Part One Hundred and Fourteen
Yvonne's bedroom was almost entirely enveloped in blackness except for the tiny bedside light turned down to its lowest. The huddled shape hidden under the quilt was almost impossible to distinguish and Yvonne felt lost in the darkness where she wanted to be. The house was so quiet that the loud ticking of the clock could be heard very distinctly.
It was only in the safety and isolation of the deep impenetrable space of her bedroom that Yvonne could let the tears stream down her face and the feelings of grief could overwhelm her. It was at moments like these that she was least like an Atkins, being able to shed that cool hard façade that only those closest to her had glimpses of. The one saving grace these days was that only Lauren was around her and she had more space to cry in than before she went to prison. She didn't have the likes of Charlie and the woman that she used to be telling her that she looked like a monkey's arse if she was seen in public with tear marks running down her face. She knew now that before she went to Larkhall, she had had no one to turn to for that instinctive generosity that she knew was a quality that no one should despise or confuse with weakness. Curiously enough, her time in Larkhall had helped her to make that emotional jump with all the other women around who looked after each other when one of them was feeling down. Every woman worth her salt that she had ever known who was locked up in prison with her, acted that way with unthinking human decency.
She had hoped against hope over these last days that nothing would come out of Lauren's mad act, that no one would discover the crime, if she cared to call it that. For the first time in her life, the word 'crime' had an ugly sound. She had worked so hard to get Lauren to hold it together and to stop her going down the weird self-destructive route that Charlie and Ritchie had been capable of. Lauren's welfare had taken up all her emotional energies so that she hadn't given time for anything else and she had taken for granted Karen's help to keep Lauren on the straight and narrow, even to going upstairs and having a quiet word with her. She feared now that she might have overcompensated towards Lauren like an Atkins mother does and had taken Karen for granted.
It felt like eternity that she was shut out in the cold and the dark with no hope, no future.
Fresh sobs racked her body as the events of the past days flashed through her brain, replaying over and over again despite her wish to forget it and everything that was going on in her life. Time more than anything else in her life had no meaning.
Lauren sat quietly downstairs. She had no inclination to go out and, though she had brought a fresh set of troubles down on the Atkins family, her place was to be around Mum. She distracted herself by leafing through the same crappy magazine which she had read for the twentieth time featuring the same sun tanned, fake golden haired mindless bimbo that always angered her. What do you do when you are a dark brunette with brains? There was something in the magazine which told her that she didn't fit into this conventional world that was being offered to her on a gilt platter.
Trigger nuzzled himself against her knee, wagging his tail and his big brown eyes sensing that his mistress was troubled. Animals and children always knew instinctively when something was wrong even if they did not know what it was.
It was that spark of self-preservation that rescued Yvonne when she was at her lowest point as it always did, her ultimate strength that alone marked her out as not being an Atkins. She suddenly felt at her most submerged in being buried in the depths of her bed and had a desperate drive to get out of here into the real world, as she was doing neither herself nor Lauren any good lying here stewing.
"Yvonne. Hey, come in," Cassie greeted her as an unexpected ring at the door.
"The house sounds bleeding quiet," Yvonne remarked.
"Roisin's taken the kids to the pictures. I would have gone along but I feel dead on my feet after a bad day at work and I've got a lousy headache. Niamh offered to tuck me into bed but I went for the settee instead." She gestured to the quilt, which had been displaced, and the settee, which she had been lying on, the packet of 'Anadin extra' and a mug of water on a side table next to it.
"No rest for the wicked," Yvonne said nonchalantly without thinking too much about the expression and then wincing slightly at its connotations.
"You look pretty rough," Cassie said rather tactlessly. She had had a rough day at work and wasn't feeling in the mood to watch every word.
"Thanks for the bleeding compliment," Yvonne snapped. "I'll say the same to you sometime."
