Part Forty-Eight
That feeling of life turning over a leaf which ran round the court was one, which Jo was slowest of all to catch up with. Her footsteps out of the court were hesitant, uncertain. Day in, day out, she had been driven to shut herself away at lunchtime and, at the end of the day, take herself back home to pore through the trial documents, to run through her memories of the day to pick out any vital clues to build into her trial strategy as it evolved. That Thursday when John unexpectedly landed himself on her doorstep was the only break in her almost monastic existence. That compulsive driving force within her that drove her relentlessly onwards was suddenly disconnected from her and this left her stranded. Waves of tiredness broke over her and she could not for the life of her work out what she should do next.
"Do you want to come for a drink, Jo?" Yvonne enquired in an unusually diffident tone of voice, so unlike her. "That is, if you want to." "I don't know, there must be something I ought to be doing but I don't know what," came a vague reply a million miles away from that familiar sharp precision of tone.
"You look knackered, Jo. You deserve a proper break." Christ, she's as bad as I am, or Helen used to be, Karen thought sympathetically. She's another potential workaholic whom I can give the sort of sensible advice to that I can't ever follow myself.
"'Too much work and too little play makes Jill a dull girl.' That's what my mum always told me. Of course, she got more than she bargained for when I became a teenager." Cassie's wide grin drew a general laugh from the others while Jo smiled openly for the first time for ages. The gates of freedom were half-open and the view of the other side looked vague, indistinct but definitely promising.
"We really would like you to come for a drink with us, Jo. After all, you've done all the hard work." It was the voice of the tall, elegant woman with short-cropped hair that decided her. The gates swung wide-open and golden sunlight of the dawn illuminated the scenery. It looked and felt good.
"All right, I'm persuaded." They threaded their way through the crowded foyer and out into the cold, bracing air of a sunny winter's day. The wind blew Jo's hair back and the sun dazzled her eyes, blowing the cobwebs out of her mind. Cassie was out front next to Yvonne, being the thirstiest for a drink. Tall as she was, Jo was outpaced by them and was content to follow wherever the others led her. It made a nice change to just go with the flow and follow the crowd.
Soon, they were glad to come into the warmth and comfort of the pub from the wind blasted streets and sitting comfortable.
"I feel like I'm taking time off school," Jo confided to Roisin.
"It's best to make the most of it. Cassie and I have a few hours before we've got to pick up the children from school. Until then, I've learnt from Cassie to enjoy yourself while you can." It was automatic habit that prompted Jo and Roisin to exchange details of their children like any mother would. This experience was a rarity in her normal daily work. It was decades since the first female barristers and solicitors had appeared in the 'old boys clubs' of chambers. Even now, women were in the minority and the typical conversation at chambers reflected that.
"I've got two sons, Mark and Tom. One's at university and the other is ready to spread his wings. The most I see of him is a pile of dirty washing, his music on loud and when it stops, the blast of air and an open front door, tells me that he's shot out somewhere for the day." "I get the opposite," laughed Roisin. "As soon as we get home, it's 'mum' for me and 'Cassie' for Cassie depending on whom Michael and Niamh want. I must say that it's so much easier than when I lived with my ex-husband. He couldn't boil an egg much less than deal with the hundred and one things that you get called on to do as a parent. That slice of time when the children go to bed can be sheer bedlam. You'll know that, won't you." "I remember." That faraway look in Jo's eyes told Roisin of a whole wealth of memories, buried deep and that only a slight prompt would make them come to life.
"I used to get dragged in to the local park and kick a football with them. I wasn't that much good though." "That doesn't matter. You were there for them." Roisin's brilliant smile only made Jo feel more uncomfortable.
"It doesn't seem like that sometimes. When they were small, I had a rough patch when my husband was dying and I started an affair with John. It wasn't anything cheap, though. I was in love with John and I still am." Jo's hasty defensive interjection was followed by a dreamy reflection on the present.
