Whitethorn Woods Read online

  My ex-husband, that bloody Eamon, left me penniless when he went off with that appalling, vulgar woman, Iris. The upkeep of the house was amazing, so I was always very stuck for cash when it came to it. Which, of course, was why I was so grateful to the tabloids.

  Now I know we have to pretend to think they are terrible and that we only let them into the house for the maid sort of thing, but they were hugely interested in what poor Becca had done and in fact I was secretly delighted with them. One of them bought the story of Becca’s childhood and the ‘What Made Her the Woman She Became’ angle. Another bought stuff about her life in the chic fashion boutique. I should have got a retainer from that hoity-toity madam who owns the place – I bet I doubled her business.

  Then there was a piece about how Becca had changed after her father, bloody Eamon, had left home. I enjoyed helping to write that. Nowhere did they say that I was collaborating but I gave them all the information and all the pictures. It made a magnificent set of articles.

  Of course I didn’t like titles like ‘In the Mind of the Murderess’ but on the other hand it did sell papers, and in many people’s minds that’s exactly what poor silly Becca actually was.

  Every time I visited, she would ask how had the reporters found out all these details. I reassured her that I had told them nothing new, they knew it all already. What they didn’t know, they made up. Like all that silly business about poor Becca going up to the well in Whitethorn Woods to pray to St Ann that Franklin would love her.

  ‘I never did, Mother, you know that,’ she had wept at me.

  I soothed her and patted her down. Of course everyone knew it was nonsense. They just made it up out of their heads …

  I had been very well paid for that particular story. It gave the newspapers freedom to take pictures of the terrible shrine. And did that sell papers! Obviously Becca knew nothing of this and I reassured her and reminded her that I had managed to keep Franklin out of the story and she was naturally very grateful. When she came out of jail she would marry him, of course, so she didn’t want him attracting unpleasant limelight and attention until then.

  She had begged him to come and visit her until I told her that the reporters were outside the jail all the time and they would spot him and the careful privacy we had all been keeping would be blown. She saw the sense in that.

  They’re quite nice in the jail, really. Basically out for the prisoners’ good – which must be quite hard when you think of the kind of people they have to deal with normally. Of course, Becca is different, and they see that, naturally they would. She’s a lady for one thing and she hasn’t the mind of a criminal for another. She’s so far above everyone in the place and yet gets on perfectly pleasantly with them all, which is a true sign of good breeding.

  She’s learning embroidery at recreation time, from one of the warders, a nice woman called Kate. Becca says it’s very restful, therapeutic even. She gave me a perfectly horrid little cushion cover she had made and I told her it has pride of place in the sitting room. Poor dear Becca! She thinks she’ll be home any day to see it. She has risen above her whole terrible situation by refusing to acknowledge it. It’s a way of coping and for Becca it’s working very well.

  She has started a huge coverlet for her bed with the words ‘Franklin’ and ‘Rebecca’ intertwined.

  I have to remember not to wear my best finery going to see her because Becca can spot a designer outfit at half a mile, it was all those years working in the boutique. She would know I couldn’t ordinarily afford Prada or Joseph jackets. I have what I call my prison visiting outfit, so that she won’t make the connection between the publishing of the tabloid stories and her mother’s new wardrobe.

  Becca herself looks a lot better as the weeks and months go by. She walks straighter, she doesn’t fuss about her hair and sort of twiddle with it like she used to, it’s just straight now and classy looking. There’s one of the warders, Gwen, who is a friend of Kate, the nice one, and apparently she trained as a hairdresser and still works part time in a beauty parlour and she gives them all a regular trim. They’re not allowed to hold a pair of scissors themselves of course. Which is idiotic in Becca’s case, I mean, what harm would she do to anyone with a pair of scissors?

  She seems less anxious these days than when she was out in the real world, somehow much calmer. Very interested in shading and matching threads, and whether she’ll be chosen for a netball team. Becca! Interested in sports and embroidery! Who would have thought it? Well, who would have thought any of it really?

  Sometimes the tabloid people ask me, do I have any sympathy for poor Janice who went unsuspecting to her death because of Becca, but I remind them that I cannot be quoted; my opinions and my natural, deep, deep sorrow cannot be entered into. And then before they start to turn against me I feed them another picture of Becca or titbit about the parties she used to go to, launches, receptions, to which she hadn’t even been invited. They would run another story describing her as a good-time party girl.

  Imagine!

  You know the way they talk about people becoming institutionalised? Well, I think it’s absolutely true. Becca has few interests now outside the terrible place where she is. She tells me of horrid lesbian affairs between the prisoners, and sometimes between prisoners and warders. The only thing that unites her to the world outside is her future with Franklin.

  It’s marvellous, of course, that she is so positive about everything but then she does seem to have lost touch with reality since she doesn’t realise how long she is going to be in there. Nor did she ever refer to the enormity of what she had done. She sort of waves it away.

  And yet it was a terrible thing. Killing Franklin’s fiancée – or getting her killed, which was just as bad. ‘A deliberate and cold-blooded killing,’ as the judge said when he sentenced her after a unanimous verdict from the jury. She never once spoke of Janice or, indeed, that sad chap, Kevin, who did the driving, or anything at all about that night.

