unlikelyheroine Posted: 31 May 2005 09:38 pm
The Nikki & Helen Chronicles

A repost from the other board...

DISCLAIMER: Helen and Nikki and various other characters are owned by Shed Productions and I am just borrowing them for my story. This first part of the story is not 18-rated, but later sections will be.

1.

Nikki had lost track of the number of women she had slept with.

She could remember the first, of course. And the second. The third and fourth were kind of somewhat hidden in an alcohol-fuelled haze… or was it the fourth and fifth she has been drunk for? Nikki wasn’t really sure of the order after Woman #5. Perhaps if she sat down with a pen and a piece of paper, she could remember most of the names, or the locations - but she’d probably forget to note a couple of the less memorable ones.

Trisha had known what she was getting herself into. The London lesbian scene was pretty small and Nikki was somewhat legendary. In fact, three years before they got together as a couple, she and Nikki had had a one night stand. Trisha had managed to summon up the courage to invite Nikki back to her flat and had the sex of her life with this strong, toned, dark woman fucking her brains out. Trisha had called Nikki once after that and left a message, but she didn’t have much hope that Nikki would call her back and she was proved right as Nikki never did. But they met again a few years later, at the party of someone who was, it seemed, their mutual friend, and this time they talked all night, rather than having sex. Trisha found that Nikki was not just good in bed; she was funny, intelligent and, Trisha thought, probably very sensitive underneath all the macho stuff - although Trisha could not discount the effects of massive amounts of tequila on them both that evening. They fall asleep in each other’s arms when dawn was breaking, and when they awoke again that afternoon, everything was different.

Nikki found herself experiencing hitherto unknown feelings of attachment and devotion - of being in bed with someone and just relaxing, not constantly needing to assert herself or prove herself - but just being settled. Somehow, she and Trisha had clicked this time, when the last time all Nikki had wanted to do was to get this cute blonde girl into bed and keep her there until she was moaning and calling out Nikki’s name underneath her…

This time, it felt different.

It took Nikki a while to let her guard down, but things were definitely different. She and Trisha spent nearly all their time together and Nikki, to her disbelief, found that she no longer wanted to sleep with all of the halfway attractive lesbian and bisexual - not to mention a significant proportion of the good-looking straight - women of the capital.

Trisha said it first, about six weeks after they had fallen into their happy and relaxed affair. It happened when they were in bed one morning, and Trisha said the words almost, it seemed, without thinking, They had been chatting and Nikki said something which made Trisha smile and sit astride her playfully, and she leaned in to kiss Nikki and just said it so casually: “I love you.”

In the next instant, Nikki saw Trisha regret her words. A look of horror passed over the blonde woman’s face as she realised what she had said. Trisha knew how it worked with women like Nikki - OK, somehow, she had managed to keep her around for more than just a one-night-stand, and somehow she had also managed Nikki to show the other side of herself, the side that would make chicken soup (or at least heat up the Heinz variety) for a sick girlfriend and supply her with tissues for her snotty nose, that sort of thing - but Trisha was realistic, even though she could feel herself falling for Nikki. Nikki was a serial womaniser, almost a predator. She was unlikely to be around next month, never mind for the duration. Trisha kicked herself, and Nikki saw Trisha kicking herself. It had to be said that Nikki had seen women do exactly the same thing with her before. She had spent one weekend with a married woman who by Sunday night was talking about divorcing her husband of twelve years and buying a riverboat for them to live on.

When Trisha said it though, it hadn‘t seemed ridiculous, it hadn‘t seemed like too much too soon. Nikki realised that Trisha‘s words had not made her start looking for the emergency exit - instead Nikki felt a warmth from them. Nikki decided to go with it.

“It’s OK”, Nikki said, taking Trisha’s hand and kissing it softly. Trisha bit her lip and looked down at her. Nikki shifted her weight. She was a lot bigger and stronger than Trisha and she swung her down onto the bed with ease.

Trisha expected that Nikki was going to restore the balance between them by giving her a good seeing to. She readied herself - Nikki could be wild sometimes. But Nikki surprised her. Instead of taking her roughly, as Trisha had imagined would happen, she kissed her - gently, then passionately, then gently again, and softly stroked her face.

2.

Trisha was handling the removal women.

“No - don’t put that there. It blocks out the light!” Trisha barked orders all over the place while Nikki hung out the window of the back bedroom, having a crafty cigarette. They had booked a firm of lesbian removers and big strapping butch women - together with one much smaller babydyke who seemed to be having trouble keeping up with the others - were swarming all over their new apartment, setting things down and then shifting them again, according to Trisha’s instructions.

“That’s bad for your health. And these white walls.” Trisha appeared in the doorway, strode over to her lover and reached for Nikki’s outstretched arm to confiscate the cigarette.

“Hey, hey, I’m just having the one. You know, they say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do.”

Trisha now had her hands on her hips, utterly unconvinced. “I see - and what stress do you have, exactly? I am organising everything.”

“Well, babe - I know how talented you are at this kind of thing. I have left it to your capable hands, that’s all. But up here”- Nikki tapped the size of her head. “A sea of troubles, I can tell you.” She smiled and took another drag of the cigarette.

Trisha snatched the fag from her and stubbed it out in an ashtray that seemed to appear from nowhere. “You’ll have more than a sea of troubles if I don’t see you lugging boxes in the next thirty seconds.”

Nikki enjoyed playing the big butch girlfriend and fetching and carrying things for her woman - but she always liked it much more if said woman asked her first. Or, as it always seemed to be in Trisha’s case, told her to do it. Nikki complied with Trisha’s order but gave her a look which said: “You’re going to get it later.” It was one Trisha immediately understood and a shiver of excitement went through her.

3.

Time passed. The years went by and soon, Nikki didn’t recognise the person she had been at twenty-five. In her early thirties, tall and dark and still as toned as ever thanks to her regular jogging and gym workouts, it wasn’t that she didn’t still get attention from other women. She got it more than ever. But she had absolutely no interest in them - Trisha was enough for her. Trisha and Nikki had settled down into domestic comfort and also into a business partnership which was beginning to become very profitable. Their lesbian nightclub in Soho was doing a roaring trade and the women were raking it in, and beginning to think about moving into a bigger flat, perhaps expanding the business a little, perhaps even getting a holiday home somewhere in Spain.

Nikki realised she was happy. And she was happy to tell Trisha: “I love you.”

Nikki took in all the feelings on Trisha’s face, the first time she said it: happiness, reciprocity, and, Nikki could see there too, a certain amount of relief. But over the years, Trisha relaxed as the relationship put down roots. Trisha knew the attention Nikki got and dealt with it; Trisha was not short of admirers herself. They were a good-looking couple and they owned one of the top gay clubs in London; there were always women after them. A few men, too, in the case of Trisha. But neither Nikki nor Trisha was really tempted.

One night, Trisha had gone out with some friends of hers from school and Nikki was in the back room of the club going through the books when a young, strikingly attractive woman talked her way past security and ending up in the back of the club.

Nikki recognised her. It was a woman who had offered to buy Nikki drinks, on several occasions, when Nikki had been out sitting by the bar observing how the evenings were going.

The encounter Nikki and this woman, Anya, had in the back room of the club was the closest Nikki got to cheating on Trisha in their nine years together. Anya was stunning - a cleavage to die for… and she was wearing a skirt which left little to the imagination, although Nikki found herself imagining, just a little bit. They ended up kissing briefly, but Nikki stopped it, even though she was getting twinges in a certain place that no other woman but Trisha had aroused in a while. She turned Anya down, but Anya wasn’t the kind of woman to get annoyed over something like that. She just smiled and told Nikki it was a pity, and then left Nikki her business card. Nikki looked at the card later. She was a solicitor, at a firm in the City, it looked like. Nikki shoved the business card into her desk drawer and forgot about it, and when Trisha came back from her night out - very drunk - Nikki took Trisha to bed and made love to her with a passion so fierce that it reminded Trisha of that first time they had made love - well, back then, it had only been sex - when Nikki had shown Trisha that all that previous sex she had had was so inconsequential, so much of nothing compared to this woman.

They went on happily, not thinking about the future too much, not worrying too much, taking nothing too seriously except the running of the club and the way they felt about each other. They had fun together. Everything was going right.

And then there was Gossard.

Last edited by unlikelyheroine on 31 May 2005 09:40 pm; edited 1 time in total Shared Cell



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 129
Location: London




unlikelyheroine Posted: 31 May 2005 09:40 pm

4.

“Come on, Wade. Wakey, wakey!”

Nikki’s sleep was interrupted by a shove from Fenner. Nikki went from suddenly feeling warm and secure to a cold, rude, awakening. She had been dreaming about Trish. She usually dreamed about Trish, and last night she had lain awake for an hour, looking at the hard wall in front of her, trying to ignore how scratchy her blanket felt, imagining she was back in her warm, big, bed with the woman she loved… thinking about how happy they had been eighteen months ago.

Now she had been brought back down to earth. She was in Larkhall, and her only company was this prick. Nikki swore and sat up.

“Not very ladylike language, Wade. But then, I don’t suppose you’re all that ladylike.”

