"What's up with Denny?" Julie J asked Lauren in passing. She had just seen Denny mooch past on her own, her face grim and avoiding any communication.
"Search me," came the laconic reply. "No reason why I should know what goes on in her brain."
Julie J's eyebrows rose at Lauren's response. That was a non-answer if ever she heard one and she wasn't much better than Denny right now.
"But you two have been so close since you first came here, like me and Julie," She persisted.
"Well, that's the way it goes."
Lauren's shrug of her shoulders accompanied the deadpan words. As Lauren paused for a second, her words hung in the air and made her feel uncomfortable at how cold and unfeeling she sounded. This is the typical Atkins way of talking, she thought, as she shook her head to clear her mind and reached out for the Lauren Atkins she wanted to be.
"Look here, Julie, I just can't get close to her these days to even talk about the weather outside, much less ask her about her feelings. I've tried but it's not working. In fact, I'm getting really worried about her especially as mum is due to visit this afternoon."
Her voice had become more animated as she opened up to this very kind hearted woman who was patiently waiting for her to become herself. Mum was dead right to say of the Julies that they were the salt of the earth.
"Well, there you are. Problem solved once Yvonne gets to see her. She knows Denny inside out and she'll get Denny to talk."
Lauren's expression failed to respond at Julie Saunders' big beaming confident smile. She saw herself cast in the big sister role if not nagging mother versus truculent aggressive daughter and it made her nervous to even start trying to get through.
"You might lead a horse to water but you can't make her drink it. That's the problem. Denny can easily cop out and probably will."
"Is that what's getting you down in the dumps?"
Lauren nodded. Despite all the restrictions of prison, the daily regime of life that she could not call her own, the same day in day out monotony, she warmed to the feeling that there were women only a cell door or so away she could turn to. All it took was to reach out beyond herself.
"Well, if there is anything we can do, just ask."
"Just ask," Came the delayed echo response as Julie Saunders, who had just come up, plugged herself into the gist of the conversation and offered her words of comfort.
Lauren smiled for the first time in days at the unselfconscious generosity, which these two golden hearted women offered.
"Can I come back with you to your cell?" Lauren asked. She realised that there were too many prying eyes and generalised eavesdroppers around. She had talked deliberately in a low-pitched voice so she couldn't be overheard and this was another reason why she had felt uncomfortable. She needed someplace else where she could talk properly but wanted the Julies to be around her.
"It was Dockley wasn't it," Julie Johnson's sensitivities worked that one out. She had been racking her brains as she saw that Denny had changed. This was no easy matter when one day went past like another in a generalised bored haze. Automatically, she flipped open a cheap pack of Lambert and Butlers and offered a cigarette to the other two. Immediately Lauren's memories fell into place and she recalled the way that Denny stalked ahead of her and disappeared to some other part of G Wing. Improbable though it might seem with a brief one off visit, the events were far too perfectly tied up to provide any other explanation. It was just that she didn't want to admit to herself that Shell Dockley had such a powerful hold over Denny after the long period of time they had been separated.
"That's about the size of it. But how could Denny change so quickly from the nice kid that she is to….."
"……the way she used to be before Yvonne ever came here. We saw her then and remember what she was like. That's why we've got worried and asked you. You see much more of her these days than we do."
True, thought Lauren, but it still didn't mean that she sees more. Something can be right under your nose but if you don't want to see it, you won't notice it. At last she could see a way out of the problem that had been bothering her.
"What was Denny like years ago? There's a lot that you've seen of her that I don't know."
She was all ears as the Julies filled her in on everything, going way back in time, even before the time when Helen Stewart first came to Larkhall as Wing Governor, burning with her ambition to turn the prison system around.
"You know that if you don't see mum, then she'll be on your case. She doesn't give up as you know very well."
From closely looking at the expression on Denny's face, Lauren sighed with relief as she had seen that she had found the knack to turn the key in the lock of Denny's mind after a bitter resistance. It was a very tense battle of wills and Lauren had been as nervous as hell before she summoned up the courage to ever so casually suggested that they had a quiet chat. It was as well that Lauren had the Atkins knack of covering up her feelings as if her face were painted over with the most immaculate makeup.
"All right Lauren, but I swear if you mention one frigging word about it, I'll never speak to you again," Denny glared at her.
Denny, you have a very eloquent way of not speaking to anyone else for the rest of your life, Lauren thought to herself with a touch of humour. It was as well that she could see the joke and Denny couldn't.
"It's a deal. I'll talk to mum about the weather, what a cow Bodybag is and how lousy the food is and let you talk," Lauren said lightly.
Despite Denny's extreme tension and her frustration at being gently manoeuvred into this deal by this smart talking woman, a tiny part of her smiled inside for the first time since this black cloud had descended on her and blotted everything out. She kept that resolve tight hard inside herself that Shell needed to get out of that nut house or she'd crack up completely. She could see it coming a mile away so why didn't even that know all, Miss Betts see it?
Yvonne's eyes were lined by her mascara to perfection as always but they flitted around the crowded waiting room as always, wondering what she would find. She had happened to talk to Lauren a few days before and Lauren had been a bit cryptic about Denny in particular and that had tipped off the Atkins early warning system that there was impending trouble.