"I'm sorry, Yvonne. You've caught me at a bad time. I've had too many brain dead idiots to deal with," Cassie offered in a more conciliatory tone. This reasonableness was only skin deep as one of Cassie's failings was that illness made her new found maturity and flexibility go out the window and made her revert to being self centred and short tempered.
"Being a mother of a daughter who's killed a prison officer, so that it hits the front pages of the national papers and feeling like it's only a matter of time before the Old Bill comes sniffing around isn't my idea of having a ball. Being dumped by your girlfriend doesn't exactly help much either," Yvonne reared up, almost subconsciously wanting a confrontation as one way of dealing with her feelings.
"Hey, Yvonne, I'm really sorry to hear about that. What on earth happened?" Cassie said with genuine concern, her more mature side of her personality starting to be engaged.
"Karen doesn't want to deal with the fact that Lauren killed Fenner. I didn't want any of that. I hadn't the slightest idea that she had this crazy idea of stalking Fenner and then killing him. Soon as she waltzed in through the door and told me what she'd done, I had to clean everything up, the gun, Lauren's clothes, the car, the lot. If you mess up on something like this, the shit will hit the fan and Lauren would be nicked. It won't happen to Lauren, not if I can help it."
"And how on earth did you think Karen felt about it?" Cassie asked Yvonne with an incredulous edge which Yvonne thought totally patronising. She was back to being confrontational again.
"There was no time but to act fast. I thought Karen would have understood that you have to deal with the emergency first before anything else," Yvonne snapped.
"For Christ's sake, grow up!" Cassie exploded. How on earth did Yvonne think that Karen, the Karen Betts who is a Wing Governor of a prison and had been upholding the law, would catch Yvonne half way through a typical Atkins quick cover up and would nonchalantly go along with it because she was starry eyed in love with her.
"Look here, I did the same with Roisin as you have done with Karen. I had this mad idea of siphoning off money from the company accounts and thought I could get away with it. I persuaded Roisin to go along with it and, if she hadn't been madly in love with me," And here Cassie gave off a self satisfied narcissistic smile at her awareness of her own charms, "she would have had no hand in it. When we were caught, I had to go through so much of a guilt trip from her, and rightly. I couldn't see it at the time and that's why I'm putting you straight so you don't mess up the same way that I did."
"In case it might have escaped your mind, darling," and here the genuine Yvonne sarcastic thrust, not a term of endearment, embroidered the word. "It was Lauren who killed Fenner, not me and I had no hand in it."
"Apart from clearing up any incriminating evidence, you're right," Cassie retorted, the pain from her headache reaching new heights of agony. "The difference between Roisin and I as we were then and you and Karen as you are now," and Cassie paused for reflection to check that she had got the tortuous sentence right, "is that we were locked up in the same cell even if we were split up some of the time. We didn't have choices in our personal space while you and Karen have. The trouble is that, emotionally, Karen doesn't see what Lauren did in the same way that you do."
The two women glared at each other as they paused, as if in an old fashioned naval battle where two fighting galleons had hurled all their ammunition at each other, the shot lockers were empty and there was nothing to do but think venomous thoughts at each other as substitute lethal weapons as they both did right now.
"You have to give Karen some space, for how long, you can't say and neither, I suspect can Karen," Cassie urged patiently, struggling to be reasonable.
"Thanks for being bleeding Marge Proops. Anyway, I can see I've come round at the wrong time. I'm off."
And Yvonne exited and Cassie made her way back to the security blanket of her quilt and reached for two more tablets.
"Nikki Wade," came the familiar, well modulated voice that brought back to Yvonne such intense nostalgic feelings of closeness that none of Charlie's old friends could conjure up. She had known them for years and now they kept their distance. After her bust up with Cassie and Roisin being out for the evening, Nikki was her last hope. She had phoned up Nikki on her mobile after having driven aimlessly around and had cooled down a bit. She was stuck in the middle of nowhere and she was getting nowhere fast.
"Nikki, I need to see you. It's sort of personal stuff and I could really do with your help and advice."