Fenner was smirking. He had a way of smirking which was almost audible.

“What do you want?”

“A word. A word of warning, in fact.”

Nikki looked at him, and waited for him to get on with whatever bollocks it was he was going to say.

“You and Dockley. You don’t get on.”

“Understatement of the flipping century”, Nikki muttered.

“Well, as Dockley’s personal officer, I wouldn’t like to see her become the victim of bullying by another prisoner.”

Nikki snorted. “Dockley? A victim? Are you having a laugh, or what?”

Fenner folded his arms. “Well. It would be terrible if say, another prisoner were to attack Dockley, and if a prison officer were to see it.”

“What?” Nikki said, beginning to understand.

“Especially someone in here for a violent crime, a lifer, especially if they found drugs in her cell as well, when they did a search.”

“Fenner, you fu-”

Fenner clamped a hand over Nikki’s mouth.

“Tut, tut. No abusive language, or I will have to put you on report. All I’m saying is Wade, watch that temper of yours. It could get you into big trouble. A little more co-operation with the staff here wouldn’t go amiss.”

Nikki struggled free of Fenner’s hand.

“You mean, you’d set me up, you….” Nikki halted the “bastard”.

Fenner leaned in close. Nikki could smell his breath, which was pretty disgusting, although it was mostly overpowered by some foul aftershave Fenner must have thrown all over himself this morning.

He almost spat the words. “You’re damn fucking right I would, you fucking dyke.”

On that final word, he gave Nikki a shove which threw her backwards so that her head hit the wall with a crack.

Then Fenner left, whistling to himself at another job done well.

Nikki rubbed the back of her head. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, but no doubt she’d have a cracking bump there later.

Nikki leant over the bed to see if Fenner‘s entrance had awoken her cellmate, but she cellmate wasn‘t there. Well - Fenner probably wasn’t man enough to try to intimidate more than one woman at a time.

As she felt her head beginning to throb, Nikki let out a long sigh.

5.

Just another day in prison. Nikki stood in line with her plastic tray, waiting to be served up the slops that passed for food in this place by the Two Julies.

“’Ere, Julies, what’s this crap?” Dockley’s voice came from the front of the cue.

“Bangers”, said one Julie, “and mash”, finished the two of them, in unison.

At least the Two Julies have each other, Nikki thought, as she absently-mindedly swung the plastic tray against her thigh. Although people often thought there was more between the Two Julies, they were simply the very best of friends, and there for each other when it counted.

Nikki didn’t really even have any friends in here. Her cellmate, Monica, was the closest she had to a friend. Nikki spent most of her time daydreaming about Trisha, about the past and about what she would do once she got out of this place. Nikki tried not to think about just how far away her release might be.

As Nikki chewed on the bangers and mash, she decided that she had to concede that Dockley had had a point, for once, when she had called the lunch “crap”. It was considerably worse fare than normal, though Nikki doubted that was the Julies’ fault - it was probably the result of an edict from the management of the prison, a plan to give them even worse stuff than usual to keep their spirits nicely down. One time a prisoner on G wing had told Nikki that they drugged the food in these places to try to keep everyone respecting the system. Whilst she wouldn’t put it past the authorities to do such a thing, Nikki was conscious that even if they were trying to do this, it wasn’t succeeding. At this precise moment, Denny was squaring up to a prisoner who had objected to Dockley’s decision to throw her tray on the floor. Fenner stepped in to deal with that one -poor Dominic McAllister wasn’t being successful in separating the parties.

Nikki’s head was really starting to hurt her, and she doubted the food was going to make her feel much better it. She decided to ditch it. As she stood up with her tray, Nikki walked straight into Dockley - or rather, Dockley walked straight into her.

“A bit careless, aren’tcha?” Dockley looked Nikki up and down. Nikki had a bit of height on Dockley and could probably take her, but Dockley was dangerous because she was flipping mad.

“Not now, Dockley.” Nikki glanced over and saw Fenner looking at them with interest.

“You should look where you’re going, you silly cow”, Dockley said.

Nikki bit her tongue. The urge to get involved in an altercation was rising within her, but in the crowded canteen - with Fenner there, not to mention a couple of other screws - it wouldn’t be the best idea. Plus Nikki wasn’t sure she was on form what with her head sprouting a massive lump out of the back of it thanks to Fenner’s efforts that morning.

Dockley sensed that Nikki wasn’t going to rise to it this time. She stepped past her. “Next time, Wade.”

Nikki’s hands were bunched into fists by her side. She shoved them into her pockets and returned to her cell. The back of her head was beginning to throb quite hard now, and she thought she might like to try to catch a bit of sleep before she went to do some work in the garden.

6.

There are some men who just won’t accept that a woman doesn't want them. When a woman’s reason is because she is involved with another woman, sometimes the resentment a man feels can be that much worse. Nikki knew this. She had seen it with several of her girlfriends before, had seen guys do everything to pick them up and not take no for an answer because they couldn’t quite accept that a woman was wanted where they were not. Most were nice guys, and not too much trouble. They would give up sooner or later, still utterly bewildered as to why a hot girl would be exclusively into the lesbo action and not willing to let a guy in on it.

A few were more persistent, and they were the ones that troubled Nikki. Nikki imagined that straight women had the same troubles with these guys - they just couldn’t accept that they weren’t wanted - but with gay women, a couple of guys almost seemed like they had a point to prove. If this bitch just had the right guy’s dick inside her - that was the reasoning.

Gossard was the worst Nikki had ever encountered. He met Trisha when she reported a series of thefts in the club. Gossard knew it was a lesbian bar and that the chances had to be that its owners would be of a persuasion to match their business, but this didn’t deter him. He had his sights set on Trisha.

Trisha first of all tried being polite with him, but he wasn’t having any of it, and eventually, there was that day when Nikki came back to the club and found Gossard trying to rape Trisha.

He had her pinned over a table. His trousers were down, and Trisha’s skirt was up, and she was screaming. Gossard was pinning her down, and trying to force his hand over Trisha’s mouth.

To say a red mist descended - to say that Nikki was angry, furious, wild - it wouldn’t be quite right. What Nikki felt was a kind of blankness, a kind of nothing. She felt in a time and place where she could do anything, anything at all, and where no thought at all needed to be given to the consequences of her actions. It was an absence of feeling, if anything; of just acting out what was in her head without a moment’s thought about it.

The broken bottle went into Gossard’s neck almost in slow motion, as if Nikki were imagining it, rather than really doing it. Nikki was conscious that Gossard had dropped to the floor and that he was making a very strange noise, but she didn’t think anything of it. Then Nikki felt glad that Trisha wasn’t being hurt any more, but then she turned to her girlfriend and saw the look of horror on her face.

Gossard lay dying on the ground, and Nikki realised what she had done - she had killed him. In that instant, Nikki thought: Good. You deserved it, you bastard.

But then Trisha was still screaming. Shared Cell



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 129
Location: London




unlikelyheroine Posted: 31 May 2005 09:42 pm

7.

No-one really understood why Helen wanted to do it. Helen had a First Class degree from a top university; she could have had a good job in the City as a lawyer or a banker, like a lot of her friends. If she had wanted to try and make the world a better place, she could have trained as a teacher, or even something in social work - these were the options her father suggested to her when Helen first told him she wanted to join the Prison Service.

“Sweetheart - I know you want to help people - but being a prison officer?!”

“I’ll go in at a higher level than that Dad… this fast track course, it means you can start as Wing Governor.”

Her father had shook his head. “I’ll still worry about you.”

“I know. But this is what I want to do.”

“Well… if you’re sure…”

“I am. Dad, I really think I can achieve things!” Helen’s father thought of her when she was a child, always bringing home half-dead, or even already expired, birds and other wildlife and trying to keep them alive in her room, staying up half the night with them, and just prolonging the inevitable. But he managed to smile and agree with her that this was what she should do.

John Stewart thought about Jesus’s friendship with Mary Magdalene; it was an example to everyone not to judge a person on the basis of their past. It wasn’t these women’s pasts that bothered him though, but what they were like behind bars, in the present. Jesus, John thought to himself, was a man in his early thirties who always hung around with twelve other guys, whereas his little girl would be going off to be a Wing Governor all by herself!

He told Helen this, and she laughed.

Keep her safe, John Stewart appealed to God, later. Please keep my baby girl safe. He almost added “in the nest of vipers”, but didn’t. He knew he should not judge.

8.

“So how was it?” Sean was cooking something - pasta and something. Helen was not a very good cook and usually let Sean decide all their meals.

“It was OK.” Helen set down the shopping bag. She’d picked up some wine on the way home. “Interesting.”

Helen had been to Larkhall Prison to meet her new colleagues. G Wing, where she was going to start next week, was currently without a Wing Governor, the last one having left abruptly, for some reason. Helen had familiarised herself with the layout of the prison and chatted to a few of the staff, a couple of whom seemed to be a bit miffed about a fast track graduate taking the Wing Governor job they had tried to lay claim to. Helen had wanted to get on and to make positive connections today, but it hadn’t really happened, although she had talked for a while to a young and apparently very sensitive PO called Dominic, who she had liked. It would be good to have someone she could get on with.

