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TWENTY-ONE

FRAN

Surprisingly, I’d been given my own room or prison cell or whatever exactly I was meant to call it.

Something about remanded prison rule seven, saying that I didn’t have to share with another prisoner until I was officially found guilty.

But it was harder to keep up the facade that this was all part of my budget weekend away when there were literal thick cast iron bars now outside my window.

I had a desk, a small flatscreen TV, and some surprisingly nice patterned curtains to cover up the avant-garde design of exposed metal. The cell even featured a lime green accent wall to contrast the dull beige I had in my custodial suite.

Although, I had to admit, I not only felt like the new girl at school – but also the new girl that had her arm in a cast, so couldn’t do PE.

I didn’t need to go to inmate education or work, and the guards didn’t treat me with quite the same animosity as the others.

They mostly just left me to do my own thing between roll calls.

One of them even asked me about the book I was reading, and we engaged in some light small talk, although he was no Paul.

I got to meet some new people, which was nice; a different type of people from my usual neighbourhood, though I felt like I was doing a good job of the head-down-low thing.

I had made no nemeses yet, no one trying to shiv me during recreation, which I was taking as a good sign.

A lot of the stereotypes I’d had about prison were already eroding away.

But while I was projecting the whole unfazed, strong-but-silent type around the rest of the inmates, truth be told, I was terrified.

Not of them , of course. Sure, there were probably some other killers in here too, but I bet I could win against them in a one-on-one fistfight easily; I had killed scarier people than them, even if some of them looked pretty damn scary.

What I was truly petrified of was that the rest of my life could be like this.

To the rest of the inmates, remanded custody seemed to carry something of a stigma, like I was a baby-faced infant about to have my bliss shattered at any moment.

Word was, a lot of those on remand just pleaded guilty to get some control of their lives back, and not live in constant anxiety.

A bunch of inmates in the lunch queue had casually told me to get used to my new home for the next few years.

I had made a friend, though, Lucy. She had killed her sister over a row about inheritance, but had told me in good faith that her sister was a bit of a bitch, so I was going to take her word for it.

I tried to stay on the good side of the guards, so they could put me with Lucy as a roommate if I was found guilty and had to be stuck here until my teeth started falling out.

‘I hear you had your lawyer coming in today?’ Lucy asked me at lunch, as she dipped her bread into the mayo. An interesting cuisine choice.

‘Yeah, to bring some clothes and to brief me before it all kicks off tomorrow.’

‘Oh yeah, when is your trial again?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I repeated, hoping I wouldn’t make Lucy feel stupid.

‘Awhhh, that’ll be nice,’ said Lucy, as if we were talking about a cream tea at a country estate.

She took a big bite of her bread before returning it to dip into the mayo.

‘It will be good to get out for a bit and get some fresh air, I guess. How come you never have any visitors?’ she asked, dropping her bread with a thud against the plastic tray and crossing her arms. ‘You don’t get anybody.

You haven’t got a boyfriend or a husband or a girlfriend? ’

‘Oh, I have a husband,’ I said, before reconsidering. ‘I have a husband technically, but for complicated reasons, he’s a lot of the reason I’m in here.’

‘Ohh, I see,’ Lucy said, tapping her nose. ‘Pimp?’

‘What?! No, he’s a police officer.’

‘Oh, that makes more sense. He arrested you?’

‘No, but he helped.’

Ooh, that hurt more than I thought it would, to say it aloud.

‘Not much of a husband then, is he?’ Lucy said, using the last teeny bit of crust to mop up the remaining modicum of mayo.

‘No. Well, he isn’t exactly…’ I didn’t want to complete the sentence. I guess I hadn’t ended up being much of a wife. Whatever way you cut it, I had killed our neighbour – I cut him up in quite a few ways actually.

I kept thinking about the phone call, remembering how good it had felt to hear Gareth’s voice again. God, just hearing him speak again, I’d wanted him to tell me we had a dinner reservation at Positano’s tonight, to wear the dress he liked and that he’d swing by at eight.

Like most of my major life decisions, I’d been mulling this one over for a while before finally taking the plunge.

I’d often lingered by the phones in the block, debating whether to be the one to make the call, but I’d figured this was probably going to be my last chance before the trial.