Yvonne amazed herself as she heard her own voice in instant recall. Perhaps the Yvonne Atkins of old would never have talked that way. She would have turned it over in her own mind and stewed in her own worries and suffered. Of course, no one around her at that time would have picked up the slightest trace of these worries. That wasn't like our Eevie, was it?
"Sure, no time like the present. Why don't you come over tonight to the club?" Nikki's split second judgement told her that this was serious.
"Give me half an hour and I'll be over."
Yvonne's car swung round in an arc and scrunched to a halt with a screech of tyres on the loose gravel in the car park at the back of the club. Out of breath, she stumbled through the front doors of the one place that, in the past, had made her nervous. After all, it's just another club, isn't it.
She greeted Yvonne with a dazzling smile and a big hug and a peck on her cheek that was so Nikki and gestured her to a side room. The girl behind the bar recognised the woman who came into the club and cynically concluded that she might be Nikki's new bird. This older woman looked the hard and dominating type for those who fancied them. She knew better than to make a joke about it as Nikki drew a very precise line between what she would tolerate from someone who worked for her and Trish and what she wouldn't. Nikki was responsible for hiring and firing staff and had a very blunt way of expressing herself and any barmaid who seriously transgressed was out on her ear.
Nikki took one look at Yvonne's drawn face which had noticeably aged in comparison with the glowing serene law abiding Yvonne who was asking her to talk to Helen so that Fenner could be nailed the legal way. It spelt trouble when she recalled the dramatic and unexpected headlines of Fenner's death and the sight of Yvonne's clearly troubled mind.
"I'd have had this place decked out with balloons and streamers to celebrate Fenner getting what he deserved only what does one less bastard screw in this world mean to the women who come to this club?" Nikki joked as she poured Yvonne a drink.
Yvonne grimaced. The joke was well intended but her nerves were stretched wire taut which made her more aggressive than normal.
"You're not telling me that I killed Fenner, Nikki?" she asked Nikki slightly aggressively.
"No, you're too smart for that or the body would never have turned up," Nikki cut off the potential argument before it could get going. "But that's why you wanted to see me, isn't it," And Nikki laid a hand on her shoulder.
That gesture brought back to her the time that they had joked about Yvonne 'turning lezzie' and Nikki's semi joking mock sexual proposition in the brief halcyon days when they had really run G Wing when the screws had organised the 'mass sick in.' This time, this was the gesture of affection that she needed and she settled back into her chair and smiled for the first time.
"You don't miss much, Nikki. I'd better tell you the truth. I've got to talk to someone about it and you're a close friend who I know will listen to me."
Nikki pricked up her ears. Surely, Karen was the first person she would go to. After all, what are lovers for though good friends sometimes had the advantage of being detached from the situation. She could have done with someone to whom she could have talked about her love for Helen to when she was stuck inside Larkhall.
"You tell it how it is from the very beginning."
Yvonne took a swig from her drink and the occasion rapidly assembled her conflicting thoughts that had jarred up against themselves into order.
"Last time I saw you, Karen and I were going to nail Fenner the legal way and Karen had got two red hot barristers on the job…….."
"You've changed, Yvonne. The Yvonne Atkins I knew would have had Fenner die very painfully given half a chance," Smiled Nikki.
"I've changed but Lauren hasn't. That's the trouble," Yvonne's very throaty, choked up voice told Nikki everything.
"So it was Lauren who murdered Fenner?" Nikki asked gently.
"Yeah. I caught her coming back waving that bloody gun around looking as if she'd been snorting Bolivian marching powder and told me and Karen straight off what she'd done. We'd had one of the best days in our lives till she burst in," Yvonne's words struggled out of her mouth.
"Did you have any idea about what Lauren was up to till then?" Nikki questioned reluctantly. Her tones expressed all the delicacy of touch that she could summon up.
Yvonne shook her head decisively and looked down at the table in silence. Nikki knew instinctively to leave off the questions for the moment.
