. ‘A thank you would be nice,’ he said.

‘Fuck you, ’ said Lily, and the last thing she heard as she and Nige headed out of the house was Nick bloody O’Rourke laughing his bollocks off at her. Again.

It was her first day in Holloway. She thought she would choke with terror at the sensation of being hemmed-in, shut away. A prison officer at reception checked and logged her belongings, then allowed her to buy two phone cards with her own private cash.

‘Should be just one,’ said the officer. ‘But as you’re new in, two, okay?’

Then she was strip-searched for the first time, adding indignity to fear, and locked in a room with six other prisoners. Three of them were heroin users, one of which had turned on her violent boyfriend, nearly braining him with a candlestick, and she joked that his head was so hard it had broken the bloody thing, and she was sorry about that because the candlestick had been a gift from her mother.

One of the others was an intimidatingly tall, twenty-stone Jamaican woman with dreadlocks and a bass-baritone voice, called Mercy. She’d been done for importing cocaine and spoke in a fast patois that Lily at first struggled to comprehend. After a while, she developed an ear for it, and could talk to Mercy and understand her fully. Mercy had three kids at home in Jamaica, and had taken the coke with her on her first-ever trip to England because she had been told that if she didn’t, her eleven-year-old son would be killed.

‘Do you know if he’s safe now?’ Lily had asked her later on.

‘He’s in hiding with his grandma,’ said Mercy, and Lily thought then that her own life had been a picnic compared to this poor woman’s. After that, they each had a rudimentary health check and then Lily was pronounced ‘processed’ and was put on D3, the intake wing, in a four-bed dormitory.

Like boarding school, she thought.

‘It true you killed your old man?’ asked one of the heroin junkies in the dorm. The girl had told Lily she’d decided not to sign on to the methadone programme because she said they were all loony-tunes in the hospital wing: she’d tried it before and she wasn’t trying it again. She’d rather go cold turkey.

Lily didn’t answer. She was blank-faced with shock at finding herself here, inside.

The heroin girl took her silence as an admission of guilt. They’d all read about the case in the papers; many of them had been the victims of violent husbands, boyfriends, pimps, and Lily had turned the tables. Struck a blow for the sisterhood.

‘ Hey girl – respect,’ said her cellmate with a grin.

Lily sprang awake next morning wondering: Where the hell am I? She’d dreamed again. Back inside. Fucking dreams. But now she was lying in a comfy double bed, and sunlight was filtering through the closed curtains, and her first thought was that this was a different dream, another illusion, and that at any moment she would really wake up, and she would be in stir, forever in stir, on a hard bunk bed with a stained mattress and scratchy blankets and snoring cellmates for company. Ready to face the indignity all over again. The degradation, the dire prison food eaten at trestle tables on cheap, uncomfortable chairs, the need to fill the day before lights out and the sweet release of sleep.

But no. Here she was. She was out. Her mind ran back over the events of the past two days. Becks telling her to go – and the relief on her face last night when Lily and the boys had pitched up and collected her things. Joe skulking in the background – keeping out of it; not wanting to get involved. And who could blame him? Jack Rackland, sitting on a bench with her in the park, watching kiddies play…oh, and her kids, her beautiful girls, and then – and this was so painful, so awful – Saz’s face twisted with hate as she’d launched herself at Lily, knocking her flying.

Lily turned over in the bed, groaning, pulling the pillow over her head, trying to block out the image.

Oh, and more of them. Nick O’Rourke laughing at her last night, Nick O’Rourke kissing her. She paused over that. Relived for a moment the old, delicious sensations. But no. She couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anyone. So what if he’d ferried her off to this neat, unshowy safe flat? So what if the kitchenette cupboards were well stocked with food. So what if she found wearable women’s clothes in the wardrobe, and a man’s, too – what was this, a little love-nest for Nick and some tart? She thought his marriage to Julia had ended long since, she’d heard that somewhere. Probably from Becks.

All right, he’d done all this for her, but she still couldn’t trust him.

Furthermore, she was potless. She hadn’t a bean. Very soon, she was going to have to get her hands on some substantial cash, set herself back up on her feet, get Jack paid and pointed in the right direction. It was going to be a challenge, but she thought: I can do this.

A buzzer went off, very loud. Lily stiffened and emerged from beneath the pillow. What the fuck? she thought, her heart freezing in panic.

The buzzer sounded again, not muffled by the goose-down pillow this time. Very loud indeed. Lily sat bolt upright, pulling the long faded lavender-coloured t-shirt she’d grabbed out of the closet to wear in bed further down, hunching her knees up to her chest. She looked around her with wild, frightened eyes. Where was it coming from? It sounded again, and she pinpointed it. There was a telephone intercom on the wall. Someone was downstairs, leaning on the doorbell.

Oh shit.

Who the hell could it be?

She glanced at the clock beside the bed. It was ten past nine: she’d slept late. She’d been worn out. Now her pulse was hammering away as the fear picked up where it had left off last night. It would be Freddy or Si; they’d tracked her down and if she opened the door they’d kill her.

The buzzer sounded again.

Gulping, crossing her arms over herself for comfort, Lily left the bed and went over to the intercom. Yeah, it would be them. For sure. They’d found her. But…what if it wasn’t them? What if it was Nick, how big a laugh would that give him, hard-hearted murderess Lily King quivering with fear from a doorbell?

She stood beside the damned thing and took a deep, deep breath. She reached out, feeling sick with terror, and picked it up.

‘Hello?’ she said unsteadily into the phone. ‘Who’s there?’

There was silence. Traffic passing by, someone breathing.

Oh God oh help, it’s them, it’s them…

‘Hello?’ she repeated, feeling cold sweat break out all over her body. Because she’d just told them, hadn’t she?, that she was there. She shouldn’t have spoken. Shouldn’t have picked the damned thing up. What was she thinking? Was she completely mad?

There was nothing to be heard but the breathing. Fast, frantic breathing.

Oh for God’s sake just say or do something, she thought. Break the bloody door down, just get it over with. I don’t care any more.

Then an unsteady female voice said: ‘It’s…it’s Oli. It’s Oli.’

Lily sagged against the wall in shock. Oli, her baby girl…