Part Two
Karen had driven to work with a curious feeling of dissociation, having woken up with the feeling that what had happened yesterday wasn't real. Yvonne was still out in Spain, soaking up the sun and Lauren was at home where she belonged, where she would always belong. Then it hit her like a stone to the back of the head in a way that chilled her soul all over. She had gone round to Yvonne's far too empty house to pick Trigger up. That way that the normally lively highly sociable dog had been suspiciously quiet and had kept to himself, shouted out the bad news far more eloquently than the monotone call of the newspaper seller.
Images of Lauren floated through her mind of Yvonne's house that golden summer moving in stately slow motion. She could still feel the sharp bracing feel of the cool still waters in Yvonne's extensive yet private back garden which embraced her while out there in the sun soaked world on dry land, Lauren chatted away inconsequentially to Cassie as they reclined lazily on sun loungers in a hot bygone summer. Well, there have been consequences enough since then, she thought grimly to herself as she looked out of the window as raindrops marked their way down her bedroom window. But Lauren belongs to Yvonne's house, the sleepier part of her mind reasoned to herself, but darker storm cloud memories told her otherwise as they moved relentlessly across the sky, cutting out the sunshine and the warmth. The hurt and the pain of what she had to do that day when she had to finish her relationship with Yvonne could be brusquely pushed on one side but it couldn't be obliterated, she knew full well. Hadn't that blind feeling of panic predated the here and now of Lauren's arrest by three months and been proved right now that the news had broken, as surely as if it had been announced on the ten o'clock news? That tough survival instinct that had served her so well over the years was a demanding mistress but it had kept her from….from sliding off the rails apart from the unwitting knowledge of the circumstances of how Jim Fenner came to die. She knew that, well enough when she acted as a sort of parent to the half worldly wise, half childlike Lauren who had lain in her bed in that darkened bedroom that, most of all is or was her home. Lauren had given her strange feelings, of talking about another person who looked like her who had committed the murder, not Lauren who could talk so strangely rationally about the matter and how she had conceived the whole idea in the first place. It shocked her to read Ritchie's last will and testament urging her to apparently do the one decent thing in his life to make up for what Fenner had done to her. At that moment, she yanked the breaks on to the terrible slide in her thinking process, of the long string of consequences, of cause and effect that had signed Fenner's death warrant from the moment he raped her to his death at Lauren's hands. It spurred her to get out of bed and stop brooding over everything. That was going to do her no good and, besides, she had a prison wing to run.
Over a necessary cup of strong coffee, first thing, she slipped on the ball and chain of her daily duties and started to plan for the day ahead. She would have to sort out the administrative details of Lauren Atkins's cell allocation and that her induction would be handled fairly, the words didn't taste good in her mouth but it was the best that she could come up with first thing in the morning. She was not exactly a morning person but she could make the best of a bad job.
Once she was in her office first thing before her meeting, dressed in her habitual wing Governor suit and mode of thinking, she had one phone call to make to chase up when she would get the transfers she had been chasing up for weeks. A smile creased her face when she heard what was to her some good news. There were others who might have mixed feelings but that was, for once, their problem, not hers. She grabbed her folder and hurried off down the corridor. She was a little late but not bad considering.
"I don't know," Moaned Bodybag like a stuck record, her head turning in all directions to freely distribute her diatribe like a water sprinkler on a drought parched lawn. "We're rushed off our feet, day in day out. If I've told Madam once, I've told her a hundred times about how short handed we are. She expects each one of us to rush round in this madhouse and do her precious reports on time. It's just like the bad old days of Stewart." Di intoned in sympathy as one of the 'old guard' and now Sylvia's 'best friend.' "Well, that's it, I've written to the General Secretary and he'll have a thing or two to tell Betts how scandalously understaffed Larkhall is and that will be a blot on her copybook," She finished in a triumphantly malignant manner.
