mother, Sophie appeared calm. Do you remember she offered you a cup of tea?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hardly the actions of an hysteric. Let us return for a moment to your description of Deborah Shelley. She seemed calm. Would it be fair to say she conducted herself with dignity, as did
her daughter?’
There is a squawk of protest from Miss Webber. Mr Latimer cuts her off: ‘Let me rephrase that. Did Deborah Shelley behave in an undignified manner while you were at the house?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you.’
Mr Latimer has planted the notion of dignity, altogether a different image from the woman who had just calmly seen off her husband. Not cool and calculating but brave and dignified. Mousy gives
a little nod and that spark of hope tickles in my chest.
Chapter Nine
T he judge suggests we break for lunch and the jury file out. Mr Latimer comes over. ‘Everything all right?’
I nod, a little dazed. The tension in my body is suddenly evident to me, running the length of my limbs, coiled round my spine.
‘Good.’ He smiles.
I wonder why he doesn’t invest in a new wig – or is the tatty relic some sort of statement? The legal equivalent of a Hell’s Angel’s dirty denims.
The guard escorts me downstairs and, after using the facilities, I sit in my cell. This is a windowless box with whitewashed walls and a bench seat across the narrow rear wall. Hundreds of
people have sat here, waiting to be called, to be tried, to be sentenced.
The guard brings lunch, a cheese-salad sandwich, bag of crisps, a pack of round shortbread biscuits and tea in a plastic cup. I eat half of the sandwich and one of the biscuits. The tea is
tasteless, an odd grey colour with little discs of oil visible on the surface. I sip it and close my eyes. My bones feel weak, my muscles feeble. I’m like a puppet that has had its strings
cut.
My case had already made the national press and television, so when I got up the courage to go into the prison kitchen and meet some of the women I’d be sharing the place
with, they all knew what I stood accused of.
There are eighteen of us in Shapley House; perhaps eight were in the kitchen that day. ‘I couldn’t do that,’ announced one of the women, flatly, arms crossed and staring at me
as I fumbled about trying to find the things to make a cup of tea. ‘Drug someone up, then hold a bag over their head and watch them die.’
The room was quiet and I stilled, not knowing how to reply. I set aside my cup and turned to leave.
‘You got any burn?’ the same woman asked. She had a crude tattoo on her neck, small, hard eyes. ‘You, Mrs Mercy Killer, you got any burn?’
Some of the other women laughed but I sensed unease riddled through it. The nickname was to stick. I became known as Mercy.
‘Any baccy?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘What bleedin’ use are you, then?’
I fled to my room. ‘Burn’ was short for Old Holborn, the rolling tobacco of choice that the women wound into needle-thin cigarettes. It was the top currency in Styal, prized even
higher than the methadone given out to the addicts three times a day. Some of the addicts sold their methadone to buy tobacco.
Fleetingly I considered taking up smoking in order to have something to trade.
I don’t know why Gaynor, the loudmouth in my house, took such an instant dislike to me. I guess I was an easy target, different from nearly everyone else, different class, different
background, different accent, room of my own. It was like being in a foreign country: I didn’t understand the culture or the language. ‘The sweatbox’ was the name for the van that
transported us to and from court. People would say, ‘I’m in on a section twenty,’ and I’d need it explaining – assault inflicting grievous bodily harm. There was no
neat little number for me. Murder is murder.
In prison there are sheets to fill in for everything: phone credit, CDs, shampoo, tampons, lip salve. For some reason all the toiletries have to be from
‘Yes.’
‘Hardly the actions of an hysteric. Let us return for a moment to your description of Deborah Shelley. She seemed calm. Would it be fair to say she conducted herself with dignity, as did
her daughter?’
There is a squawk of protest from Miss Webber. Mr Latimer cuts her off: ‘Let me rephrase that. Did Deborah Shelley behave in an undignified manner while you were at the house?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you.’
Mr Latimer has planted the notion of dignity, altogether a different image from the woman who had just calmly seen off her husband. Not cool and calculating but brave and dignified. Mousy gives
a little nod and that spark of hope tickles in my chest.
Chapter Nine
T he judge suggests we break for lunch and the jury file out. Mr Latimer comes over. ‘Everything all right?’
I nod, a little dazed. The tension in my body is suddenly evident to me, running the length of my limbs, coiled round my spine.
‘Good.’ He smiles.
I wonder why he doesn’t invest in a new wig – or is the tatty relic some sort of statement? The legal equivalent of a Hell’s Angel’s dirty denims.
The guard escorts me downstairs and, after using the facilities, I sit in my cell. This is a windowless box with whitewashed walls and a bench seat across the narrow rear wall. Hundreds of
people have sat here, waiting to be called, to be tried, to be sentenced.
The guard brings lunch, a cheese-salad sandwich, bag of crisps, a pack of round shortbread biscuits and tea in a plastic cup. I eat half of the sandwich and one of the biscuits. The tea is
tasteless, an odd grey colour with little discs of oil visible on the surface. I sip it and close my eyes. My bones feel weak, my muscles feeble. I’m like a puppet that has had its strings
cut.
My case had already made the national press and television, so when I got up the courage to go into the prison kitchen and meet some of the women I’d be sharing the place
with, they all knew what I stood accused of.
There are eighteen of us in Shapley House; perhaps eight were in the kitchen that day. ‘I couldn’t do that,’ announced one of the women, flatly, arms crossed and staring at me
as I fumbled about trying to find the things to make a cup of tea. ‘Drug someone up, then hold a bag over their head and watch them die.’
The room was quiet and I stilled, not knowing how to reply. I set aside my cup and turned to leave.
‘You got any burn?’ the same woman asked. She had a crude tattoo on her neck, small, hard eyes. ‘You, Mrs Mercy Killer, you got any burn?’
Some of the other women laughed but I sensed unease riddled through it. The nickname was to stick. I became known as Mercy.
‘Any baccy?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘What bleedin’ use are you, then?’
I fled to my room. ‘Burn’ was short for Old Holborn, the rolling tobacco of choice that the women wound into needle-thin cigarettes. It was the top currency in Styal, prized even
higher than the methadone given out to the addicts three times a day. Some of the addicts sold their methadone to buy tobacco.
Fleetingly I considered taking up smoking in order to have something to trade.
I don’t know why Gaynor, the loudmouth in my house, took such an instant dislike to me. I guess I was an easy target, different from nearly everyone else, different class, different
background, different accent, room of my own. It was like being in a foreign country: I didn’t understand the culture or the language. ‘The sweatbox’ was the name for the van that
transported us to and from court. People would say, ‘I’m in on a section twenty,’ and I’d need it explaining – assault inflicting grievous bodily harm. There was no
neat little number for me. Murder is murder.
In prison there are sheets to fill in for everything: phone credit, CDs, shampoo, tampons, lip salve. For some reason all the toiletries have to be from
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