"When I was younger, somehow my sons appeared to sail through everything even though I wasn't coping properly. Looking back on it, I wonder how I managed to keep everything together. It was only when they got to that difficult age when I started having blazing rows with them. They changed overnight into moody hyper-sensitive teenagers. A hard day at court seem easier to handle than hormonal teenagers and, only now, I'm back where I started in figuring out what I want out of life. I feel that somehow whatever I didn't deal with as a young single woman all those years ago, I'm destined to deal with now." "You shouldn't worry, Jo." That comforting Irish brogue wrapped itself round her senses. "I've done time for helping Cassie take money from the firm we both worked for, and was suddenly snatched away from the children I loved. I was helpless to stop my ex husband filling their heads with all sorts of hurtful things about Cassie, that I was taking drugs, which I was when I was in prison. You can't rewrite the past, Jo. You have got to use whatever instincts you have to mend what you may have done wrong. If you do that, they'll forgive you." "Michael is twelve and Niamh is nine," Roisin added conversationally.
"You wouldn't think that I could be a responsible parent from what you've seen of me in court, Jo," Cassie teased. "Oh, I think I could. Anyone who is a good mother can spot another one a mile away." The other mothers sitting round the table picked up immediately on Jo's warm smile and the obvious sincerity and knowledge that only comes from personal experience. The brief silence that followed wasn't one of those embarrassing silences when everyone had run out of something to say and there had to be the need for some kind of spoken word, no matter how trivial or inconsequential. Nothing needed to be said amongst such strong-minded women.
Karen broke in on their conversation with a determined smile on her face and in her tone of voice.
"What are you drinking next, Jo? I remember the last time you came here that you were fidgeting all the time, guilty as hell that we'd lured you away. This time, you're not sneaking away back to some non existent work that you are nearly sure is waiting on your desk. I have a wing to run but Gina Rossi will take care of everything till I get back. I'm sure your junior will be able to do likewise. That's what they call delegation." "Is she always like this?" Jo asked Helen, amazed with her force of personality.
"Only some of the time, but then again she can be worse. I used to be her boss once." Helen's exaggerated stage whisper made Karen grin. Helen's years at Larkhall had not helped making her very carrying Scottish brogue the worst whisperer in the world.
"Did John get it right, that you are the Nikki Wade whose court of appeal hearing was all the talk of the legal profession?" Jo asked suddenly. "Is there more than one of me?" quipped Nikki.
"Hardly. I don't think Larkhall would have coped with two of you." Jo could hear Karen's voice behind her as she was bringing a trayful of drinks and couldn't resist the lighthearted remark, which was accompanied with a raised eyebrow.
"In that case, you couldn't have managed with two of me either. Bodybag would definitely have died of heart failure. What do they get up to these days? I'm sure it can't be anything like that………" "….Babes behind Bars scam," Finished Karen dryly. "That just had to be the all time record." "Babes behind Bars? What on earth is that?" "Oh nothing much," Deadpanned Yvonne. "I got the idea that some of the girls could get a nice little earner paid directly to add to their personal spends. Personal spends is the name for the weekly pocket money you get in goods from the prison shop. Babes behind Bars was the name for a telephone sex line operation that I set up." "You can't be serious?" grinned Jo. "It was dead easy. Babs here was our computer expert who stuck an advert on the net…." "Babs did indeed. Getting past the password was easy," Babs looked over the top of her spectacles and smiled in fond memory. "I was quite proud of that. It was an intellectual challenge when I had run through most of the books in the Larkhall library and wanted something to occupy my mind." "Anyway, I got Crystal's Josh to sneak the mobiles into Larkhall in his lunchbox, state of the art stuff they were. They looked like a set of headphones and no one noticed a thing till one of the Julies messed it up." "What happened?" Jo asked questions periodically and, for a moment, she wondered if her ears and memory wasn't playing tricks. She looked again at Yvonne and realised that Yvonne was as honest as they came, more so than some people she could think of. Everything here wasn't smudged in various shaded of muddy grey but was in sharp contrasting black and white. It made her feel comfortable. A stray thought crossed her mind that George will have experienced this for herself and would definitely be the better for this highly nurturing, female company. All of them periodically glanced sideways to check anyone out on the fringes of the conversation wasn't left out and ensured that everyone was looked after. "Julie Johnson got one of the punters to come and visit her, as she had some stupid romantic idea about him. She was broody and she gave him a hand job under the table, but dropped the yoghurt carton. She was a bloody fool as the punter blabbed and it led the trail straight back to her mobile. We had to dump the rest of the mobiles and fast. Denny stashed them in a cistern in the ladies." "So that's where they went. I had G Wing turned upside down to find them and never found a trace of them," Karen exclaimed. This was one of those little puzzles that periodically nagged at her and even at the time she sensed that Yvonne had something to do with it. "You could have asked me. I would have told you," Yvonne answered pertly, a slight smirk on her face.
