Page 89 of The Dead Ex

‘You’ve got to make sure they stay in their pads. Don’t take any shit about how they need to see the nurse.’

‘Who’s my partner?’

‘Off sick. Just you today.’

He was grinning. Testing me. Just like Dad had said they would.

There was nothing for it but to go up the stairs.They were broad and modern with open struts just wide enough to see through to the floor beneath. Along the walls on the landing itself were rows of doors like a cheap hotel. Men were banging them. ‘I need my meds, for fuck’s sake,’ one was shouting.

This was inhuman.

‘Thank God I’m out of here,’ said an officer, walking past me on the stairs. ‘I’ve been on all night and they haven’t let up.Still that’s what you get with perverts.’

I felt my stomach dipping down with fear. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t they tell you, love? This is the sex offenders’ wing.’

What? I stared at the officer. Surely there’d been a mistake. No one had said. Then I recalled the nudges and the winks when I’d started that morning. Someone had set me up. Or else I was being tested to show my mettle.

‘Neverbeen in one before, Smith? Good luck.’

By 11.30, my head was ringing with the shouts, pleas and threats.

‘Officer, I need a crap, and there’s no fucking toilet paper in here.’

‘Get me out of here, I’m going to be sick.’

‘What about my human rights? I’m going to get my solicitor to sort out you bastards.’

This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be.

‘Miss, do something. PLEASE.’

This was after I’dmade the mistake of talking back to one of them through a closed door. Instantly, they’d seized on the fact that I was a woman.

Even worse, I needed a pee myself, but there was no one to keep watch while I went. Surely this was against employment regulations.

At last! A loud bell sounded accompanied by a metallic click. Each door opened at the same time. How was I going to manage all these men?

‘Stay in line,’ I shouted as they pushed past me, jostling down the stairs. So much for an ‘orderly fashion’.

‘Fuck that, miss,’ retorted a man with a closely shaved head. ‘I’m bleeding starving. You need more bloody staff. Going to talk to the IMB, I am.’

The Independent Monitoring Board is a panel of volunteers from the public who visit prisoners to make sure that the proper standards of careand decency are being observed. An inmate, for example, might complain about the temperature of the cells or that the food portions are too small. The IMB then forwards this to higher authorities. It’s a good system in my view. Frankly, I had some sympathy for the man with the shaved head. As I was beginning to learn, staff shortages caused huge problems for all of us.

There were just two menleft now. One walked with hunched shoulders, revealing a large red dragon tattooed on his neck. Another was loitering at his door as if he didn’t want to leave, despite the fuss he’d been making earlier.

‘I need to show you summat, miss,’ he said in a soft voice.

Male prisoners often called women staff ‘miss’, regardless of marital status. That was something else we’d been taught.

‘Look.’

He was beckoning inside.

Never go into a pad unless someone knows your whereabouts.That’s what our training manual had said.

Hesitantly, I put my head round the door.