"Nikki, there's a call for you." as the sudden racket of the phone disturbed the silence.
"Can you take the name and phone number and tell whoever it is that I'll phone back as soon as I can," Nikki's sharp edged voice and glare was directed at her unfavourite barmaid.
"No don't go, Yvonne," She added as Yvonne went to stand up with the obvious intention of leaving and not getting in the way of her work. Right now, the last thing she wanted was to blow it with Nikki after her visit to Cassie had gone so spectacularly wrong. "I'll phone back only when I'm good and ready and not before."
"So you don't get to pick up your medal for bumping off Fenner?" Nikki's joke drew a wan smile from Yvonne.
"Not this time, Nikki, for once in my life."
"So where does Karen come into it, Yvonne?"
Yvonne drew in a deep breath and inhaled cigarette smoke as her device for working her way round to verbalising what was most emotionally painful.
"Karen wants some space from me," Yvonne's short sentence concealed a multitude of pain and she stopped.
"Is that what she wants to do or what you want to do?" came the gentle question, as soft as that of a slowly falling leaf on an autumn day.
"Not me, Nikki. As for Karen, I don't know. She had been given the third degree by the two barristers I told you about and the judge who was due to hear the case. They believed in her and wanted to see Fenner behind bars for raping Karen and for all the shit that happened to every woman who was at Larkhall. They're all decent people and they felt let down and that's the trouble. It's not like going up before the screws and being banged up by some bastard who doesn't give a shit. The two women really cared in their different ways. Anyway, Karen can't believe that I'm not the Yvonne Atkins of old and that I've put my past behind me. I'm not sure she knows what she feels," Yvonne added earnestly.
Nikki held her glass meditatively between her long shapely fingers. She could see it from both sides but it didn't make it any easier to put it into words that she could say to Yvonne.
"Yvonne, would it help if I explained what happened when Helen and I split up once. I think it might help you."
"Helen like Karen is or was Wing Governor. They are used to being on the right side of the bars." she made a tentative start, feeling her way by touch and intuition. "You know well enough that a screw ending up on the wrong side of the prison bars is in big trouble if that screw is the one who is used to carrying the keys. Take Lorna Rose for example. I made it feel too dangerous for Helen in the way that I landed on her doorstep and she didn't have the choice whether or not I was going to call on her. Helen had to smuggle me back into Larkhall the very night that everything kicked off at Bodybag's party. Of course, I had to miss out on the sight of Bodybag prancing around out of her head on E's."
Yvonne smiled broadly at Nikki's recall of one of the highlights of her life.
"At the time though, Helen freaked out as, going through her mind was the fear that she was, quote, harbouring a criminal, unquote, on the very night that we slept together. Crystal did time for harbouring Denny Blood and Shell Dockley. When she found out that I'd threatened to stick a bottle into Fenner's guts, or at least made out that I was about to, that helped finish it between us though I didn't know at the time. I was standing up for Helen the same way that Lauren was standing up for you, and Ritchie and the rest of us. That doesn't make it any easier for Karen. I have a pretty good idea through Helen how Karen is feeling."
"So what do I do, Nikki?" Yvonne asked her and the world around her, emotion choking her voice.
"You can't force her to come back to you, Yvonne. It doesn't work out that way. You have to see that. Helen and I will be here for you whenever you want us. I can promise you this much."
Tears came to Yvonne's eyes but for once in her life, she made no attempt to brush them away.
"Your word is worth more than most people's word sworn on the Bible," Yvonne declared emotionally.
They drifted along for a while chatting about everyday matters when the barmaid returned and both Nikki and Yvonne realised that Nikki had work to do. She looked at the time and it was getting late. Lauren would be worrying about her.
"I'll take you up on this sometime. I'd better be going and thanks," Yvonne got to her feet and her smile and tone of voice being more relaxed than she had been for days ever since the darkness fell when Fenner was killed.
"Night night, Yvonne," Nikki called out to her as if she were in the cell next to hers at Larkhall and not to her house somewhere in London.