"Yeah, it's all from when Jim Fenner, well, you know. I'll miss him. The place isn't the same without him," Di's dreamy voice and vacant eyes conveyed the impression of happy days, alas in the past.
Selena's blank face admirably masked her bottled up anger at that sleazy man who offered her his words of friendly advice as an older experienced Prison Officer while the smile curving his lips drew attention to the way his eyes mentally undressed her. Urrgh. That was one of the periodic penalties of her decision to 'dress like a normal woman' so that her private life remained untouched and unknown to prying eyes. She envied Kris's swaggering gait and hands in her trousers stance which led even the thickest of guys to draw the obvious conclusion and leave her alone but she could not imagine herself behaving the same way. That was not her style.
Colin, too, was finding that the ominous black presence in the corner of his eye was fading with the months as were his fears. It was the sheer terror of being ground helplessly under Fenner's heel as 'Mr Fixit's mate' that was receding into the past now that the chair in the corner where he always used to sit was occupied by another human form. He could reduce him so easily to craven, undignified abject surrender to his schemes, in his actions and in his thoughts. He had a way of 'taking over' his mind with a few vicious threatening words and running rings round him. He had been scribbling furiously in his diary so as to avoid Di's eye. That woman gave him the creeps either as an unwanted sexual would be predator or as a spiteful prison officer but could not stop himself from snorting derisively at Di's remark. "Oh, I suppose you're glad that Jim's no longer with us," Di turned on the dramatics. "You ought to be grateful that he took an interest in you as a brand new prison officer fresh out of training college. "Leave it out, Di," Colin fended off the attack. "I don't want to talk about it." At moments like this, he was glad to chat to Selena in the Social Club. She had a soothing sympathetic manner even though he didn't know much about her home life, sort of kept herself to herself that way.
"Here's Madam coming. Late as usual after skiving off yesterday. Work at home, my eye." Her practiced ear could pick out the measured tread of Karen's footsteps along the corridor and hoist her fake smile into position in a way that never fooled Karen for one instant.
Karen perched herself on her favourite spot in the PO's room, running her eyes round the crowd, the PO's who always kept their mouths shut, ran past the two hostile presences of Di Barker and Sylvia whose negativity could potentially infect a new generation of PO's with their brand of poisonous cynicism and looked at Paula, Selena and Colin who were beginning to find their feet.
"We will have a new inmate on remand before she stands trial whose name may be familiar to you all, Lauren Atkins," Karen started and paused while a gasp of mixed astonishment and pure venom rippled round the room.
"In case you don't know already as the press have been slow off the mark, she was picked up last night and is accused of the murder of Jim Fenner……" "I might have known that that gangster's family was at the bottom of it. Didn't I tell you all," started Bodybag, crowing triumphantly.
"I seem to remember that you kept banging on about Yvonne Atkins being responsible till I was sick of hearing about it," Karen cut short what she knew was going to be a stream of verbal diarrhoea.
"I bet she put her up to it. No honour among thieves, that's what my mother says." "Well, to get to the point," Karen cut back with visible disgust in her tones, "She will be arriving shortly and she is to be treated as a normal prisoner. If I hear of any 'score settling' going on, any idea of taking it out of her as she is an Atkins, that person will be up before me facing a disciplinary charge and I don't mean just an aural warning." She paused to let the full impact of her last words sink in.
"Any prisoners held on remand are, after all, innocent until proven guilty, and if they are sentenced according to the due process of law, they are treated fairly as a convicted criminal and not according to some lynch mob. Got that?" Karen glared at Bodybag.
"It's easy to see that palling up with that judge who came round here has had an effect on you, not to mention that toffee nosed barrister," Sniffed Bodybag. "Oh, haven't they," Karen smiled mysteriously. Let them make of it what they like, she thought. "If Jim Fenner could see what was going on, that the Red carpet was being rolled out for the daughter of that Gangster's Moll, he'd turn in his grave," Bodybag's venomous words echoed round the PO's room.
