The Ice Cream Girls (16 page)

I needed time and space to prepare myself, not this. Not this sharing nightmare.

Tina already had her bed picked out, her locker beside her bed had a few cosmetics on top, all neatly lined up, and a Good News Bible resting proudly on the edge of the locker closest to her bed. The sink in the corner had her toothbrush and a tube of Crest toothpaste sitting in a tin mug. Her noticeboard was covered in postcards from Jamaica and photos of her family. I only had a few photos of my family. A few I had hastily packed the night before the last day of the trial, when something in me told me to at least pack a bag in case. I packed it, but had left it at home. Serena’s family, apparently, had a bag with them. She’d been ready to go down, which is maybe where I went wrong. I stupidly believed that being innocent meant I’d be sent home with the Court’s apologies.

The metal-framed bed on the opposite side of the room to Tina’s was neatly made up, with hospital corners and the white sheet folded down at the top over the thin, grey, scratchy prison-issue blanket. I was touched: she’d obviously done it – there was no way in hell a screw would do anything like that.

‘I don’t understand what I’m doing here,’ I said, sitting down on my new bed with the two binbags of my belongings slumped beside my feet.

‘Poppy the Ice Cream Girl, sometimes it’s better not to question these things. Sometimes it’s better to just embrace it.’

‘How can I embrace something that’s basically a loss of privileges?’

‘Did they say you were losing privileges?’

‘No, but this isn’t exactly good, is it?’

‘People would kill to be in here with me. Even when there’s overcrowding they don’t put just anyone in here because they know what an honour it is to be with me. Stop complaining or I might think you’re not really my friend.’

‘You were the one who warned me off being friends with people in here, now you’re saying that we’re friends?’

‘Every young girl who comes in here for the first time needs to be told to stay away from “friends”. It stops them making stupid mistakes and it makes them take their time to suss people out before they get to know them. Otherwise, you would all become friends with the first person who smiles at you. And a snake’s smile can be very pretty. Very pretty indeed.’

I flopped back on the cardboard-like mattress, stared up at the grey-cream ceiling with its cracked and peeling paint. My appeal had to go well. They had to quash my conviction and set me free – I couldn’t take much more of this.

‘Let me tell you the rules for this room,’ Tina said.

Rules, of course there were rules. Everything had a rule in here. ‘We don’t sleep too late, we get up, sweep the floor, mop it with bleach every other day – that helps to keep the cockroaches away. Tidy your bed, keep your things neat. You wash up anything you use straight away. We can take it in turns to get Sunlight soap from the canteen to wash underwear. We try to get as much time outside as possible – it’s good for the mind and soul to be outside in God’s fresh air. We don’t play the radio too loud. And we have as much fun as possible.’

‘This isn’t a holiday camp, and we’re not here for fun,’ I said.

I heard Tina rustling around in her locker and then, after a fashion, the click-click of plastic on plastic. She was probably knitting, a lot of women did that in here to keep sane and to keep them off the fags. I could not summon the energy nor will to lift my head to see what she was making.

‘You know what your problem is, Poppy?’ she said. ‘You want to be rescued. You long to be rescued but you’re not willing to do it for yourself. And you cannot see a good rescue when it hits you over the head.’

‘You’ve rescued me?’ I asked. ‘How? Because all I can see are four walls and a window with bars on it and a metal door I’m not allowed a key to.’

‘You’re so pathetic sometimes, I wonder why I like you,’ she replied. She obviously avoided answering my question because we both knew she had not rescued me. She had probably just called in some favours to get herself a roommate. ‘Tell me what your favourite colour is so I can make you a blanket for your new bed.’

‘Green,’ I said.

‘Baby blue it is then,’ she replied, and the clickity-click got faster.

‘Hang on,’ I said to her, lifting my head to watch her sit cross-legged on her bed, knitting, ‘what happened to your accent? You don’t sound West Indian any more, you sound like Northern Shona, like you’re from Yorkshire.’

‘I am,’ she said with a grin as she scrutinised the line of stitches she was creating. ‘Would you have listened to a word someone with my real accent was saying? Would you heckers! To someone like you, a Jamaican accent is probably a bit scary, but definitely unforgettable. And before you ask, yes, everything I told you about my story and why I’m here is true. Every word. Every bleeding word.’

I rested my head back on the mattress again. Shamefully, she was right, her real accent would have been lost in the white noise in my head – her Jamaican accent, being so alien to me, kept repeating in my head when I got into a situation that she had warned me against.

‘And by the way, you say “Caribbean”, not “West Indian”.’

‘OK,’ I said. After a few seconds, I raised my head again. ‘I really don’t like blue that much.’

‘It’s only a scarf,’ she countered. ‘I’m sure you’ll love it.’

‘A scarf? You said a blanket a minute ago.’

‘Girl, do you think I’m going to use up all my spends on wool to make a blanket? Are you mad?’

‘It’s true,’ one woman said to the other.

‘Really,’ said the other.

‘Yes! Alicia was cleaning the Big Luv’s office and she heard Black Tina tell him he’d have blood on his hands if he didn’t move the Ice Cream Girl into a shared room before her appeal. After the appeal would be too late.’

‘Alicia ought not to be listening at doors like that.’

‘I told her, she won’t listen. But she was right, cos Black Tina’s got the Ice Cream Girl as a roommate.’

‘Black Tina always calls it right, though. She can see who’s going to top themselves a mile off.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah.’