Yvonne's bedroom was almost entirely enveloped in blackness except for the tiny bedside light turned down to its lowest. The huddled shape hidden under the quilt was almost impossible to distinguish and Yvonne felt lost in the darkness where she wanted to be. The house was so quiet that the loud ticking of the clock could be heard very distinctly.
It was only in the safety and isolation of the deep impenetrable space of her bedroom that Yvonne could let the tears stream down her face and the feelings of grief could overwhelm her. It was at moments like these that she was least like an Atkins, being able to shed that cool hard façade that only those closest to her had glimpses of. The one saving grace these days was that only Lauren was around her and she had more space to cry in than before she went to prison. She didn't have the likes of Charlie and the woman that she used to be telling her that she looked like a monkey's arse if she was seen in public with tear marks running down her face. She knew now that before she went to Larkhall, she had had no one to turn to for that instinctive generosity that she knew was a quality that no one should despise or confuse with weakness. Curiously enough, her time in Larkhall had helped her to make that emotional jump with all the other women around who looked after each other when one of them was feeling down. Every woman worth her salt that she had ever known who was locked up in prison with her, acted that way with unthinking human decency.
She had hoped against hope over these last days that nothing would come out of Lauren's mad act, that no one would discover the crime, if she cared to call it that. For the first time in her life, the word 'crime' had an ugly sound. She had worked so hard to get Lauren to hold it together and to stop her going down the weird self-destructive route that Charlie and Ritchie had been capable of. Lauren's welfare had taken up all her emotional energies so that she hadn't given time for anything else and she had taken for granted Karen's help to keep Lauren on the straight and narrow, even to going upstairs and having a quiet word with her. She feared now that she might have overcompensated towards Lauren like an Atkins mother does and had taken Karen for granted.
It felt like eternity that she was shut out in the cold and the dark with no hope, no future.
Fresh sobs racked her body as the events of the past days flashed through her brain, replaying over and over again despite her wish to forget it and everything that was going on in her life. Time more than anything else in her life had no meaning.
Lauren sat quietly downstairs. She had no inclination to go out and, though she had brought a fresh set of troubles down on the Atkins family, her place was to be around Mum. She distracted herself by leafing through the same crappy magazine which she had read for the twentieth time featuring the same sun tanned, fake golden haired mindless bimbo that always angered her. What do you do when you are a dark brunette with brains? There was something in the magazine which told her that she didn't fit into this conventional world that was being offered to her on a gilt platter.
Trigger nuzzled himself against her knee, wagging his tail and his big brown eyes sensing that his mistress was troubled. Animals and children always knew instinctively when something was wrong even if they did not know what it was.
It was that spark of self-preservation that rescued Yvonne when she was at her lowest point as it always did, her ultimate strength that alone marked her out as not being an Atkins. She suddenly felt at her most submerged in being buried in the depths of her bed and had a desperate drive to get out of here into the real world, as she was doing neither herself nor Lauren any good lying here stewing.
"Yvonne. Hey, come in," Cassie greeted her as an unexpected ring at the door.
"The house sounds bleeding quiet," Yvonne remarked.
"Roisin's taken the kids to the pictures. I would have gone along but I feel dead on my feet after a bad day at work and I've got a lousy headache. Niamh offered to tuck me into bed but I went for the settee instead." She gestured to the quilt, which had been displaced, and the settee, which she had been lying on, the packet of 'Anadin extra' and a mug of water on a side table next to it.
"No rest for the wicked," Yvonne said nonchalantly without thinking too much about the expression and then wincing slightly at its connotations.
"You look pretty rough," Cassie said rather tactlessly. She had had a rough day at work and wasn't feeling in the mood to watch every word.
"Thanks for the bleeding compliment," Yvonne snapped. "I'll say the same to you sometime."
