Lynda La Plante
She’s Out
For Ann Mitchell
‘Dolly Rawlins’
The book She’s Out is also dedicated to six very special women. They are the actresses who brought the characters of Gloria, Julia, Ester, Connie, Kathleen and Angela to life. I will always value their talent and friendship, and wish them the greatest success and accolade they each deserve.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Verity Lambert, Jonathan Powell, to my script editor Betina Soto Acebal, and my executive assistant Liz Thorburn and Alice Asquith, my research assistant, from La Plante Productions.
Thanks also to Suzanne Baboneau and Hazel Orme at Macmillan, and my appreciation as always to Jackie Malton, Chris Tchaikowsky and to all the staff at Holloway and Brixton prisons.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the crew of the film, the stunt girls, make-up and wardrobe, and all the production staff. A very special thanks to Colin Munn and Annie Fielden.
Last, but by no means least, my sincere thanks to the director of She’s Out, Ian Toynton, who also directed my first television series Widows. Ian’s inspiration and talent make us all fortunate to have worked with him; his patience with each and every one of us was, as he was, inexhaustible.
Chapter 1
The date was ringed with a fine red biro circle, 15 March 1994. It was the only mark on the cheap calendar pinned to the wall in her cell. There were no photographs, no memorabilia, not even a picture cut out of a magazine. She had always been in a cell by herself. The prison authorities had discussed the possibility of her sharing with another inmate but it had been decided it was preferable to leave Dorothy Rawlins as she had requested — alone.
Rawlins had been a model prisoner from the day she had arrived. She seemed to settle into a solitary existence immediately. At first she spoke little and was always polite to both prisoners and prison officers. She rarely smiled, she never wrote letters, but read for hours on end alone in her cell, and ate alone. After six months she began to work in the prison library; a year later she became a trusty. Gradually the women began to refer to Rawlins during recreational periods, asking her opinion on their marriages, their love lives. They trusted her opinions and her advice but she made no one a close friend. She wrote their letters, she taught some of the inmates to read and write, she was always patient, always calm and, above all, she would always listen. If you had a problem, Dolly Rawlins would sort it out for you. Over the following years she became a very dominant and respected figure within the prison hierarchy.
The women would often whisper about her to the new inmates, embroidering her past, which made her even more of a queen-like figurehead. Dorothy Rawlins was in Holloway for murder. She had shot her husband, the infamous Harry Rawlins, at point-blank range. The murder took on a macabre feeling as throughout the years the often repeated story was embellished, but no one ever discussed the murder to her face. It was as if she had an invisible barrier around her own emotions. Kindly towards anyone who needed comfort, she seemed never to need anything herself.
So the rumours continued: stories passed from one inmate to another, that Rawlins had also been a part of a big diamond raid. Although she had never been charged and no evidence had ever been brought forward at her trial to implicate her in it, the hints that she had instigated the raid, and got away with it, accentuated her mystique. More important was the rumour that she had also got away with the diamonds. The diamonds, some said, were valued at one million, then two million. The robbery had been a terrifying, brutal raid and a young, beautiful girl called Shirley Miller had been shot and killed.
Four years into her sentence, Rawlins began to write letters to request a better baby wing at Holloway. She began to work with the young mothers and children. The result was that she became even more of a ‘Mama’ figure. There was nothing she would not do for these young women, and it was on Rawlins’s shoulders that they sobbed their hearts out when their babies were taken from them. Rawlins seemed to have an intuitive understanding, talking for hour upon hour with these distressed girls. She also had the same quiet patience with the drug offenders.
Five years into her sentence, Dolly Rawlins proved an invaluable inmate. She kept a photo album of the prisoners who had left, their letters to her, and especially the photographs of their children. But only the calendar was pinned to the identical chipboard in every inmate’s cell. Nothing ever took precedence over the years of waiting.
She would always receive letters when the girls left Holloway. It was as if they needed her strength on the outside, but usually the letters came only for a couple of weeks then stopped. She was never hurt by the sudden silence, the lack of continued contact, because there were always the new inmates who needed her. She was a heroine, and the whispers about her criminal past continued. Sometimes she would smile as if enjoying the notoriety, encouraging the stories with little hints that maybe, just maybe, she knew more about the diamond raid than she would ever admit. She was also aware by now that the mystery surrounding her past enhanced her position within the prison pecking order. She wanted to remain top dog and she accomplished it without fighting or arguments.
After seven years, Rawlins was the ‘Big Mama’ — and it was always Dolly who broke up the fights, Dolly who was called on to settle arguments, Dolly who received the small gift tokens, the extra cigarettes. The prison officers referred to her as a model prisoner, and she was given a lot of freedom by the authorities. She organized and instigated further education, drug rehabilitation sessions and, with a year to go before she was released, Holloway opened an entire new mother-and-baby wing, with a bright, toy-filled nursery. This was where she spent most of her time. She was able to help the staff considerably and enjoyed caring for the children. They became a focus for Dolly, who had no visitors, no one on the outside to care for or about her. And the caring for the babies began to shape a future dream for when she would finally be free.
Dolly Rawlins did have those diamonds waiting and, if they had been worth two million when she was sentenced, now she calculated they had to be worth three, possibly four million. Alone in her cell she would dream about just what she was going to use the money for. She calculated that fencing them would bring the value down to around one million. She would have to give a cut to Audrey, Shirley Miller’s mother, and a cut to Jimmy Donaldson, the man holding them for her. She would then have enough to open a home, buy a small terraced house, maybe in Islington or an area close to the prison, so she could come and visit the girls she knew would still need her. She even contemplated opening the home specifically for the pregnant prisoners who, she knew, would have their babies taken. Then they could know they were in good care as many of the girls were single parents and their babies might otherwise be put up for adoption.
The daydreaming occupied Dolly for hours on end. She kept it to herself, afraid that if she mentioned it to anyone they would know for sure she had to have considerable finances. She did have several thousand pounds in a bank account arranged for her by her lawyer and she calculated that with that, a government grant and the money from the gems, the home would be up and running within a year of her release. She even thought about possibly offering a sanctuary for some of the drug addicts who needed a secure place to stay when they were released. And, a number of the women inside were battered wives: perhaps she could allocate a couple of rooms for them. The daydreaming relieved any tension that she felt. It was like a comforter, a warm secret that enveloped her and helped her sleep. The dream would soon be a reality as the months disappeared into weeks, and then days. As the ringed date was drawing closer and closer, she could hardly contain herself: this would give the rest of her life a meaning — she would have a reason to live. Never having had a child of her own it had touched her deeply to have been so close to newly born babies: their fragility, their total dependency opened the terrible, secret pain of her own childlessness. Soon she would have a houseful of children who needed her. Then she could truly call herself ‘Mama’.