"At the time?" "Ah well, that was different. We were different then." Karen's mind drifted back in time to the days when her time was cut out wondering what else this very mischievous woman would get up to next, audibly sighing when Sylvia was banging on about the "gangster's moll", accompanying her to Yvonne's cell when she carried a drooping bunch of dried out, wilted flowers to Yvonne and hearing her crudely and pathetically explaining what had happened to them. She had instantly disapproved of the petty and malicious way she had behaved. Yes, even then it was bloody Sylvia. That was the only thing in her life, which hadn't changed.
"I remember those mobiles," Nikki chimed in out of nowhere. "You, Nikki?" Helen asked, her eyes wide open and eyebrows raised. She thought she knew everything about Nikki but this was something she'd never told her about. Nikki Wade, telephone sex line operator? This wasn't her style.
"I only saw the others at it." "Why did you do it?" Jo asked out of curiosity. "I was bored. One of the biggest problems in prison is boredom. Your brain stagnates if you let it. Karen will agree that prison spends aren't exactly generous. If you've got someone on the outside who will take things in, you are fine but women like Denny and the Julies haven't got anyone. It helped them out. Apart from that, it was a laugh. You need all the lighter moments in prison that you can get. Any one of us will tell you that."
"I thought you were Wing Governor and in charge of G Wing." "Don't you start, Jo. At least you've only got John and some prat of a barrister to deal with." All the others laughed outright with Karen's mortification. It was a good cover for their collective unspoken wish to avoid any mention of the trial and keep everything light. Inwardly, everyone felt a moment's unease as Karen had inadvertently dragged matters back to the present and away from the warm safety of nostalgic reminiscences about the lighter side of prison life.
"And what did you get up to at Larkhall, Nikki?" "Oh, not much. I can remember stashing some home made hootch in the potting shed." "You never told me that one, Nikki. Tell us about it," Helen grinned.
Nikki was about to remind everyone that it was just before Monica's son Spencer died when she remembered how scarred Helen was by that experience to this day and stopped herself in time.
"I think it was just before your time, Yvonne, but the Julies had this totally mad plan to brew up some jungle juice and as there wasn't anywhere safe to hide it, they came to muggins here…….." "……..Behind your hard exterior, you were always as soft as grease…" Nikki smiled and nodded in agreement at Yvonne's very affectionate and very accurate description and continued.
"….and I came up with the idea of camouflaging it in the compost heap outside so that it would generate heat. Better than their daft idea of taking turns to hug it. Anyway, Dockley heard about it and grassed us up to Fenner." "That's typical Dockley for you. How the hell did you get out of that one?" "Dockley couldn't have known exactly where it was as Fenner and a sidekick came lumbering up and tore the shed apart. They never even took one glance at the plastic bag which was bubbling at the top. I really enjoyed myself taking the piss out of him." "What did the booze taste like, Nikki?" "I never had any of it. I wasn't in the mood for a party. Dockley was going to be there at the piss up so I gave it a miss. From the drunken sounds I heard from my cell, it was pretty good stuff." A vague ghost memory drifted across Helen's mind of that dreadful day when she had done her best to be sympathetic. "If I had been there, Nikki, you would have been." Nikki smiled brightly at Yvonne. She was a good mate of hers and Yvonne being there would have made that difference. Besides, Dockley might not have come along to the party if they were both there.
At that point, Jo stood up to fetch the next round of drinks when Cassie nearly dropped them in it. She was never known for her sense of discretion and the alcohol had loosened her tongue.
"I've got a good story to tell," Cassie said brightly. She was about to enlarge on it when Yvonne caught her eye and discreetly elbowed her in the ribs. "You and me are going elsewhere to talk," She hissed into Cassie's ear and gestured to the toilet. "Same again, Jo for both of us," Yvonne smiled. Jo shrugged her shoulders and headed off to the bar. It was a private matter and experience had taught her not to ask too many questions.
