One – Helen Dryden

Sitting in her car, her handbag sitting on her lap, she watches the golden leaves fall from the trees, like snow, and carpet the ground. She watches the light breeze ruffle the coat of a woman who parked her car just after her and just managed to find the courage to get up, and out into the early morning autumn chill. Helen knows that visiting a loved one in prison must be tough – all the weighing up of options: does it make it better, or worse, and for whom? Can you live with the memories? Is it worth it?

She doesn't have those problems, those hard things to consider, because the woman she is here to visit is not a loved one, not in any sense of the word, and never will be. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that Helen hates the woman she has come to visit today. Except the reason she's here – well, she could say that that was down to a loved one, so some of the same problems are bouncing through her mind as she sits here, in her car, watching the world go by. Will it make it worse, coming here today, confronting the damn woman, or will it make it better? Will it make it easier for her to sleep at night or worse, having come here and managing to unearth the answers she so dearly wants? Because she will get those answers from Lindsay Denton, no matter what. What Helen wants, Helen gets – except it seems, her husband.

He found another one, after her, just like she had been told he would, eight and a half years ago, the very first time she'd walked these footprints to visit a woman she hated. She caught him red-handed this time – quite apt, really, catching them red-handed when the woman herself had been a red-head. Eliza, she'd been called. Eliza Williamson and she had, like Lindsay, worked with Mike. It hadn't gone on for as long as Lindsay, a few months, compared to years, but it had been only a few months after his first mistress - though, really, does Helen think that Lindsay had been the first one? – had been put in prison for fifteen years.

To be honest, she thought he had more dignity than that.

There hasn't been another one after her, of that Helen is sure. When the girl had gone, there had been shouting and anger and threats and ultimatums had been issued. She had told her husband that if his disgraceful behaviour continued, she would leave him. And if there is one thing that Mike Dryden can't live without and it isn't his job, then it is his wife. Helen is his support, his fall-back, his rock throughout the years and despite the appalling way he has treated her, he loves her.

Maybe not as much as his job or the women he slept with – though, Helen never had asked him if he loved Lindsay Denton and doubted very much that she'd enjoy hearing the answer – but he loved her. A relationship formed more than twenty years ago, when they were young and naive, now means an awful lot to both parties involved. Not enough that she can put up with his cheating ways, but enough to give him a second chance if he promised not to betray her again. And, up until pretty recently, she had been certain that her ultimatum had worked and her husband hadn't touched another woman in seven years,

But recently, she has come to question whether his old habits had died the death she thought they had. It is all down to a green piece of paper, an almost identical copy to the sheet that is neatly folded and slipped into her handbag. All that is different on the two green sheets is the name, written in block capitals at the top of page. One reads Helen Dryden, the other Mike Dryden.

Helen knows that he's been visiting Lindsay.

Suddenly tired of the blustering weather and the monotony of other people's life – there's now a woman, struggling with several children and a pushchair, making her way across the car park – Helen opens the car door and goes into the prison. Even this is boring – all she does is flash the green piece of paper, sit on an uncomfortable blue chair, wait for the prison officers to come and collect her, go through the metal detector, and get waved through to the visiting room. It takes nearly half an hour, but then she's through and she can say what she's come all this many miles to say.

Lindsay Denton is looking downcast when she enters and for a split-second, Helen wonders if this woman's life is so boring, so desperate that she accepts visits from a woman she knows hates her. Except, really, Helen knows it's not wondering, is it? It's the truth. Why else would she say yes to her visit today, knowing that Helen is highly unlikely to have had an epiphany and forgiven her and that the most likely thing is that she will have to suffer through fifteen minutes akin to the first time she visited?

She suddenly feels pity for Lindsay Denton, but then she pushes it away. You don't feel pity for your husband's ex-mistress. You just hate them.

She sits down opposite Lindsay, but she doesn't bother taking off her coat. She knows this visit won't last long, at least if it goes the way she's planning. She stares through the glass and when Lindsay looks up and they meet gazes, and Helen is certain the other woman is listening, she speaks.

"The next time my husband," she starts, her tone cold and detached. She knows it's petty to claim such ownership over Mike, but she just can't help it. Lindsay once had him and now Helen must make clear that she doesn't anymore. "requests a visit, you say no." Helen doesn't give Lindsay a choice, a decision – no, Helen has decided what Lindsay will do and Lindsay will do it.

The woman on the other side of the glass doesn't say a word and Helen nods. She picks up her bag and stands, casting one last glance over the woman who very nearly destroyed her life.

"I doubt he's ever going to request a visit again, any way, Helen." She's walking away, her back to the glass, when Lindsay speaks up. "But if he does, I think I'll make my own decisions, thank you." She stops dead in her tracks. She thought she was making herself very clear, clear enough that Lindsay wouldn't even try and challenge her.

"Stay away from my husband," she hits back, viciously, turning back to face the other woman. Lindsay just smiles at her and Helen knows that whatever she says, Lindsay will never willingly go along with what she wants.

They do hate each other after all.

She turns, shaking her head. She's still shaking her head when she gets back to her car.

...