Page 22 of The Stranger in Room Six

I have nightmares about Gerald conspiring with other inmates to beat me up. I’m so scared in the morning that I refuse to leave the cell, despite being given a second strike. Three, and I go to Solitary. I stop eating. I stop drinking. How can I live without my girls? Will they ever forgive me?

Solitary means a bleak single cell without a window, for twenty-four hours a day. A kindly prison officer entreats me to ‘eat something, love’. I can’t. The weight drops off me and they have to find me a smaller-sized tracksuit. Then I’m called into a room marked Visits.

‘Elspeth,’ I whisper, too weak to talk any louder.

She looks older. Strained. ‘You’re so thin, Mum,’ she says, making to give me a cuddle.

‘NO TOUCHING!’ roars the guard.

‘Gillian wouldn’t let me come before. Uncle Derek said we should cut ourselves off. But I still love you, Mum.’

Tears stream down my cheeks. ‘Thank you,’ I sob. ‘Tell me, what’s it like at home?’

‘We’ve had to leave the house,’ she whispers. ‘Journalists kept knocking on the door. They wanted to talk to us but we wouldn’t, so we’re staying at Uncle Derek’s.’

My heart sinks. Will he turn my younger daughter against me too? I try to remember that it’s better for them to be with their uncle than on their own.

‘Uncle Derek is arranging the funeral.’ Elspeth’s eyes swim with tears. ‘We had to wait until the autopsy was carried out.’

The funeral? How could I have forgotten that there’d be one? I could blame it on the shock of Gerald’s death but, to be honest, it’s more the shock of being in here.

‘I don’t know if they’ll give me leave to go,’ I say, remembering how the other day a woman in the dining room was cursing everything in sight because she’d been refused permission to go to her ‘nan’s wake’.

Elspeth looks down at the ground. ‘Uncle Derek thinks it’s best that you don’t because of … the situation.’

Of course. Why would he want his brother’s murderer turning up at his grave?

‘He says it will encourage more journalists to be there.’

I’m trying to summon the courage to ask the question that has been hammering in my head since this all began. ‘Have you heard from …’ I finally blurt out.

I want to say Karen’s name, but I can’t bear to taste it in my mouth.

My daughter seems to understand. ‘That woman? No.’

Then a guard comes in and says it’s time for her to go.

‘Will you come again?’ I beg.

Elspeth nods. ‘But please eat. They told me you’re refusing food. I don’t want to lose you too, Mum.’

So she still cares. Tears stream down my cheeks in gratitude. ‘Are you able to concentrate at school?’ I ask.

Another nod. Her eyes are wet.

‘And what about your sister?’

‘She’s working hard too but she won’t talk about you.’

I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘We all have our own way of dealing with things.’

‘I said, visiting time is over!’

Elspeth clutches my arm. ‘Will you be all right, Mum?’

‘NO TOUCHING!’

‘I’m all right as long as you two are,’ I choke, desperately trying not to cry for her sake. ‘I’m sorry about your father. I really am.’

Tears are rolling down both our cheeks now. ‘I know you are, Mum. I’ll come again as soon as I can.’

A guard leads me away. I walk with my head turned so I can see Elspeth’s face for as long as possible. I keep staring until her brown hair turns into a speck in the sea of visitors and she disappears altogether.

When I get back to my cell, I find people coming in and out. ‘Get her away from here,’ snaps a guard to the officer beside me.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Your cellmate’s only gone and topped herself.’

An ice-cold shiver goes through me.

I’m ushered away, but not before I spot the pool of blood on the floor.

They take me to the guards’ office at the end of the wing, where I’m told to sit down. The door is shut.

‘Did your cellmate seem suicidal to you?’ says the woman opposite me.

‘No,’ I whisper.

‘What about the toothbrush?’

‘The one she kept chewing?’

‘So, you knew about it. Did you never think to tell anyone?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because she chewed it down to a sharp point and then stabbed her own artery.’

I’m stunned into silence. How had I not known? ‘It helps to calm my nerves,’ she’d told me. And, naive as I was, I’d believed her.

‘Couldn’t cope with the shame of embezzling funds from her boss,’ the officer continued. ‘One of the big papers was about to run a piece on her.’

‘But she said she’d murdered her husband because he’d tried to throttle her.’

‘Rubbish. Our Shirley was a big-time fraudster. Thousands, she got away with.’

‘Perhaps,’ I say, finding my voice becoming stronger, ‘she killed herself because she couldn’t live without her three-year-old.’

‘Told you that one too, did she? There was no three-year-old. She just had a random photograph to get sympathy. A bit of a fantasist, you could say.’

I gasp. ‘So she lied?’

‘Takes one to know one,’ says the officer chillingly. ‘Come on. All that stuff about you pushing your old man by accident. You wanted him dead didn’t you, Lady Belinda?’