Instantly, she put her hand to her mouth, which was shaped like an O, as the impact of her words became clear. She was so used to uttering these proverbs without thinking that her 'died in the wool' attitudes tripped her up to fall headlong. Selena turned her head down to repress a smile while Colin suddenly had an explosion of coughing as something went down his throat the wrong way.
"Sorry, Ma'am," He muttered in a strangulated fashion.
"Let's move on to the next item which is some good news for us all," Karen continued briskly after her deadpan start and turning to look pointedly in Bodybag's direction. "Sylvia, can you remember your thirtieth wedding anniversary dance here when you were dancing very ardently with a certain young good looking prison officer?" Sylvia blushed a pretty pink colour as how could she forget the feelings of shame and embarrassment the morning after, seeing the hidden grins amongst her fellow prison officers at her expense. She would have done the same if that sort of thing happened to someone else and she was the spectator.
"Dominic McAllister for the benefit of those who didn't know him. Well, he's coming back to us, date to be arranged and, as he's worked here before and earned a good reputation as a caring prison officer, Di," Karen spoke sharply, as the news had thrown her into total confusion, "I imagine he'll slot in with only a bit of refresher training to bring him up to speed." "That's brilliant news," Selena chirped up. "Don't you be getting any wrong ideas about him, Selena," Di broke in bitterly with undertones of possessiveness. As she had failed to snare him, she wasn't going to have a younger woman who thought she was God's gift to men swanning around and getting off with him. "Breaks all the women's hearts and never gives anything back." "I promise to behave myself, Di," Selena said primly.
"And this brings me to the last item. We are at last getting a new Principal Officer on level transfer who, again, is no stranger to Larkhall. Gina Rossi. I am pleased with this appointment as she did a fine job when she was here last time and I've heard nothing but glowing reports from the men's prison where she's been working and deservedly got her promotion. Again, for the benefit of those who don't know her, she is friendly and outgoing and you know where you stand with her. I am sure that her honesty will be a real asset to the wing." And, with that, Karen discreetly drew to a close a long chapter of darkness in Larkhall's past. Things would never be the same, all the prison officers agreed on that for entirely different reasons. Di's and Bodybag's glares and bad vibrations testified to that.
In the back yard of the magistrate's court, Lauren caught a glimpse of a square white van before she was led inside. The door slammed shut on Lauren's world, separating her from what in a sickening moment she realised was her past. She edged along into the tiny cell waiting for her and she felt her world judder sideways into slow motion to who knows where. There was no window and absolutely no sensation as to where her place was in the world, only whatever her sense of balance and movement told her which cut off one of her sources of perception in the world. She was cut off, disconnected and travelling not according to her own lazy grip of the steering wheel and right foot on the accelerator, but according to how some plod decided. She dared not think too much of the future. She was in suspended animation and sheer boredom was the only thing to cling to.
After what seemed an eternity, the van swung right and lurched to a halt but the engine was still running.
"What the frig is happening?" Lauren asked herself, her first taste of the feeling all prisoners experience when they know something is happening but they don't know what and nobody is telling them. In reality, the driver was checking in at the gatehouse and showing his ID. Lauren's world lurched sideways again and, when it came to an inelegant halt, she heard the engine switch off. Instantly, her heart was in her mouth though she talked to herself to rouse a little of the Atkins spirit. Like a wanderer in a bare desert, a wineglassful of water was precious. A blinding square of light dazzled her eyes and paralysed her where she stood.
"Come on, move it," Growled a disembodied voice from somewhere out of the white nothingness and she could feel an unknown body pushing at her from behind. Instinctively, her feet found each step downwards and in front to the stone cobbled yard. At that moment, Lauren's eyesight returned to normal though her eyes hurt and opened up the illusion of the normal way to the visitor's block, which her feet were used to taking her to.
The other prisoners, shabby, down at heel who were to be her enforced companions, mutely indicated her way in the opposite direction up a short flight of steps and to the intake room.