Helen had also made a start at going through the files, to see what was going on on the Wing. There were files on each of the prisoners, as well as a log of the day-to-day happenings on G Wing. The latter was something of a wake-up call for Helen. She had been told on the course, of course, about what things could be like in a place like Larkhall, but seeing the real-life events there in black and white… repeated acts of violence; abuse hurled towards the prison officers; attempted break-outs (one seemingly involving some kind of acrylic wig); altercations at mealtimes, in the chapel, in the yard, at the pool table… the list went on and on. In the catalogue of violence and foul language and general-troublemaking, there were a few women who seemed to be the usual suspects, but two names stood out more frequently than any of the others: Dockley, M and Wade, N.

Helen dug out their files. During the course of the next hour and a half, the coffee she had been brought by two very polite female prisoners (“Of course, they’re nice as pie to you, Ma’am, seeing as you’re the governor, but let me tell you, they’re former prostitutes and when it comes down to it, no amount of sprucing up of the exterior can-” “Thank you”, Helen had said, interrupting the sour-faced female PO, Sylvia Hollamby and ushering her out of the office) went cold on her desk as she was mesmerised by the files. Their contents were shocking, but utterly fascinating and certainly a lot more enthralling than any of her old Criminology textbooks.

Both Dockley and Wade were serving life sentences; both were convicted murderers. Nicola Wade had - Jesus Christ, thought Helen - murdered a police officer by sticking a broken bottle in his neck. How awful. Both Dockley and Wade had long records of reports detailing their bad behaviour whilst in prison, although Dockley had apparently calmed down of late. There was a note on the file from her personal officer, Jim Fenner, to say her behaviour seemed to be improving. On the other hand, Wade didn't seem to get on with Fenner, judging by the reports. Helen had met Fenner earlier in the day. She hadn’t liked him much, but perhaps, she thought, he came in for a lot of stick from the women, being a male authority figure in a women’s prison.

“Was it a tough day? I can feel the tension in your shoulders.” Sean massaged Helen’s back as she drank a glass of wine and tried to relax.

“I guess it was just a bit of a culture shock - you know. I mean they tell you what it’s going to be like, but…”

“You’ll feel better on Monday. When you can get down to business.” Sean reached for the wine bottle, and Helen thought about the police officer again. It was horrible, what some people could do... but she knew she had to try to be fair with all of the women and not judge them on what they had done.

Sean gestured to Helen’s wine glass. “Fancy some more?”

“Yes please.” Helen nodded and held out the glass.

“So,” Sean topped the glass up, “you got your self-defence moves lined up? Some of these women can be pretty tough, you know.”

“Physical attacks on prison officers by female inmates are very rare”. Helen was quoting her fast track course’s material.

“Well, I’m not just thinking of physical attacks.”

Helen’s eyes met Sean’s. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, a good-looking woman like you, in a place like that! You know, these prisons are full of ladies who bat for the other team.” Sean winked. “You’ll have admirers queuing up! You’ll have to watch yourself!”

“Och, don’t be daft!”

“It’s a good job you’re not going to prison as one of the inmates - they’d be all over you. You’d have to get some big strong butch woman on your side to protect you.” Sean grinned and took a sip of his wine.

Helen smiled at Sean’s joking around, but she wasn’t really in the mood to laugh about it. Seeing the prison today and reading the files had reminded her what a tough task this was going to be. And that was before factoring in the opposition she might get from some of the “old timers” among G Wing’s prison staff, who weren’t going to take too kindly to her being in charge…

Helen could feel herself weakening, and told herself to get a grip. She could do this. She’d be chosen to do this, they had offered her the job. She was capable of doing good things on G Wing - she knew it, she could feel it.

But for tonight - it was a chance to relax. She finished her glass of wine and motioned for Sean to pour her another. Shared Cell



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 129
Location: London




unlikelyheroine Posted: 31 May 2005 09:43 pm

9.

Helen lay awake thinking, as Sean slept beside her. Helen was still thinking about the contents of those files earlier. Why did it shock her, to read that kind of thing? She had had all the preparation, done the training, she knew all the horror stories about the things people did that got them locked up… so what was it? The cold hard reality of it, the knowledge that in a few days she would be amongst these women… trying to be an authority figure, but trying to improve things for them too?

Helen sighed, turned over, and wrapped her arms around Sean. He moved slightly in his sleep and said “Mmmm…”

No more thinking about the bad things these women have done, Helen told herself. It’s not about whether they are good or bad women or not… I have a job to do, and I’ll do it.

Helen drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

10.

Several miles away, Nikki Wade woke in a cold sweat.

Before she had killed Gossard, Nikki had not believed it was possible to wake in a cold sweat. It was the kind of thing you read about in books, but seemed to be a bit of dramatic licence. I mean, if you’re sweating, you’re not cold, are you?

Now Nikki knew how it felt. To wake in the horror and agony that things have gone terribly wrong and there is nothing you can do to fix it - it was worse than a nightmare, because nightmares end. This was her life, her life sentence, and her days in prison stretched out in front of her.

Nikki ran her hand through her hair. It was drenched with sweat. She had been having a nightmare again about that night, only in her dream she hadn’t got to Gossard in time and he had raped Trisha and killed her with a broken bottle… and there was nothing she could do.

It was a warm night, but Nikki was shaking. And she was alone on the top bunk of a bloody bunk bed in a sodding prison! Nikki missed Trisha more than she could express, missed the physical closeness and the simple day to day things like chatting and cooking together and sharing a bottle of wine and all of that. She lived from one of Trisha’s visits to another and in between nothing really mattered. Time passed, thankfully it passed but so slowly that Nikki sometimes felt like the world could not be spinning at all…

Over time, Nikki’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the prison and now she could make out every sodding brick in her sodding cell. Nikki hadn’t got as far as counting them - she wasn’t that cracked. Occasionally, she was tempted to make some ironic tally marks on the wall, one for each day she spent in the place - she’d probably have covered every part of the walls and the floor as well and have made a good job of the ceiling before she got out of this dump.

Nikki tried to herself that it didn’t really matter anyway. She was here and that was that. No point getting all whiny about it. May as well just sit it out as best she could. But on nights like this, she wondered where she would be right now if none of it had ever happened. Safely tucked up with her woman by her side… running the club, nice holidays in the sun every year. Being able to do just the simple things like jogging in the park, taking the dog for a stroll by the river. Not that Nikki and Trisha had a dog. Not that they could really have a dog in their eighth-storey flat, and not that dogs were allowed by the landlord anyway and well Nikki didn’t even really like dogs much but God, what Nikki wouldn’t give to have one now, kicking up a fuss, having a good old yap and demanding she take it out for a moonlit stroll - well, a moonlit dump, Nikki supposed. And being able to do it. To just take the dog out, no-one to tell her not to go, except perhaps Trisha imploring her to stay in the warm bed… and walking outside like everyone else does everyday, something she never realised was bliss until it was taken away and she just had the prison yard… and then being able to go back to that warm bed, where her woman was.

Nikki felt sick. Sick right down deep to her stomach. But where did it get her? All of this? Bloody nowhere. She lay back down and closed her eyes and prayed for a dreamless sleep to come, and imagined she had someone - what do I mean “someone“, Trisha, of course, she told herself - to wrap her arms around. Shared Cell



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 129
Location: London




unlikelyheroine Posted: 31 May 2005 09:45 pm

11.

Since Nikki had been banged up, she had got to know who her real friends were. Most women she knew from the London gay scene - i.e., most of the people she had previously counted as her friends - had vanished from sight as soon as she was arrested. There were a few exceptions, and two friends in particular wrote to her from time to time and sent her cards. Nikki now counted those women as true friends.

On the inside, Nikki kept pretty much to herself, but just as in the outside world, everyone knew her - or knew of her. Whilst she got on well with most of the other inmates, apart from Dockley and her sidekick Denny Blood, there wasn’t anyone she was really close to, apart from Carol Byatt. Dockley had started on Carol as soon as she had arrived a couple of months ago, sensing another victim for her and Denny to get at, but Nikki had been around to watch out for Carol and Dockley had had to give up. Nikki and Carol had spent a lot of time talking and they had become friends.

Nikki wondered sometimes if Carol wanted a bit more than that; she wasn't blind to the way Carol looked at her sometimes. Nikki was conscious, in fact, that just like on the outside, in here she got a lot of attention. But again, just like the outside, Nikki was faithful to Trisha and rebuffed all advances from the women.

This morning, Nikki was angry at herself for letting Fenner get to her. Carol could sense something was up with Nikki, but already knew better than to ask what it was. Nikki wasn’t the kind of person to confide in anyone.

I can’t believe I let that bastard touch me, Nikki thought. She resolved that it wouldn’t happen again. She was going to give no ground at all with Fenner now. Nikki knew the way Fenner operated. She knew the deal with Fenner and Dockley; it would be obvious to anyone who took the time to notice what was going on, but of course, the rest of the screws couldn’t give a toss so long as the prison was running smoothly and there wasn’t a riot on their hands.