"Are you mad? You were about to tell everyone about that scam we pulled on Bodybag's computer." "Yeah, I was going to as it happens." "Jo Mills is a bleeding barrister. Sometimes people get sent down after what she does in court. Karen Betts? She's Wing Governor of the very prison we scammed. It happened a few years back but that doesn't matter." "Are you going back to the 'screws against cons' thinking? I thought you'd moved on from there." "I ain't going to dump on either of them so that they know something that they'd sooner not want to know about. That way, they might make it official. What they don't know about, they won't grieve over and they know it. It was enough for them to know what my Lauren did to Fenner. I lost Karen over that. I could have lost my freedom." Yvonne's blazing anger squashed Cassie's defiance.
"Oh shit, I nearly landed us all in it." "Oh shit indeed. Let's get back and join the gang." Yvonne smiled encouragingly at Cassie who looked very crestfallen as she realised what she had nearly done. "Don't worry, you daft sod. We all make mistakes sometimes. I married Charlie for instance. Cost me half of my bleeding life."
"You were inside much longer than Roash and I. Tell us some more stories, Nikki." Nikki hesitated. She found it easy to recount the more humorous side to life in prison to those who she felt comfortable with, but some instinct inhibited her from blowing her own trumpet.
"Well, don't expect me to tell any stirring stories about rescuing damsels in distress. I did start a couple of demonstrations, one of which turned into a riot, thanks to Maxi Purvis and her sidekicks," Nikki started nervously. "I was standing up for a point of principle." "That reminds me of John. In his younger days when he was a student, he was once involved in a sit in at his university," Broke in Jo.
"So the judge has been a bad boy in his time. I might have known. You tell us more about it." The more she considered the judge, the more Yvonne reckoned that he was a man totally outside her experience and was way different from the bastards she had known.
"But I'm interrupting, Nikki," Jo apologised. "You carry on with your story first." Nikki sighed inwardly. It made her out to be some kind of hero when all she thought was that she'd only acted in a way that she thought right.
Half an hour later, Jo smiled in a dazed kind of way and sipped her drink as she was called upon to start her story. This afternoon was certainly an eye opener on all sides. It wasn't the alcohol that made her feel different as she was clear headed enough. She made a mental note of one thing as she launched into the story. In future, she would never open a carton of yoghurt and think of such an inconsequential item of food in quite the same way and likewise, when she put on a set of headphones to listen to some music.
That feeling of life turning over a leaf which ran round the court was one, which Jo was slowest of all to catch up with. Her footsteps out of the court were hesitant, uncertain. Day in, day out, she had been driven to shut herself away at lunchtime and, at the end of the day, take herself back home to pore through the trial documents, to run through her memories of the day to pick out any vital clues to build into her trial strategy as it evolved. That Thursday when John unexpectedly landed himself on her doorstep was the only break in her almost monastic existence. That compulsive driving force within her that drove her relentlessly onwards was suddenly disconnected from her and this left her stranded. Waves of tiredness broke over her and she could not for the life of her work out what she should do next.
"Do you want to come for a drink, Jo?" Yvonne enquired in an unusually diffident tone of voice, so unlike her. "That is, if you want to." "I don't know, there must be something I ought to be doing but I don't know what," came a vague reply a million miles away from that familiar sharp precision of tone.
"You look knackered, Jo. You deserve a proper break." Christ, she's as bad as I am, or Helen used to be, Karen thought sympathetically. She's another potential workaholic whom I can give the sort of sensible advice to that I can't ever follow myself.
"'Too much work and too little play makes Jill a dull girl.' That's what my mum always told me. Of course, she got more than she bargained for when I became a teenager." Cassie's wide grin drew a general laugh from the others while Jo smiled openly for the first time for ages. The gates of freedom were half-open and the view of the other side looked vague, indistinct but definitely promising.
"We really would like you to come for a drink with us, Jo. After all, you've done all the hard work." It was the voice of the tall, elegant woman with short-cropped hair that decided her. The gates swung wide-open and golden sunlight of the dawn illuminated the scenery. It looked and felt good.
"All right, I'm persuaded." They threaded their way through the crowded foyer and out into the cold, bracing air of a sunny winter's day. The wind blew Jo's hair back and the sun dazzled her eyes, blowing the cobwebs out of her mind. Cassie was out front next to Yvonne, being the thirstiest for a drink. Tall as she was, Jo was outpaced by them and was content to follow wherever the others led her. It made a nice change to just go with the flow and follow the crowd.