"I'm sorry, Yvonne. You've caught me at a bad time. I've had too many brain dead idiots to deal with," Cassie offered in a more conciliatory tone. This reasonableness was only skin deep as one of Cassie's failings was that illness made her new found maturity and flexibility go out the window and made her revert to being self centred and short tempered.
"Being a mother of a daughter who's killed a prison officer, so that it hits the front pages of the national papers and feeling like it's only a matter of time before the Old Bill comes sniffing around isn't my idea of having a ball. Being dumped by your girlfriend doesn't exactly help much either," Yvonne reared up, almost subconsciously wanting a confrontation as one way of dealing with her feelings.
"Hey, Yvonne, I'm really sorry to hear about that. What on earth happened?" Cassie said with genuine concern, her more mature side of her personality starting to be engaged.
"Karen doesn't want to deal with the fact that Lauren killed Fenner. I didn't want any of that. I hadn't the slightest idea that she had this crazy idea of stalking Fenner and then killing him. Soon as she waltzed in through the door and told me what she'd done, I had to clean everything up, the gun, Lauren's clothes, the car, the lot. If you mess up on something like this, the shit will hit the fan and Lauren would be nicked. It won't happen to Lauren, not if I can help it."
"And how on earth did you think Karen felt about it?" Cassie asked Yvonne with an incredulous edge which Yvonne thought totally patronising. She was back to being confrontational again.
"There was no time but to act fast. I thought Karen would have understood that you have to deal with the emergency first before anything else," Yvonne snapped.
"For Christ's sake, grow up!" Cassie exploded. How on earth did Yvonne think that Karen, the Karen Betts who is a Wing Governor of a prison and had been upholding the law, would catch Yvonne half way through a typical Atkins quick cover up and would nonchalantly go along with it because she was starry eyed in love with her.
"Look here, I did the same with Roisin as you have done with Karen. I had this mad idea of siphoning off money from the company accounts and thought I could get away with it. I persuaded Roisin to go along with it and, if she hadn't been madly in love with me," And here Cassie gave off a self satisfied narcissistic smile at her awareness of her own charms, "she would have had no hand in it. When we were caught, I had to go through so much of a guilt trip from her, and rightly. I couldn't see it at the time and that's why I'm putting you straight so you don't mess up the same way that I did."
"In case it might have escaped your mind, darling," and here the genuine Yvonne sarcastic thrust, not a term of endearment, embroidered the word. "It was Lauren who killed Fenner, not me and I had no hand in it."
"Apart from clearing up any incriminating evidence, you're right," Cassie retorted, the pain from her headache reaching new heights of agony. "The difference between Roisin and I as we were then and you and Karen as you are now," and Cassie paused for reflection to check that she had got the tortuous sentence right, "is that we were locked up in the same cell even if we were split up some of the time. We didn't have choices in our personal space while you and Karen have. The trouble is that, emotionally, Karen doesn't see what Lauren did in the same way that you do."
The two women glared at each other as they paused, as if in an old fashioned naval battle where two fighting galleons had hurled all their ammunition at each other, the shot lockers were empty and there was nothing to do but think venomous thoughts at each other as substitute lethal weapons as they both did right now.
"You have to give Karen some space, for how long, you can't say and neither, I suspect can Karen," Cassie urged patiently, struggling to be reasonable.
"Thanks for being bleeding Marge Proops. Anyway, I can see I've come round at the wrong time. I'm off."
And Yvonne exited and Cassie made her way back to the security blanket of her quilt and reached for two more tablets.
"Nikki Wade," came the familiar, well modulated voice that brought back to Yvonne such intense nostalgic feelings of closeness that none of Charlie's old friends could conjure up. She had known them for years and now they kept their distance. After her bust up with Cassie and Roisin being out for the evening, Nikki was her last hope. She had phoned up Nikki on her mobile after having driven aimlessly around and had cooled down a bit. She was stuck in the middle of nowhere and she was getting nowhere fast.
"Nikki, I need to see you. It's sort of personal stuff and I could really do with your help and advice."