"Your name please," Colin Hedges asked at reception.
"Well, I'm not Victoria Beckham though I'm better looking than her." a trace of insolence in Lauren flashed in retaliation.
"I'm sure you are but rules is rules. Your name, if you please," Came the polite reply.
Sighing, Lauren gave herself away to the inevitable bureaucratic process that dragged her along while Colin Hedges noted, like mother like daughter in terms of hard-edged wariness and spiky humour. She had lost heart to argue any further after all the knockbacks of the last twenty-four hours. Listlessly, she watched all the belongings of her past freedom being stripped from her to be packaged away, listed and signed away along with her rights that she never knew she had. A prison number was going to be substituted for her name. The voice of a woman who chatted to her could be heard as if a long distance away as they all sat on the hard plastic seat in their rough blue terry towel robes. "In you come then, strip search, finger prints and then photo," A hated voice called out. "You what?" Lauren bridled. Yvonne had not told her about this one. "Causing trouble already, Atkins? I suppose you think you've booked yourself into a five star hotel. This is Her Majesty's Prison in case you hadn't noticed. We're only trying to do our job," Bodybag intoned for what must be the thousandth time in her life.
"So were the SS. I suppose you'll gas us in our cells later on," Lauren's fired up anger made a blind rush to escape.
"If you don't agree voluntarily, you can be forced," Bodybag's malicious smile and voice savoured every petty humiliation.
What Bodybag and the two other prison officers were not prepared for was the wiry strength in Lauren's slight frame as she struggled and squirmed for all she was worth and that they were sweating by the time they were done. With relief, Bodybag was only too pleased to click the camera on the three mug shots and dab the fingerprints and hope that the next prisoner was going to be more acquiescent.
It was a little later that Karen was patrolling the wing when a flush faced resentful Lauren glared at her with her black eyes. "Lauren, I've placed you to share a cell with Denny Blood," Karen said politely. "It might help you settle in here." "Settle in?" Lauren's angry incredulous tones exploded. "With Bodybag of all people strip-searching me? You must be joking." Karen's face was impassive as she took this jolt to her system. Sylvia must have arranged to swap duties with Di Barker against her express instructions. She would have it out with the pair of them later.
"That was not my doing, Lauren. You must have heard before coming here that things don't necessarily go according to plan. I shall look into that later on. In the meantime, you must do your best to settle in and I shall see you later for a proper induction interview, as I would do for anyone else held here on remand," Karen's voice was pitched low but very emphatically hoping against hope that Lauren had Yvonne's genius for reading between the lines. This situation, as with handling a very lightly reined personal escort duty for Denny when she had home leave to visit Yvonne, demanded a delicacy of feel in walking a tightrope.
"All right then," Lauren's monosyllabic reply showed that she had looked and listened and she took her plastic sack full of permitted possessions into the cell.
"Hi Lauren. It's wicked to see you here. I mean that it's not good that you got caught but if you are going to end up here, it's great that we're sharing cells," Denny's wide grin and eager excitement burst in on Lauren as soon as she opened the cell door. "I can look after myself, Denny," Lauren said. "Look here, man. I've been here a long time and I've seen a lot of the girls come and go," Denny hesitated at this point as she had seen too many prisoners walk down that aisle being cheered on to the open gates at the other end, everyone but her. Then in a more confident vein as she acted as big sister to what stuck out a mile as a very confused, unsettled Lauren.
"Everyone thinks the same when they come here, Nikki, the Julies, your mum, everyone. First thing you got to understand is that you need the help of all the other girls and everyone else needs yours. We've got to stick together and even if you don't think you need my help, I know that you will need it. I got to say that it's been easier since that bastard screw Fenner is out of the way and that we've got one of the best screws around in charge of this wing." Lauren sat down limply on her bunk, This was the first time that someone had actually spoken approvingly of what she had done in that insane period of madness and that she was seeing Karen in a new light.