Fenner had quite a few fans amongst the female prisoners too. This was because he tended to reserve the sadistic, utter bastard side of himself for those he knew his "charms" wouldn't work on or who had already worked out what he was really like.

Nikki and Carol were leaning over the railing on the top floor. Down below by the pool table, there was one of the new prisoners, Rachel Hicks. Looked like Denny was having a go at her over something or other. Rachel was referred to as a “first-timer.” Technically, Nikki was also a first-timer in here, but eighteen months into a life sentence for murdering a copper was kind of a different league to this kid who was in for having a few Es and had been apparently pretty unlucky with the severity of her sentence.

Fenner stepped in to get rid of Denny. Nikki could see that familiar look in the scumbag’s eye; Fenner was sniffing around Rachel, without a doubt. That bastard was after her, Nikki could sense it.

Nikki felt her head throb suddenly, an unwelcome reminder of the way she had let Fenner push her around in her cell the other day - Nikki felt her anger rising, as much at herself as at the prison officer. She was going to give no quarter to that bastard now. It infuriated her that so few of the other women, the other prison officers, saw this guy for what he was.

“Fancy a game of pool, Nikki?”

Nikki was an excellent pool player and could wipe the floor with most of the women in the prison, but didn’t bother. Pool reminded her of the club. They had a few tables there; something about pool playing and lesbianism went together. There had been a near riot when during refurbishments to the club, they had been forced to close the pool room.

“No thanks”, Nikki told Carol quietly, staring at Fenner and Rachel.

At this point, Carol would have asked any other person if they were alright, but Carol knew she would be hitting a brick wall with Nikki with that question, so she changed the subject.

“When do you reckon we’ll get a new Wing Governor?”

The Acting Wing Governor on G Wing at the moment was the Principal Officer from H Wing. Fenner seemed mightily pissed off not to have been given the role, although he did his best to hide it. Nikki knew, though, that Fenner would love the chance to be in charge of all the women, he would relish the change to be given even more freedom to roam about and take what he wanted from them. The guy was disgusting.

In response to Carol’s question, Nikki shrugged. “Dunno. They’re all the same, anyway.”

“There’s a rumour there’ll be a new one on Monday. Some woman. Been working at Greenham.”

Nikki had heard of Greenham. It was a new secure facility for young female offenders somewhere up north, or maybe Scotland. “Is that right. Where’d you hear that?”

“The Julies heard Bodybag talking about it when they were making her tea or something.”

“Well”, Nikki took a cigarette from her pocket and offered another to Carol, but Carol shook her head. “It's the same old shitty circus, different ringleader. Don’t make much difference. Sure you don‘t want a fag?”

"Not for me, thanks."

Nikki shrugged. "Suit yourself."

By the pool table, a fight broke out as Denny lost a game of pool to one of the remand prisoners and sought to take revenge with the cue.

12.

Helen was trying to decide between Suit #1 and Suit #2.

“Sean - which do you think?”

Sean was very tenderly and carefully attending to a potted plant, and seemed not to hear her.

“Sean!”

“What? Oh, the black one, definitely. Says you mean business.”

“Right. Which blouse - the blue one, or the pink one?”

Sean leaned carefully over the plant and with the most delicate of touches, squirted water onto its stem from a small bottle.

“SEAN!?!”

“Oh - pink. You mean business, but you have a softer, nurturing side when necessary.”

Helen looked at him. “Are you taking the piss?”

Sean looked back at her with a solemn expression. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Ma’am.”

“This is serious, you know. The impression you give on your first day, it can determine everything…”

“All they’re going to see is how gorgeous you are.” Sean ditched the plant and wrapped his arms around Helen, and moved in to kiss her.

“No, no, there’s no time for any of that.”

“Charming.” Sean returned to his plant.

“I’m already running late!” Helen dragged several pairs of shoes out of the cupboard.

“Whatever you wear, you’re going to look great. Anyway, isn’t it all about how you do the job, not how you look?”

“It should be, but…” Helen had been warned of the opinion many prison officers would have of a university graduate with very little prison experience being fast-tracked into a Wing Governor role. She would need to get the officers on her side very quickly. She didn’t want to look like some silly schoolgirl. She needed to create a good impression, right from the word go.

“Well, trust a gardener not to understand! The plants don’t care what you wear!”

Helen picked a pair of shoes largely at random, went for the black suit and pink blouse Sean had selected and dashed for the door, already fifteen minutes behind the schedule she had set for herself.

13.

“WHAT DO WE WANT?”

“BREAKFAST!”

“WHEN DO WE WANT IT?”

“NOW!”

Breakfast was a good fifteen minutes late. Nikki had already led the assembled prisoners of G Wing in a chorus of “Why Are We Waiting?” and now had them in chant mode.

“Come on, girls! That’s enough of that!” Bodybag was attempting to regain some kind of order.

“SHUT IT!” Fenner bellowed above the baying mob. He jabbed a finger at Nikki. “You. Wade. Causing trouble again?”

Nikki was thoroughly enjoying seeing Fenner get wound up. “No, sir. Just exercising our democratic right of protest. You know, history has taught us that the masses rise up when they have hungry bellies.”

“Shut up, Wade. Breakfast will be ready when it’s ready.”

“What is it - did you make Dockley cook yours first?” Nikki said loud enough for only Fenner to hear. Today was Dockley’s first day on kitchen duty, a job Nikki strongly suspected she had got purely through Fenner’s intervention. The Two Julies were back to being cleaners.

Fenner went to say something, but at that moment, the hatch was lifted noisily. Breakfast was served.

“You’ll keep, Wade”, Fenner smirked. “It's not as if you’re going anywhere, after all.” Shared Cell



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 129
Location: London




unlikelyheroine Posted: 31 May 2005 09:48 pm

14.

Helen sat at the temporary traffic light, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and willing the change to green. Since when had this traffic light been here, anyway!?

She fiddled with the radio, tuned in the news long enough to hear about two more horrific murders, then tuned it out again. Not exactly what she needed to settle her nerves this morning. Helen felt the same way she had always felt on the morning of an exam - sick with nerves.

And she was increasingly anxious that on her very first day at Larkhall, she was going to be somewhat late. This wouldn’t exactly match the mature, professional image she would be trying to project amongst her colleagues…

Helen wondered what would be waiting for her on her first morning. When she had applied for the job at Larkhall, she knew it would be tough. Privately, Helen admitted that it would be that much tougher because of her lack of real experience, but she had been thinking a lot over the past few days, remembering why she had got into the Prison Service and the difference she believed she could make… Helen believed firmly that what she lacked in years in the Service she could make up for with a positive approach and a willingness to try new ideas.

Finally, the light changed. Helen glanced at the clock in her car - she could probably just about make it. The speedometer registered briefly above the legal limit for a second, but Helen brought the car back down under it - she’d be a good girl, this morning of all mornings.

15.

Jim Fenner was making a note of the report on Nikki Wade and the trouble she had caused this morning with her little breakfast mini-riot.

“Hardly a riot, Jim”, Dominic McAllister said, blowing on his cup of tea. “I know it got a bit noisy, but-”

“Get real, Dom”, Jim said, writing the oh-so-satisfying word “Wade” in the section asking for the name of the prisoner on report. “Whenever there’s trouble in this place, seems to me Wade isn’t too far behind.”

“Or Dockley”, Dominic said, taking a sip of tea.

“Dockley? Don’t be daft. I know we’ve had problems with her in the past, but that one has turned a corner. I’ll be recommending her for Enhanced.”

Dominic merely nodded and said nothing. He had his own opinion of Shell Dockley. She wasn’t like Nikki, but he didn’t necessarily consider that a good thing. It seemed to Dominic that with Nikki Wade, what you saw was what you got: she was angry and bitter about being inside and resentful of authority, and boy, did you get to know about it.

Dockley, however, was something else. She was playing the system well enough to get a job in the kitchens and now, it seemed, to get moved up to the Threes, but Dominic doubted whether Shell had genuinely seen the error of her ways. More likely she’d seen a way to make life comfortable for herself.

Not that that was bad in itself; when prisoners decided to follow the rules and play the game in order to make life easier for themselves, life suddenly got easier for everyone. Dominic’s concern, however, was that Shell’s new “model prisoner” posturing was all an act and that it diverted attention from whatever it was she was really up to.

Not that he could say any of that to Jim. Jim was Dockley’s personal officer and consistently defended her.

Jim allowed himself a very small, almost imperceptible smirk. Some mornings, he thought, it was just great to be holding a Biro. Jim inscribed the time of Nikki’s offence and added some personal notes about her attitude, signing his name with a very satisfying flourish. Jim told himself that Wade’s antics would be the first thing the new governor could deal with once she had settled into her office, had a cup of tea, filed her nails, etc, whatever...

16.

“So - I hope that I have set out my vision, of what we can achieve here, on G Wing.”

Helen ended her short speech about what she hoped to bring as Wing Governor with a smile. There was a moment’s awkward silence, before Jim Fenner spoke.

“Well. We’d just like to say how very glad we all are to have you here, Miss Stewart. I think I speak for everyone when I say: Welcome to Larkhall.”

