Karen remembered her feelings so vividly the instant that she had moved back to her flat ,only three short weeks ago. That was why she had wanted to leave, to move on. After all, this had been a consistent pattern in her life in so many different ways.
She had blinked her eyes as soon as she had shut the door behind her in that supposed moment of fulfillment of reclaiming that blessed familiarity of her own home. She had stood rooted to the spot as she started to take in all the familiar surroundings. Every object had been in its rightful place to her, every piece of furniture, the draped curtains at the back and front of her large living room, the low table where she had often done her work, every ornament, even a bottle of wine that she'd forgotten to put away in the rush to get packed to stay over at Nikki and Helen's flat. Everything had been in place, everything ……except her. This painful confession had been wrenched out of her despite her most rigid determination not to give way to it, to try and push that thought right down to the uttermost depths of herself. That way, she could have pretended not to hear that traitorous voice within her describing that she had felt ripped out and away from her rightful place and had been badly grafted back into place. Just this one time, that familiar tactic of hers hadn't worked and feelings of panic had spiraled up inside her, making it difficult to breathe. She had started to inhale and exhale in short rapid blasts of air and she had looked wildly round the room. The room had started to swim and tilt before her eyes.Eventually, she had more collapsed than sat down into a nearby chair and lay there spread-eagled in the chair. Time passed before by some unaccountable miracle, the beginnings of calming sensations had started to seep through her. She had put her hand to her forehead and it felt sweaty.
Now that her mind had fully burst open like a long suppressed volcano, the memories of the night that Shell had broken in came back to haunt her. If she really wanted to get back to belonging back in the flat where she had lived, logic had told her that this experience belonged inescapably to the flat. The thought had made her feel cold inside yet that spark of resolution inside her had come to her rescue as it always had done. She had no choice but to allow herself to replay the horror movie and watch from the front row, wide screen. Everything was starting to take shape in her mind and she had let herself reflect on how she felt, how she should see herself as others saw her. Somehow she had reached for that capacity for perspective and her fingers had stretched out for it with just enough of a firm grip.
It was funny the way she had chatted away to Shell almost as if it was the old days, even though Shell was technically the criminal burglar. She had felt curiously detached from the interesting fact that they were talking together in her flat, that she let her quite naturally borrow her toilet as much as any other welcome guest. They'd reminisced about the old days. Shell had even noticed the scars on her arm and, yes she was genuinely sorry for her. She'd meant her absolutely no harm as she'd simply and truthfully asked that Karen could help her be reunited with her son, hardly the act of a woman who was evil personified. Shell had been totally open and trusting to her and she had cruelly betrayed her. Yes, she had to say it, Shell had felt as betrayed and as lost as she had been when her own son Ross took her life, someone whom she would have given as much to be reunited with him as Shell would have given to be reunited with her son. Both dreams were as hopeless and futile as each other that self punishingly honest side of Karen had concluded so bitterly. She had always had that link with Shell that she could never explain to herself, let alone to anyone else. Now it was all too plain and obvious. So why did she do it, she demanded of herself? Because Shell Dockley was an escaped inmate of a secure hospital and it was her duty not to let her stroll out of her flat to go elsewhere and she was highly conscious of the very real threat that Shell Dockley had posed to John. She wondered why he ever imagined that his stature as a high court judge would pacify Shell of all people. For a man whose manner spoke so obviously as the sophisticated man of the world, John could be dangerously naïve in the same way when he had slept with her at that very ill-starred conference, the flavour of which promised so much for others and which had turned to ashes in her mouth. Tears had streamed down her face as she had sat in the dimly lit cozy feel of what was, after all, her own home when she had never felt more estranged from herself and her home , in all her life.
Practical instinct had driven her to prize open the cork from the bottle of wine, pour herself a drink and reach for a cigarette. It was then that she had tried to get a grip on the situation and had taken a leaf out of John's book in starting to assimilate scattered facts and put them together in some logical order and separate out the essential from the incidental, if not totally irrelevant. She had to admit that the taste of the wine and the soothing nicotine, a totally un John approach, had helped at that moment. She had only been away for a day while the workmen had made good the damage and had pronounced the flat safe and secure. They had done work for her before and had been thoroughly competent so, logically speaking, there was nothing to worry about but that was not what her still raw nerves had been still beseeching her to understand.
