Once again, Yvonne found herself walking through the gates of Larkhall Prison. The number of times she had visited on either Denny's behalf or Lauren's behalf felt as if she were becoming a prison visitor with semi official status. The prison bars that had resolutely held her in captivity were now there waiting for a prison officer to let her through as a matter of course either coming or going. With one notable exception, every screw that she saw had that relaxed attitude with no trace of that inner watchfulness that used to make them tense, with pent up aggressiveness ready to snap the handcuffs on her should anything kick off without warning. Of course, the sole exception was Bodybag who would never leave it out. She had that slow Witter dogged persistence like a brain dead English bulldog with one fixed idea in her mind that would never change. She made more work for herself and that fixed scowl she gave her was as much as she dare do with Karen around.
Denny greeted her with a big hug and that huge grin from ear to ear which was her basically affectionate nature shining through now it was safe to be that way. They chatted inconsequentially for a brief minute while Yvonne edged her way into the topic that was uppermost on her mind.
"So you've pinched my idea of slipping Bodybag an 'E' or so I heard from Karen," Yvonne grinned.
"She was dead good about that one. We would never have seen any harm come to her or Gina. It was all done in good fun, not like the Monopoly money for Bodybag. Honest, mum."
Denny's cheeky grin and raised eyebrows only confirmed what Yvonne had known in a second anyway. Nevertheless, at the risk of repetition, she thought she would say her piece.
"I know that it was only a harmless joke, Denny. Nevertheless, you've got to know that an awful lot of trust is being placed on you if you get your chance. I know Karen and I know that she's sticking her neck out for you."
Immediately, Yvonne regretted what she had said. She had a gut feeling that this idea might be more dodgy than Karen was either making out or thinking. The whole thing had that well meaning feel about it that could blow up in everyone's face. She couldn't put her finger on it and she could hear herself sounding like a nagging anxious mother."
"Leave it out. Miss Betts has given me an ear bending before you got to me, only she had more time to do it. You know me, mum. I've slipped a bit at times but I'm a grown up now. I'm not the kid that you had to look after when you were here."
True, sighed Yvonne. She walked right into that one.
"It's gut instinct talking to me, Denny. I've learnt to listen to it and trust it over the years."
"Is it because it's Shell. I know that you two never got on," Denny pursued, looking straight into Yvonne's eyes. "You give it to me straight up."
"Straight up," Yvonne repeated automatically as her mind whizzed back to the past.
She had always despised that two-faced tart that would sell out her mates for favours from Fenner if she had the chance. She had talked to Nikki who had told her of the days when nobody had believed her in any rows and she got slapped down while Shell walked away Scot-free. Yvonne was a woman with a very simple litmus test where anyone was concerned. She either trusted them or she didn't. She could smell double-dealing and a bent anyone, not just a screw. And yet, she had loathed to the bottom of her soul what had happened to Shell as an abomination against nature that a mother could have been separated from her baby. For ages, Hedges fawned his way up to her for no good reason, promising the earth when what that meant was that he was guilty as sin. Despite the worst she thought of Shell, she gave him the brush off time after time till he got the message. Eventually, in those thirty seconds while her eyes were wide open, she grasped for the solid.
"I disliked and distrusted her for the way she behaved. You know that she was way too close to Fenner and she was always out for her own interest."
"Your Miss Betts lived with Fenner, remember?" came Denny's razor sharp reply.
"Yeah," Yvonne was forced to admit. "She used to be another one like me that went for the bastards. I got married to Charlie, remember, but you don't have to stay the same way as when you started out in life. Growing up ain't the sort of thing you stop doing when you're twenty one and have the key to the door."
Yvonne's slow deliberate reply shook Denny in turn. She had let it go right out of her mind how resolutely straight that Yvonne used to be, in fact married for a number of years. She started to feel confused, uneasy.
"Key to the door? What's that."
"An old wives' tale. The sort of crap Bodybag's always coming out with."
Denny wore that classically puzzled expression on her face that always made Yvonne smile affectionately. Gradually the corrugated frown of baffled concentration cleared as the penny dropped.
"So what about shell?"
Yvonne had cleared her thoughts and she could see a clear passage through the obstacle course.
