mind as surely as if Janeece had spoken the words out loud: ‘Because I’m not very good at it. I don’t read because I can’t read very well, I don’t know all the words…’
‘Did your mother or your teacher never read you a book? My daughter used to love that.’
Janeece shook her head slightly, to indicate ‘no’ and also to banish the image of her mother, the slapping flat hand with the long nails that scratched, her voice like a machine gun in her head: ‘You are a fat, useless piece of shit; you are nothing and you will always be nothing, just like your shit of a father.’
‘Would you like me to read it to you?’
Kate showed her the cover.
‘Wha’?’
Janeece pulled her head back on her shoulders. Was this woman mad? Did she look like a baby that wanted story time?
‘I said, would you like me to read it to you? It’s a lovely story, I think you’ll like it! But, Janeece, be warned, once you fall in love with Hardy it can become a bit of an addiction. We would then have to progress to Far from, and Tess of course.’
Without speaking, Janeece sloped around the table and pulled out the chair opposite Kate’s.
‘How much of it are you goin’ to read?’
Maybe she would listen, just for a bit.
‘Oh, Janeece, I am going to read all of it, cover to cover, word for word; all of it! Not eighty or so words here and there, but all of it and then, if I like, I might go right back to the beginning and read it all over again!’
‘But you’d already know what ’appens!’
Janeece shook her head as though it was Kate that had misunderstood the concept of book reading.
‘Oh, I’ve already read it many times. But that’s the lovely thing about books; they are never the same twice. Every time I read this story I picture something different, learn something new, and the ending always takes me slightly by surprise. It’s like heading to a particular destination, but taking a different route each time you go. That way you see and feel new things each time you travel, and when you arrive, it’s always a bit of a mystery quite how you ended up there! So, Janeece, would you like to go on this journey with me?’
The girl considered this.
‘Awright. But most people in here don’ mix with me cos I’m dangerous.’
‘Well, I am not most people and I think we can all be a bit dangerous, when provoked. Now, are you sitting comfortably, as they say?’
‘What you in for?’
‘Janeece, are we going to start this book or not?’
‘Yeah, but I wanna know what you’s in for. I wanna know who I’m mixin’ wiv.’
‘I don’t know why it is important, but if you insist. I am here because I killed someone. I stabbed my husband with a very sharp knife and I watched him bleed to death. I just sat and watched until he gurgled his last breath. He tried to ask for help, tried to beg, but I didn’t listen to his pleas and I certainly wasn’t going to help him.’
Kate was trying to earn her stripes.
‘Why d’you do that?’
The girl was all ears. Bingo!
Kate leant across the table and whispered conspiratorially, ‘He wasn’t very nice to me, Janeece.’
Janeece had nothing more to say.
Kate began:
To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality.
* * *
Remembering the day she introduced Janeece to reading always gave Kate a small swell of pride. Yes, she was in here, her skin slowly greying from the lack of fresh air and good veg, but that really didn’t matter in the great scheme of things. What mattered was each small difference she could make to someone else’s life.
Her cell door was ajar and Kate became aware of a presence in the doorway. Janeece’s Herculean form stood blocking the light, a piece of A4 paper clutched in her hand.
‘Is everything all right, dear?’
It was rare for the girl to come to Kate’s cell; the two usually met in the reading room or in class. Kate couldn’t