Marlham Women’s Prison was centred around an atrium encircled by metal walkways with Plexiglas sides and decks with rows of cells on each floor. It was ugly and noisy: even the lightest touch to a railing sent up a loud clang, like a sneeze in a silent church. It had been built originally as a sanatorium but now sprawled under a mass of fiddly red-brick extensions.
The cells were far more homely than the communal areas suggested. Not chintz and soft lighting, admittedly, but nor was it all shiny magnolia bricks and metal bars, as Porridge had led Kate to expect. It was more like a youth hostel, functional and sparse.
A tiny rectangular window sat high on the outside wall. The safety glass was frosted and there was no mechanism for opening it, but it still had four metal bars across it for good measure. Kate tried not to imagine the world beyond the window; it was easier. In her mind, there was her old life and a new future life waiting for her. This was the period of transition in between – limbo-like and necessary.
She wished she could tell the kids that she was all right and that it wasn’t as horrendous as they might have imagined. She had a cell to herself and was quite comfortable and warm. It could have been a lot worse. Unlike most new inmates, Kate wasn’t longing for her mattress at home. Quite the opposite. She felt cosy and safe in her new environment, enjoying the solace of a single bed.
Her musings were interrupted by a burly guard who came to her cell and unlocked the door that had only minutes before been locked; Kate didn’t yet understand the protocol.
‘Up you jump!’ The instruction was delivered as a friendly request more than an order.
Kate slipped off the bed and popped her feet into the open-backed, rubber-soled slippers that she had been issued with.
The guard strode ahead of her, using a combination of key and swipe card to gain access from one corridor to another. They criss-crossed several walkways until she found herself in a grey, cold, clinical bathroom. There was a single dull light bulb contained in what looked like a small cage. The sink was cracked with rust-coloured water marks running towards the plug hole. The atmosphere was damp, fungal.
‘You can shower, Kate.’
Kate smiled at her. ‘Thank you, I’d like that. How long have I got?’
The warder’s tone was pleasant. ‘Take as long as you need, my love.’
‘Really?’
The woman nodded. ‘There’s not much going on tonight. You take your time.’
Kate replayed the guard’s words over and over. ‘Take as long as you need, my love.’
She couldn’t believe it; those eight words were like music.
Kate stepped into one of four identical cubicles, noting the peculiar dairy-like smell of changing rooms and communal bathing. As she let the water pour over her head and body she laughed into its cascade. This quickly turned to crying. Her tears, however, were of relief, not sadness. She had already vowed never to shed a tear for Mark or for what she’d done to him. Never. Leisurely, she soaped her skin and shampooed her hair – twice! She stood in the small square confines long after she had finished washing and let the water pummel her skin just for the sheer joy of being able to.
Then she closed her eyes and catalogued this brand-new sensation. This was what it felt like to take a shower without a hammering heart, without setting a mental timer, without listing the chores to be done inside her head while her shaking hand fumbled for shampoo or soap under a too hot current.
She giggled. For the first time in over eighteen years, with a warder standing on the other side of the door and about to retire to a cell where she would be locked in for the night, she knew that she had been liberated from her own private hell.
‘Better?’ the guard asked as Kate stepped from the bathroom.
‘Oh yes, much.’
The tears came an hour later. The sobs from Kate’s cell could be heard along the corridor. There were several shouts of ‘Shut the fuck up!’ and a couple of more empathetic responses.
The guard on duty lingered at the end of the walkway. It wasn’t unusual for this to happen once the drama of the trial had faded and the realisation dawned on new prisoners that this was it for the next few years. She waited. Kate’s distress was evident. The warder