Helen was expecting trouble from Fenner - he had years of experience in the Prison Service and no doubt, she thought, wouldn‘t take too kindly to some young whippersnapper with her university ideas. But perhaps she had misjudged him, ahead of time. She smiled at him. “Thank you, Mr. Fenner.”

The POs dispersed to go and do their work, or in Hollamby’s case, to make another cup of tea. Fenner stepped over to Helen.

“Don’t want to bother you on your first day, Ma’am, but…”

“What’s up?”

“Well. It wasn’t a major incident, but you should probably know there was some trouble this morning. I’m afraid it was one of the usual suspects around here - Nikki Wade. I’ve put her on report.”

Wade. The woman who had murdered that policeman, Helen thought, and a cold shiver went down her spine, just thinking about it.

Come on Stewart, she told herself. Get a bloody grip, woman.

“If I were you, I’d read her the riot act. Throw the bloody book at her. Wade’s a troublemaker, you see, through and through. You have to let her know what’s what, right from the outset, or she’ll take advantage.”

Helen knew Jim was probably trying only to help, but she bristled at being told how to do her job. She was the Wing Governor, after all, even if only for all of five minutes. “Thank you, Jim… I’ll handle it.”

Jim paused for a moment. Helen wondered if he knew what she was thinking. Helen sighed inwardly ; she couldn’t afford to alienate her staff at 10am on Day #1.

“Yes, right, well - why don’t you bring Wade to see me. Shall we say - 12 noon?”

Fenner nodded. “Yes Ma’am. No problem at all.”

In front of Helen, Fenner kept his expression perfectly even - he even added a dash of sorry resignation, as if he regretted the fact that, dear oh dear, he had to tell Miss Stewart to deal with the unfortunate Wade - what a pity, but it couldn’t be helped, his hands were tied…

Once out of view and on the Wing, Fenner strode off smugly to tell Nikki the good news that the governor would be wanting to see her later.

OK here's the next part!!

Thank you for the great feedback again!! :D

17.

Helen sat at her desk and let out a long sigh.

She had just got out of a meeting with the prison’s governing Governor, Simon Stubberfield. He’d been polite, but condescending. He had told her what a good Principal Officer she had in Jim Fenner and Helen had wondered whether he was really suggesting that Fenner should have her job. Stubberfield hadn’t picked her as governor of G Wing; she had been allocated this role as part of the fast track programme. Stubberfield was going to take some convincing about Helen being able to hack it in Larkhall. He had given her a long lecture about women's prisons and their particular problems.

Helen believed that she could make a difference, but just at the moment, it seemed that the turmoil and difficulties of prison life were going to have to take priority over her ideals and her enthusiasm. On her desk in front of her were stacks of papers she was going to need to go through regarding the recent flare-ups of trouble on the Wing, Nicola Wade’s personal file that she had to have a proper look through, and a big steaming mug of coffee.

Helen decided to go with the coffee first. It warmed her instantly; the caffeine would probably take a little longer to kick in, sadly.

After taking a few moments to compose herself, Helen took a deep breath and opened the file marked “Wade, N.” After a couple of minutes of reading, Helen realised that Jim Fenner had not been wrong about Wade - she was trouble, alright. A catalogue of her rebellions against authority were listed in the file since she had first arrived at Larkhall about eighteen months ago. The list went on and on.

Helen sighed and read on, but as she got towards the end of the file, she realised that she could no find of the previous criminal record she had expected to see with a prisoner like Wade. She knew from her studies and courses that many murders were in fact committed by people with no previous convictions, but stabbing a police officer to death somehow smacked of the hardened con rather than the ordinary citizen pushed to breaking point.

Now that Helen thought about it, she seemed to remember Wade’s case from the papers a couple of years ago. Had she been that one - Helen remembered the headline in a tabloid newspaper: "Lesbian Cop Killer Gets Life", or something similar. Helen thought suddenly that she had even written an essay on it - presentations of sexuality and criminal deviancy or something or other.

There was a knock at the door.

Helen glanced at the clock. 12 o’clock already. It was time for her to meet this Nicola Wade.

18.

Nikki stood outside the door as Fenner looked on smugly. No doubt he was the reason she had to go and meet the new governor.

Nikki knew what the new governor would be like: full of do-gooder ideas but determined to take a tough line early on to assert her authority, blah blah blah, the usual crap.

Fenner, smug grin attacked, knocked on the door, and opened it.

“Wade’s here, Ma’am.”

Helen frowned at the use of “Ma’am.” She was sure she had mentioned in her talk that morning that the officers could be familiar with her. She wondered briefly, noting Fenner’s tone, if he was taking the piss just a little bit, but she dismissed the thought: she reminded herself that she needed her officers on side, early on.

“Thank you, Mr. Fenner.”

Fenner was hovering as if he wanted to hear proceedings.

“That will be all, Mr. Fenner.”

“I thought perhaps I might explain the situation-”

“That won’t be necessary.” Helen dismissed him. She wanted to handle this on her own.

Nikki gave Fenner a look as he was leaving which said: Yes, go on, piss off.


“Well. Nicola-”

“Nikki”.

“Sorry?”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “The name’s Nikki, don’t bother with this bloody "Nicola" crap.”

Helen stared at the inmate. She was caught off-guard, for several reasons.

Firstly, the fact that the first thing this prisoner was doing was disagreeing with her.

Secondly, because this “Nikki” had used two swear words, albeit two of the mildest, within twenty seconds of stepping inside her office.

And thirdly, because Nicola - Nikki - Wade, was not what Helen had been expecting. At all.

Helen, like many of her generation, believed that the roots of crime lay in social deprivation. The courses she had been on, the studies she had read and the mantra of her lecturers and teachers - the message was that poverty and lack of opportunity - and to some extent, abuse - resulted in criminal acts. It was one of the things that frustrated Helen; some people never had a chance in life. Things went wrong for them early on - they were never given opportunities or had aspirations instilled in them and it marked them down for life. Helen wanted to change things for the women here and show them that there was more to life than scraping along, drifting in and out of prison and hostels. She wanted to show them that there was a whole other life out there, where they could be successful and happy without the need to resort to crime, violence and the dark side of life that went with it all.

Now - Helen didn’t want to think herself a snob. Not at all. And she hated making assumptions. And she wanted to challenge her own prejudices about “criminal” and “deviant” women, and everything else. But the third thing Helen was thinking about challenged her preconceived ideas about Nikki Wade and about the kind of person she was. Because those mild swear words - well, coarse though the meaning was, they had been said in such a well-spoken accent.

Of course, Helen knew she shouldn’t make assumptions. There were quite a few middle-class people behind bars, although they tended to be there for the “white collar” crimes like fraud, money laundering and so on. But of course middle class people were just as capable of murder as anyone else… It was simply that reading about Nikki Wade’s crime, Helen had imagined her as a certain kind of person, and was going to respond accordingly. Instead, Helen was being faced with a woman who was challenging all her pre-conceptions.

As Helen motioned for Nikki to take a seat and Nikki duly did so, somewhat slowly, arms folded and a confrontational look set on her face, Helen could see that Nikki didn’t look anything like most of the female prisoners Helen had hitherto encountered. For one thing, she didn’t appear to be on drugs.

Helen was well aware of the shocking figures for drug abuse and addiction within prison and knew the tell-tale signs for when a prisoner was under the influence. Nikki gave no indication of any of those signs at all. She was angry, but not edgy in the way a junkie - or even someone tempted to take a few substances on the inside - would be.

Helen could also see something else in Nikki, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. Something told her, however, that those eyes which were blazing with what looked like anger - possibly at authority, or at prison, or at Helen herself - also somehow shone with intelligence.

All of this, from the first few seconds in a room together. Helen would wonder later if she had gone back and applied things she knew later to that first meeting, if once she knew how sensitive and thoughtful Nikki was, she had told herself she had seen it that first day in the angry young woman who had sat across a desk from her and glared. Perhaps, Helen thought, but perhaps not. There was something about Nikki, from the first moment.

“This”, Nikki declared, folding her arms ever tighter and leaning back in the chair “is a whole heap of crap.”

19.

Helen tapped her pen on the pad in front of her briefly, then remembered the lectures she had had on body language, and recollected that fidgeting was a sign of nervousness and weakness.

She put the pen down.

“You think that kind of language is appropriate, do you, Nikki?”

Nikki shrugged and rolled her eyes.

“I’m asking you a question.”

“Well, let me guess. I’m here because of Fenner, right?”

“You’re here because of your behaviour.”

“But it was Fenner who drew your attention to it, right? His name on the report?”

Helen looked at the prisoner. “And it’s Mr. Fenner who is making you use offensive language to the Wing Governor, I suppose?”

Nikki rolled her eyes again. “Whatever.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Whatever, Miss.”

Helen was struck again by Nikki’s demeanour. She knew that a lot of prisoners, when brought to task over what they had done, would adopt submissive stances and try to talk their way out of things. Some would deny everything and put the blame on others; others would apologise profusely and promise they would never do the like again. Others would sit impassively and wait for whatever punishment was being doled out. It was only a minority of prisoners who would continue to put up a fight at this stage.

