Scene Five

When Nikki got up on Monday morning, feelings of anti climax and depression started to creep in and peaked as soon as she entered the door at work. What was she doing here, she asked herself. It was all too much after all she had gone through leading up to the trial. Before the big day, she had fought down her fears as the trial grew ever closer for her to venture forth to do battle to clear her name. When she got into the witness box, she had felt strangely elevated as she had been at the centre of a historical pageant illustrated in bright, bold colours. It wasn't every day she had successively told her side of her story to three very astute judges, engaged in a verbal dustup with John Deed's enemies, enjoyed a bitter-sweet intimate conversation with him and celebrated her triumph with those who were dear to her. The dreamy and blissful weekend with Helen had lasted an eternity and, here she was, back at work again. Everything ought to be spectacular after such a triumph but the normal washed out beige colours, impersonal office furniture and same old people greeted her. She felt temporarily diminished and washed out and just wanted to be allowed simply to slip into her space and bury herself behind the computer screen but of course, that wasn't to be her fate. "You know, I'm sure I saw her on the television last Friday but then again, I can't be sure. I flicked over to Neighbours so I wasn't really looking." "I know what it's like. You see someone when you're out shopping and think, hang on a minute, I've seen that person before."

"Don't know what you're on about. I was watching Eastenders."

This inane conversation rambled on for a few minutes, arousing Nikki's feelings of cold contempt straight away. She decided to cut to the chase and get it over with.

"You're talking about me, aren't you? Why don't you spit it out and ask me straight?"

The long pause betrayed the other women's slavery to custom of not wanting to get involved in an embarrassing confrontation. It wasn't even as if a voice prohibited them from acting but more as if each of them had a defective fuse that prevented them ever making that connection.

"So are you that woman who was on the news last Friday?" a voice finally asked her after a lot of hastily exchanged looks. This was only because the longer time went on, the absence of an answer to Nikki's blunt question kept them on the spot and got more painful by the minute.

"What do you mean?" asked Nikki blandly.

"You know, the woman who stabbed that policeman."

"And what if I was?" came Nikki's icy calm reply and raised eyebrows. Her cool demeanor froze out the neighbourhood gossips who were stuck for figuring out their next move. The only person who was close to this strange apparition was Tony and he was no earthly use in getting the gossip and dishing it. Why he should be a friend with a lesbian was anyone's guess but then again, he was standoffish and strange.

"Didn't you think to tell us about your past? I mean, we've treated you perfectly normally without us knowing that you had something to hide."

"Did I need to tell you anything that goes on outside these walls and if so why?" Nikki asked with raised eyebrows.

She smiled to herself afterwards, as she suspected that this facility to frame sharp questions to bat back awkward questions came from her acquaintance with the legal profession. It sounded something like Jo Mills might come out with.

"You never know. You might lose your temper."

Nikki sighed, and turned to face the row of suspicious eyes. She did her best to address them in reasonable tones.

"Just get this straight between us once and for all. I've come here to do a job and earn a living. I've been here for the past four or five months. I've been pretty cool, calm and collected and haven't trodden on anyone's toes. I've been the diplomatic one, both with customers and with the rest of you. Is there really any reason why this shouldn't continue? Does whatever the tabloids and the television come out with alter the way I behave? The judges told me that my record is as clean as theirs is. You have to take my word for that as, after all I was there."

Despite Nikki's calm words, she knew that feelings of rage were boiling up within herself and they etched her voice with jagged edges. She knew very well that it wasn't good for her to react that way however much she clearly intimidated all the neighbourhood sneaks all around her. Her capacity for anger really worried her after that dreadful day years ago which had put her behind bars. Intellectually she reasoned to herself that feeling anger wasn't a crime but only the violent expression of it could be. Emotionally, she wasn't so sure and she could only square that circle by controlling her tendency to speak first and think later. This was where Helen's presence had been so invaluable over time in showing her that there were other ways of handling a situation.