Yvonne amazed herself as she heard her own voice in instant recall. Perhaps the Yvonne Atkins of old would never have talked that way. She would have turned it over in her own mind and stewed in her own worries and suffered. Of course, no one around her at that time would have picked up the slightest trace of these worries. That wasn't like our Eevie, was it?
"Sure, no time like the present. Why don't you come over tonight to the club?" Nikki's split second judgement told her that this was serious.
"Give me half an hour and I'll be over."
Yvonne's car swung round in an arc and scrunched to a halt with a screech of tyres on the loose gravel in the car park at the back of the club. Out of breath, she stumbled through the front doors of the one place that, in the past, had made her nervous. After all, it's just another club, isn't it.
She greeted Yvonne with a dazzling smile and a big hug and a peck on her cheek that was so Nikki and gestured her to a side room. The girl behind the bar recognised the woman who came into the club and cynically concluded that she might be Nikki's new bird. This older woman looked the hard and dominating type for those who fancied them. She knew better than to make a joke about it as Nikki drew a very precise line between what she would tolerate from someone who worked for her and Trish and what she wouldn't. Nikki was responsible for hiring and firing staff and had a very blunt way of expressing herself and any barmaid who seriously transgressed was out on her ear.
Nikki took one look at Yvonne's drawn face which had noticeably aged in comparison with the glowing serene law abiding Yvonne who was asking her to talk to Helen so that Fenner could be nailed the legal way. It spelt trouble when she recalled the dramatic and unexpected headlines of Fenner's death and the sight of Yvonne's clearly troubled mind.
"I'd have had this place decked out with balloons and streamers to celebrate Fenner getting what he deserved only what does one less bastard screw in this world mean to the women who come to this club?" Nikki joked as she poured Yvonne a drink.
Yvonne grimaced. The joke was well intended but her nerves were stretched wire taut which made her more aggressive than normal.
"You're not telling me that I killed Fenner, Nikki?" she asked Nikki slightly aggressively.
"No, you're too smart for that or the body would never have turned up," Nikki cut off the potential argument before it could get going. "But that's why you wanted to see me, isn't it," And Nikki laid a hand on her shoulder.
That gesture brought back to her the time that they had joked about Yvonne 'turning lezzie' and Nikki's semi joking mock sexual proposition in the brief halcyon days when they had really run G Wing when the screws had organised the 'mass sick in.' This time, this was the gesture of affection that she needed and she settled back into her chair and smiled for the first time.
"You don't miss much, Nikki. I'd better tell you the truth. I've got to talk to someone about it and you're a close friend who I know will listen to me."
Nikki pricked up her ears. Surely, Karen was the first person she would go to. After all, what are lovers for though good friends sometimes had the advantage of being detached from the situation. She could have done with someone to whom she could have talked about her love for Helen to when she was stuck inside Larkhall.
"You tell it how it is from the very beginning."
Yvonne took a swig from her drink and the occasion rapidly assembled her conflicting thoughts that had jarred up against themselves into order.
"Last time I saw you, Karen and I were going to nail Fenner the legal way and Karen had got two red hot barristers on the job…….."
"You've changed, Yvonne. The Yvonne Atkins I knew would have had Fenner die very painfully given half a chance," Smiled Nikki.
"I've changed but Lauren hasn't. That's the trouble," Yvonne's very throaty, choked up voice told Nikki everything.
"So it was Lauren who murdered Fenner?" Nikki asked gently.
"Yeah. I caught her coming back waving that bloody gun around looking as if she'd been snorting Bolivian marching powder and told me and Karen straight off what she'd done. We'd had one of the best days in our lives till she burst in," Yvonne's words struggled out of her mouth.
"Did you have any idea about what Lauren was up to till then?" Nikki questioned reluctantly. Her tones expressed all the delicacy of touch that she could summon up.
Yvonne shook her head decisively and looked down at the table in silence. Nikki knew instinctively to leave off the questions for the moment.
"Nikki, there's a call for you." as the sudden racket of the phone disturbed the silence.