"I would not have wished it on my worst enemy to get shipped out to Ashmore, the way it happened to Shell. I've got to be honest, she's pulled enough strokes in her time but that was way, way worse than anything she's ever done. You know what I feel about mothers and children, Denny, and that baby should have lived with Shell. I'll give her that much that from what you told me, she would have been a good mother."
"So what's with all this slagging off Shell a minute or two ago."
"Just that Dockley is not all bad. I'm being fair to her."
Denny paused for a few seconds while she let it sink in. She was confused as in listening to Yvonne, everything was black or white. Yvonne either loved or hated and there wasn't a middle course of greys. She had absorbed this as naturally as mother's milk and it was this, which had sorted out the collection of jumbled ideas and fucked up experiences, which had played havoc with her feelings. She had spent so many years drifting, rudderless, while pretending to be hard and tough. She had taken out her own bad experiences on weaker women around her and the pain that she had inflicted on them happened to block out her own. She had always been searching for someone smarter, quicker thinking, more attractive to tell her what to do and that one woman for ages had been Shell. There was that devil may care manner about her that had first attracted her and Shell had been the woman whom she had first slept with on the occasions that Shell wasn't sneaking off with that wanker Fenner.
"I know that the two of you were close and I wouldn't stop you even if I wanted to," Yvonne continued, her voice husky with choked emotions. "But you've got to keep your feet on the ground."
"What do you mean?" Denny asked in a more composed tone of voice. Yvonne had grabbed her attention and was listening. It was always that when Yvonne reasoned with her that what had been confusing her made sense. It was what had first drawn her to Yvonne as well as her great sense of humour.
"It's just that if or when you see Dockley, you'd better prepare yourself for anything. You've not seen her for two years if my memory's right. You don't know and I don't know what that place is like and the woman you knew may have changed."
"You're trying to put me off her but you're just being sneaky about it," Denny shouted in a voice that echoed round the visiting room. There was mingled fear and anger in her voice and her facial expression.
"Anything wrong, Yvonne?" Dominic enquired politely.
"It's all right, Mr. McAllister Any problem and I'll give you a shout," Yvonne answered in as calm and as level a tone of voice as she could summon up. He nodded back at her, trusting her judgement.
"All right, Denny. Maybe I'm talking bollocks and maybe things are all right but I'd be a bad mother if I let you go into something, telling you that everything's all sweetness and light when maybe it isn't. You think it over and maybe if Karen does get you the OK, she'll tell you how things are. All I'm telling you, is that you cannot think that the Shell Dockley that those bastards shipped out will be the woman you'll maybe see. Just think on it and be realistic."
The words that Yvonne had been urging on Denny finally sank home. It helped Yvonne to talk as she needed to thread her own thoughts together properly and drag out her own thoughts and fears out into the open and give them shape.
"Go on."
"I know that you care for Dockley…….."
"Why do you call her Dockley and not Shell?" Denny flared with the last little outburst.
"'Cos that's what I've always called her," Yvonne promptly retorted.
Denny shut up and let Yvonne continue in her own time.
"I know that you want to see her and you want to make sure she's being looked after, and you're feeling guilty that you've put her out of your mind for a long time. You're feeling better now and you feel that you're up to seeing her."
"I know I am."
"You will be if you stick to Karen's agreement. She'll be less soft on you in holding you to your agreement to keep your nose clean and that's saying something."
For the first time for what seemed ages, Denny grinned slightly at Yvonne's touch of humour. She had that sureness of touch in knowing when and how to lightening things up.
"You're really telling me all this stuff for my sake?"
"Don't I always?"
Yvonne's incredibly tender voice soothed Denny in those few syllables which was the most solid rock hard guarantee that she could ever get out of life.
"I'm afraid, time's up everyone," Dominic said in his considerate way as he explained to everyone that visiting time was over. Bodybag's stentorian tones made no such apology as she hectored everyone as to every little detail as to what the visitors should do as she enjoyed bossing about those whom she regarded as an inferior species.
Impulsively, Denny reached forward to hug Yvonne closely to herself as if she would never let her go. That warmth between them would never die and Denny knew it.
Yvonne seemed to float back to her car. That was one good deed for the day and, however tense it was, confirmed to her a feeling of self worth. Whatever her doubts as to what lay in store for her in her life, there was one gift she could point out to herself which thank God had not deserted her.