three days now (did I mention that already?) and . . . well, I’m beginning to worry. There’s not much to do in here, and there’s a lot of time to think and fret and start to build up catastrophes inside your head.
I’ve spent the last few days and nights doing that. Worrying that you didn’t get the letter. Worrying that the prison authorities didn’t pass it on (can they do that without telling me? I honestly don’t know). Worrying that I didn’t explain right.
It’s the last one that has been keeping me awake. Because if it’s that, then it’s my fault.
I was trying to keep it short and snappy, but now I’m thinking, I shouldn’t have stopped so quickly. I should have put in more of the facts, tried to show you why I’m innocent. Because you can’t just take my word for it—I get that.
When I came here, the other women—I can be honest with you, Mr. Wrexham—they felt like another species. It’s not that I think I’m better than them. But they all seemed . . . they all seemed to fit in here. Even the frightened ones, the self-harmers and the ones who screamed and banged their heads against their cell walls and cried at night, even the girls barely out of school. They looked . . . I don’t know. They looked like they belonged here, with their pale, gaunt faces and their pulled-back hair and their blurred tattoos. They looked . . . well, they looked guilty.
But I was different.
I’m English, for a start, of course, which didn’t help. I couldn’t understand them when they got angry and started shouting and all up in my face. I had no idea what half the slang meant. And I was visibly middle-class, in a way that I can’t put my finger on but which might as well have been written across my forehead as far as the other women were concerned.
But the main thing was, I had never been in prison. I don’t think I’d ever even met someone who had, before I came here. There were secret codes I couldn’t decipher, and currents I had no way of navigating. I didn’t understand what was going on when one woman passed something to another in the corridor and all of a sudden the wardens came barreling out, shouting. I didn’t see the fights coming; I didn’t know who was off her meds, or who was coming down from a high and might lash out. I didn’t know the ones to avoid or the ones with permanent PMS. I didn’t know what to wear or what to do, or what would get you spat on or punched by the other inmates, or what would provoke the wardens to come down hard on you.
I sounded different. I looked different. I felt different.
And then one day I went into the bathroom and I caught a glimpse of a woman walking towards me from the far corner. She had her hair scraped back like all the others, her eyes were like chips of granite, and her face was set, hard and white. My first thought was, Oh God, she looks pissed off; I wonder what she’s in for.
My second thought was, Maybe I’d better use the other bathroom.
And then I realized.
It was a mirror on the far wall. The woman was me.
It should have been a shock—the realization that I wasn’t different at all but just another woman sucked into this soulless system. But in a strange way it helped.
I still don’t fit in completely. I’m still the English girl—and they all know what I’m in for. In prison they don’t like people who harm children, Mr. Wrexham; you probably know that. I’ve told them it’s not true, of course—what I’m accused of. But they look at me and I know what they’re thinking—They all say that.
And I know—I know that’s what you’ll be thinking too. That’s what I wanted to say. I understand if you’re skeptical. I didn’t manage to convince the police, after all. I’m here. Without bail. I must be guilty.
But it’s not true.
I have 140 days to convince you. All I have to do is tell the truth, right? I just have to start at the beginning and set it all out, clearly and calmly, until I get to the end.
And the beginning was the advert.
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