Karen had driven to work with a curious feeling of dissociation, having woken up with the feeling that what had happened yesterday wasn't real. Yvonne was still out in Spain, soaking up the sun and Lauren was at home where she belonged, where she would always belong. Then it hit her like a stone to the back of the head in a way that chilled her soul all over. She had gone round to Yvonne's far too empty house to pick Trigger up. That way that the normally lively highly sociable dog had been suspiciously quiet and had kept to himself, shouted out the bad news far more eloquently than the monotone call of the newspaper seller.
Images of Lauren floated through her mind of Yvonne's house that golden summer moving in stately slow motion. She could still feel the sharp bracing feel of the cool still waters in Yvonne's extensive yet private back garden which embraced her while out there in the sun soaked world on dry land, Lauren chatted away inconsequentially to Cassie as they reclined lazily on sun loungers in a hot bygone summer. Well, there have been consequences enough since then, she thought grimly to herself as she looked out of the window as raindrops marked their way down her bedroom window. But Lauren belongs to Yvonne's house, the sleepier part of her mind reasoned to herself, but darker storm cloud memories told her otherwise as they moved relentlessly across the sky, cutting out the sunshine and the warmth. The hurt and the pain of what she had to do that day when she had to finish her relationship with Yvonne could be brusquely pushed on one side but it couldn't be obliterated, she knew full well. Hadn't that blind feeling of panic predated the here and now of Lauren's arrest by three months and been proved right now that the news had broken, as surely as if it had been announced on the ten o'clock news? That tough survival instinct that had served her so well over the years was a demanding mistress but it had kept her from….from sliding off the rails apart from the unwitting knowledge of the circumstances of how Jim Fenner came to die. She knew that, well enough when she acted as a sort of parent to the half worldly wise, half childlike Lauren who had lain in her bed in that darkened bedroom that, most of all is or was her home. Lauren had given her strange feelings, of talking about another person who looked like her who had committed the murder, not Lauren who could talk so strangely rationally about the matter and how she had conceived the whole idea in the first place. It shocked her to read Ritchie's last will and testament urging her to apparently do the one decent thing in his life to make up for what Fenner had done to her. At that moment, she yanked the breaks on to the terrible slide in her thinking process, of the long string of consequences, of cause and effect that had signed Fenner's death warrant from the moment he raped her to his death at Lauren's hands. It spurred her to get out of bed and stop brooding over everything. That was going to do her no good and, besides, she had a prison wing to run.
Over a necessary cup of strong coffee, first thing, she slipped on the ball and chain of her daily duties and started to plan for the day ahead. She would have to sort out the administrative details of Lauren Atkins's cell allocation and that her induction would be handled fairly, the words didn't taste good in her mouth but it was the best that she could come up with first thing in the morning. She was not exactly a morning person but she could make the best of a bad job.
Once she was in her office first thing before her meeting, dressed in her habitual wing Governor suit and mode of thinking, she had one phone call to make to chase up when she would get the transfers she had been chasing up for weeks. A smile creased her face when she heard what was to her some good news. There were others who might have mixed feelings but that was, for once, their problem, not hers. She grabbed her folder and hurried off down the corridor. She was a little late but not bad considering.
"I don't know," Moaned Bodybag like a stuck record, her head turning in all directions to freely distribute her diatribe like a water sprinkler on a drought parched lawn. "We're rushed off our feet, day in day out. If I've told Madam once, I've told her a hundred times about how short handed we are. She expects each one of us to rush round in this madhouse and do her precious reports on time. It's just like the bad old days of Stewart." Di intoned in sympathy as one of the 'old guard' and now Sylvia's 'best friend.' "Well, that's it, I've written to the General Secretary and he'll have a thing or two to tell Betts how scandalously understaffed Larkhall is and that will be a blot on her copybook," She finished in a triumphantly malignant manner.
