Nikki had been beginning to feel that life at Larkhall was beginning to settle down to a pattern. She had entered G Wing metaphorically speaking, with a triumphant clap of thunder but she had to consolidate on that excellent start. It was similar to when she had first learned to drive a car. Even after passing her test, she still needed an abnormal amount of concentrated effort to work out what she would do in certain situations and this was similar. She felt that she was operating on blind instinct, her experience from the other side of the bars, knowledge that her mind had subconsciously gleaned from reminiscences with Helen and finally her training course. It had carried her so far but she knew she needed to progress from there. The prison service had very prescribed laid down rules of what could and could not be done, all the way from negotiating rights of the Prison Officers Association to the way office stationery was ordered. After a month, she had now developed those invisible feelers for what went on around her, which wasn't a million miles from the way she had run her share of the club. Somehow, she had worked her way through some abstruse situations where she had wondered more than anyone else how she had plucked the rabbit out of the hat. She knew, above all else, that unless she could be true to herself, she could not believe in herself. That had been all important throughout her life, from as early as she could remember.
She knew that both Natalie Buxton and Di Barker hated her in equal measure but they were discreet and devious about it. At least Sylvia Hollamby was honest in her dislike of her, she had to give that obstinate reactionary woman that amount of credit. This was exacerbated by an incident when she had tried to bamboozle her about what 'the General Secretary would and not allow' but she had successfully called her bluff. As for everyone else, she had made her presence felt in that understated fashion that served her very well. As time went on, she sensed that her presence as wing governor was becoming as unremarkable and part of the natural order of events. Amongst other strange twists of fate, she was getting used to handling that bunch of keys to negotiate her way round the labyrinth that was G wing. Finally, on Friday she had plucked up the strength of will to attack the pile of files that she had let accumulate in her 'in tray' while her presence on the wing had been more high profile than she was wise to allow herself. She hadn't let slide that side her job out of a horror of paperwork as such but what the files contained. The dry details of wrecked lives never ceased to pain her but then again, Helen had confided to her in passing that her work as a psychologist brought her into contact with another segment of suffering humanity.
"What do you mean, Helen?" Nikki had asked her one night a few weeks ago when Helen looked more world weary than normal.
"I'm doing my level best to patch up people's wounds, whether self inflicted or not. It isn't all plain sailing."
"I know," Nikki had replied with tender sympathy. "Still, your patients are lucky to have you around to care for them."
Helen's smile in response was rather strained. Nikki had never intruded in Helen's professional business and a month of her new job sharpened her understanding of that kind of professional responsibility.
"Still here, Nikki?" Karen had smiled through the half open door, breaking into her concentration. "I'm off somewhere special."
"That means George," Nikki had grinned back.
She could so vividly remember in retrospect Karen's smirk of self-satisfaction for that second before the door closed and Karen was gone. Nikki had attacked the pile of files with the last of her energy before she could let herself go home.
"I'm off out, Gina," she had called out as she crossed the wing and let herself out into the front yard. It had been a blazing hot summer day and the force of the heat had made her feel glad to set off home. She dropped her keys into the slot and slid into the car seat of her little Ford Fiesta, which was, parked pride of place outside the prison walls. That little touch still reminded her of how times had changed. It would, given time, fade into normality without forgetting her past and not being true to it. When she thought about it, she gained quiet satisfaction that there was hardly anything in her life that she would disown but that was only what she expected of herself.
She was ready to chill out with Helen with a quiet peaceful night in with her version of Karen's pleasures. She felt she had earned it twice over, as she parked her car, grabbed her overfull briefcase and clattered down the short flight of steps to the basement entrance. She heard Helen's voice talking in the living room, entered the room with a broad smile and slung her briefcase into a corner of the room. It was nothing new to her that Helen continued to talk on the phone as she occasionally took emergency calls when she was home. What did slightly surprise her was that Helen didn't turn round to face her. It struck her that she wasn't fully here.
"Do you realise that if just once either you or I had chosen to do what was morally right, rather than what was legally right, this might never have happened?"
Nikki's alarm bells were jangling straightaway as this conversation was utterly out of the ordinary. The brief pause for the unknown caller to reply only made Helen more overwrought than she was already
"Don't you feel any guilt, judge? Don't you think that maybe this time, the law didn't know best? Because I can tell you that I sure as hell do."
That meant John Deed, Nikki swiftly concluded and started to get worried. There could only be one judge. How in hell has he come to be professionally involved in Helen's life in such a way that sounded like trouble? That perplexed her all the more as she considered Helen and the judge to be the two of the most morally upright people Nikki had ever met with a positive passion for doing the right thing.
"She knows that Ross has been coming to see me for four months, and that he'd been an inpatient for the last two. She doesn't know that you knew about it, but we both know that she'll have to some time. This hiding things from her that she needs to know, ends whenever she begins to want answers, and that's not negotiable."