Andrew had already warned me I had homework for tonight to prepare for.

I hoped Gareth wouldn’t feel too upset by the fact I hadn’t said that I loved him back.

Thing was, it wasn’t because I didn’t – as hard as I tried to deny it, I knew I did.

It was just too agonising to say it aloud.

Despite everything – the arrest, him not visiting for the past three months – I still loved him.

Lucy went to go and meet her boyfriend, who I had heard an annoyingly large amount about, and I decided to go back to my journal, my ikiagi .

I couldn’t really make a mind map in prison about how to kill Clark, so I instead drew random doodles to mark ideas and plans.

Like my own personal language of hieroglyphics, I made it up as I went along.

Getting away with it would be the difficult part.

Look, at this point, you might be thinking, ‘So what? You had a tough childhood because some men stole money from the children’s home you grew up in, big deal. But until a few months ago, you had a great life, Fran, so all of this is completely self-inflicted. Why are you living in the past?’

To that I say: maybe you had a rough childhood, even a terrible one.

But I’m guessing you’ve never been eleven years old, with the house on fire, desperately trying to open the door to the next room.

The wood’s swollen from the heat, so it won’t budge, and you keep frying your hands on the doorknob, unable to shift it even a little bit as you begin to hear your sister Edith’s terrified screams from inside.

Tell me then if you wouldn’t want to kill the people responsible for that.

I thought about what Angus said, about waiting until Clark had popped his clogs of old age.

But that was part of the problem. I didn’t want Clark to have a peaceful death, where he tripped over in the night whilst trying to take a piss and died on a carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed for twenty years.

I wanted him to look into my eyes and remember me as I killed him.

I wanted to see the same flash of recognition that I had in O’Neill as he’d slipped away before tumbling down onto the carpet.

However, I was starting to think that could be quite unlikely considering a life in prison was looming over me.

About an hour into my strategizing, I heard a knock at the door. I swivelled around, trying to give the body language of a woman that definitely was not planning to kill again.

It was one of the guards.

‘Hey, Donoghue, there’s someone here to see you.’

The meeting room looked like some weird university meet and greet, with big fluorescent foam chairs.

I was wondering what I would say to Gareth.

If I’d refuse to talk, or if I’d maybe just break down, kiss him, and jump his bones right there and then.

It was anyone’s guess; I didn’t even know myself.

I had spent weeks building up the courage to call him before I’d finally ripped off the plaster yesterday, but I hadn’t thought he would come in to see me.

As the guard led me across the room I saw Lucy in a corner, whose boyfriend was not-so-subtly slipping something into her hand that she crammed fast into her pocket.

I kept my eyes peeled across the room, looking for my husband, but I couldn’t spot Gareth at all.

Instead, I saw someone with their hood up, their back to the wall and hands scratching rhythmically on the bright red fabric of the chair.

‘Angus? What are you doing here?’

‘Hey,’ Angus said, appearing happy to see me, but all the symptoms of his anxiety remaining on his face. ‘Hey, how are you?’

I shot him a concerned glance before sitting down on the green foam chair.

‘You know I’m in prison, right? I’m not exactly excelling in life at the moment.’

‘Yeah, of course, sorry,’ he said remorsefully, the joke missing him by a country mile.

‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Are you okay?’

Angus nodded, gulping, shuffling again in his chair.

I was still getting over the fact that he had even made it here.

I hadn’t seen Angus leave his house for years, and now the last two times I had seen him, he had been somewhere new.

I could tell that prison wasn’t exactly a great place for him to visit and test his boundaries, though.

He was wearing the red felt on the chair away to reveal the grey scalp of the fabric beneath.

‘Yeah, yeah, of course, I was just…worried about you, is all,’ Angus stuttered.

‘Is Gareth okay?’ he asked after a moment. It almost unnerved me to hear Angus ask this many questions. It made me wonder if I should have checked in to prison sooner, to push my brother out of his comfort zone. Maybe he’d actually be worried about me , for a change.

‘He’s doing okay,’ I lied.

Angus seemed to accept the answer as he did another survey of his surroundings before talking.

‘What do you think people talk about in here? Like, what’s there to say? Do you get to watch TV?’