hair would be the least of her children’s worries.
The visiting room was functional and austere, smaller than she had imagined. Square tables and plastic chairs like the ones in the Mountbriers school hall sat uniformly in three rows of four. Security cameras blinked from every corner. The linoleum floor had been polished to a high shine. God help anyone in socks, thought Kate as she peered through the safety glass at the top of the door.
The visitors were already in situ, with some of her fellow inmates seated opposite them. It was fascinating for Kate to see the women she lived with interacting with their families and friends. A brassy, blonde scrapper called Moll was crying as she squinted at a photograph. Not such a tough nut after all.
Jojo, a neighbour of Kate’s, was wearing a vest, her wasted addict’s muscles on full display. She was slouched in a chair across from a woman who was unmistakably her mother, decked out in pearls and wearing a flashy watch. The older woman sat with lips pursed, eyes darting continually to the clock on the wall, disapproval and disappointment dripping from every pore.
Kate scanned the rest of the tables. Where are you, where are you?
Her eyes lighted on a familiar face. It was Natasha, the art teacher at Mountbriers and Kate’s one and only friend. She smiled widely to hide her disappointment. Not her children, not today.
Natasha sat cleaning and admiring her nails, before twisting the beads on her chunky bangle to best show off their pattern. She surveyed the decor as though she were rendezvousing in Costa Coffee on a sunny day rather than visiting her jailbird friend. Natasha looked as if she had stepped from a pavement cafe in St Tropez. Her skin held the burnish of a recent tan. Silver and diamante clips attempted to hold her unruly hair at bay, which she had grown to shoulder length. Her vest sat snugly over her slender, bra-less form and a multi-coloured patchwork skirt pooled in a fan around her chair. Kate knew it would not have occurred to her friend to opt for demure or depressed.
Kate took the seat opposite Natasha and worried momentarily how they would start. But Natasha hardly blinked, as though it had been a few minutes and not many months since they had last seen each other.
‘Okay, so I once stole a bottle of Panda Pop when I was twelve, but was too scared to repeat the exercise, so I gave up thievery there and then. Every time there was an early-evening knock at the door I thought it was the police coming to get me! I used to hide, sweating under the duvet until my dad sent them away.’
Kate shook her head, trying to pick up the thread.
‘It was more of a dare and not my thing at all. Oh, and I also sneaked a look at your notebook once, when you left it on the kitchen table at Mountbriers. I read a list of chores, all quite standard, and saw a picture of a flower that you had scrawled, which wasn’t very good, your perspective was all wrong. I remember thinking, God, I hope this is a bloody code for something deviant and exciting – no one’s life can be this boring! And finally, drum roll please, I did have a teeny tiny crush on Cattermole, the school chaplain. I think I saw myself in some Thornbirdsesque illicit love affair, with the poor chap caught between his devotion to the church and his lust for me.’
Natasha raised one of her elegantly arched eyebrows and flashed Kate a wicked grin.
‘So, there we have it, Kate, my confession to you; things I didn’t share but probably should have, knowing that you wouldn’t have judged me and that you’d have loved and helped me no matter what. Now it’s your turn!’
Kate laughed until the tears gathered.
‘Oh, Tash, I never told anyone. I couldn’t.’
‘I’m teasing you, honey. We’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘I guess we do. I hated pretending to you, to everyone, but especially you. I reached a point where I just couldn’t do it any more.’
‘Do you know what, mate? I knew something wasn’t right. He was a pig of a man in a number of ways, but I had no idea of the extent of your suffering. I guessed at a bit of bullying, but when I heard the full detail…’ Natasha paused to compose herself. ‘I think you are a remarkable woman,