As she had taken a swig from the stray bottle of wine, her mind was made up in a flash. To her delight, it reconciled the more imaginative side of her, which she distrusted, and the practical, sensible side of her, which didn't always deliver the goods. She would have to move to another flat. It was nothing earthshaking, she had comforted herself, she had done it before from when she had split up with Fenner. Therefore, logically thinking, she could do that again. After all, hadn't she always tended to be a 'moving on' kind of woman, whether it was houses or relationships. Her flat had been what she had wanted for these past few years but if being comfortable with herself again meant going elsewhere, then so be it. Looking round the flat, it had seemed not so much that she had suddenly become hypersensitive and neurotic but rather, that she had been blind to the obvious dangers. It was so flimsily built so that even an amateur burglar like Shell Dockley had been able to break in so easily while she and John had slept through it, oblivious.
That resolution brought her where she was at lunchtime on Wednesday December 7th 2005, to reach for her phone to mark the first step in a new beginning.
"Helen, it's Karen here"
"Hi Karen," that sprightly, unmistakably accented voice called back at her and immediately lightened her spirits. "It's nice to here from you. How's it felt like, settling back in?"
"Everything's physically fine, no passing stray vandals have trashed the place. It's just that….."
"…….it doesn't feel the same, Karen, as if your most private, most intimate part of yourself had been intruded on"
"Violated would be a more exact word to describe how I'm feeling"
Helen smiled to herself. Karen had made the exact connection for herself, one in which direction she had edged her gently.
"Do you never give up being the psychologist, Helen? I ought to be careful in my choice of friends." Karen retorted in a half joking tone.
"No more than you give up being governing governor, Karen. I had a brief taste of that, the feeling of power, of world domination"
Fifteen love to Helen, Karen conceded with a wry smile at Helen's laughing reply. That bit of verbal jousting had cheered her up, however. Taking that thought further, she judged that this was precisely what Helen had been aiming at. This had the makings of an over the phone, 'mini therapy' session. In turn, the thought that Karen might be the sort of person who, one day, would need her professional help had never crossed Helen's mind but then again, she would have once said the same about that august presence on the judge's throne that was her first experience of seeing John Deed from afar.
"What I was going to ask you was much more practical than to ask you to muck around with my psyche." She proceeded dryly. "I wondered if you could come round with me tonight to give a second opinion on a flat I'd spotted as I want to move house, put everything behind me and move on"
Helen thought matters over. Nikki had announced that she was having an evening in to plough through some paperwork at home while Helen was at a loose end. It would do both of them good though she wondered if Karen genuinely wanted her advice or merely to confirm what she really wanted to decide. Ah well, mine is not to reason why, she
finally decided.
"I'd be delighted to give you the benefit of my none too expert opinion." Helen joked.
Karen grinned down the phone. That humour was what she wanted to hear right now.
Karen drove them both in her sports car round the winding streets, away from the dockland and by various circuitous directions, to a slightly less starkly urban setting with its jumble of smart new developments book ending the claustrophobic, tight packed Victorian working class cluster of terraced streets. Helen gave up wondering where they were going and let Karen do the navigating. She seemed sure of herself, in fact determined to arrive at their destination.
She had to admit that the flat that Karen had selected looked pretty good to her. It reminded her of a smaller scale version of the flat she had once shared with Sean. It was an older building, set a little back from the road with two large imposing windows standing sentinel on the street outside. That was probably the very point and an unconscious reason why she had chosen it. One glance at them showed that heavy sash windows were not the kind to be so easily jemmied open by a screwdriver though she wondered if that was in Karen's conscious or unconscious thoughts.
Karen rapped smartly on the door which swung silently on its hinges and let a middle aged man come into view.
"Glad you could make it. So you want to have another look around"
"I've brought a friend round with me to help make up my mind."