"That sounds fine by me, Nikki." A fresh voice hailed from the back of the assembled crowd. "I saw what you had to say and you were brilliant. You really told them straight."

A brilliant smile spread across Nikki's face and her eyes glowed brilliantly. Trust Tony to be a real friend and help her out. It immediately dissolved away those blocked feelings and made her feel at the top of the world.

"Thank you, Tony. This is the first intelligent remark today. It's great to hear it."

"So how did you swing it with the judges?" came the final grumpy question after a stony silence.

"How do you mean? Are you talking about bribery and corruption on my pittance of a wage, my pulling power with three middle aged male heterosexual judges or maybe, just maybe, they recognized the justice of my case. If the bastard who tried to rape my girlfriend hadn't been taken out, he would have stood in the dock, not me," Nikki retorted, her smooth tones rolling over the critics with incisive logic and an undertow of cutting sarcasm. At once, she felt better about herself in handling the situation and finally squashing these narrow minded morons.

"So what did happen?" came a question without an ounce of sympathy or understanding.

"That's for me to know and for you to work out. If you don't mind, I just want to get in here and back to my job. You managed to cope without me for just one day? Yeah?"

Nikki promptly clicked on her computer monitor and checked out the day's accumulation of e-mails. Handling something fairly mundane and easy enabled her to drop back into normal operating mode. She felt mentally closed off from her surroundings in the dead stillness of the office. It was only till break time that Nikki finally got to talk to Tony.

"Tony, can I have a private word with you," Nikki said in a low tone of voice. She had turned matters over in her mind and could see the writing on the wall. He nodded back at her and led the way out of the room.

"We'd better borrow the cleaner's room. We can't exactly go into the toilets and talk," Tony volunteered.

That made Nikki laugh out loud. The guy was as much of a friend to her than any of the women she had known through the clubs. They threaded their way to this very cramped room, which was stacked with bottles of cleaning fluids and mops and buckets. The room was a dump with a small table in it with only room to stand. However, Nikki drew a breath of relief.

"I get the idea that you're very close to walking out of your job, Nikki," Tony volunteered.

"How did you guess?" marvelled Nikki.

"It's obvious. You've been getting more and more uptight in the last few months and I could tell that you were in serious danger of losing it today."

"Are you sure you weren't a lesbian in an earlier life." Nikki asked, a smile curving her lips. "I mean, there are always possibilities in reincarnation."

"You mean, how did I come to spot something that's very obvious?" counter queried the man with a wry smile on his face at the back handed compliment.

"You really have the knack of figuring out how I'm feeling."

"It's obvious that you don't really fit in around here though you've tried your hardest."

"So are you stopping me from walking out on that lot?"

"Not till you've got somewhere else to go. I know little of your partner but by the look of the picture of her, she looks as if she has a strong personality. I'd guess she's not the sort of person who would let you give way to a mad impulse."

"You're right enough there," came Nikki's slightly awestruck reply at his sharp perception. This was a quality that she was used to only from women.

"Is this what being part of the straight world is about? If it weren't for Helen keeping regular nine to five hours, I would never have bothered."

"You're just unlucky to be among the more backward part of it."

"So why do you stick around here? How long have you worked here for?" Nikki asked with great intensity. She had never had the time to talk properly to the man. She needed some answers urgently to get some perspective in her life. She couldn't and wouldn't do anything until she could unlock this conundrum.

"I've been here since I left school, Nikki. I've never had any real ambition and I've been here far too long to think in risking my security to move elsewhere. I suppose I'm part of the furniture. I live at home so it's no great hardship."

"There's a big wide world out there, Tony. I was expelled from my boarding school due to 'lesbian activities.' I worked every bar and club you name till me and my partner got our own club together and everything was fine….till Gossard, that bastard policeman came around one night. Because I took him out to stop him raping my partner, I ended up doing three years in Larkhall. I would have been stuck there for life if it hadn't been for my first appeal."