"Can you take the name and phone number and tell whoever it is that I'll phone back as soon as I can," Nikki's sharp edged voice and glare was directed at her unfavourite barmaid.
"No don't go, Yvonne," She added as Yvonne went to stand up with the obvious intention of leaving and not getting in the way of her work. Right now, the last thing she wanted was to blow it with Nikki after her visit to Cassie had gone so spectacularly wrong. "I'll phone back only when I'm good and ready and not before."
"So you don't get to pick up your medal for bumping off Fenner?" Nikki's joke drew a wan smile from Yvonne.
"Not this time, Nikki, for once in my life."
"So where does Karen come into it, Yvonne?"
Yvonne drew in a deep breath and inhaled cigarette smoke as her device for working her way round to verbalising what was most emotionally painful.
"Karen wants some space from me," Yvonne's short sentence concealed a multitude of pain and she stopped.
"Is that what she wants to do or what you want to do?" came the gentle question, as soft as that of a slowly falling leaf on an autumn day.
"Not me, Nikki. As for Karen, I don't know. She had been given the third degree by the two barristers I told you about and the judge who was due to hear the case. They believed in her and wanted to see Fenner behind bars for raping Karen and for all the shit that happened to every woman who was at Larkhall. They're all decent people and they felt let down and that's the trouble. It's not like going up before the screws and being banged up by some bastard who doesn't give a shit. The two women really cared in their different ways. Anyway, Karen can't believe that I'm not the Yvonne Atkins of old and that I've put my past behind me. I'm not sure she knows what she feels," Yvonne added earnestly.
Nikki held her glass meditatively between her long shapely fingers. She could see it from both sides but it didn't make it any easier to put it into words that she could say to Yvonne.
"Yvonne, would it help if I explained what happened when Helen and I split up once. I think it might help you."
"Helen like Karen is or was Wing Governor. They are used to being on the right side of the bars." she made a tentative start, feeling her way by touch and intuition. "You know well enough that a screw ending up on the wrong side of the prison bars is in big trouble if that screw is the one who is used to carrying the keys. Take Lorna Rose for example. I made it feel too dangerous for Helen in the way that I landed on her doorstep and she didn't have the choice whether or not I was going to call on her. Helen had to smuggle me back into Larkhall the very night that everything kicked off at Bodybag's party. Of course, I had to miss out on the sight of Bodybag prancing around out of her head on E's."
Yvonne smiled broadly at Nikki's recall of one of the highlights of her life.
"At the time though, Helen freaked out as, going through her mind was the fear that she was, quote, harbouring a criminal, unquote, on the very night that we slept together. Crystal did time for harbouring Denny Blood and Shell Dockley. When she found out that I'd threatened to stick a bottle into Fenner's guts, or at least made out that I was about to, that helped finish it between us though I didn't know at the time. I was standing up for Helen the same way that Lauren was standing up for you, and Ritchie and the rest of us. That doesn't make it any easier for Karen. I have a pretty good idea through Helen how Karen is feeling."
"So what do I do, Nikki?" Yvonne asked her and the world around her, emotion choking her voice.
"You can't force her to come back to you, Yvonne. It doesn't work out that way. You have to see that. Helen and I will be here for you whenever you want us. I can promise you this much."
Tears came to Yvonne's eyes but for once in her life, she made no attempt to brush them away.
"Your word is worth more than most people's word sworn on the Bible," Yvonne declared emotionally.
They drifted along for a while chatting about everyday matters when the barmaid returned and both Nikki and Yvonne realised that Nikki had work to do. She looked at the time and it was getting late. Lauren would be worrying about her.
"I'll take you up on this sometime. I'd better be going and thanks," Yvonne got to her feet and her smile and tone of voice being more relaxed than she had been for days ever since the darkness fell when Fenner was killed.
"Night night, Yvonne," Nikki called out to her as if she were in the cell next to hers at Larkhall and not to her house somewhere in London.