Nikki started to have a horrid suspicion of the truth but didn't want to believe the evidence that her very active mind was starting to put together. Surely, there were more Rosses in the busy bustling outpost of London than the one she knew? She had been in Karen's room and the framed picture of the smiling clean-cut adolescent was pride of place on her desk. She didn't talk much of him but she knew well enough that he lurked somewhere at the back of her mind. Family ties weren't exactly her scene but a long time ago Yvonne had educated her by her personal example as to the power of that tie.
"Nikki's here," Helen finally said, turning round to face her at last, pain clearly etched all over her very expressive face, "…..waiting for me to explain everything to her. It's not just Karen who's been kept in the dark all this time."
Helen looked for the first time directly at Nikki, the expression on her face beseeching her for forgiveness and the earpiece of her cordless phone was directly clamped against her ear as she took in the final words and put the phone down.
"Ross is dead. That's Ross as in Karen's son," Helen blurted out the verbal bombshell, utterly unable to dress up the words any differently.
Nikki's jaw dropped in horror at the news. Whatever surprises she was getting used to at work was as nothing compared to what had dropped on her as she had stepped through her own front door. Her utter failure to make a response seemed to last an eternity.
"How did you……." She said at last.
"He's been a patient of mine, a heroin addict with HIV was recently admitted to inpatient care. He's been getting worse and worse…"
"So what happened?"
"He committed suicide by cutting his wrist an hour or so ago. I've just broken the news to Karen."
Those terse staccato words didn't even begin to deal with either woman's feelings. Both of them were numb with shock, standing like statues and rooted to the spot in what should be their cosy flat. It was only instinct that prompted Nikki to ask herself exactly who Helen had been on the phone to and a questioning, hard expression settled on Nikki's face as she shook her head in confusion.
"I am a psychologist and I would not have been acting professionally if I had told you everything that goes on in my job even if it concerns someone…."
Helen lunged in abruptly with flashing eyes and a rigidity in her manner that Nikki had not seen for a long time. It shocked her but not enough to stop her jumping straight in.
"……..who's my present boss and someone who you were once in charge of."
Her lightning thrust was delivered to counter Helen with a degree of calm and self-assurance, which surprised herself at a moment like this .She was curiously calm. She reasoned instinctively that Helen under pressure would revert to that persona who lectured her across the desk from that very same chair which she now occupied. If Helen had mentally jumped back in time to when they were both in Larkhall, Nikki knew that she would have to drag her back to the here and now. In truth, Nikki's calm assurance was borne of years of responsibility in one form or another.
Helen's eyes flitted nervously round the room and the tip of her tongue flicked across her lower lip but she was silent, undecided.
"Come on, you'd better tell the story from the start as it's out in the open now."
Helen's stood rigidly as if she were frozen inside by the horror and guilt that she had felt from when she had first heard the news and of being persuaded to keep quiet against her better judgement. She moved stiffly to the sofa and let herself drop. She breathed in and out and her eyes remained closed. Nikki reclined at an angle on the other side of the settee and maintained a patient silence. Helen sensed that feeling flow out from Nikki and
started to realise that she wasn't on her own.
"It's as well that you've found out everything," she eventually exhaled the words very faintly.
"Isn't it always?" came the gentle answer with a slight smile on her face.
Helen nodded and her head turned slightly to glance in Nikki's direction.
"It's been going on for months, Nikki. Ross Betts was referred to me from his GP as he had an out of control heroin habit and severe feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, which he concealed behind an aggressive surly manner. Of course, I knew straightaway he was Karen's son. You get to put two and two together in a situation like that, don't you Nikki? You can understand that I did my best to try to contain the situation, to try everything in the book to improve his self-esteem. His addiction bad as it was in itself was only the surface symptom of the trouble. I did my best to contain the situation and try and deal with the root cause of the problem. You can understand where I'm coming from, don't you. "
Helen paused, having gently included Nikki as a fellow professional for the first time in their lives.
"If I were in your shoes, I think I would have done the same," came Nikki's reflective answer.
"I began to see that whatever I did, he was slowly but surely going downhill. Believe you me, false pride and burying your head in the sand have no place in my job or in my life."
"Just backtrack a moment, Helen. I assume that Karen has never had any idea of his drug habit. Did you talk to him about telling her of his problem?"
Helen's lips twisted in bitter memories of the irony of the situation.
"He had never grown up, Nikki. His addiction had got to the point that he had lost all his pride and self respect and would tell any story if it would get him a prescription for heroin substitute. The one scrap of pride left in him was that his mother, I mean Karen, would never know. So I decided that I needed a second opinion."
"So you went to the judge? Why not me? You know how good I can be in a situation like this," Nikki said in a hurt voice. She respected the judge right enough but Helen only knew him slightly. She could have come to her on this one occasion.