The man was obviously the landlord and he gestured to them to pass through into the front living room. The room was imposing with a high ceiling and a rich carpet. It looked somewhat sparsely furnished and the feel of it wasn't entirely welcoming.
"It feels a bit empty and bare," Karen said doubtfully to herself.
"That's what an unlet flat is like, Karen. Picture all your belongings in it and you can soon make it feel like home. You need a bit of imagination"
Helen was enthusiastic and joking straightaway as, after all, it wasn't her decision and this mentally freed her up.
"Do you get many problems with the neighbours"
What Karen was really getting at, thought Helen, was is the area safe and, in particular, was there a risk from burglars.
"I haven't heard any of the previous tenants complain. If they had, I'd be the first to hear. It's a quiet place where everybody keeps themselves to themselves. It's off the beaten track for late night clubbers or Saturday night drunks. There's a newsagent and an Indian shop open all hours who have been here for years, no trouble."
"What about the next door neighbours?" Karen asked, of the other half of the house which was joined together and which shared the steps up to the flat.
"They're professionals." The man replied. "They've been here years and they want somewhere nice and respectable. Besides, this house has thick walls in the days when they built houses to last, not the sort of flimsy, cut price plasterboard efforts they run up these days"
Karen started to look at the possibilities of the house more closely, imagining in her mind's eye, her own furniture in new surroundings, working from past experience. She walked slowly to the window, noting the secure lock on the bottom of the sash window and that it would take gelignite to shift it. She had always had fairly modern tastes in her surroundings and it bothered her if what she took with her could be grafted into this much more traditional style of building. She didn't much care for traditional styles any more than she did in the way that she worked and that had been her unconscious sticking point so that she needed a second opinion. Helen's obvious enthusiasm for the flat was starting to whittle away at these reservations.
"Let's look at the rest of the flat," Karen replied non committally.
They went out by the hallway which really did seem to symmetrically anchor the flat together. Helen strode enthusiastically after the landlord while Karen paced her steps a little behind her. The bedroom opened out to a little garden at the back, which was charming, and, to Karen's eye, conveniently low maintenance.
"Fancy getting green fingers?" joked Helen.
"Well, it looks very private and nice to sit out in at the weekend. If I have any botanical problems, I'm sure Nikki would be only too happy to help. After all, she works for me," came Karen's droll reply.
"At a price"
Karen's eye started to check the position of sockets, storage space, the look of her own bed in the middle of the room and noticing that the colour of the walls was pleasing. This flat was starting to look like a white canvas onto which she could paint her own ideas of home. When they went into the kitchen, Karen was much more active, poring over every part of it, a place where some of her life would be spent and it started to meet her approval.
"You look like the lady of the manor surveying her domains," teased Helen.
"Hardly manor," commented Karen dryly." Just somewhere nice and comfortable to live the part of my life that the prison service doesn't own."
"Exactly why did the last tenant leave?" Karen asked the final question to which she got a prompt reply.
"He'd lived here for a few years and, when he retired, moved to a villa in Spain. He was dead reliable, the ideal tenant"
To Karen, the last piece of the jigsaw had finally fallen into place. This flat would be as easy to travel to work as what she now considered as her old flat. Visions of time off, removal vans and packing everything into boxes came into her mind.
"I could do with a drink"
"There's the leftovers in a bottle and a glass on the windowsill." offered the landlord, helpfully. Karen strode over to the window and on the wide sill behind the curtain was a shapely cut glass goblet and enough of an expensive wine for just one person, herself.
"What about me?" teased Helen who was ready for a drink at any time.
"You're not the one making a life or death decision, Helen." Smirked Karen at the other woman's less than convincing crestfallen look.
Karen drained the glass in one gulp. The final decision was made.
"All right, I'll go for it. Where do I sign the contract"
It was just this sort of moment of history that had prompted Karen Betts, a disillusioned nurse who was sick and tired of too many patients dying on her, to seek a new career, and new horizons, and become a basic grade prison officer so many years ago.