Shell was in a confused state of excitement and tension as she drove the stolen car along the country roads out of Ashmoor. It was pitch black outside as there were no streetlights and only her headlights. She didn't want to have to get herself lost on some unlit country road. She was a city woman. Pubs, clubs and late night eating-places were what she knew, not some stinking farmyard and lumbering combine harvester blocking up the road. For all she knew, the police were on her tail and she needed to get away fast from here. A sense of crazy excitement flared up inside her fading down to a feeling of sheer relief as she spotted the sign she was looking for. She turned her car to cut right round the roundabout and drop down to the four lanes, wide reassurance of the motorway. This huge gash in the rolling countryside etched a hundred miles and more line from north to south and all routes headed to the London of her homeland.
She had flipped out a Guns and Roses CD and the pounding guitars and wailing vocals blasted out. She pushed her foot near to the bottom of the floorboard and the low slung car made her feel that the tarmac was whizzing past either side of her at an impossibly fast pace. She was free and on the run. She hadn't been behind the wheel of a car since she lived in Amsterdam but it had all come back to her. She felt incredibly sharp and alert. It was a shame Denny wasn't with her to share the fun and games, she thought with a pang of regret but a surge of excitement overtook her at the thought of her freedom. It was all so easy when she thought back on what had happened.
Cutting back on the pills had been the first step in getting to where she was now. She must be a kid at heart, she thought to herself, wanting something when some tosser told her no and getting bored with it when she was allowed it. When she was at Larkhall, drugs were banned so she wanted drugs, right? It was easy enough to get the other girls to smuggle them in at visiting time or lob a parcel over the wall. The rest was easy, as she had handled the distribution. It was jellies and valium most of the day to get out of it and either that or Denny's body made the nights go sweeter. When she got here, the screws were feeding her stuff so she would go through the day with a cabbage for a mind and not notice. Trouble was, she had woken up and once she had flushed the stuff away, she became more like the old Shell and she could plan what she wanted to do.
That nurse was the other part of the plan. She had made a special effort to be nice and cooperative. The dozy tart even offered her the key to her escape served up on a plate, the problem of which car in the car park was hers. From her previous experience of escaping from Larkhall, that bastard Fenner helped her to escape for his own selfish reasons, the only reason why she had trusted him. The other half of her scheme was that pathetic creep from the film crew who positively drooled all over her. That van of theirs was dead easy to spot in the car park. This time was different. She would have to do everything by herself like that shrink always kept banging on about. The one problem was the escape car. One car would look just like another and trying every car door would be a dead giveaway.
"A bright red Fiesta, dead nippy and goes like a bat out of hell. It's got a registration plate that really suits me. Means I don't have to put in for special ones." She droned on enthusiastically after subjecting Shell to an inordinately long description of the latest burn up along country roads with her mates.
"Oh and what's that?" Shell asked,
"ACE123T" she answered proudly." Says everything, doesn't it"
"Yeah, it does say everything." Shell agreed with her politely and blandly. Inside, she gave a mental jump for joy. She had just been handed the way out of Ashmoor. All it took was to put her plan into operation.
"Time for your nighttime injection, Shell." The nurse called out. Shell was the last one she had to treat and the other patients in the ward were sliding off into nighttime's oblivion, which would take away their troubles. Everything was still and quiet while Shell lay in her nightie, apparently submissive. The nurse pulled the plunger back and approached the other woman, fully expecting her to hold her arm out meekly, as if she were at the local doctor's. Instead of that, steel hard hands gripped her and secured a hold on the terrified woman and she was pushed down into the bed.
"Oh no you don't, mush. It's your time for La La land. Just don't struggle and you'll be all right." Shell muttered fiercely but enough to keep her voice down and to persuade the terrified woman to cooperate. In an instant, she remembered just why Shell Dockley had ended up in prison. She nodded her head and made a gargling sound into the pillow.
Shell picked up the syringe off the floor and plunged the needle into the other woman's forearm. Within seconds, the woman's body went limp.
The rest of the business was easy. She undid the buttons of the nurse's uniform and eased off the outer clothing. To her immense satisfaction, it fitted on her surprisingly easily, just a bit on the tight side but nothing so much that anyone would notice. She rifled through her pockets and found her pass card in her uniform. She would need that.
"So now I'm Nurse Ford," muttered Shell to herself, enjoying the joke of a false identity.
She secured the nurse's small blue handbag, which lay on the floor and examined the contents. She opened the purse, which contained a couple of credit cards, and thirty pounds, which was what she, was hoping for. The make up, a mobile phone and a bunch of keys completed the escape kit. She worked swiftly and silently and when she was done, thoughtfully tucked the other woman in her bed with the blanket almost covering her face. Last of all, she reached in her bedside locker for the letter from Denny and slipped that carefully into the bag. It was important for practical reasons and because of the sort of sentimental urges that she only felt safe with in relation to her kids and hardly anyone else besides.
