Chapter 2
Outside, the visitor’s keys chinked softly together. A muscle leapt in Joan’s cheek. Maybe – maybe –
Then another sound, harsh but lilting. Was the person out there … humming?
Joan’s shoulders slumped. The truth came crashing over her, and she couldn’t numb herself fast enough to endure it. The darkness blurred and stung her eyes. That voice outside was a woman’s, but it was too low-pitched, too abrasive.
It wasn’t Vera.
In that moment, it all descended upon her again, the things she’d been holding at bay. The stale air, her ragged, dirty nails, the chill that made her jaw clatter and her limbs ache.
She should be stirring into action. Readying herself, calculating the risk of harm from a midnight visitor, mapping out what to say and do to turn the situation (whatever it was) to her own advantage. She had done all that before, and in situations as bad as this.
Instead she thought: why couldn’t it have been Vera?
The humming was growing louder, the notes gathering themselves into lyrics.
‘Long years had passed, war came so fast…’
It wasn’t a young woman’s voice singing out there. It sounded sandpapery, roughened from a lifetime of smoking and shouting.
‘Bravely they marched away…’
When was the last time Joan had heard another person’s voice? She knew it couldn’t be the literal truth, but the last voice she recalled had belonged to Bea Smith. ‘This is it, Freak… I win.’ That memory reeked of earth and iron, of excited sweat and warm blood, and it made her fingers clench around the bed frame. Too much closeness, a loss of control. Entanglement.
‘Cannons roared loud, and in the mad crowd
Wounded and dying lay.’
How close had Joan come that day to ending up back in psych ward for the rest of her life? Or to taking that screwdriver and following Smith’s example?
She’d shut down instead, a safety switch to prevent an overload. She had dropped the weapon, gone quietly; she’d said and done nothing so they would call her sane. No burning smell, no shower of sparks, no last fiery show. Not this time.
‘Up goes a shout, a horse dashes out
Out of the ranks so blue…’
That voice in the hallway, though… It sounded lazily amused and mischievous – and cruel. A children’s song, but any sensible child would have fled by now.
‘Galloped away to where Joe lay…’
It was right outside her cell.
Joan squinted. She craned forward, watching the rectangle of glass that was set into the cell door. It had been placed at head height so any passers-by could watch her at their leisure. The lights were off in the corridor, but they had proper windows out there, where the prisoners couldn’t see through them. Moonlight must be flowing in, or floodlights from the yard. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out a profile: a long, sharp nose and a curiously shaped face, all angles and bones.
‘Then came a voice he knew…’
The taunting melody of the keys again; a clicking and gliding of metal weights. Then the scrape of the door opening outwards.
Joan rose to her feet.
The darkness thinned. The half-light of the corridor illuminated a tall, narrow figure, all glinting buttons and long black limbs. It flexed its spindly fingers, then stepped forward.
‘Hello, Joan. Haven’t you got a hug for an old mate?’
***
Joan stood and stared. After weeks of inertia, her mind was suddenly staggering in forty directions at once.
She could have said ‘Is it you?’ or ‘Am I mad?’ Instead she heard herself say ‘You do realise…’ Her voice, long unused, came out croaky and slurred. ‘You realise that song is even creepier in light of recent revelations?’ She paused for breath. Getting a whole sentence out was exhausting.
‘Now, now.’ Joan’s visitor stepped deeper into the cell, leaving the door open behind her. ‘I’ll have you know I used to sing that song to my nephews when they were little. Course, they’ve both taken out restraining orders since.’
Joan didn’t move. This was no hallucination, although it certainly should have been.
‘What are you doing here?’ She forced the question out, her throat rasping, then licked her cracked lips. They tasted of blood.
The woman sauntered closer until they were standing face to face. In her solid heels, she had no trouble looking Joan in the eye.
Then she grinned. An old white scar ran the length of her face, from left eyebrow to pointed chin.
She said ‘Just looking for a quiet place to enjoy one of these.’ She reached behind her and Joan flinched, which made her visitor chuckle. In the woman’s hand was a pack of cigarettes.
Turning her back on Joan, she strolled over to the metal toilet and seated herself on the lid, her feet planted wide apart, her elbows on her knees. Cigarette jutting from her mouth, she mumbled ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ There was a rattle, a scrape, then a blue and orange flare. The woman squeezed her eyes shut, sucking hard until her strange face seemed to be nothing but cheekbones.
Then she dropped the match and stamped it out beneath her heel.
‘No smoking in Victorian prisons,’ the visitor intoned, expelling acrid curls through her nostrils. ‘Fuck me.’ Joan had never heard anyone get that many syllables from a four-letter word.
The woman took another long drag, then said ‘Time was, every single bastard in this place would’ve smoked. Screws, lags, social workers – even the fucken nurses. ’ She inhaled again, the tip of the cigarette glowing neon orange. ‘Come to think of it, the nurses were the worst. But now...' She jabbed the air in Joan’s direction. ‘You can’t even do it in the bloody carpark! Come visitor’s day, if I want to enjoy an honest ciggie, I have to walk a hundred miles thataway–’ she flung out one arm ‘–and stand in a fucken field, with all the bikies and dealers and thirty-year-old grandmas asking me for a light!’ Exhausted by her own outrage, she paused for another deep draw. In a calmer voice, she added ‘It does promote a sense of community, though, I will say that.’
Joan still hadn’t moved.
‘What – ’ this time her voice came out steady ‘ – are you doing here?’
The woman glanced up at her.
‘Oh, you poor darl. It’s those elephant pills they’ve got you on; no wonder you’re a bit woozy.’ She waved a hand in front of Joan’s face and said in a slow, clear voice ‘It’s OK, I am not a figment of your psychosis. It really is me, your close personal … colleague.’ She gave a smile that showed the white points of her incisors. ‘Cynthia Leach, from Blackmoor.’
‘Cynthia.’ The word creaked its way out of Joan’s mouth. Her episodes of madness had made more sense than this.
‘Yep.’ The woman blew a puff of smoke up into Joan’s face. ‘Fifteen years, eh, Ferguson? I’d like to say you haven’t changed a bit, but frankly…’ She looked Joan up and down, taking in her rumpled teal tracksuit, her bare feet, her hair that hung in werewolf tangles around her face. ‘Well, frankly you look like shit.’
‘You –’ Joan stared down at her. Despite the gloom, she recognised that uniform. ‘You … work here now?’
‘Work here?’ Cynthia broke into a coughing fit. Banging her chest, she spluttered ‘Well, that’s put me back in my box. You always were good at that, Joan.’
She grinned up at Joan again. Joan could make out the places where the scar had sliced through both of Cynthia’s lips. At Blackmoor, the rumours said that scar had been the work of a particularly vicious drug dealer, who’d grown the nail of her pinkie finger two inches long for that very purpose. Rumour also had it that Cynthia had dealt with the attack by biting that finger off.
Cynthia raised one mangled eyebrow.
‘Oh Joan, haven’t you heard? I’m your new governor.’