"Still, I suppose you got free board, TV and meals….." Tony said casually. The warm, intimate temperature of the room suddenly changed and dropped to one of frozen anger.

"What I can't work out, Tony," Nikki spoke at last in a steely tone of voice as her face darkened," is how come an intelligent guy like you talks a load of shit like this."

There was an embarrassed silence. To Tony, Nikki was just another working woman who was highly capable so that he couldn't get his head round the idea that she had once been a prisoner. Prisons were a million miles away from his rather constrained family life, something that you read about on the news.

"I'm sorry, Nikki," he said at last." I've never met anyone who's been in prison before. I only know what I read in the papers. If you don't mind me saying, you don't look like the sort of person who's ever been in prison."

Nikki sighed patiently at the awkward yet honest answer of the man before her. She laid her hand awkwardly and briefly on the arm of his jacket.

I could write a whole book about what I went through in prison but, you take it from me, even as we speak, there's a man just like Gossard, who's got power over vulnerable prisoners and doesn't he just know it. You wouldn't believe half the stories I could tell, drugs, suicides, you name it, I've seen it. If Helen hadn't have pushed my appeal through the Home Office, I'd still be in prison till God known when."

Tony's eyes widened at the intensity of the mental picture that Nikki conjured up. He turned red in the face in embarrassment, which temporarily choked his capacity for words until human decency struggled to the surface amongst all his confusion and finally framed his thoughts.

"I'm sorry. I take that back. It was a stupid remark but what's important now is what you do with your life for the future."

Nikki gave him a quick forgiving smile as she calmed down and paused for reflection.

"I don't know, Tony. I know I'm not staying around here forever. Now I have a clean record, I'm going to look out for other jobs. I'll stick it out till I find somewhere better……." came Nikki's dreamy, abstracted reply as she was thinking aloud. Then her eyes focused in on Tony and she realized that she'd only partly achieved her initial quest before her attention had been diverted.

"……anyway, we were talking about you. How in hell have you stuck it out in this dump for all these years? I mean you don't get medals for bravery for staying here, you know."

"I just stay in the background and observe silently what goes on around…until you came here and I had this unaccountable desire to stick my oar in and interfere."

"You watch it, Tony. Just remember, I'm spoken for," warned Nikki in joking tones.

"Don't get me wrong, Nikki. One mistake is enough. You're just a good friend. I'll miss you when you're gone."

Nikki was touched by the man's loneliness. It seemed to be a common feature of London life. A city should supposedly bring all the lonely people together and all the social facilities for people of all kinds of persuasion to get together. Instead, there was something about the modern, revved up pace of city life, cars roaring their way to urgent destinations, single people with their 'own space' that drove people apart. Walking along the streets, you were as likely to come across someone with a different language and different culture.

"I'll still here for now, Tony. I've got to dig my escape tunnel yet. That won't necessarily be that easy."

"You'll make it, Nikki. I've got faith in you."

Nikki was touched by the generosity of spirit of the man. She didn't know what to do or say but realized that, if she were successful, she would leave him behind like other friends like Yvonne and the two Julies. She was about to say something when her worst enemy knocked officiously at the door. Both of them jumped and realized that they had an unwelcome visitor.

"I thought I'd find out where you two had sneaked off to. There's work that needs doing. You can't expect us to cover for you both."

"At least you know that the two of us hadn't been kissing and cuddling somewhere. It's against my principles, you know, out and proud lesbian found alone with a straight guy. Now, that would exercise your vivid imagination if you had one," replied Nikki impishly, grinning from ear to ear and the words jumping out of her mouth from nowhere. Tony laughed at Nikki's outright cheek and the way she set out to confuse the stupid woman. They felt like two naughty schoolchildren. He wished he could be more like her.

Nikki strolled lazily back along the corridor, on her way back to work while the other woman stomped on ahead. She felt somehow that she'd been in this movie before but she couldn't work out where.