She took in at a glance Lauren's big smile and wave, which assured her that there was nothing, wrong with her. The expression on Denny's face told her a completely different story. She gave each woman a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and the different physical feel of each of them reinforced her belief in her instincts.
"Hi mum. It's great to see you," Lauren started chattering at breakneck speed. "The sun's shining outside and all the girls are getting on with each other, well all except Natalie Buxton who scowls at me every so often."
"That evil tart," Yvonne snorted scornfully. "You want to watch her."
"Well, I'd sooner that two faced bitch is scowling at me rather than smiling at me. Conniving tart though she may be, I can always keep one step ahead of her and I get to hear of everything that's going down on G Wing.So long as she can't get anyone else to do her dirty work for her, she's history. You've only got to watch out if she makes use of someone else that starts all the trouble and you can't see who's pulling the strings."
Yvonne smiled fondly at her daughter, seeing in her a younger version of the woman she had been on G Wing. A sidelong glance at Denny told her that Denny's anger was boiling up as Lauren's spontaneous outpourings were quite easily taken the wrong way, especially by a poor kid like Denny who has always been paranoid and insecure.
"And how's my other daughter?" Yvonne asked very gently and softly, her voice caressing Denny's jangled nerves to reassure her not to worry as mum's here.
"I went to see Shell the other day," blurted out Denny, almost aggressively as if daring anyone to criticise her. "Not that I suppose you're interested as you never liked her."
"I'll be straight with you, I didn't. But you know as well as I that nothing that Dockley did in her life….."
"Her name's Shell," Denny interrupted aggressively.
"……..As I was saying, nothing Dockley has done in her life deserved what happened to her. When she came back from sunny Amsterdam, she was a pain in the arse sometimes but nothing more. I could have lived with her if she had stayed at Larkhall. The real evil bastard mentioning no names was the one who had her ghosted out to Ashmore and separated her from her baby. Whenever I think of him I hope that he is rotting in hell. You know me, that in my book, that is the worst crime ever, maybe worse than anything even Charlie has done."
Yvonne's voice rose in intensity to a climax and she knew she had pulled out all the stops. She could only tell it the way it was and that no fancy verbal footwork would work with Denny.
"Well, anyway, Miss Betts and Mr. McAllister drove me up to Ashmore. The place is weird, as if you were stepping into something out of Star Trek. I got to talk to Shell for a bit on my own."
"And how was she?" Yvonne asked.
Denny shrugged her shoulders.
"'Satisfactory' they called her. Well, I suppose to someone who didn't know the old Shell, she might have looked that way. I mean they've got all the shrinks there with long words and fancy titles, who am I to say different?"
The suppressed anger in Denny had only halfway come out in her. Both Lauren and Yvonne did not like the feel of the way Denny was talking. It was as if she were still in shock from some terrible accident.
"Do you really want us to shut up and talk about something different?"
"You're all right," came the more subdued, more depressive response. "She sounds as if they're doping her up and she only sounded half here. She's dressed up in that tracksuit get up that she used to wear here when she was feeling down."
"That doesn't sound good," Lauren said, feeling her response to be lame and hollow and not as sympathetic as she felt.
"She'll be getting three meals a day, same as anywhere. The place is dead weird, man. Everything looks flash and looks like a posh hotel, or as much as I know what one looks like and it makes this place seem a dump. Larkhall has got bolts and bars everywhere but Ashmore has doors which shut dead quietly but you know that you're locked in. Anyway, I'm glad I'm not there, at least in one way. Never thought Larkhall would feel like home from home…….."
Denny started chatting away on more impersonal matters, which Lauren started to join in with. Yvonne's sharp ears picked up on the fact that Denny never referred to Lauren in her conversation and certainly not as her sister as she used to do. Yvonne was grateful to the way that Lauren gracefully slid unobtrusively into the background but it disturbed her that the more attention that she gave Denny somehow wasn't coming back to her in any real way. At least it was better than hostility but there was something deeply wrong.
"I'm afraid visiting time's up," Dominic's polite tones cut into the hubbub. Instinctively, all the prisoners and visitors exchanged hurried hugs and last words with each other.
"You look after yourself, Denny," Yvonne urged with all the tenderness within her.
"And you, Lauren, watch out for that snake in the grass, Natalie Buxton."
"Don't worry, I'll be on the case and I'll look after Denny too," Lauren grinned.
Denny grimaced slightly at the thought of being 'looked after.' She had quite forgotten that she had done precisely this for Lauren right up to the final verdict in the trial. When she was in this sort of mood, nothing good that she might have done in her life would cheer her up. All she could think of was Shell being shut up in that place and anything else was a distraction.
As Yvonne headed for the exit, the crowds built up and a thought crossed her mind. She had to act on it right now while she had the chance.
"Hey Dominic?" She asked. "Could you do me a favour?"
There was something in the way Yvonne spoke that grabbed his attention, even while his eyes followed the rest of the departing visitors.
"I'm listening"
"Can you pass word to Karen that I want to speak to her about something that's bothering me."
Dominic gestured with his head to Lauren and Denny whose backs were turned to them, as they stood in single file ready to go back to the wing.
"You mean?"
"You've got it."
"I'll see to it personally."
Yvonne smiled warmly at this response. His few quiet words meant far more than some of the men in her life had promised her with all their flannel and smooth talking.