"Yeah, it's all from when Jim Fenner, well, you know. I'll miss him. The place isn't the same without him," Di's dreamy voice and vacant eyes conveyed the impression of happy days, alas in the past.
Selena's blank face admirably masked her bottled up anger at that sleazy man who offered her his words of friendly advice as an older experienced Prison Officer while the smile curving his lips drew attention to the way his eyes mentally undressed her. Urrgh. That was one of the periodic penalties of her decision to 'dress like a normal woman' so that her private life remained untouched and unknown to prying eyes. She envied Kris's swaggering gait and hands in her trousers stance which led even the thickest of guys to draw the obvious conclusion and leave her alone but she could not imagine herself behaving the same way. That was not her style.
Colin, too, was finding that the ominous black presence in the corner of his eye was fading with the months as were his fears. It was the sheer terror of being ground helplessly under Fenner's heel as 'Mr Fixit's mate' that was receding into the past now that the chair in the corner where he always used to sit was occupied by another human form. He could reduce him so easily to craven, undignified abject surrender to his schemes, in his actions and in his thoughts. He had a way of 'taking over' his mind with a few vicious threatening words and running rings round him. He had been scribbling furiously in his diary so as to avoid Di's eye. That woman gave him the creeps either as an unwanted sexual would be predator or as a spiteful prison officer but could not stop himself from snorting derisively at Di's remark. "Oh, I suppose you're glad that Jim's no longer with us," Di turned on the dramatics. "You ought to be grateful that he took an interest in you as a brand new prison officer fresh out of training college. "Leave it out, Di," Colin fended off the attack. "I don't want to talk about it." At moments like this, he was glad to chat to Selena in the Social Club. She had a soothing sympathetic manner even though he didn't know much about her home life, sort of kept herself to herself that way.
"Here's Madam coming. Late as usual after skiving off yesterday. Work at home, my eye." Her practiced ear could pick out the measured tread of Karen's footsteps along the corridor and hoist her fake smile into position in a way that never fooled Karen for one instant.
Karen perched herself on her favourite spot in the PO's room, running her eyes round the crowd, the PO's who always kept their mouths shut, ran past the two hostile presences of Di Barker and Sylvia whose negativity could potentially infect a new generation of PO's with their brand of poisonous cynicism and looked at Paula, Selena and Colin who were beginning to find their feet.
"We will have a new inmate on remand before she stands trial whose name may be familiar to you all, Lauren Atkins," Karen started and paused while a gasp of mixed astonishment and pure venom rippled round the room.
"In case you don't know already as the press have been slow off the mark, she was picked up last night and is accused of the murder of Jim Fenner……" "I might have known that that gangster's family was at the bottom of it. Didn't I tell you all," started Bodybag, crowing triumphantly.
"I seem to remember that you kept banging on about Yvonne Atkins being responsible till I was sick of hearing about it," Karen cut short what she knew was going to be a stream of verbal diarrhoea.
"I bet she put her up to it. No honour among thieves, that's what my mother says." "Well, to get to the point," Karen cut back with visible disgust in her tones, "She will be arriving shortly and she is to be treated as a normal prisoner. If I hear of any 'score settling' going on, any idea of taking it out of her as she is an Atkins, that person will be up before me facing a disciplinary charge and I don't mean just an aural warning." She paused to let the full impact of her last words sink in.
"Any prisoners held on remand are, after all, innocent until proven guilty, and if they are sentenced according to the due process of law, they are treated fairly as a convicted criminal and not according to some lynch mob. Got that?" Karen glared at Bodybag.
"It's easy to see that palling up with that judge who came round here has had an effect on you, not to mention that toffee nosed barrister," Sniffed Bodybag. "Oh, haven't they," Karen smiled mysteriously. Let them make of it what they like, she thought. "If Jim Fenner could see what was going on, that the Red carpet was being rolled out for the daughter of that Gangster's Moll, he'd turn in his grave," Bodybag's venomous words echoed round the PO's room.
