a/n Hope you enjoy. :)
Two - Eva Lawson
She's tired, and she can feel the sweat drying on her forehead and clinging to her fringe. A prison officer is in front of her, another behind, leading her back to her cell. For the last half an hour she's been in the prison gym, working out, trying to clear her mind of all the sad, dark thoughts crowding her mind.
But now Lindsay's finished, all the thoughts are rushing back, flooding in and retaking their perches in her brain. She flicks closed her eyes for a second, allowing herself a few precious seconds of black stillness, only because she knows the route back to her cell with her eyes closed - literally. She's walked this path so many times over the past three or so years that it's become like second nature, the weaving and ducking through blank corridor after corridor. Lindsay's sure the officers have chosen the longest route to the gym possible, but she will never be certain because she has no way of discovering either way.
They reach her cell and she stands to the side as the prison officer pulls the keys out of her pocket and inserts them into the lock. Lindsay sighs, her gaze turning to the floor as the lock takes what seems like an age to click open. The officer swings the door and gestures for her to enter.
Another thing Lindsay has learnt over the three years she's been here is that the officers only talk to you when necessary and only then haltingly, as if they're not sure you'll understand. It grates on her on the best of days, and now she's getting annoyed as she stubbornly waits for the guard to give the order verbally.
After an awkward moment of silence, the officer behind Lindsay gives her a shove in the direction of the gaping entrance to the cell. She gets the message, muttering under breath as she crosses the threshold unwillingly. Why anyone would go willingly into a cold, dank, silent cell eludes Lindsay, but she has no choice. The moment she's in, the guard pulls the door closed, slamming in with more force than necessary, in a feeble attempt to show Lindsay whose boss. She already knows. They're in charge; she's the prisoner - blah, blah. She knows but she doesn't really care. She's sick of it.
She's sick of prison really, of the mind numbingly boring days, of the lack of proper conversation with another vaguely interesting human being, sick of the whole thing - but, really she should have thought about all of that before she accepted the offer from Akers. Lindsay should have considered the fact that the plan might have backfired, that things might have gone awry and wondered about what that would be mean. Prison, almost certainly.
If she'd thought about the possible consequences, she might not have accepted Akers offer at all. She might not have ended up here.
But she has and there's no use wondering what if, is there? It just taunts her with what could have happened, with the best case scenarios, unlike the worst case scenario she finds herself living through, everyday, as her life lies out in front of her, full of days just like this, just as boring, just as empty. And it nearly kills her. Twelve more years. Twelve more years of nothing.
Lindsay sits heavily down in the chair, wiping her sweaty forehead and wondering how long it'll take until the guards will be back, ready to escort her to the showers. Because she's had nothing better to do, Lindsay has taken to timing how long it has taken for them to return - the shortest time was just twenty minutes, the longest has been three hours. The truth is she doesn't know when they'll be back. It seems to be random and it annoys her, slightly, to know they don't care enough just to write down a schedule for her shower visits.
She puts her head in her hands for a second, sighing deeply, trying to fight the thoughts threatening to overwhelm her.
It's been three weeks since Eva Lawson's visit and Lindsay still can't get her head around the fact that there's nothing she can do for her. Six months spent in agonising wonder, wonder that maybe, just maybe she could say goodbye to this place, and say hello to freedom.
But her hopes - though not even that high, if she's being truthful - were completely and utterly crushed that day, even with Eva's sympathetic eyes and kind words. It all boiled down to one thing, really; she could claim innocence all day long, but no one was going to believe her - like Kate had cruelly told her that day, a year ago now - because she wasn't innocent. She was guilty, however you wanted to look at it. What nobody seemed to understand properly, except from Eva, was that she wasn't guilty of what they all thought she was guilty of.
Lindsay wants to be out of this place so much that it feels like an ache in her chest. It doesn't help that prison is slowly choking her, strangling her, breaking her down.
She doesn't want to be here. She doesn't want to be here. She doesn't want to be here!
Why won't they let her go? Why can't she just be left alone to live her life - she knows now never to accept another offer from a stranger, a stranger who would walk her right into danger, right into a situation that would ruin her already dreadful life even more. Why can't they trust her word? Let her have her job back, her life back, and Lindsay knows she'd never set a foot out of line again.
But it doesn't work like that. Of course it doesn't.
Angry at her sad predicament, Lindsay pushes her chair back, the legs scraping the floor loudly. She stands and crosses the cell quickly, to the far right corner - where, sitting on the table, is a small TV. Lindsay flicks the switch into the 'on' position, before returning to the chair and dragging it over. She sits heavily, resting her chin in her palms, staring at the small screen.
It's half nine in the morning and there's nothing decent on BBC 1 - just some programme about tracing heirs to wills, or something like that, all Lindsay knows really is that it's on most days from nine till ten and that she doesn't like it - so she reaches out and presses the next channel button on the TV. It was explained it her three months ago, when she decided to start renting the telly, that inmates aren't allowed remotes - for some unknown reason - so she has to control all the TV features with the fiddly buttons on the set itself, which limits her viewing distance to an arms width away.
She flicks channels until she reaches Watch. Lindsay knows - because she's spent hours watching this TV since she got it; there's nothing better to do than split the time in her cell - several hours a day, at least - between watching the TV and playing the keyboard - that The Bill will be on. She enjoys watching it, mainly because she likes picking holes in it, but also because, while watching it, she can forget, for a few minutes, that it's a TV show and that she's in prison, and she can pretend that she's solving the case. Eight or nine times out of ten, Lindsay puts the clues and evidence together before the cops on the show.
It reminds Lindsay, that before, she was a damn good police officer and it helps her to remember, that underneath, that damn good police officer is still there.
She settles in her chair, watching the action unfold on the screen. Lindsay only started watching the programme a few weeks ago, so therefore, it takes her a few minutes to remember all the character's names and their roles, but after that, she manages to let her muscles relax.
Lindsay never was much of a telly watcher, not before, when there were better things to do. But after two and half years here, she decided, that to cure the boredom more than anything, she needed to become one. She started by watching the soaps, trialling them one by one, until she realised that the unrelenting gloom of death and ruin that took place on the cobbles, squares and farms of the nations soaps where not the best medicine for the unrelenting gloom of her own life.
After that, she started watching the numerous game shows that seemed to descend on the channels after five. For a while, she watched Pointless every day, but as time passed, it no longer offered a decent distraction from her thoughts, so she started channel surfing again. It was then she discovered The Bill.
Lindsay wouldn't say, not in a million years, that The Bill reflects the police in a wholly truthful way - but after the events of three years ago, the events that led to life in prison for her and four police officers dead - she would definitely say that it was more truthful that most people would give it credit for.
Police officers do die in the line of duty, sometimes hideously, and sometimes for nothing, and sometimes for everything.
Lindsay's eyes are fixed on the screen, drawn to the tense action occurring, when a knock sounds. She sighs, and leans over, flicking the TV off, just as the robotic sounding order for her stand away from the door sounds out.
Glancing at the time on the telly, Lindsay realised they have a new record. It's only taken them eleven minutes to return this time.
Sighing for the second time, Lindsay wearily stands up. The Bill is going to have to wait.