Anyway, Yeni said let’s watch Friends and eat our marzipan, and we trotted through to the front room like a little family and put it on. I didn’t know that they have reruns on at teatime now as well as Thursday nights and Sunday nights and Friday nights. Yeni shared her bar with me, and we three all sat on the sofa, watching and munching and smiling at the jokes. Every now and then Yeni broke off a little taste and fed it to an insistent Margie, who spat it out down her front. She’s so good with her. I’ll give her fantastic references when she goes. She might not want my name on her CV though, if she stays in Britain.
Yeni put Margie to bed and I went up to say good night. Margie didn’t want a story, she wanted to hear her singing tape with the lullabies on it, so I put it on the chunky plastic tape recorder and I sat on the floor next to her crib, thinking about her future. She can’t even talk properly yet and she’s already got so much to overcome. It’s a shame that she’s an only child of two only children. Aunts or uncles or siblings could have shared the experience with her, protected her, diluted the shame. Maybe we should think about moving eventually, leave Britain and go abroad, change our names and cover our tracks. Margie struggled valiantly to stay awake, staggering around the crib like a punch-drunk boxer. She sighed as she fell asleep, and I was frightened for her because she’s so small.
I don’t want to go to the Vale of Leven ever again.
chapter twenty-seven
IT’LL BE FINE. I’VE WRITTEN BITCHY THINGS ABOUT SUSIE BEFORE, and she did go to a lot of effort to try to keep me from seeing it. I was surprised by my nice hair when I spotted myself in the bathroom mirror this morning. I had my blue T-shirt on and realized that my belly has gone down a bit. Or maybe it hasn’t. I look thinner in that T-shirt anyway, so I decided to wear it to the visit. I ran across the road to the newsagents, well, hobbled really, because I’m so stiff from my reckless, stretchless run yesterday. I’m not on the cover of any of the papers. The Evington file and everything, it doesn’t change anything, although I feel far less worried about explaining the newspaper article to her now. Susie knows how slippery these newspaper people can be, she’ll know I’ve been stitched up. She’ll be glad to see Margie anyway.
I started off for the prison early with Susie’s dry-cleaned court suit hanging off the jacket peg and Margie strapped into the car seat in the back. She nodded off within the first ten minutes of the drive and slept for most of it. The traffic was light, and I listened to a gratifying radio program about a dead writer whose genius wasn’t recognized during his lifetime. The troll women weren’t there when we arrived, just a man and a fat old woman with a child of about three. They were waiting outside the door, and sleepy Margie perked up when she saw the other girl.
We were all let in and gave our names, I handed over my phone, and the children played together while we waited to be let into the first waiting room. The other girl was dressed poorly and had her ears pierced, but she was an absolute gem. Her language was miles better than any other child of her age I’ve met. She actually said, “May I see your pretty socks?” to Margie at one point. Margie tried to bite her. She played beautifully with Margie and the rubber Tigger toy I’d brought with us. She was patient and understanding and smiled up at both of us when Margie screamed and tried to knock over a chair. The fat woman with her was too old to be her mum; I guessed she was her granny and they were there to visit her mum.
“What a beautifully behaved child she is,” I said.
“She can be a right handful sometimes, but…” said the granny indulgently.
The prison guards are nearly all women. They’re not as beefy as you’d expect, but they’re nippy and unfriendly. It’s like the Surly Lady Army. They’re what I remember girls being like in early puberty: powerful and unwilling and terrifying.
They held us for too long in the first room. I could see them through the glass wall, talking to each other and looking through at us. The granny was getting agitated. She thought something had happened to the girl’s mum; perhaps she’d killed herself or something. She got a bit tearful after we’d been kept waiting for ten minutes and tried to hide it from the child.
“Can’t they tell us why we’re waiting?” she said nervously.
Taking charge, I went to the door and rattled it, motioning to the guard at the reception desk to unlock it so I could come out and speak to her, but she shook her head and looked away from us, muttering to the other guard under her breath. I shook the door again, but she refused to look at me. The granny was weeping openly by this time, and I tried to comfort her by saying the delay might be nothing to do with her daughter.
“Ye dinna understand,” she said. “She’s tried it before.” She snatched the child away from playing happily with Margie and hugged her tight.
Margie started to cry, and the three-year-old child tried to comfort both Margie and her gran at once, patting her Granny’s back and making cheerful swoopy noises to Margie. She must have siblings at home, I thought. I told the granny to stop crying right now, and to my surprise she did. She put the child down to play, but the girl, who was unnaturally calm for a child of her age, kept hold of her granny’s knee and used her free hand to play with Margie. I don’t care if Margie does grow up to be a spoiled, selfish little princess. I never want her to have to do that for either of us. I want to attend to her every whim and keep her ignorant of that impotent need to save other people.
Eventually a different guard opened the door and asked me to wait for a moment while they took the granny through. She was sniveling in panic now, and the terrified child clung to her leg. The old lady disappeared out into the corridor, and they shut the door again. Margie, not knowing what it is to anticipate the next minute fearfully, ran the length of the room a couple of times and started making high-pitched noises. I was grinning at her, asking her what that meant exactly, hmm, Margie-Pargie? Whatever can you mean, you meaty little pudding?
A guard opened the door and invited me into the corridor, so I scooped Margie up and we followed her down to the second waiting room, which was already empty. I set Margie down. “I hope that lady’s daughter is all right?” I said, imagining the granny sobbing her poor old broken heart out in a soundproof room next door.
The guard looked me up and down. “She’s fine.” And then she walked away behind the screen and through a small side door.
They left me waiting there for twenty-one minutes. I knocked on the side door several times, thinking bloody visiting would be over if they didn’t let me in soon. When the guard finally came back, I was really annoyed and said that I shouldn’t be penalized and miss my visiting time because another visit had gone wrong. The guard didn’t know what I was talking about.
“The old lady who was in here,” I explained, “she was very upset because we were held back.” The guard shook her head and left again just as it dawned on me. The old woman was already in visiting her daughter. I was the one they’d held back.
It must have taken four minutes before two male guards came in, but I was doing deep breathing to slow my heart rate down and wondering how to get through the next ten minutes without punching someone.
“We’d like to search you please, sir,” said the fat one.
I exhaled, bristling with relief because I realized that they wouldn’t be worried about my passing contraband to Susie if she was dead. Impatiently, I dropped my coat to the chair and stood like a starfish, no-no-no-ing while he asked me if I had any drugs about my person, any sharp objects or needles. He patted me down while his friend looked on and got me to kick my shoes off so he could feel under my feet. Then he flicked a finger, giving me permission to put my stuff back on, and turned to the outside door. I followed him with my heel still working its way back into the shoe, holding Margie by the waist.