Soon, they were glad to come into the warmth and comfort of the pub from the wind blasted streets and sitting comfortable.
"I feel like I'm taking time off school," Jo confided to Roisin.
"It's best to make the most of it. Cassie and I have a few hours before we've got to pick up the children from school. Until then, I've learnt from Cassie to enjoy yourself while you can." It was automatic habit that prompted Jo and Roisin to exchange details of their children like any mother would. This experience was a rarity in her normal daily work. It was decades since the first female barristers and solicitors had appeared in the 'old boys clubs' of chambers. Even now, women were in the minority and the typical conversation at chambers reflected that.
"I've got two sons, Mark and Tom. One's at university and the other is ready to spread his wings. The most I see of him is a pile of dirty washing, his music on loud and when it stops, the blast of air and an open front door, tells me that he's shot out somewhere for the day." "I get the opposite," laughed Roisin. "As soon as we get home, it's 'mum' for me and 'Cassie' for Cassie depending on whom Michael and Niamh want. I must say that it's so much easier than when I lived with my ex-husband. He couldn't boil an egg much less than deal with the hundred and one things that you get called on to do as a parent. That slice of time when the children go to bed can be sheer bedlam. You'll know that, won't you." "I remember." That faraway look in Jo's eyes told Roisin of a whole wealth of memories, buried deep and that only a slight prompt would make them come to life.
"I used to get dragged in to the local park and kick a football with them. I wasn't that much good though." "That doesn't matter. You were there for them." Roisin's brilliant smile only made Jo feel more uncomfortable.
"It doesn't seem like that sometimes. When they were small, I had a rough patch when my husband was dying and I started an affair with John. It wasn't anything cheap, though. I was in love with John and I still am." Jo's hasty defensive interjection was followed by a dreamy reflection on the present.
"When I was younger, somehow my sons appeared to sail through everything even though I wasn't coping properly. Looking back on it, I wonder how I managed to keep everything together. It was only when they got to that difficult age when I started having blazing rows with them. They changed overnight into moody hyper-sensitive teenagers. A hard day at court seem easier to handle than hormonal teenagers and, only now, I'm back where I started in figuring out what I want out of life. I feel that somehow whatever I didn't deal with as a young single woman all those years ago, I'm destined to deal with now." "You shouldn't worry, Jo." That comforting Irish brogue wrapped itself round her senses. "I've done time for helping Cassie take money from the firm we both worked for, and was suddenly snatched away from the children I loved. I was helpless to stop my ex husband filling their heads with all sorts of hurtful things about Cassie, that I was taking drugs, which I was when I was in prison. You can't rewrite the past, Jo. You have got to use whatever instincts you have to mend what you may have done wrong. If you do that, they'll forgive you." "Michael is twelve and Niamh is nine," Roisin added conversationally.
"You wouldn't think that I could be a responsible parent from what you've seen of me in court, Jo," Cassie teased. "Oh, I think I could. Anyone who is a good mother can spot another one a mile away." The other mothers sitting round the table picked up immediately on Jo's warm smile and the obvious sincerity and knowledge that only comes from personal experience. The brief silence that followed wasn't one of those embarrassing silences when everyone had run out of something to say and there had to be the need for some kind of spoken word, no matter how trivial or inconsequential. Nothing needed to be said amongst such strong-minded women.
Karen broke in on their conversation with a determined smile on her face and in her tone of voice.
"What are you drinking next, Jo? I remember the last time you came here that you were fidgeting all the time, guilty as hell that we'd lured you away. This time, you're not sneaking away back to some non existent work that you are nearly sure is waiting on your desk. I have a wing to run but Gina Rossi will take care of everything till I get back. I'm sure your junior will be able to do likewise. That's what they call delegation." "Is she always like this?" Jo asked Helen, amazed with her force of personality.
"Only some of the time, but then again she can be worse. I used to be her boss once." Helen's exaggerated stage whisper made Karen grin. Helen's years at Larkhall had not helped making her very carrying Scottish brogue the worst whisperer in the world.
"Did John get it right, that you are the Nikki Wade whose court of appeal hearing was all the talk of the legal profession?" Jo asked suddenly. "Is there more than one of me?" quipped Nikki.
"Hardly. I don't think Larkhall would have coped with two of you." Jo could hear Karen's voice behind her as she was bringing a trayful of drinks and couldn't resist the lighthearted remark, which was accompanied with a raised eyebrow.