Instantly, she put her hand to her mouth, which was shaped like an O, as the impact of her words became clear. She was so used to uttering these proverbs without thinking that her 'died in the wool' attitudes tripped her up to fall headlong. Selena turned her head down to repress a smile while Colin suddenly had an explosion of coughing as something went down his throat the wrong way.
"Sorry, Ma'am," He muttered in a strangulated fashion.
"Let's move on to the next item which is some good news for us all," Karen continued briskly after her deadpan start and turning to look pointedly in Bodybag's direction. "Sylvia, can you remember your thirtieth wedding anniversary dance here when you were dancing very ardently with a certain young good looking prison officer?" Sylvia blushed a pretty pink colour as how could she forget the feelings of shame and embarrassment the morning after, seeing the hidden grins amongst her fellow prison officers at her expense. She would have done the same if that sort of thing happened to someone else and she was the spectator.
"Dominic McAllister for the benefit of those who didn't know him. Well, he's coming back to us, date to be arranged and, as he's worked here before and earned a good reputation as a caring prison officer, Di," Karen spoke sharply, as the news had thrown her into total confusion, "I imagine he'll slot in with only a bit of refresher training to bring him up to speed." "That's brilliant news," Selena chirped up. "Don't you be getting any wrong ideas about him, Selena," Di broke in bitterly with undertones of possessiveness. As she had failed to snare him, she wasn't going to have a younger woman who thought she was God's gift to men swanning around and getting off with him. "Breaks all the women's hearts and never gives anything back." "I promise to behave myself, Di," Selena said primly.
"And this brings me to the last item. We are at last getting a new Principal Officer on level transfer who, again, is no stranger to Larkhall. Gina Rossi. I am pleased with this appointment as she did a fine job when she was here last time and I've heard nothing but glowing reports from the men's prison where she's been working and deservedly got her promotion. Again, for the benefit of those who don't know her, she is friendly and outgoing and you know where you stand with her. I am sure that her honesty will be a real asset to the wing." And, with that, Karen discreetly drew to a close a long chapter of darkness in Larkhall's past. Things would never be the same, all the prison officers agreed on that for entirely different reasons. Di's and Bodybag's glares and bad vibrations testified to that.
In the back yard of the magistrate's court, Lauren caught a glimpse of a square white van before she was led inside. The door slammed shut on Lauren's world, separating her from what in a sickening moment she realised was her past. She edged along into the tiny cell waiting for her and she felt her world judder sideways into slow motion to who knows where. There was no window and absolutely no sensation as to where her place was in the world, only whatever her sense of balance and movement told her which cut off one of her sources of perception in the world. She was cut off, disconnected and travelling not according to her own lazy grip of the steering wheel and right foot on the accelerator, but according to how some plod decided. She dared not think too much of the future. She was in suspended animation and sheer boredom was the only thing to cling to.
After what seemed an eternity, the van swung right and lurched to a halt but the engine was still running.
"What the frig is happening?" Lauren asked herself, her first taste of the feeling all prisoners experience when they know something is happening but they don't know what and nobody is telling them. In reality, the driver was checking in at the gatehouse and showing his ID. Lauren's world lurched sideways again and, when it came to an inelegant halt, she heard the engine switch off. Instantly, her heart was in her mouth though she talked to herself to rouse a little of the Atkins spirit. Like a wanderer in a bare desert, a wineglassful of water was precious. A blinding square of light dazzled her eyes and paralysed her where she stood.
"Come on, move it," Growled a disembodied voice from somewhere out of the white nothingness and she could feel an unknown body pushing at her from behind. Instinctively, her feet found each step downwards and in front to the stone cobbled yard. At that moment, Lauren's eyesight returned to normal though her eyes hurt and opened up the illusion of the normal way to the visitor's block, which her feet were used to taking her to.
The other prisoners, shabby, down at heel who were to be her enforced companions, mutely indicated her way in the opposite direction up a short flight of steps and to the intake room.
