Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) (31 page)

              Most of the girls were jailed for drug related crimes or petty thieving.  I'd never even smoked pot as a student - but it was arrogance on my part to think I would never light a cigarette or drink a glass of wine again - that I was immune to this kind of weakness or failing when life no longer resembled anything it had before.

              Fortunately smoking was something I neither wanted nor could do in jail, despite the one lapse after the court outcome - a temporary reaction to extreme stress.  I was glad that cigarettes weren't available though as who knew how strong my resolve would be having stepped into this abyss from which there was no escape.   Just making it through each day in whatever way possible was all I could do.  I had to survive for M - my whole world and I was determined to ensure that Mummy was there for him after this ordeal.

              Eventually a few of the other girls began to accept me.  Especially when they discovered I was a novelist which seemed to interest them.  Although I was in the early stages of my writing career and was anything but well-known, I was a novelty. At least it stopped them focusing on the way I spoke or their resentment of what they perceived as my over-privileged life.

              No-one knew the reality of our simple existence outside, but compared to the lives of some of the girls, I guess mine appeared on the surface to be a good deal better.  I tried to understand and feel compassion towards those who were openly hostile to me because I knew that from where they were sitting, I had had it easy and some of them had horrifying back stories.  Whilst blinded by my own pain, I had to remind myself that their patterns of behaviour had been learned to protect them in some fairly terrible situations. 

              The few who spoke to me about my writing, were mostly interested in writing themselves.  They lacked education and literacy skills, but in a way they were not bound by the restrictions of having them and one girl who shared her writing with me showed me the rawness of her own abused childhood which had ended in terrible tragedy - the same gentle sweet girl who had spoken to me on my first day.  Annabel had been found guilty of manslaughter after a drug binge had gone terribly wrong and a tragic accident had resulted.  Talking to her, one couldn't imagine her being charged with such a crime, but life deals out random cards and she had lost the game too many times, with catastrophic results.                This particular girl became a friend and also something of a protector when I was being bullied.  We had only compassion for each other in common, but that was enough to  breach the divide.

              Annabel stuck up for me when another girl decided to make me a target of daily bullying.

              Two of the older girls were friendly from the outset. Irene, who I have mentioned earlier, who had been jailed for assaulting her boyfriend during a row, and a sweet, quiet girl called Amanda, who was suffering from depression and had been hospitalized.  She'd been treated so badly in the hospital that in a moment of rebellion she'd set fire to her pyjamas in a metal waste-bin.  It seemed ridiculous for her to be jailed for this.  Clearly she needed help, not incarceration.  Having said that, as I got to know Amanda better, who was probably the most akin to me in background, I realised that she actually enjoyed the opt-out of life that jail provided.  She'd given up on real life and was happy to paint pictures in her cell.  She was a talented artist, but was facing losing her own daughter to care and yet, unlike me, who had fought tooth and nail to keep my child, she was resigned and felt no anger.  Her acceptance of everything may have made life easier for her to bear, but it was something I found hard to relate to, on any level but like Annabel, she was a sweet gentle soul and I was glad to have someone to talk to. 

              I would often go and sit on Amanda's bed and chat or watch television in the short time we had after the evening meal.  On my birthday, which came only four days after my imprisonment, she made me a lovely poster with the words, NEVER GIVE UP HOPE, emblazoned on it - offering me hope, where she herself had none. 

              Having a birthday wasn't  important in the great scheme of things, but it did increase my sense of isolation and not being able to speak to M or even my father, was the hardest.  It seemed crazy that only eighteen months earlier I could never have believed that I would be in any situation where I couldn't see or speak to my son.  I had told him I loved him "the world and back" every day of his life and now all I could do was whisper it silently in my mind and hope he still knew and felt the deep bond we'd always shared.

              The few hours we shared at contact on my last birthday were so precious to both of us.  “Every second counts Mummy,” he would say at each contact and we would do our best to make them count even more, squeezing as much out of our time as possible.  When the session was over, I had to wait for M to be taken out of the front door and then I was let out the back way into a dark alley.  On that day, it was pouring with rain and as I had been in Court before the session which had run on later than expected, I was wearing heels and a suit. I was trying to carry the cake-tin with the cake he had made me and his toys and find my way in the dark, back to the main road where I'd left my car.   Unable to see the potholes I stumbled and fell and the tin went flying.  I managed to retrieve it without too much damage to the cake, but I cried all the way back to the car as I couldn’t bear that it had been damaged at all.  It had seemed symbolic of how hard they were trying to crush us, when I picked it up off the ground and scooped it hurriedly back into the tin. It had been made with love and care by M and like everything he'd ever given me, I would have preserved it forever, if that were only possible.

              Here I was now spending my birthday in jail. I would have given anything to have even a few moments with M, even supervised.  I longed for his warm little hug, the smell of him, his golden-flecked hair brushing my chin as he snuggled into me.  I longed for the life we had had and knew he longed for it too and I blamed myself constantly for running away, whilst knowing that faced with the same situation, I would do the same again.  I struggled with feelings of anger towards Dad, needing someone to blame for this travesty but I tried to fight them.  I knew how much M loved his Grandad.  They'd had a special relationship.  He had been the male role model in his life and that too was a bond that I felt could never be broken.

              Without a date for contact with M, despite asking daily, I was falling into a hole so deep with despair, I was not sure how I would claw my way out -   and with the endless trauma, I was starting to go numb as a coping mechanism.  At first, I wailed and howled in the night like a animal caught in a trap, but over time my mind and body simply could not physically cry any more.  I felt a cold gripping hand in the pit of my stomach - but no tears, having shed so many for M already. 