"Night night. Sweet dreams, mush. At least I know you won't grass on me," She couldn't help resist whispering.
Shell walked quietly down the wing, let herself out and went down the first corridor, the part of the wing that she knew. When she got beyond that, her heart was in her mouth as she had never been that way before except in the traumatic occasion when she was first dragged that way from Larkhall. Luck was with her as the hospital very thoughtfully provided comprehensive signs and amongst those, 'official car park' enabled her to walk straight out of the place. The cold and the dark was a bracing tonic of fresh air after the typical stale hospital air and, sure enough, the red Fiesta was the fourth one in the first row. At last, she was free.
At nighttime, Nikki and Helen lay asleep together in their double bed. The room was dark apart from moonlight shining faintly through the windows. Just before they settled down to sleep, the thought came to both of them that their days of living on the opposite hours of the day were behind them and they were truly free to be who they wanted to be. The demands of their daytime jobs were heavy and recent events had collided those professional spheres against each other but they had come through this one together. No matter what else happened in their lives, then unless a major crisis blew up at nighttime from Larkhall, they were free to share the same space together and the world could go its own sweet way and would not touch them.
"Wonder what Shell is doing now?" Denny asked the Julies just before lockup time." Course, she wasn't your friend so you wouldn't be interested"
"I'll be straight, Denny. She did some bloody evil things in her time, you know that. It ain't no wonder that we got to be mates with Yvonne and the two of them always hated each other's guts"
Julie Saunders removed her glasses and stared fairly severely at Denny. In her own mind, she had worked out her own allegiances and knew where she stood. She wasn't inclined to forget what had gone on although she was prepared to forgive where it was right to do so. Talking with Yvonne over the years had sharpened up her ideas so that she could take over where Yvonne had left off.
"That don't mean that we don't understand that you were both mates"
"A bit more than mates….." Denny interjected. She could still remember of those months in Spain, the sun beating down on them both on the deck of that yacht and the brief coolness of the nights, which didn't stay cool for long. Not when she had her all to herself instead of with some dickhead who was bound to mess with her head. Shell had a dodgy taste in men and had never learnt from it, Denny thought pityingly.
"….but that don't mean that we don't think that what happened to Shell was disgusting. It was all that bastard Fenner's doing. It's a shame that something can't be done for her but once you get into one of them places, you'd need gelignite to get you out again"
There was a gloomy silence. Denny had accepted the grim truth behind that remark. Miss Betts may be the governor of this prison but she wasn't God. She never pretended that she was in the way that she was never afraid to show that very human side of her. She hadn't seen that much of her round the wing recently but she supposed she was kept very busy.
"I wonder what Shell's doing right now…….." Denny finished
The Julies didn't answer. What could they say but she's likely to be doing the same of them. One nick is the same as another except the bolts and bars on muppet wing were twice as secure and her chances of escape twice as hopeless.
Several hours later, Shell saw the outskirts of London after a long drive down the motorway. It was a long way to London and she had risked calling into a service station and filling up the tank and buying an A - Z map of London. She knew where she had grown up and bits and pieces of London but frigging dockland was totally new to her. She had to see Miss Betts and didn't want to be driving in circles all night. So what if she were seen with a road map driving uncertainly round London. Half the population were frigging tourists and foreigners so she wouldn't stand out.
At last, she came to the road on which new flats were situated. She had to hand it to Miss Betts for taste. It had a posh communal garage underneath it, a flight of steps, cut into the earth and leading from outside the sliding doors up to her posh looking bungalow, brand spanking new. It was in total darkness so Miss Betts would bound to be there. She drove up quietly to the flat and parked the car just outside. She fished round in the glove compartment and found what she was looking for, a long thin screwdriver which was nice and comfortable. She had done a bit of breaking and entering in her time and that, driving and sex was something, which, once you learned, you never forgot the knack. This gaffe looked dead easy, big wide windows, not some old terraced house with a front door and small windows four feet up, solid and secure. Delicately, she pressed the screwdriver against the door frame and, without too much effort, clicked it open.
The sound was loud to Shell's pent up emotions and must have roused Miss Betts. She paused a few minutes to see if there was any response and thankfully, everything was as quiet as the grave. Stupid expression that, she thought. She swore she could see her little Ronan inside the house as she waited. Don't worry, she soothed herself in her head, mummy's coming to find you. She stepped into the flat and stood in the front room. Fortunately, the moonlight gave her enough illumination to avoid knocking into anything. The room, what she could see of it, had class as Miss Betts had. She would always have class, not like Shell Dockley, she thought ruefully. She tiptoed to the landing, which led to the rest of the flat and, seeing the door at the end and guessing that this was the bedroom, tiptoes in and watched and waited.