  And I didn’t want to distress her. Poor lamb, her life hadn’t turned out at all as she had hoped.

  So when she talked about Franklin and the future I did nothing to discourage her. Once she realised he couldn’t come to see her, she stopped asking about him and what he was doing.

  This was a great relief.

  A huge relief in fact. It’s been getting more and more difficult to field her questions about him. I tried to tell her about the bridge club but Becca had lost all interest – she barely reacted when I told her about the grand slam that I had got. I think she barely takes on board that Wilfred and Franklin and I play regularly together, getting a fourth where we can find one. But then I suppose bridge might have been a bit of a sore subject, what with Janice’s having met Franklin there, being a bridge partner and everything.

  So maybe better not mention bridge.

  Trouble is that there are so many things it’s better not to mention. I talk on about whether this thread is cerise or fuchsia, and how hard it is for Kate the warder to support two children on her wages, and I listen to stories about how Gloria’s romance with Ailis is over, and how it’s all political getting on the netball team.

  And I listen to stories about women who are prostitutes, drug dealers, or have murdered their husbands in self-defence. It’s such an uncanny sort of an existence. That bloody Eamon, my ex-husband, asked would Becca like him to visit and I said certainly not. He had been no help to her before all this business and he would only upset her further now. So that softened his cough.

  Kate draws me aside from time to time when I visit and tells me that Becca is adapting very well and is very popular with the other prisoners. As if I would somehow be pleased that these terrible women liked my Becca or not! But Kate meant well, she couldn’t help it if she had no advantages when she was growing up, and from what Becca said, Kate too had been a victim like I was, her husband had left her. Bastards, really, all of them when you think about it.

  So I took to bringing Kate little presents as we
ll when I visited. Nothing huge, just a nice soap or a glossy magazine, or a little jar of tapenade. Poor dear, I don’t think she knew what it was, but she was pleased all the same. And as I say, it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t grow up in a proper home. And she was very kind to my Becca.

  Franklin was relieved that I had sorted out that he shouldn’t visit. Very relieved, I imagine. But Wilfred, who was so polite and always tried to do the right thing, asked, should he come and see Becca? I thought about it for a while but I said, not really, what would there be for him to say? And he too was frightfully relieved. I could see it. I didn’t want Wilfred in there anyway, blabbing and saying the wrong thing. He was only offering to be polite.

  He was still Franklin’s partner in this mysterious mobile phone service they were doing, downloading or uploading or offloading something on to people’s cellphones, impossible to understand.

  Then the mother of that poor Janice asked could she visit Becca, but I told Kate to tell the authorities that this would be the wrong thing. This poor woman was Born Again or something very dubious and she thought Becca would find peace if she went to tell her she had forgiven her, but I think Becca has actually forgotten about Janice, to be honest, so I discouraged it and Kate must have passed the message on because she never went.

  And life went on in the funny way it does, everything changed and yet finding a similarity in the days. We continued to play bridge two nights a week. Becca’s father, bloody Eamon, would telephone me every time there was something new in the tabloids – his frightful wife apparently reads nothing else.

  ‘How do they know these things?’ he would cry at me into the phone.

  I shrugged. I had no idea, I told him. I never saw him so he wouldn’t know that I had such smart clothes and that I had bought a sports car. Or that there was a cleaner every day now and a gardener once a week. It was none of his business anyway. Little he had cared when he abandoned his wife and daughter.

  I would take a taxi to the prison each week, and ask it to wait at the bus stop around the corner and then join the rest of the prison visitors, opening my bag for examination and accepting a body search before visiting my own daughter. I didn’t want anyone to tell Becca that I kept a taxi waiting. She would wonder where I got the funds. And in the end it was all for her own good, her peace of mind, and enabled me to visit her every week without too much stress and strain.

  ‘Kate is very good to me, Mother,’ she said one day.

  ‘Yes indeed.’ I was wondering where this was leading.

  ‘I was wondering if you could ask her for tea sometime on her day off, Mother?’

  ‘No, darling, that wouldn’t do at all,’ I said.

  ‘Please, Mother.’

  Becca had lost touch with the real world. How could I ask such a sad, poor woman, who lived in a council flat and worked as a prison warder, to my house?

  ‘Sorry, Becca, out of the question,’ I said briskly.

  Becca was very disappointed. I could see by her face. But the whole thing was totally impossible. She said no more, just resumed her stitching at a feverish pace. I wondered as I got back into my taxi why I had bothered to come and see her at all. She was really so ungrateful for all I had done. Wasn’t it enough that I had bought all these little gifts for Kate? Not a word of thank you from Becca. Maybe the woman had never told her.

  It was so hard to know! I mean, Kate was just a prison warder. Imagine Becca thinking I could entertain her at home. I couldn’t possibly let her see how we lived.

  As the taxi pulled away, I thought I saw Kate standing there looking at me thoughtfully but it must have been my imagination. If she had seen me she would have come over and talked, not just stood there watching as she was. I hoped that she wouldn’t say anything to Becca about my taking a taxi. But then I shook myself and told myself not to be fanciful. Being in that awful prison would make anyone fanciful, really.