"In that case, you couldn't have managed with two of me either. Bodybag would definitely have died of heart failure. What do they get up to these days? I'm sure it can't be anything like that………" "….Babes behind Bars scam," Finished Karen dryly. "That just had to be the all time record." "Babes behind Bars? What on earth is that?" "Oh nothing much," Deadpanned Yvonne. "I got the idea that some of the girls could get a nice little earner paid directly to add to their personal spends. Personal spends is the name for the weekly pocket money you get in goods from the prison shop. Babes behind Bars was the name for a telephone sex line operation that I set up." "You can't be serious?" grinned Jo. "It was dead easy. Babs here was our computer expert who stuck an advert on the net…." "Babs did indeed. Getting past the password was easy," Babs looked over the top of her spectacles and smiled in fond memory. "I was quite proud of that. It was an intellectual challenge when I had run through most of the books in the Larkhall library and wanted something to occupy my mind." "Anyway, I got Crystal's Josh to sneak the mobiles into Larkhall in his lunchbox, state of the art stuff they were. They looked like a set of headphones and no one noticed a thing till one of the Julies messed it up." "What happened?" Jo asked questions periodically and, for a moment, she wondered if her ears and memory wasn't playing tricks. She looked again at Yvonne and realised that Yvonne was as honest as they came, more so than some people she could think of. Everything here wasn't smudged in various shaded of muddy grey but was in sharp contrasting black and white. It made her feel comfortable. A stray thought crossed her mind that George will have experienced this for herself and would definitely be the better for this highly nurturing, female company. All of them periodically glanced sideways to check anyone out on the fringes of the conversation wasn't left out and ensured that everyone was looked after. "Julie Johnson got one of the punters to come and visit her, as she had some stupid romantic idea about him. She was broody and she gave him a hand job under the table, but dropped the yoghurt carton. She was a bloody fool as the punter blabbed and it led the trail straight back to her mobile. We had to dump the rest of the mobiles and fast. Denny stashed them in a cistern in the ladies." "So that's where they went. I had G Wing turned upside down to find them and never found a trace of them," Karen exclaimed. This was one of those little puzzles that periodically nagged at her and even at the time she sensed that Yvonne had something to do with it. "You could have asked me. I would have told you," Yvonne answered pertly, a slight smirk on her face.
"At the time?" "Ah well, that was different. We were different then." Karen's mind drifted back in time to the days when her time was cut out wondering what else this very mischievous woman would get up to next, audibly sighing when Sylvia was banging on about the "gangster's moll", accompanying her to Yvonne's cell when she carried a drooping bunch of dried out, wilted flowers to Yvonne and hearing her crudely and pathetically explaining what had happened to them. She had instantly disapproved of the petty and malicious way she had behaved. Yes, even then it was bloody Sylvia. That was the only thing in her life, which hadn't changed.
"I remember those mobiles," Nikki chimed in out of nowhere. "You, Nikki?" Helen asked, her eyes wide open and eyebrows raised. She thought she knew everything about Nikki but this was something she'd never told her about. Nikki Wade, telephone sex line operator? This wasn't her style.
"I only saw the others at it." "Why did you do it?" Jo asked out of curiosity. "I was bored. One of the biggest problems in prison is boredom. Your brain stagnates if you let it. Karen will agree that prison spends aren't exactly generous. If you've got someone on the outside who will take things in, you are fine but women like Denny and the Julies haven't got anyone. It helped them out. Apart from that, it was a laugh. You need all the lighter moments in prison that you can get. Any one of us will tell you that."
"I thought you were Wing Governor and in charge of G Wing." "Don't you start, Jo. At least you've only got John and some prat of a barrister to deal with." All the others laughed outright with Karen's mortification. It was a good cover for their collective unspoken wish to avoid any mention of the trial and keep everything light. Inwardly, everyone felt a moment's unease as Karen had inadvertently dragged matters back to the present and away from the warm safety of nostalgic reminiscences about the lighter side of prison life.
"And what did you get up to at Larkhall, Nikki?" "Oh, not much. I can remember stashing some home made hootch in the potting shed." "You never told me that one, Nikki. Tell us about it," Helen grinned.
Nikki was about to remind everyone that it was just before Monica's son Spencer died when she remembered how scarred Helen was by that experience to this day and stopped herself in time.