The troublemakers, Helen thought, but immediately corrected herself. Best not to label prisoners early on, as they would often act out the label they had given, even take pride in it. Was Nikki like that, Helen thought? Glad to be seen as a rebel and a source of trouble on the Wing? Whilst Helen wanted to take a firm line early on, she didn’t want to add fuel to this particular fire.

“Nikki. The report is about what happened at breakfast time.”

“And it's from Fenner.”

Helen ignored this. “And looking through your previous behaviour - this is just the latest in a long list of reports you’ve had… practically ever since you got here, there have been black marks against your name. Week after week.”

“Hmm… and how many of them have got Fenner’s name beside them?” Nikki rolled her eyes and glanced back at the Wing Governor.

Helen frowned. A moment of tension stretched across the room, but was suddenly broken with the ringing of the telephone.

“Yes?…. What?….Vomiting - where?”

Nikki tapped her foot on the floor slowly.

“I see. Right.”

Helen put the phone down again.

“So… how long then, miss?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Come on, let’s get it over with, let’s not waste each other’s sodding time. I’m sure you’ve got things to do here - potted plants to move in, files to rearrange or something. How long on the block do I get this time, now Fenner’s got his knickers in a twist?”

“Nikki.” Helen stared at her, and then stood up and leaned forward, her hands pressed down on the desk. In another life, Nikki thought, I would be looking down her top right now. But all of Nikki’s senses had been dulled since she had been inside, the whole world was darker, more in shadow, less real and defined. Nikki barely looked at women any more the way she used to.

She certainly wasn’t going to look twice at this preppy young woman here - God thought Nikki, she’s wearing a bloody twinset. Is she running a prison wing , or judging at a jam stall?

Nikki did wonder, briefly, if perhaps another clothing style would suit the governor better, but her conscious mind did not long tolerate the deviation from feeling scathing contempt for this woman and the corrupt system she represented. Her anger quickly returned and she tuned back in to the one-way conversation that was going on. This Miss Stewart was still going on, was she? Bloody hell.

“Let me give you a piece of advice, Nikki. You better change your attitude - and fast. I won’t tolerate you speaking to me in this way, and I won’t tolerate the lack of respect you have evidently been showing to a senior officer in this prison up until now. Do I make myself clear?”

Respect! For Fenner! What a joke. This one just didn’t have a clue. Nikki sighed. “Whatever you say, Miss.”

Helen picked up the phone again.

“Could you come and collect Nikki Wade, please? No… I’ve got another idea in mind. Thank you.”

Fenner was at the door in double quick time.

“Mr. Fenner. Would you please escort Nikki to the kitchens.”

Fenner was frowning. “I’m sorry? I thought perhaps, bearing in mind… she should be…”

“She’s to collect the mop and bucket and the other cleaning…” Helen struggled for the word - “utensils… One of the cleaners is unwell, I understand.”

Nikki’s face suddenly softened - to Helen’s surprise, though unlike Nikki, her expression betrayed nothing. “Which cleaner, miss?”

“Well - it’s Carol Byatt. She’s been sick apparently.”

Nikki‘s face showed concern.

Is there another side to her? Helen wondered.

“Is she alright? I mean-”

Fenner cut Nikki short. “That’s enough, Wade, cut the gossiping.”

Helen gave Fenner a look as if to say: I‘ll handle this. It did not go unnoticed by Nikki.

Helen turned back to the prisoner. “You could go down the block, yes, but I thought perhaps you could do something more constructive. You can clean the toilets today, Nikki. Put all that energy into something useful for once, hmm?”

Nikki‘s cocky swagger was back again now, and Helen wondered whether she had imagined her apparent concern for the other prisoner. “I’ll take my suppressed anger out with a bog brush, Miss. Absolutely.” Yeah, right up Fenner’s -

Helen smiled an efficient smile. “You do that. That will be all.”

“I think you’ll make a lovely Mrs Mop, Wade” Fenner said, as he escorted Nikki down to the kitchens.

Nikki would normally have got herself another report for a retort here, but she was distracted, thinking about Carol. Being sick? Could just be Dockley’s cooking of course, but Nikki looked out for Carol, and she was worried. Carol was one of those women that always seemed a bit delicate - the kind of woman Nikki had a weakness for.

Well, thought Nikki. DID have a weakness for - in a previous life, when there was more to my life than this place…

20.

“Sean - I can’t really talk right now.” Helen was scribbling notes ahead of her meeting with G Wing’s officers that afternoon. Stubberfield - or the prison visitors - had had some idea about a fashion show. Helen could imagine how that was going to go down with Hollamby, for example. She had not spoken to Sylvia Hollamby for long but she had already got the firm impression that any hint of the prisoners having any fun at all - or doing anything beyond eating, sleeping and being locked up - was something Sylvia would strongly disapprove of as new-fangled, lily-livered mollycoddling of cons, etc etc etc.

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m missing you. And I love you", Sean said.

“I love you too. But really darling, I’m rushed off my feet here.”

“Well - I just wanted to check that it was all going OK. On your first day.”

“It’s fine - it’s just busy. We’ll talk later, OK? I’ll pick up a bottle of wine on the way home and we’ll have a chat.”

Sean said goodbye, and Helen was glad to return to her notes. It wasn’t that she didn’t love the guy or appreciate the effort that he went to for her, it was just that sometimes she didn’t think he appreciated what her career meant to her.

She knew that Sean loved his job, but it wasn’t really a vocation, the way Helen felt her job was. Sean had studied Philosophy at university and then travelled around for a few years before returning to the UK and deciding that he wanted to be a gardener, and his parents had helped set him up in it. Helen was glad that he did something he enjoyed but it wasn’t something he had fought for and worked for. Helen knew that many of the other officers would think she had been parachuted into her current role but she had worked hard academically for years and spent a huge amount of time getting to where she was and what was more, it meant a lot to her. It wasn’t something pleasant to fill the days with and it wasn’t something that she could switch off when she got home, the way Sean could about his potted plants - well, apart from when he was potting them at home and getting soil everywhere - but even that was something he did because it relaxed him, whereas Helen knew being a Wing Governor was anything but relaxing. But if she’d wanted a relaxing job, she’d have taken up the offer to teach English & Classics at the old private school her friend from university, Claire, had attended. Claire was good friends with the headmistress and Helen had met her several times; the headmistress had taken a shine to Helen and offered her a job on the spot. Helen had explained that she wasn’t a teacher but Claire had explained in turn that it wasn’t necessary to have any qualifications to be a teacher at a private school. Helen had been taken aback at this and somewhat embarrassed that she hadn’t known it.

Helen snapped back to the present. Fashion show. Meeting. Yep.

She took a big gulp of her cup of coffee.

21.

Nikki scrubbed at a particularly dodgy-looking substance on the side of the pan.

“I want to be able to see my face in it, Wade”, Fenner said, from behind her.

“Oh - I think I can already see it down here, Sir.” Nikki turned and smiled at him, then peered back down the toilet again. “Oh no wait, my mistake -it’s just a floater.”

“You know something-”

The main toilet doors banged open. The two Julies to the rescue - well, thought Nikki, not that I need saving from this guy. Nikki wasn’t going to let him touch her - not ever again. She would make sure that she got to him first.

Fenner’s demeanour altered in a second with the appearance of the two other women, who chorused “Mr Fenner!” in sing-song unison.

“Right, I’d best be off now you’ve got the idea, Wade. These are ladies’ toilets, after all.” Fenner nodded to the Julies as he left.

“Julies…” Nikki said, stepping up from the foul toilet and removing the rubber gloves for a second (they really weren’t her kind of thing) - “what’s up with Carol?”

“We dunno. She was fine one minute, the next she was-” Julie J began…

…. “Being sick all over the floor!”, they both finished.

Nikki hoped Carol wasn’t getting into drugs. To the best of her knowledge, Carol had stayed off them so far whilst on Larkhall and that was the way Nikki wanted things to stay for her friend. She resolved to seek out Carol later - once she had finished with this -well - heap of shit she was dealing with right now.

Last edited by unlikelyheroine on 13 Jun 2005 05:56 pm; edited 1 time in total

All the feedback is great, thanks! I am trying to write it in the style of S1 so it sort of feels like that series although I haven't actually got to the events of S1 yet - this is all backstory I suppose!! :D

Next part:

22.

“A… fashion show?!”

Sylvia Hollamby was aghast. She had heard of some things during her time as a PO, but this took the biscuit. Not only were the women engaging in an activity which smacked of being far too geared towards them enjoying themselves , but what did this ragtag bunch of misfit reprobates know about fashion apart from how to shoplift blouses from Top Shop!? Not to mention, the whole thing seemed like it would be a nightmare to administrate (Sylvia suspected that it would require additional duties of one kind or another), and quite why prison visitors would want to see Shell Dockley, Nikki Wade et al dressed up in God knows what was beyond her.

This had to be the work of the new Wing Governor. Sylvia sniffed and sipped her tea, regarding the younger woman suspiciously. A few years in the ivory tower of a university faculty was no substitute for hands-on experience. It was all very well thinking that you could save these women from themselves, but the simple fact was that probably not one amongst them was worth it. Sylvia had very fixed opinions about cons: most were wastes of space and most were just out for what they could get. And if you gave them an inch, they would take a mile.