"I only went to the judge for one reason and one reason only. I wanted to get the finest legal opinion as to whether or not I could tell Karen myself. Please understand Nikki, it's not like the old days of me treating you just as a well-meaning prisoner. On the matter of the law, he knows more than both I or you know."
It was Nikki's turn to look away from Helen. Her feelings of hurt and rejection were, even now, still able to rise to the surface but a voice at the back of her head repeated a relentless logic of what had to be done. She had always thought and acted from the heart from when she was little but as she had got older, some instinct in her knew how to think with her head. Living with Helen had spurred this way of wrestling with a problem. She still felt uncomfortable but could see why Helen had acted as she had done. She turned back to look at Helen, gave a half smile and reached out a hand to touch Helen. It felt a little safer for both of them to do so.
"So what did you come up with?"
A faint feeling of release began to seep through Helen as some of the tension started to ease. She did not dare to think about Karen and what she must be going through but a little of the advice which she handed out at her clinic came back to her. A step at a time, she thought. That is her only hope at this minute.
"I told him that she was both my friend and his but he insisted that he has a right to patient confidentiality, just as both of us did."
"That's tough advice, Helen."
"He meant it, Nikki. He knows Karen well and he would be sworn to silence as much as I was. He told me that keeping the matter from Karen was going to be one of the hardest things he would ever have to do and would give anything for her not to be hurt."
Nikki reflected long and hard on this. If the judge had taken on the same burden as Helen had, then she could not help but respect him for it.
"The judge is a good guy, Helen, but don't you think that he was too caught up in legal niceties and was mistaken, however good his motives. You know that the shit will hit the fan and who can criticise Karen for blaming anyone who's kept secrets from her. It sounds good in theory but that's half the problem."
"Be careful, Nikki. You're only a month in to your job. You might find yourself in the very same position that I have of having to maintain a confidential secret or some kind of moral dilemma that you can't talk to me about. It could happen to you," Helen warned Nikki in low but emotion drenched tones.
"So that's why you told me once that your job isn't plain sailing. I'd call that the understatement of the century."
For the first time, Nikki smiled at that faint irony, even at such a traumatic moment like this.
"You really hate the idea of me holding all this back from you," Helen asked softly and the other woman nodded.
"It reminded me of the way we were at Larkhall when I felt at times that you had to be the one in charge, to be right all the time. I know that what I'm feeling sounds irrational but…………………."
Helen leaned over and gently brushed Nikki's cheek with her fingertips.
"Believe you me, there were so many times when I wanted so much to tell you, when I woke up in the middle of the night worrying about the situation. Look at it like this. When you seek advice from the finest legal mind whose moral standards in his profession let alone any other are as high as you can get, what do you do when you don't like what you are told? If you get advice that goes against the grain, then you should never have asked for it in the first place. I had committed myself to the legal way of operating and I had, have, faith in him and what he had to say. That's what I had to keep telling myself as there wasn't anything else that held me in there."
There was a pause as Nikki mulled over what Helen had told her. The emotional hurt was healing and she began to realize that she had been reverting to the person she used to be as much as Helen had so briefly. Her heart was beginning to agree with her head as she reflected on the thought that ancient scars take a lot of healing.
"Hey, come here."
Nikki's musical voice curled round seductively inside all of Helen's senses and drew her in to bridge the gap that had run down the middle of the sofa in between them. She leaned over and let Nikki's arms enfold her. It felt like heaven to smell the faint fragrance of her skin and made her feel whole again. She could feel Nikki's delicate fingertips gently running through her hair and the comfort of lying against her breasts. There was absolutely nowhere else she wanted to be right now in this universe. A fierce glow of tenderness and possessiveness welled up in Nikki as she looked down on Helen and she felt that she was home at last. That was what she was looking forward to on the way home all along. She hadn't bargained on walking into the shock and turmoil that had briefly turned their lives upside down.
"Oh Christ, Helen. I only saw Karen an hour or so ago and she looked so radiant, full of the joys of life. What's happening to her right now?" "I think I can answer that one, Nikki," Helen paused and swallowed .She had to face up to that one at last. "I was talking to the judge just now and he was going over to see Karen. He said that George had told him that she had gone into emotional shock. He didn't know the reason why until I told him." "I hope he or George looks after her. She'll need it." "As much as she has the resources to come through the other side of this one," Helen said grimly, looking Nikki straight in the eye. "For all my work in psychology, I can't paint a picture as to what that will be like. All I know is that she'll get help over the weekend and we'd better hang back to see if we're needed." "It's down to me to help her when she's back at work. She has been the strong one in smoothing my coming back to Larkhall in the first place," Nikki reasoned resolutely.
Both of them stared into space, deep in thought. Totally out of the blue, the long buried emotional scars of their shared past at Larkhall had come to the surface. They had not expected that would happen after all this time. They felt more intensely for what Karen must be going through that very instant, more than they cared to think. Even if their own future was fine, both had a nasty sinking feeling about what Karen's future held for her.