"I think it was just before your time, Yvonne, but the Julies had this totally mad plan to brew up some jungle juice and as there wasn't anywhere safe to hide it, they came to muggins here…….." "……..Behind your hard exterior, you were always as soft as grease…" Nikki smiled and nodded in agreement at Yvonne's very affectionate and very accurate description and continued.
"….and I came up with the idea of camouflaging it in the compost heap outside so that it would generate heat. Better than their daft idea of taking turns to hug it. Anyway, Dockley heard about it and grassed us up to Fenner." "That's typical Dockley for you. How the hell did you get out of that one?" "Dockley couldn't have known exactly where it was as Fenner and a sidekick came lumbering up and tore the shed apart. They never even took one glance at the plastic bag which was bubbling at the top. I really enjoyed myself taking the piss out of him." "What did the booze taste like, Nikki?" "I never had any of it. I wasn't in the mood for a party. Dockley was going to be there at the piss up so I gave it a miss. From the drunken sounds I heard from my cell, it was pretty good stuff." A vague ghost memory drifted across Helen's mind of that dreadful day when she had done her best to be sympathetic. "If I had been there, Nikki, you would have been." Nikki smiled brightly at Yvonne. She was a good mate of hers and Yvonne being there would have made that difference. Besides, Dockley might not have come along to the party if they were both there.
At that point, Jo stood up to fetch the next round of drinks when Cassie nearly dropped them in it. She was never known for her sense of discretion and the alcohol had loosened her tongue.
"I've got a good story to tell," Cassie said brightly. She was about to enlarge on it when Yvonne caught her eye and discreetly elbowed her in the ribs. "You and me are going elsewhere to talk," She hissed into Cassie's ear and gestured to the toilet. "Same again, Jo for both of us," Yvonne smiled. Jo shrugged her shoulders and headed off to the bar. It was a private matter and experience had taught her not to ask too many questions.
"Are you mad? You were about to tell everyone about that scam we pulled on Bodybag's computer." "Yeah, I was going to as it happens." "Jo Mills is a bleeding barrister. Sometimes people get sent down after what she does in court. Karen Betts? She's Wing Governor of the very prison we scammed. It happened a few years back but that doesn't matter." "Are you going back to the 'screws against cons' thinking? I thought you'd moved on from there." "I ain't going to dump on either of them so that they know something that they'd sooner not want to know about. That way, they might make it official. What they don't know about, they won't grieve over and they know it. It was enough for them to know what my Lauren did to Fenner. I lost Karen over that. I could have lost my freedom." Yvonne's blazing anger squashed Cassie's defiance.
"Oh shit, I nearly landed us all in it." "Oh shit indeed. Let's get back and join the gang." Yvonne smiled encouragingly at Cassie who looked very crestfallen as she realised what she had nearly done. "Don't worry, you daft sod. We all make mistakes sometimes. I married Charlie for instance. Cost me half of my bleeding life."
"You were inside much longer than Roash and I. Tell us some more stories, Nikki." Nikki hesitated. She found it easy to recount the more humorous side to life in prison to those who she felt comfortable with, but some instinct inhibited her from blowing her own trumpet.
"Well, don't expect me to tell any stirring stories about rescuing damsels in distress. I did start a couple of demonstrations, one of which turned into a riot, thanks to Maxi Purvis and her sidekicks," Nikki started nervously. "I was standing up for a point of principle." "That reminds me of John. In his younger days when he was a student, he was once involved in a sit in at his university," Broke in Jo.
"So the judge has been a bad boy in his time. I might have known. You tell us more about it." The more she considered the judge, the more Yvonne reckoned that he was a man totally outside her experience and was way different from the bastards she had known.
"But I'm interrupting, Nikki," Jo apologised. "You carry on with your story first." Nikki sighed inwardly. It made her out to be some kind of hero when all she thought was that she'd only acted in a way that she thought right.
Half an hour later, Jo smiled in a dazed kind of way and sipped her drink as she was called upon to start her story. This afternoon was certainly an eye opener on all sides. It wasn't the alcohol that made her feel different as she was clear headed enough. She made a mental note of one thing as she launched into the story. In future, she would never open a carton of yoghurt and think of such an inconsequential item of food in quite the same way and likewise, when she put on a set of headphones to listen to some music.