The light seemed brighter, every noise amplified, every smell stronger. The small space around seemed bigger, the sky further away than ever before. One step felt like a pigeon step. It felt as though each memory of the outside world had been erased and now she was experiencing everything for the first time. Each day in prison had passed second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, as though time was in slow motion. She had had time to think, to remember what she had done and why, to relive it over and over again.
Now, standing outside the exit of the prison where she had spent many months, Lindsay James pondered on all that had happened since she was eleven years old. When she first admitted to Rachel Mason that it was her that had killed her father and not her mother, she wasn't ashamed of what she had done, it was more fear and love for her mother and sister that caused Lindsay to keep quiet. But now, after all this time, she began to wonder what life would have been like if she hadn't killed him, if she'd kept quiet, if she'd let her father hurt her mother and her sister just like he had hurt her. She shook her head to rid herself of these thoughts, but the nagging feeling in her stomach wouldn't go away. A feeling of guilt and shame came over her, the inability to face her family after letting her mother take the blame for her father's murder, for leaving sister Emily with no mother for a short time and then without a sister. She had nothing now. Before Lindsay went to prison she was a bright girl doing well at school with her whole life ahead of her, but now she had no qualifications, no friends and a criminal record hanging over her. Eighteen years old and finished.
The security man came and moved Lindsay along after a while of her just standing and thinking, but approaching the road, she realised that going home wasn't an option. There was only one person that hadn't judged her, that had just been there for her and tried to help her, and that was the only person she needed right now. Lindsay knew she had to find her, to ask her for help again. With the decision made, Lindsay set off to do all she could to find Rachel Mason.