The Ice Cream Girls (15 page)

We stare at each other for a moment then, without a word, we exchange papers and she turns away, shutting the door firmly behind her as she returns to her house, to her life.

poppy

I have a letter postmarked HMP Colfrane.

It’s from Tina. I wrote to her with this address, but I didn’t think she would use it. I sit down on the third stair and eagerly rip it open. I expect to see lots of black ‘censored’ lines on it. She used to write lots of dodgy things in her letters when she wrote to me, just to have them censored, just to wind up the screws. And to make me laugh, of course, always to make me laugh.

‘Well, aren’t you a special lil’ ray o’ sunshine,’ the woman said, sitting opposite me at my lone table.

I looked up at her, not really comprehending what she was saying through the general haze that surrounded me, and her strong West Indian accent – I wasn’t sure if it was from Jamaica or somewhere else. I couldn’t understand a lot of things. This was my first trip to the dining hall, I usually just ate in my room, but I had ventured here and now sat at a table, all alone. Until this woman showed up.

‘Come on darlin’, smile, it not dat bad.’

Where do you think we are, in a café?
I asked her silently.
At the Queen’s garden party? How could this not be ‘dat bad’?

‘M’ never taut m’ see da day, y’know?’ she said. ‘Black girl go free, white girl bang up.’ She knew who I was, most people in here probably knew who I was. ‘We all waitin’ to see your friend, not you.’

I stared down at my plate, prodded at the grey mush in front of me with my plastic fork. I wasn’t hungry, but a part of me was telling me to eat. To eat, to sleep, to try to keep going as normally as possible because there was always the appeal. There was always the chance that I wouldn’t be here for long. The truth would be revealed and I could get out of here. That part of me had my dad’s voice. Although I had not heard from him since the guilty verdict – and only Mum had dropped off a suitcase of hastily packed clothes and belongings at the prison gate, then left – the voice inside that was telling me everything would work out and I’d soon be free was my dad’s.

‘It not so bad, y’know.’

I scowled at her in my head; on my face I wouldn’t dare. She was terrifying. Everyone here was terrifying. I should not be in this place with these criminals and I knew, in deep down places, that I was going to come to some harm here.

‘M’ call Tina. Call me de welcoming committee,’ she said. She smiled, showing yellowing teeth that looked like they had once been straight and white and strong.

‘Led me give you some advice,’ she said.

I continued to prod at the mush on my plate. I hadn’t even attempted to cut the bread roll to butter it – it looked like a slab of brown marble and sounded like one when it had been dropped on to my tray.

‘You be awright, y’know, if you keep your head down. Don’t budder no one, and no one budder you. Y’hear?’

I nodded without really listening. ‘An’ Poppy da Ice Cream Girl be careful who your friends are, y’know. M’ talk to everyone who talk to me, me have no friends, friends, y’know.’

No, I don’t know
, I thought.
I have no idea what you’re talking about
. But I nodded all the same. I nodded because she might leave me alone quicker if I did.

‘You keep yourself to yourself, it safer dat way, m’ promise you.’

That
I understood and agreed with. I wasn’t going to befriend anyone in here. I was nothing like these people, they were not the sort of people I’d be friends with. I wasn’t going to be here that long anyway. What did I need friends for? Especially when they were all criminals.

‘You tink you better dan all of us, eh?’ Tina asked.

My cheeks flushed that she’d been reading my mind.

‘You not, y’know. Not in da eyes of da law. Dem screws, dey make sure you know it every single day. And dem udders, dey won’t like you lookin’ down on dem. You tink you better dan everyone else, fine, jus’ hide it better, girl. Hide it deep, for you own good.’

She was right, I had to be careful, I had to be really careful in here about what other people found out about me.

‘And listen carefully now, dis important: stay away from drugs.’

Drugs? Is she pulling my leg? Even if I was into drugs, how would I get them in here?
I looked up at her, confused and sceptical. I thought she had some good advice, but she was clearly a bit doo-lally.