"Your name please," Colin Hedges asked at reception.
"Well, I'm not Victoria Beckham though I'm better looking than her." a trace of insolence in Lauren flashed in retaliation.
"I'm sure you are but rules is rules. Your name, if you please," Came the polite reply.
Sighing, Lauren gave herself away to the inevitable bureaucratic process that dragged her along while Colin Hedges noted, like mother like daughter in terms of hard-edged wariness and spiky humour. She had lost heart to argue any further after all the knockbacks of the last twenty-four hours. Listlessly, she watched all the belongings of her past freedom being stripped from her to be packaged away, listed and signed away along with her rights that she never knew she had. A prison number was going to be substituted for her name. The voice of a woman who chatted to her could be heard as if a long distance away as they all sat on the hard plastic seat in their rough blue terry towel robes. "In you come then, strip search, finger prints and then photo," A hated voice called out. "You what?" Lauren bridled. Yvonne had not told her about this one. "Causing trouble already, Atkins? I suppose you think you've booked yourself into a five star hotel. This is Her Majesty's Prison in case you hadn't noticed. We're only trying to do our job," Bodybag intoned for what must be the thousandth time in her life.
"So were the SS. I suppose you'll gas us in our cells later on," Lauren's fired up anger made a blind rush to escape.
"If you don't agree voluntarily, you can be forced," Bodybag's malicious smile and voice savoured every petty humiliation.
What Bodybag and the two other prison officers were not prepared for was the wiry strength in Lauren's slight frame as she struggled and squirmed for all she was worth and that they were sweating by the time they were done. With relief, Bodybag was only too pleased to click the camera on the three mug shots and dab the fingerprints and hope that the next prisoner was going to be more acquiescent.
It was a little later that Karen was patrolling the wing when a flush faced resentful Lauren glared at her with her black eyes. "Lauren, I've placed you to share a cell with Denny Blood," Karen said politely. "It might help you settle in here." "Settle in?" Lauren's angry incredulous tones exploded. "With Bodybag of all people strip-searching me? You must be joking." Karen's face was impassive as she took this jolt to her system. Sylvia must have arranged to swap duties with Di Barker against her express instructions. She would have it out with the pair of them later.
"That was not my doing, Lauren. You must have heard before coming here that things don't necessarily go according to plan. I shall look into that later on. In the meantime, you must do your best to settle in and I shall see you later for a proper induction interview, as I would do for anyone else held here on remand," Karen's voice was pitched low but very emphatically hoping against hope that Lauren had Yvonne's genius for reading between the lines. This situation, as with handling a very lightly reined personal escort duty for Denny when she had home leave to visit Yvonne, demanded a delicacy of feel in walking a tightrope.
"All right then," Lauren's monosyllabic reply showed that she had looked and listened and she took her plastic sack full of permitted possessions into the cell.
"Hi Lauren. It's wicked to see you here. I mean that it's not good that you got caught but if you are going to end up here, it's great that we're sharing cells," Denny's wide grin and eager excitement burst in on Lauren as soon as she opened the cell door. "I can look after myself, Denny," Lauren said. "Look here, man. I've been here a long time and I've seen a lot of the girls come and go," Denny hesitated at this point as she had seen too many prisoners walk down that aisle being cheered on to the open gates at the other end, everyone but her. Then in a more confident vein as she acted as big sister to what stuck out a mile as a very confused, unsettled Lauren.
"Everyone thinks the same when they come here, Nikki, the Julies, your mum, everyone. First thing you got to understand is that you need the help of all the other girls and everyone else needs yours. We've got to stick together and even if you don't think you need my help, I know that you will need it. I got to say that it's been easier since that bastard screw Fenner is out of the way and that we've got one of the best screws around in charge of this wing." Lauren sat down limply on her bunk, This was the first time that someone had actually spoken approvingly of what she had done in that insane period of madness and that she was seeing Karen in a new light.