“It’s an initiative by the prison visitors”, Helen explained. “It will be a project for the women to work on and all the other Wings will also be involved. I’m sure a lot of the women feel frustrated at not having anything constructive to work on while they are on in the inside - well, this will give them something to concentrate on.”

Touchy-feely huggy-lovey claptrap! thought Sylvia. What did a con need to concentrate on other than the error of their ways? The whole point of prison was for these women to be banged up and suffer and ruminate on their past wrongs - not be kept entertained or motivated or God knows what else. If these women had wanted interesting existences, then they shouldn’t have broken the law in the first place. Prison should equal boredom, as far as Hollamby was concerned. And the prison visitors - she might have known. They were all idealistic types with their heads in the clouds. They only saw one side of prison life - the most presentable side, when everyone was on their best behaviour.

“Sounds a great idea”, said Dominic. “I am sure the women will be really enthusiastic about it.”

Helen smiled at him. “Let’s hope so. The show is planned for three weeks’ time, so it doesn’t give us a huge amount of time to work with.”

“Oh yes”, said Sylvia, “I’m sure the women will have to clear their diaries, won’t they.” She glanced over at Jim, who smirked back.

Helen ignored the comment. “Simon Stubberfield is really anxious that everyone makes a big effort for this. He’s inviting a number of VIP guests.”

Once again, Sylvia was aghast. Why would VIPs want to look at a load of prisoners dressed up and jumping about? The mind boggled.

Jim stepped forward. “Well, don’t worry Ma’am. We’ll be making a big effort. Won’t we?”

Fenner's transition from smirk to sucking up to her did not go unnoticed by Helen, but she made no comment, simply filing away the information for future reference.

Lorna Rose and Dominic nodded at Fenner's words. Sylvia pursed her lips and ingested yet more tea.

23.

Nikki rolled her eyes. A fashion show. Yet more rubbish designed to keep the women quiet and distracted and not worrying about anything actually important. Plus, another chance for the prison to try to show how reasonable it was and how it was possible for the women on the inside to achieve something - blah, blah, blah. Nikki had more important things to worry about.

“Where do you think you’re going, Wade?”

Nikki sighed as Hollamby stepped out in front of her with what Nikki supposed Hollamby thought was a threatening / intimidating glare. Somehow, the sight of the prison officer did not strike fear into Nikki’s heart; perhaps it was the fact that the inmate was nearly a foot taller than her.

“I’m just going up to see Carol. She’s not feeling well.”

Hollamby tutted and shook her head. “Not feeling well, my backside!”

Nikki considered the impact of the use of the word “feeling” and a reference to Bodybag’s backside in the same sentence. Not pleasant.

Hollamby folded her arms. “She’s malingering, that one.”

“I’d like to go and see her. If you don’t mind.”, Nikki said.

Hollamby tutted once more and her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You do an awful lot of wandering about, don’t you? Outside as well, always in and out of that shed.”

“It’s a free country”, Nikki said, but the irony seemed lost on Hollamby, who finally, with a sigh and a shake of the head, stepped out of Nikki’s way.

“I’ve got my eye on you, Wade. I’ll be watching for any funny business.”

24.

Carol looked like shit. Nikki was shocked to see her looking so terrible; Carol was usually one of the women who looked slightly better in this place, largely down to the fact she steered clear of drugs. Well, except nicotine, though she’d even been off that late, Nikki had noticed. Nikki had seen several women take up a smoking habit in prison, but Carol was the first one that she had observed give up.

“You look well”, Nikki lied.

“Don’t lie”. Carol smiled a weak smile. “I look like shit. It’s OK, you can say it. I feel like shit.”

“What happened?”, Nikki asked, sitting on the edge of Carol’s bed.

“I don’t know. One minute I was feeling fine; next minute, spewing everywhere.”

“This is what you get when you put Dockley on kitchen duty.”

Carol grinned. “I’m surprised most of the Wing is still on their feet, to be honest…!” She pulled at a loose thread in the duvet. “How are you doing, Nikki?”

“Me? I’m fine, as always.”

“Trisha alright?”

Carol noticed the look pass across Nikki’s face; something was wrong. But it was gone in an instant and Nikki was smiling at her. “She’s great, yeah.”

“You could tell me. If there was something wrong.”

Nikki looked down at the cell floor, which like much of the décor in Larkhall, was brick and painted over with an off-white paint.

“I know, Carol. And you know - you could tell me if something was up.”

Carol glanced out towards the doorway of the cell, and Nikki knew she was looking to see if there was anyone around who could hear their conversation.

“Well… the reason I was sick… it’s not the food in this place or anything.”

“No?”

“No. Another reason.”

Nikki looked at Carol, and Carol looked back. And then it dawned on Nikki.

“No way!”

Carol nodded slowly. “Yes. I think so. Well, it’s not like I can get the old Clear Blue piss test or anything but, I reckon I must be. My period’s bloody late otherwise. And it would explain the way I am feeling…”

“It’s Gavin’s?”

Carol rolled her eyes at Nikki’s. “Of course it’s Gavin’s!” Gavin or “Gav” was Carol’s on-off boyfriend and she had spoken about him quite a few times, usually with expletives and general venom but occasionally in a softer way. Nikki had got the impression it was more off than on but it had obviously been on enough, recently enough for Carol to get knocked up.

Carol bit her lip. “It must have happened literally, the weekend before I came here.”

“Well - you look after yourself. Relax. Put your feet up. If you need anything, then just give me a shout, yeah?”

Carol smiled. “I will. Thanks, Nikki.”

A shadow passed across the room. “Oh look. It’s the lovebirds.”

Dockley had appeared in the doorway, from nowhere, with her adoring sidekick, Denny.

Nikki stood. “Piss off, Dockley.”

“Oh. Very romantic, that.” Dockley tilted her head towards Carol. “Very charming, is that what does it for you, Carol?”

Denny sniggered.

Nikki took a step forward. “I said, piss off.”

“Oh - are you gonna make me, Wade?”

Inwardly, Nikki sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for this just now, but if she had to square up to Dockley, then that was how it was going to be.

“Shell.” It was Fenner, striding along the Wing like he owed the place, as sodding usual. He wasn’t exactly Nikki’s idea of a knight in shining armour but then again, Nikki had never wanted or needed one of those.

“Oh. Mr. Fenner…”

Nikki rolled her eyes. It was beyond her why the physical relationship between Dockley and Fenner (Nikki did not feel that whatever disgusting exchange of bodily fluids that went on between them really qualified to be called an “affair”) was not obvious to all. They were not particularly subtle about it. Fenner was always wandering in and out of her cell, sometimes at very inappropriate times, and the way they looked at each other… yuck. But Nikki supposed that people see what they want to see; no-one thought that such a thing could happen, or if they did, they didn’t want to have to deal with its consequences, so it was better for everyone just to act like everything going on in Larkhall was all above board. That prison was as corrupt as most of the institutions in the outside world had not surprised Nikki, but it had made her frustrated and angry beyond words. Shell was up on Enhanced pretty much because she was sleeping with Fenner. That said everything to her about the way the system worked.

Obviously the nod from Fenner took precedence over kicking off with Nikki. Shell had wandered off with Fenner and Denny, for a moment having the look of an abandoned puppy, had adopted her “tough girl” look again. This hardly had Nikki quaking in her boots; Denny wasn’t much taller than Bodybag and for all her bravado and cruel streak, was nowhere near as well-built as Nikki was from hours spent in the prison gym.

Denny seemed to realise this, and after uttering a few more meaningless threats, exited.
Nikki sat back down on the edge of the bed again.

“Nikki. You shouldn’t let them wind you up. They’re not worth it.”

“I know.” Nikki reached for a cigarette and then looked at Carol and thought better of it. “Yeah, I know you’re right... it's just Dockley, she does my bloody head in."

"She does everyone's bloody heads in!" Carol smiled.

Probably does Fenner's bloody head in even while they're doing the business, Nikki thought.

Last edited by unlikelyheroine on 13 Jun 2005 06:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

25.

"No Julies. No way!"

Julie J was holding a green and white dress up in front of Nikki, and both Julies were making "aah!" noises.

"You'll look lovely!" Julie S said. "Come on Nikki - don't be such a..."

"... miseryguts!" both Julies finished.

"Read my lips. No. Sodding. Way."

"'Ere, Ju", said Julie J. "Don't you think Nikki's got the figure to be a model, though?"

"Oh yes, Ju!" the other Julie replied. "Most definitely. Tall enough. Very striking features an' all!"

"Look. You are not going to get me in that dress. So give it up." Nikki sparked up a cigarette, causing Julie J to tut and swing the dress away from her.

"Suppose we'll have to give it to..." one Julie began...

"Dockley", they finished.

"She's been bothering us for it", Julie J explained, "but we were hoping for a better model to be honest. It's a nice dress, you see."

Nikki glanced at the dress. "It looks like it was made out of a pair of curtains."

"Well..." said Julie J, "it was, but..."

"They was nice curtains!" the Julies beamed together.