              In jail, nothing happening outside the walls seems real.  It was as if I'd entered an alternative universe.  Even on the outside, I'd felt the surrealism from the very day M had disclosed to me. We'd crossed over to a place where evil won the day and lies were the only currency.

              I'd worked tirelessly on my case with my lawyers, day and night, looking for the needle in the haystack that might bring M back to me, but all to no avail. Incarcerated, as I now was, it could only be a matter of time before he was given to his father and each time I faced the very real possibility, the cold hand of fear gripped me even harder.

              I pushed my feelings deeper and deeper inside me -  I dared not allow them pubic exposure, especially in a place like this and I worked harder and harder at freezing my pain on the inside whilst my face had long since frozen into the expression of a haunted, hunted wild animal, who could never escape the trap.

              It was only acts of kindness, found in strange places that kept that flicker of a flame of life from being extinguished altogether. It was the act of Amanda coming quietly to my cell that morning, and planting a kiss on the top of my bowed head - handing me the rolled up drawing of an angel, which I stuck on my notice board with toothpaste, wondering how long I could keep that tiny flame of hope alive when it seemed further out of reach with each passing day.

              This would be the only gift I would receive that day, but the only one I wanted was my son home with me and this nightmare to end. 

              I waited frantically for a visit from my legal team, who seemed to have abandoned to me my fate, hoping that they could give me cause to be optimistic and wondering how we managed to accumulate so many lawyers. 

              Looking back we should have insisted that Brian managed without the extra help he had claimed was so imperative, but we had no experience of the way the system was designed. We just kept pouring money into the legal machine whose mouth gaped wider and wider and demanded more hungrily, as the wheels of injustice had turned. So many in the situation were forced to give up.  I suppose we lasted longer than most simply because my father had the money to do it.  I might as well have stuck to self-litigating for all we had achieved, but for the criminal case at least, we had needed a strong QC and I had to maintain faith in Phillip as my only means of release.

              After supper I sat on Amanda’s bed and talked to her again about her own situation.  I couldn’t understand her acceptance of what was so clearly wrong.  She knew her daughter would be taken into foster care any day.  When I asked her what she wanted for herself, she said she didn’t care and wouldn’t mind staying in jail for the rest of her life.  She was clearly a bright, talented woman with much to offer and I felt angry for her that she'd been beaten down to this. 

              It was not in me to give up completely, even when I hit my darkest moments.  I clung on with every bit of strength I could muster, to my belief, that truth would overshadow the lies and win the day ultimately.  I refused to accept that there was nothing I could do to change the inevitable.  For me, anything else was unthinkable and like a mouse on a wheel, I carried on, pouring over files, reports and papers sent in by the lawyers, in readiness for the final hearing in the Family Court - even this engendered jealousy. 

              The fact that I was allowed files in my cell was another source of annoyance to the other girls who saw it as favouritism.  Having the files was a double edged sword, because without my own comprehensive cupboard full of papers and my computer, I had little to refer to in trying to challenge the latest pack of lies presented as “reports” by Miss Whiplash and the Guardian.  I would read the terrible fabrications and make notes for the lawyers without being able to talk to them or discuss with them how best to deal with things.  I sometimes felt that it would be easier not to have the files and to be left in peace - but peace was something that was far out of reach, files or no files.

              I tried to instil in Amanda some determination not to give up and yet I knew the cruel reality - the Department were omnipotent.  You could kick as hard as you liked at the cloth of gold, but they were all protected and you are on the other side.

              Amanda wasn’t a criminal, just someone in pain who'd cried for help and this was the help she’d received – to be locked up and have her daughter stolen from her.  Nothing had altered on the Island in thirty years it seemed.  They had been treating women this way since I was a girl and long before, my own experiences in my teens had forced me to grow up fast.  People with problems were given more by the system.  Animals were treated better. I failed to see how locking  her up going to solve Amanda's problems  - it seemed insane.  Whilst correctional institutions are clearly necessary for those who've committed serious crimes, it seemed crazy treatment for someone who has just lost hope or self-belief - jail was hardly the place to get back on one’s feet.  Control of the masses was the only thing on offer - lock up and shut up - not to mention what doing this was costing the tax payer.

              Voiceless, powerless and childless, as I had been the lost child back in my teens - now my child was lost to me.  I told myself it wouldn't be forever.  I would never give up.  I would go on fighting for him for as long as it took and with everything in me.  I took my strength from the love I felt for M and each time I found myself sliding closer to the edge, I used love to pull me back.

              My lawyers came to see me the week following my committal.  I was excited to see them, praying they would bring news of seeing M and turning the case around.  Part of me was also dreading it, in case they too had lost hope, but I was eager to know how they were getting on with preparing my appeal.  I longed for the simple comforts of home, the companionship of my little dog, a soak in my own bath and a decent hot meal with proper cutlery.  But none of these things came anywhere near to my longing for M.

              I was taken to a holding area, told to sit on a bench and then locked in.  It was a freezing cold day and was snowing outside.  The lawyers had been held up due to the weather conditions.   I feared they may not make it at all.  After what felt like an eternity, the guard took me to a small cubicle and I was told they'd arrived. 

              Where I'd been relaxed and comfortable in their presence in the past, I now felt shy and self-conscious.  They'd never seen me without  make-up and I felt naked and exposed without it.  It had been a useful mask behind which to hide my pain and now they would see me in my raw, pale state.   I had dark circles under my eyes so black that my eyes looked sunken. In the brief moments when I was faced with my reflection in the small mirror above my basin, I saw a ghost looking back – a deer in headlights – a face I no longer recognised as my own.