‘Girl, you face!’ she leaned forwards and lowered her voice. ‘Dere more drugs in here dan out dere, y’know. Jus’ be careful. When someone offer it to you, say no. It’s hard. You get so lonely and sad and scared in here, dat you want any-ting to make it feel better, to kill da bird. An’ dere udders who give you drugs first for free. To help you out, dey say. Dey jus’ want you to owe dem. Den they’ll be wanting you to get people to smuggle it in. An’ you do it, too. Once you got a habit, you do any-ting to get it. Any-ting. I seen nice gals, y’know? Like you. All nice and prim, wouldn’t say boo to a goose when dey get here. Den drugs get dem. And den, dem decrutching udder girls to get de drugs out and beating dem friends, making dem maddas smuggle in money and jewellery an’ tings to get de drugs.’

‘What’s decrutching?’ I asked.

‘You don’t wanna fin’ out, trust me. Jus’ stay away from de drugs. Dey is bad news all round, man, bad news.’

‘I’ll try to remember that.’

‘I mean it, y’know. An’ don’t do no favours for anyone. They be all nicey-nicey, tell you some sob story, ask to borrow you phonecard, for you to get dem som-ting from da canteen. Don’t do it. Everyone got a sad story. You start to do favours, dey take advantage. Or dey start to get you ready to smuggle drugs in for dem. Jus’ say no, to everyone and every-ting. Y’hear?’

I nodded. If I was to trust no one, then why was she helping me? I asked her this.

She smiled that wide, tarnished smile of hers again. ‘M’ tell all de new girls who look as scared as you do dis stuff. It’s what m’ want when m’ first got here. But, girl, dey never listen. Dey forget, dey don’t believe me, dey tink dey know better. At de end of de day, dey stupid. Are you stupid, Poppy da Ice Cream Girl? Dat is de question you have to ask yourself. You get yourself a job, keep ya head down, you be fine.’

‘What are you in for?’ I asked. She seemed so nice, kind, gentle. Like me, she was probably innocent and she didn’t belong here.

‘Dat’s anudder ting m’ mean to tell you, never ask dat. If someone gonna tell ya, dey tell ya. Not everyone as famous as you, y’know. But you hear tings, you always hear tings, and you find out eventually. Don’t ask doe.’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Ain’t no ting. Me? M’ grow up with strict parents, m’ dada die, m’ madda and m’ we start rowin’. We row an’ we row an’ den me run away. M’ tink m’ big grown woman, m’ can survive on m’ own. An’ den me start up really nice, find a new yard, small job. M’ get involved with a man, nice white boy him, put m’ on drugs, put m’ on streets. Nice boy, rich parents. When m’ get arrested first time, him parents take care of him, bail him out, give de judge de speech about how he was corrupted by dis dirty black girl. Him walk. Me? Two stretch. Den in and out of prison. But dis time . . . I get five stretch for trying to smuggle drugs into the country. And life for killing the bastard that rape me to get his drugs out of me.’

Nausea rose like a tidal wave inside me, threatening to spill out of my mouth on to the table. I was sitting in front of a murderer. A real-life killer. She had killed someone, removed them from this earth and she didn’t seem ashamed of it. She said it, just like that. She seemed so nice, so innocent. But she was a drug addict, a prostitute and a killer. And I thought she was just like me.

‘Don’t look so shock dere Ice Cream Girl. M’ know m’ business. De man beat me an’ rape me. Even when he got him drugs he rape again and again. And me know de poe-leece no do nuffin’. I a prostitute, right? I do what I do so me don’t deserve to say no to a man. Me know de risks, right? I know all dis. I take it. He rape me an’ rape me an’ me take it. Den, he go and den he come back, he say he gonna fix me so no one ever look at me again, and I never have chil’ren. He try to hurt me, and m’ say no more. M’ no take it no more. M’ hit him, catch him off guard, m’ take him knife, m’ stab him to save m’self. Self-defence.’

‘Self-defence?’ I echoed.

‘Self-defence if you a nice rich, white girl, but not if you ex-prostitute wid accent. Dey only know abou’ de drug smuggling cos m’ tole dem. M’ try to be honest.’

What am I doing here?
I asked myself. I was tempted to stand up on the table and scream it at the top of my lungs: ‘WHAT AM I DOING HERE?’