  When I got home the chaps were waiting for me with a scotch and ginger. Such dear boys. They always ask about Becca and I always say that it’s too dreadful to talk about and that I must go and have a long bath. Just the very fact of being in that place makes you feel defiled. I lay in the warm scented bubbles and drank my long cool scotch and ginger. Life was a great deal better these days than it used to be. Amazing, really, how having enough money can take the edge off things.

  I never worry these days about the roof slates, or getting a new handbag to tone in with a new outfit, or having good wine when we go out to dinner. I am beginning to accept as my right that I have a silk dressing gown and a redecorated bedroom. Tonight I would wear the really smart dress that had cost what we spent on our first car. It looked nice certainly but I needed better shoes. Perhaps I can come up with another little story for the ghastly papers. Something like ‘Stitching Her Way to the Future’ and a description of the counterpane Becca is making. Yes, that would be good, it would throw suspicion on some of the people in the prison. That boot-faced Kate, for example.

  I looked at myself in the mirror.

  Not bad at all for my age. New shoes would make it perfect.

  Franklin stood at the bottom of the stairs. Wilfred had gone ahead to be at the table to greet us. A special dinner out in a new restaurant. My treat. Always my treat. But then don’t be all bitter and twisted, Gabrielle, I told myself. The boys’ business is still in the foothills, it hasn’t risen to great heights yet. They actually don’t have any real money yet, poor darlings.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Franklin said. It really was a pleasure to get dressed for people who appreciated it. Bloody Eamon wouldn’t notice what I was wearing.

  ‘Thank you,’ I purred at him.

  ‘Does she not ask about me at all?’ he said unexpectedly.

  ‘No, well, you know, we all agreed that it was better for her not to get in touch until … you know … until she comes out.’

  ‘But, Gabrielle …’ he looked at me, astonished. ‘She’s not going to get out for years and years.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But you’d be amazed at how strong she is. You and I would go under in a place like that, but not Becca, she’s brave as a lion.’

  He looked at me affectionately.

  ‘You make all this so much easier for me,’ he said, his eyes full of gratitude.

  ‘Come on, Franklin, let’s not be late,’ I said, and we walked down the steps of our home, past the new wrought iron railings with the sweet peas and honeysuckle entwined. Just before we got into the car I thought I saw that Kate in our road.

  But it must have been a hallucination.

  What could she have been doing in our neighbourhood?

  And then next day I thought I saw her there again. It couldn’t have been, of course. But it made me uneasy for some reason and I decided to get her a little present and have a chat with her on my next visit. Possibly foolish Becca had already invited her to tea in my house. And now she was annoyed because the invitation had not been followed up.

  Ridiculous, but who knows what kind of thoughts people like her have.

  I brought Becca some roses from the garden, and some sweet peas for that Kate. Also a silly little lace-trimmed handkerchief with a letter K on it. She accepted the flowers and handkerchief silently with a nod of her head and left almost immediately without any little chat.

  ‘Is everything all right, Kate?’

  ‘Never better, thank you,’ she said, reaching to the back of the door of her office for her overcoat and leaving immediately. It was very mystifying.

  Becca looked just as usual but there was something watchful, wary about her. It was as if she were examining me.

  ‘We are always talking about me,’ she said. ‘And really nothing much changes here. Tell me all about your days and nights, Mother,’ she said.

  I was a bit wrong-footed here. I hadn’t expected this. Up to now I had been vague and she had never wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, you know me, Becca darling, drifting from this to that, a little bridge here, a little
reminding your bloody father to give me some support there. The days pass.’ She reached for my hand and lifted it to admire my nails.

  ‘Some of them must pass at the beauty parlour,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I wish, darling, just cheap enamel I put on myself.’

  ‘I see. Like your hairdo. Do it yourself with the kitchen scissors, do you?’

  I was very annoyed. These were things I couldn’t hide from her, the expensive styling and shaping of my hair every five weeks with Fabian. The weekly manicure at Pompadours.

  ‘What are you saying?’ I asked.

  ‘Not very much, Mother. You learn not to say anything here until you’re quite sure what it is you are trying to say.’

  ‘That would make the world a very silent place,’ I twittered at her.

  ‘Not really, no, just a more certain place.’

  I tried to change the subject. ‘Kate seemed in a hurry today, she almost brushed past me.’

  ‘It’s her half-day,’ Becca said.

  ‘Yes and I know that you did want me to invite her to afternoon tea, darling, but you’re a little out of touch, Becca. It would be so inappropriate. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, that’s all right, I understood, and so did she.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘Do you get lonely at all, Mother? What with Father having left you and my being in here and everything?’

  I couldn’t imagine why she was asking this question. ‘Well, lonely isn’t the right word. I don’t ever think about that bastard Eamon these days. I miss you, darling, and wish you were at home. And you will be. One day.’

  ‘Not for years and years, Mother.’ She was matter of fact.

  ‘I’ll be there for you,’ I said firmly.