Day
Three years and eleven months. That’s how long I spent behind bars for a crime I didn’t commit. Almost the entire sentence imposed by the judge. Some people said I should have got life and been banged up for a minimum of fifteen years. But they didn’t get their way, so in that respect I was lucky.
Inside I met four lifers who claimed they were innocent, and two of them convinced me that they were telling the truth. They were dead inside. You could see it in their eyes. No hope. No future.
Three years and eleven months had been just bearable. If I’d been a model prisoner I would have got out sooner on licence. But sheer anger and frustration caused me to make too many mistakes and too many enemies. That burning sense of injustice gave me a reason to live, though. Served as a constant reminder that one day in the not too distant future I’d get out and be free to find the bastard or bastards who had destroyed my life.
Well that day had finally arrived.
It was a warm, grey Thursday in late July. A light drizzle greeted me as I walked out of Holloway Women’s Prison just after midday. I was wearing faded jeans, a white Gap T-shirt and a denim jacket that was a size too big. I was carrying a canvas holdall containing all my worldly possessions.
This first taste of freedom felt strangely hollow, like sucking on a joint that’s slow to take effect. Maybe that’s how it is for everyone. A bit of an anti-climax until it truly sinks in.
The sky over North London was the colour of the walls in the cell I’d just vacated. It had been the same on the day I arrived. As grim and lifeless as a cancer ward.
The farewells had been short and sweet. I’d embraced a few of the inmates I’d come to regard as friends. They all got a pack of Marlboro Lights as a parting gift. The governor gave me a little pep talk and said I had to get on with my life and forget about the past. She then wished me well and told me she didn’t want to see me back inside again.
I raised two fingers to the large, red-brick building just for the hell of it. I felt I had to make some sort of gesture. As feeble as it was I felt better for it. Then I walked along the access road to where Scar was waiting.
She’d parked the car with two wheels on the kerb and was standing with her back against the nearside wing. The sight of her sent my heart racing and I felt the sting of tears in my eyes.
She’d had her hair dyed and cut short, and it made her look younger than her twenty-six years. It was black now, instead of auburn. She’d also splashed out on a new leather jacket that she wore over a red cotton blouse and tight beige trousers.
As I closed the distance between us she gradually came into focus. Five foot five. Narrow face, high cheekbones. Body tight and toned. She was slender, but with not a hint of fragility. Her eyes were cerulean blue, same as the water colour that’s cool and opaque, and a tiny silver stud glinted in the left side of her nose.
Her most striking feature was a two-inch-long scar that ran from just beneath the lobe of her left ear to the middle of her cheek.
‘Hi, beautiful,’ I said when I reached her and it was all I could do not to let the emotion of the moment overwhelm me.
We embraced, and it felt good to feel her warm breath against my neck again. It had been a long time. Too long. I’d missed her so much and the thought of snuggling up in bed with her tonight filled me with a sense of well-being. We clung to each other for a full minute and the lump in my throat got so big I couldn’t swallow.
Scar and I had formed a relationship after we started sharing a cell towards the end of my first year inside. For me it provided a much needed distraction, a way to make the banality of prison life bearable.
‘I’m taking you to a pub first,’ she said, when we finally moved apart. ‘We’ll celebrate with a bottle of champagne. Everything else can wait. So get in the car, sit back and relax.’
I sat back in the front seat of the ageing Fiesta, but I couldn’t relax. Too much to see and too many thoughts to process.
For one thing I had to remind myself that I’d got my identity back. I was Lizzie Wells again. Twenty-seven. Light brown hair. Dark brown eyes. Almost perfect teeth.
In prison the screws had labelled me a troublemaker because I found it hard to control my temper and would always answer back. That was why I didn’t get released any earlier. But then they were constantly trying to rob me of my self-respect. They were still at it even up to a few days ago.
‘You were a looker when you came in here, Lizzie,’ one of them had said. ‘But you look like shit now. I doubt that blokes will still want to pay you for sex. Good job you’re now a dyke.’
She was right about the way I looked, but the jury was still out on the other thing. In prison Scar and I had become soulmates and sexual partners. The bond between us was strong and intimate. But freedom gave me the option to return to being straight, so my sexuality was among the issues that I would need to address. I would, of course, but in my own time.
And time was something I’d become far more conscious of. In prison it passed slowly. I counted the hours and days and often my head was filled with nothing but the loud ticking of an invisible clock.
Now time was going to burn like a fuse. I was sure of it. There were things to do, people to see. The monotony of prison routine was behind me. The pace of my new life was set to blast me into orbit.
For the first time in years I felt glad to be alive. But my newfound freedom was already filling me with trepidation. A lot had changed since I’d been banged up and I was fearful of not being able to cope. I realised suddenly that I hadn’t really prepared myself mentally for the chaos of life on the outside. I’d been too wrapped up in what I planned to do.
Scar turned into Parkhurst Road. It was heavy with traffic and noisy as hell. The wail of a police siren made me jump and set my teeth on edge. We stopped at some lights. A party of primary school children in bright red uniforms started crossing the road. Their animated chatter made me smile. We then continued along Parkhurst Road and swung left into the much busier Holloway Road. Here the pavements were lined with shops and packed with pedestrians.
As we drove on I took it all in. Cars crawling by in a welter of exhaust fumes. A young mum pushing a pram. A couple of teenagers holding hands and laughing. An elderly woman struggling with two heavy Tesco bags.
Normality. The everyday things that you take for granted until they’re taken away from you. I’d missed so much of everything, and I felt bitter about that.
‘There’s a pub on the corner,’ Scar said. ‘The champagne is on me.’
I reached out and touched her knee.
‘Thanks for being so thoughtful,’ I said.
‘It’s no more than you deserve, babe. Life’s been a bitch to you, and it makes me want to cry just to think about it.’
The boozer was called The Red Lion. It was just off the high street and more than a little drab on the outside.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been inside a pub, or who I’d been with. It was a long time ago, though.
Before that fateful night my favourite tipple had been vodka, lime and lemonade. But I was also partial to bottles of potent German lager. For a time back in those days binge
