Page 108 of The Dead Ex
‘Then it’s about time he bloody learned to share,’ hisses the other.
I want to intervene and suggest that they take turns, asI might have done when I was on the other side of the fence. Instead, I stand stockstill. Transported back to the day that Zelda Darling came back into my life …
‘Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,’ Patrick said as we walked towards the mother-and-baby unit together that day in 2012.
I’d felt guilty about asking him back to work for me in the new prison, but told myself that those feelings were long dead. And it was good to have him around.
Nevertheless I experienceda small twinge when he mentioned the engagement. ‘I presume you’ve learned this from the staff.’
His voice softened. ‘I don’t gossip, Vicki. You should know that. I’m just glad you’re happy. We go back a long way.’
Something lurched in my chest. I had to put that behind me, I told myself fiercely. Concentrate on the job. So I began talking about the changes I had in mind for the MBU. As longas we stuck to work, it was as if nothing had changed between us.
Much as I loved David, he didn’t really understand my job – mind you, I didn’t understand his. But Patrick’s world centred around prison life and, just as importantly, he loved it. He ‘got’ the intensity and the excitement and the terror and the responsibilities – and danger – which came with the power. The other month, a womanhad threatened to throw boiling water over another during kitchen duties. I’d been on the wing at the time and had managed to talk her out of it.
Not long after that, I’d caught a prison officer tauntinga woman because she hadn’t had any post since she’d arrived. ‘Kids forgotten you, have they? Not surprised after what you did.’
It wasn’t the first time this member of staff had been seen tobully or reprimand prisoners over their crimes. I suspended him immediately. Thank goodness for the many prison officers here who did fantastic jobs; people like my old friends Jackie and Frances, who recently saved an inmate by cutting the cord around her neck with a ligature knife. And then there was Patrick.
Patrick understood, whereas my fiancé’s initial admiration of my job frequently turnedto irritation when my shift work interfered with our social life. ‘Can’t you just cancel it?’ demanded David when I explained I couldn’t meet his daughter Nicole on a particular Tuesday because of an appointment with the board. He wasn’t pleased when I replied that no, I couldn’t.
When I was finally introduced to her, I was faced with a sulky little thing who was rudely ungrateful for the Miniwhich her father had given her for her eighteenth birthday. ‘I wanted silver,’ she’d pouted. ‘Not black.’
‘That’s not what you told me,’ he’d said, almost as if he was amused.
‘I changed my mind.’
At no point during the dinner did Nicole look at me.
‘Only jealous,’ David said simply as if this was perfectly normal. ‘It’s a father/daughter thing. She’s never liked any of my girlfriends.’
Nor, it seemed, did David’s PA, Tanya, who was distinctly frosty every time I rang. Maybe they wondered, as did the rest of the world, what he saw in me: a red-headedprison governor without the dress style displayed by David’s previous girlfriends. I still thought about the chic cream linen dress I’d found at the back of his wardrobe when I’d moved into the London apartment. Apparently it hadbeen ‘left behind’.
Patrick and I were on the way to see a new ‘tricky’ inmate. I remembered her from 2008 in a previous posting. She was the woman who had been fighting with Sam Taylor that day – someone I still can’t get out of my head. Like poor Sam, she’d been separated from her child a few months later and had blamed me for it, even though it was the rules. I’d tried to help her with extracounselling, but the woman had taken out her grief by lashing out at whoever was nearest, accusing me of ‘picking on her’. This wasn’t true although I did have to send her to solitary for hitting another woman. I felt bad, but you had to be fair in this job.
Now she was back – and as angry as ever. To make it worse, she’d recently managed to get into the mother-and-baby unit by escaping fromher work party and pretending to be one of the cleaners. ‘I only want to cuddle the babies,’ she’d told the officers who found her there. But when they’d tried to make her leave, she’d bitten one of them.
She was punished by having visiting privileges removed and a spell in solitary.
‘Imagine never seeing your child again,’ I found myself saying to him on our way to see her. Then I stopped,appalled by my blunder.
‘It’s all right.’ He bit his lip. ‘I’m coming to terms withit; more than when we last worked together. Time is a great healer. You never forget, but you learn to live with it.’
We were approaching the security gate now to A wing. All personal chit-chat had to stop. We signed in. The officer looked serious. ‘You’ll need someone with you. Been sounding off all day, shehas.’
‘I’m sure we can manage,’ I said briskly. What sort of message would it send if a prison governor needed hand-holding?
Other women lined the corridors as Patrick and I made our way to the cell. Some called out to me. ‘Guv? I need to talk to you. My kid’s foster parents want to adopt him even though me mum says she’ll have him. Can you help me?’
‘Guv? They won’t let my other kids visitcos they say I’m a risk. At this rate, they won’t bloody recognize me when I get out.’
‘Guv …’
We knocked on the cell door, more out of courtesy than anything else. Then I unlocked it from the outside. Zelda was sitting on the narrow bed, her long hair greased and matted. She had scratches all down her arms, which I suspected were from her own fingernails.
‘You!’ she roared, leaping up. ‘Youtook away my daughter.’
‘That’s enough,’ Patrick started, but I put my hand up in alet me handle thisgesture.