The two other women, older than me and older than Tina, were standing in the corridor that led to the showers and didn’t know I was standing just around the corner, listening to them. I’d been on my way to get another shower in after spending the day getting all dusty while helping out in the library, when something in the way they were talking just around the corner made me stop where I was out of sight and listen. You got to know which conversations were worth listening in on very quickly in here. You found out the best gossip, the real news and, of course, you found out how vicious people could be about other people. Now I knew why Tina and I were sharing. She thought I was weak enough to do that. She thought I was like the other women who had done that. I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. I hadn’t even done any cutting up in about three months and the scars on my arms were starting to heal. There was no need to. I didn’t need the release I’d discovered in here from cutting up any more. I knew my appeal was going to be heard and my conviction quashed, worst-case scenario I’d be given a new trial. Tina really had no reason to worry about me. I didn’t mind that she’d been grassing me up, because it was out of concern. And she really had nothing to worry about.

I stared up at the window of the cell: the bars looked thicker, more solid now that I was going to be here longer. Now I was going to be here for ever. They had strengthened themselves because with my current need to escape, I could probably bend them with my bare hands. I could pull them clean out of the wall like Wonder Woman. I could rip apart the steel door and push aside every single person who stood in my way to get out of here. That was why the bars looked stronger, that was why the door seemed more solid – they were preparing themselves for a fight.

‘You would do well, young lady, to concentrate on paying your debt to society, to stop wasting the Court’s time with appeals and to admit what you have done. There is a certain grace in admitting your failings, and it will help you in the future when it comes to release if you confess and face up to what you have done.’

This time, I did not need a few days for the judge’s words to sink in, to assimilate the knowledge that no one believed me, that they weren’t going to quash my conviction, nor give me a new trial on the basis that the original verdict was unsafe. This time I had heard everything that was said when it was said. And I knew it was the final nail in the coffin. No new evidence meant no chance of anyone listening to me. All they had to do was listen to me. I wasn’t a liar. Yes, I had lied a couple of times, only to do with Marcus and to make sure no one found out about us. And I had hidden the clothes I was wearing that night because I was scared. But I was not a liar. And I would never lie about something as important as this.

No one believed me, though. Not even the two people who were meant to love me more than anything: Granny Morag had shown up at the court every day for the three days of the appeal because Mum and Dad did not need a babysitter. They did not come to the appeal. They thought I was liar, too, apparently. They thought I had got what I deserved. Only Granny Morag believed in me.

The image of her crying as the judge gave his verdict branded itself on my mind, on my corneas, like red-hot metal on flesh. Only the two of us in court knew the truth. Everyone else was there to see me get sent down again or to cover it for whichever publication or show they worked for. No one was interested in the truth.

Even my solicitor and barrister hadn’t been able to look me in the eye after the verdict. And when I mentioned another appeal, they had both exchanged looks and advised me to take some time to reassess what I wanted to do. In other words, you can appeal again if you want, but without us.

The thought kept playing in my mind.

Tina came back to the room after being somewhere else. She had tried to comfort me when I came back but, when I would not let her touch me and would not speak to her, she had wisely decided to leave me alone. As I would be properly, if it wasn’t for her interfering.

‘Come on now, love, you’ve got to get up,’ she said. ‘Get changed out of your suit and put on some civvies. Seeing you all dolled up like that gives me the willies.’

‘This is your fault,’ I said to her, quietly, but forcefully. I wanted her to know that I knew what she had done. How she had taken a part in this conspiracy against me. ‘You jinxed me. By getting me moved in here, you jinxed me.’

‘I wish I were that powerful,’ she said, calmly. ‘Pops, I’ve been around a long time, I’ve seen this time and time again. Very few people, especially those convicted of murder, get out on the first appeal – especially if someone else hasn’t come forward and confessed to doing it. I didn’t want you to be alone if it happened to you.’

‘Who died and made you my mother?’ I asked nastily.

‘You say you’re innocent, so don’t let this be the end of it. You have to get up, and get back to trying to prove you’re innocent. Write letters to people who can help you, find a new brief – because most of them jump ship after the first appeal fails – and get back out there, fighting. Don’t take this lying down.’

‘I don’t see you doing any of that,’ I said. ‘I don’t see you “out there” fighting. I see you just sitting back and taking it.’

‘But I’m guilty. I did what I did, and I’m being punished for it. Self-defence or not, I broke the First Commandment and I deserve to be punished for it. Would I rather my sentence was shorter? Yes. But could I cope with being told over and over again that I got what I deserved – not only from him but also from the courts? No. But if I hadn’t killed him, not even in self-defence, as you say you didn’t, then nothing would stop me fighting.’ I felt her shrug across the room. ‘But that’s the difference between you and me, isn’t it, Ice Cream Girl? You’re still waiting to be rescued. I know that no one can rescue you until you’ve rescued yourself.’

‘Fuck you,’ I said, simply.

‘And fuck you back,’ she replied happily. I heard her climb off her bed and then come across the room. She yanked back the covers and took my hands in hers. I had never noticed before but the backs of her hands were a mass of scars, deep cuts and cigarette burns. They looked old, ingrained in her skin like they were always there. She gently pulled me upright, but didn’t let go until she had tugged me to my feet.

‘You’re not allowed to be depressed about this now. Now, you go out there with your head held high and you start thinking about how you’re going to fight this. When the time is right, and you’ll know when, I’ll leave you alone to get depressed. And when that’s over, you can apply to be on your own again. Because then you’ll be ready for it and I can stop worrying about you.’

‘What if I don’t want to fit in with your little plan for my life?’ I asked.

‘Of course you’ll want to fit in, because you’re still not ready to rescue yourself, are you?’

I shrugged a little because she was right. I wasn’t ready to rescue myself – but only because I didn’t know how. I defy anyone who had led a life like mine up until eighteen to know how to rescue themselves from a high security prison. I defy anyone, no matter what sort of life they’d lived, to know how to rescue themselves from a high security prison.