‘Poppy da Ice Cream Girl, don’t look so scared. You be fine, as long as you no stupid. And you no look so scared. De strong ones dey feed on you fear. Even when you strong yourself, you show fear at start, dey pick on you. Hide you fear, hide it good. You have you own room, dat easier.’ She stood up, picked up her tray. ‘Don’t be stupid Poppy da Ice Cream Girl, dat how tings work in here. You don’t be stupid, you stay safe. See ya.’

She walked towards a table of other black women, who all greeted her with a smile and they started chatting, the sound of their voices blurring into the general noise around me. The haze I’d been living in the past few days, ever since I left the hospital wing, descended again. I felt calm again. But Tina’s words stayed lodged in my head. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ She was a drug addict, a prostitute and killer. If there was anyone that would know how things worked in here it was her. I should listen to her.

‘But why do I have to move, Miss?’ I asked the screw who had dropped a couple of black binliners on the floor of my room and told me to pack up because I was being ghosted. Not out of the prison, though – out of this room, off this level, down to somewhere else.

I liked this landing – as much as I could like anything to do with this place. It was quieter up here with the other lifers, even though I was the by far the youngest of them on this level. Although, technically, I was a young offender and should have been with other offenders my age, they had no single rooms on that wing, and being famous and a lifer meant I was allocated a room of my own. My room – small and cramped and hideous with its cockroaches and creeping damp – was still my own space. It still meant I could dress alone after a shower, I could put things wherever I wanted. I could do whatever I wanted. All the rooms on the four landings below this one were shared rooms, a few dormitories on the lower level. I thought that being notorious had this going for it at least – why was that being ripped away from me too? They already had my freedom, why were they taking away something else as well?

‘Don’t ask questions, EX396798, just do as you’re told,’ she replied in her gravelly smoker’s voice.

My hackles rose at this screw’s use of my number. She loved doing that; loved to remind you that you don’t officially have your name any more, that since the moment you walked in here, you became a number. On every piece of paper that relates to you, that number has to be written. If they so chose, they could forgo noting down your God-given name at all and just use your number. This screw in particular also loved to use your number so you never forgot she had a long and detailed memory. Oh, and to remind you that she was a fucking bastard.

Sometimes I would be stopped short by how quickly I started to speak and think like the other prisoners: how easily I’d started to resent the prison officers, how quickly I started to swear, how I picked up the lingo. I had been here six months, was allocated to stay here, and sometimes I felt like the girls who’d been here years.

‘I haven’t done anything wrong, Miss,’ I stated, ‘I don’t see why I should move.’

‘I’ll be back in ten minutes, anything you haven’t packed gets sent to the incinerator. Got that?’ she said, her voice sounding more gravelly than it had two minutes ago. I was going to sound like that if I didn’t stop smoking. I’d only started since I’d been in here. But cigarettes were something to do, a silent but constant companion, another way to kill bird. I understood now what Tina meant about drugs being appealing. After a few months, when it dawns on you that even appeals can take years to come through, you start to look around for other things to occupy your time, your mind, your body. You look for escape routes wherever you can, anything to kill that bird called time.

‘Yes, Miss.’ I snatched up the bags then began to unpeel all the pictures and magazine pages I’d stuck with little globules of toothpaste to the noticeboard and walls of my room. That bastard screw wouldn’t even tell me where I was being ghosted to.

I soon found out: ‘Welcome, welcome to the party room,’ Tina said, flashing me her less-than-perfect smile and opening her arms wide to show me my new quarters. ‘I’m so glad we are going to be sharing,’ she said.

This, this move, was all down to her. In general, prisoners did not dictate such things, but I had a feeling this was down to her. She seemed to have some sway with the other prisoners but that obviously extended to the Big Luv, because look where I was. Away from my welcomed solitude to this. I’d never even shared with my sister when I was at home, now I was expected to do so with her, a complete stranger. An ex-tom, ex-smackhead, and murderer. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of time for Tina, I had a lot of respect, but that didn’t mean us sharing would be a good idea. Especially not when I had my appeal coming up and I had to prepare myself mentally for it. It’d probably be the first time I would see my dad since I’d been in here. Mum came to visit every so often, so I’d seen her, but not Granny Morag. And Granny Morag probably wasn’t going to be at the appeal because she’d be taking care of Bella and Logan who certainly wouldn’t be coming. I would see Dad, though.