Page 23 of The Stranger in Room Six

It doesn’t take long for ‘Lady Belinda’ to catch on. One of the guards clearly took against my ‘posh accent’, and now everyone uses it.

I try to ignore it but it rankles. My mother had always taught me to speak the ‘Queen’s English’. There had been no preparation at all for a life of crime. I count my blessings that she isn’t here to see this.

As the days pass, I begin to wish I’d pleaded not guilty.

‘You got bad advice,’ says my new cellmate when I am naive enough to share this with her. ‘Your lawyer should have said there were extenuating circumstances.’

She says the phrase with such fluidity and certainty that it’s clear she’s familiar with it.

Word has it that this woman, with her steely eyes, is part of a much-feared family gang.

This is her third time – or is it the fourth?

– in jail. Opinion differs. People tiptoe around her. No one wants to get on the wrong side.

I might not have known my previous cellmate very well, but the horror of her death haunts my every waking hour. At night, she adds to my nightmares about Gerald.

‘Shut up, for Christ’s sake,’ my cellmate complains when I wake screaming from a dream where my husband is bleeding to death on the pavement after slashing his wrists with a toothbrush. ‘How am I meant to get any sleep?’

Rather surprisingly, I learn that she has a daughter, younger than Elspeth, who is expecting a child. ‘I need to be with them,’ she says. ‘They’ll need my help and protection.’

‘Protection against what?’ I ask.

She looks at me as if I’ve asked a daft question. ‘From gangs or the authorities. You can’t trust anyone in this life, Lady Belinda.’

What kind of world have I entered? Karen has ruined my life. She’s ruined all our lives. And now she’s disappeared off the face of the earth.

I feel so angry that, if she was here, I’d kill her.

‘Stop it,’ I say to myself. ‘You’re not like that.’

But the more I think about it, the more the idea takes hold. Karen needs to pay for destroying our family.

Imran has applied to visit several times now, and each time I tick the ‘NO’ box, with a heavy heart.

Then a letter arrives:

Please allow me to visit you. I expect you’re ashamed of what you did but I am also certain – because I do still know you Belinda, even after all these years – that you didn’t mean to hurt your husband.

How can he say that he knows me? It’s been so long, and yet I suppose there was a time when he knew me better than anyone in the world. I think back to walks, hand in hand along the river in Oxford, his arm around me. I am leaning into his jacket, sheltering from the wind. I feel safe. Loved.

But I know now how dangerous a letter can be. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to keep his first one, Gillian might not hate me as much as she does. I tear up the page, angry at myself.

Then I receive another visitor request. It comes through internal mail.

This is different from post delivered from the outside, which is handed out every morning.

You can tell who hasn’t received anything from their dropped faces and the way they slink back down the corridor, in contrast to the ones who open their envelopes with a mixture of ‘Bloody hell’ and ‘Yes!’ at the news inside.

I look at the name on the Request to Visit Prisoner form. It says P. Black. I don’t know anyone of that name. Supposing it’s someone from the press who wants to berate me for what I’ve done? But then again, what if it’s genuinely important? Against my instinct, I tick the ‘YES’ box.

For the next week, I shake and shiver, unsure if I’m ill or whether it’s nerves.

When I go into the visitors’ room, my mouth is dry with apprehension. Then I take in the petite woman with the smart, pointed lime-green shoes.

A shock of recognition shoots through me. This is the receptionist from Gerald’s office, Penny. The woman I met minutes before pushing my husband to his death.

My visitor is visibly trembling. ‘I’ve never been in a prison before,’ she wobbles, looking around as though someone is going to attack her. ‘But I had to come. I felt you should know the truth about your husband and Karen. Did you know they had a child?’