Nikki couldn't help but smile, though she quickly followed it with a roll of her eyes. Nikki had agreed to help out backstage with the fashion show, working on the lighting, but that was her limit. Everyone else had gone nuts over it though. The Julies weren't so bad - they were doing all the hard work making the costumes and it was good to see them enjoying themselves. But Shell and Denny had managed to get themselves prime roles performing in the show and Shell in particular, was acting like a total prima donna. She had demanded that the Julies make her outfit and was certain to attempt to hog the limelight all for herself.

Nikki wandered out from the sewing room and back down onto the wing, where Carol sat leafing through one of the gossipy magazines. Carol didn't look very well and the other day she had asked to see the doctor, who had listened to her recount her symptoms and announced that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her. The doctor didn't think she was pregnant. He thought her hiatus in periods was that she was nervous about being in prison for the first time.

Carol told Nikki this, but no-one else. She made Nikki keep the pregnancy a secret. Carol was sure she was having a baby, even if the doctor wasn't. She told Nikki that you just knew things like that.

"Touch me! Touch me! I wanna feel your body!"

Nikki's thoughts were interrupted by Dockley carrying out some impromptu pole dancing around the stairs, to whoops and cheers from Denny and some of Dockley's other cronies.

"Come on girls. Calm down", Fenner was saying, hands on hips.

Pretending he doesn't have a hard-on for it, the bastard.

"Oh! "We're only 'aving a bit of fun, Mr. Fenner!" Dockley pouted at the prison officer.

Nikki sighed. Sickening.

26.

Helen didn't feel as if her job was a regular 9-5 position. She did, however, get most weekends off. On Saturday mornings she dozed in bed, usually trying to sleep off the effects of the drinking from the night before.

This morning, Sean had woken her at dawn and they had had what from Helen's point of view was very sleepy sex. Helen woke a couple of hours later to find a note from Sean on the pillow: "Gone gardening. Back later."

Helen sighed and rolled over. At least this was a very comfy bed. She had chosen it herself, some considerable time before she had asked Sean to move in. Suddenly, Helen thought of the tiny beds the women slept in in Larkhall - some of them even bunk beds. Helen had thought her bed in her university halls was small, but you could just about get two drunk students in there if you tried hard enough. The Larkhall beds were small, cramped and uncomfortable. They were also a regulation size which meant a prisoner like Nikki Wade, for example, could find her feet were hanging off the end of the bed, seeing as she was quite a bit taller than the average woman.

Helen didn't want to think about Larkhall this morning. She wanted to think about breakfast, a leisurely read of the paper with a cup of coffee in front of her, watching the morning cookery programmes on television. Perhaps a stroll in the park later. Her first week in the job had been both terrifying and satisfying - and had left Helen utterly exhausted. Well, and in need of a big night out the night before, for which she was now paying with a pounding in her head that she was trying not to think about.

But at least she didn't have to get up today and go into work...

27.

"I hate the weekends", Sylvia said, folding her arms. "The cons always seem to kick off more on the weekends. It's like some kind of hormonal thing, have you noticed?"

Dominic looked up from the Prisoner Officer magazine he was reading. "It's probably because they have less to do. You know, there's no classes, and there's less work going on."

Hollamby looked at him. "Dominic. Do you honestly think if the cons had a few crossword puzzles to keep them busy that they would not be bashing each other's brains in of a Saturday night? It's the way they're programmed, I tell you! They simply can't help it."

"Well, they've got the fashion show to be working on. That might keep them quiet."

Hollamby snorted. "Have you heard them? They're more hyped up than ever now they know they're getting an audience for their antics."

Dominic thought the fashion show was a good idea. He liked the way Miss Stewart had explained it - it seemed like something positive and a lot of the women here had so little to look forward to or work towards, except their release date - and for a lot of them, that was a long way off.

Dominic didn't say anything though. He knew Sylvia wasn't going to agree with him.

28.

Helen leafed through the newspaper. War, violence, misery, despair. A rather amusing story about a squirrel which appeared to have a homing instinct. She sighed and closed the paper again. For all her efforts to do so, she couldn't relax. Where once Saturday mornings had meant peace, now all she could think about was the whole week's events, which kept running through her mind, over and over again. In particular, her meeting with Nikki Wade - the first prisoner she had met, and the first one she had been required to discipline. Helen wondered if she had handled it correctly. Should she have sent Nikki down the block?

"Forgive me for being blunt", Fenner had said after Helen had arranged for Nikki to spend the day cleaning the toilets, "but Wade's a man-hater."

Helen couldn't work Jim Fenner out. Sometimes he seemed so eager to please and then other times he came out with things that made Helen feel rather taken aback. Was he simply a bit "old school" in his terminology?

"A... man-hater?"

"Yeah". Fenner was very matter-of-fact. "Well, it might not be very PC to say it, Ma'am, but I've seen it before."

"You have?"

"Yes, ma'am. Usually from the lesbians, although not always. In Wade's case, you've just got to look at what's in here for. Stabbing a guy to death because he took a shine to her girlfriend." Fenner had shook his head.

"I understand that it was a bit more than that, Jim." Helen had found herself glancing through the file. Nikki's story was apparentlyy that the policeman had been trying to rape her girlfriend.

"So Wade says. Jury didn't agree though, did they?"

Helen now wondered if she could have handled this conversation better. She should have told Fenner straight that he couldn't label prisoners in that way and act from assumptions and prejudice. Sitting at her kitchen table in her dressing gown and fluffy slippers, Helen sighed. She just couldn't get her mind off Larkhall. She was almost tempted to go down there and go through some of the files on her desk in preparation for Monday...

The front door opened.

"Honey, I'm home!" Sean called, in what Helen supposed he meant to be some kind of American accent.

"I'm in the kitchen."

Sean appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Up at this time on a Saturday! Are you feeling alright?"

"I'm fine. Just thinking about work..."

"Oh, don't do that! Don't think about anything..." Sean stepped over to the table and reached for Helen's hand. He lifted it and kissed it. "I'm very impressed that you managed to make it out of bed... but I think it was kind of a waste of energy..."

"What?" Helen was still distracted, her mind on cold brick and iron gates, not on whatever Sean was suggesting.

"I mean... let's go back to bed..."

Helen acquiesced, but as Sean led her to the bedroom, she was thinking about how she could have better handled Nikki Wade.

Last edited by unlikelyheroine on 18 Jun 2005 03:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

29.

“What are you thinking about?”, Sean said, as he covered Helen’s neck with kisses and began to gently stroke her back with his fingertips.

“Nikki Wade”, Helen murmured. It was the honest answer, and she was far too tired to be anything other than honest.

“Oh that’s charming!” Sean said, in mock indignation. “Here I am worshipping your body, and you’re thinking about another man!”

It took Helen a moment to understand Sean’s confusion: it came from Nikki’s name, which, she realised, when spoken aloud, was somewhat ambiguous as to her gender.

“No… Nikki, as in Nicola, Wade. She’s one of the lifers on G Wing.”

Sean tutted. “Thinking about work in our bed again! How many times have I told you - that’s expressly FORBIDDEN. I ought to punish you very severely for that.”

Helen resisted the urge to sigh. She wasn’t really in the mood to play games. Work was getting to her - after just two weeks. It weighed heavily on her mind - more heavily than she had expected. It was easy for Sean to switch off from the dahlias and the chrysanthemums and go to bed with a clear conscience so long as he had fed them, given them Baby Bio or *whatever* but her job was about dealing with people. And even then, it was very different to the run of the mill stuff. It wasn’t like the jobs other people had - dealing with people’s queries in a call centre or serving them sandwiches or selling them CDs … she was their gaoler. Enforcing a system which deprived them of liberty in order that they paid a debt to society, a debt which someone else had decided they owed and which she was under a duty to uphold. What was more, where necessary, she had to act as an authority figure and judge and jury as well as, when required, a social worker, confidant and mother figure.

It was bewildering. It fascinated and terrified Helen at the same time. The day-to-day complexities of the job - not to mention the way it was wearing her down… it was a struggle some days to make it through, especially when she was not even confident of having all the officers on her side…

And all this after just a fortnight! Helen told herself.

The women kept her mind busy all the time. It wasn’t possible to deal with them as just one mass of humanity needing to be locked up and kept quiet, as Helen felt sure Hollamby, for example, would have viewed them. They were individuals, with their own needs. It wasn’t even possible to think of the mothers in prison, for example, as a category - there were just so many of them, with so many different stories, and so many different things happening to their kids. Shell Dockley, for example - Helen had learned that her kids were being cared for by their grandmother, Shell’s mother. Helen realised she had jumped to the conclusion that the kids would be in care - had she thought no-one in Shell’s family would care enough? Or be fit to look after them? Once again, Helen found her preconceptions being challenged in ways she had never expected.

So many different women. Even in the distinctions officially made by the prison system - e.g. the lifers being a separate category - there was such a wide variation in the prisoners. Nikki Wade, for example. After realising her doubts about the punishment she had handed down to the prisoner, Helen had gone back through Nikki’s file again. There was something about this woman, but Helen couldn’t quite put her finger on it. From their conversation, Helen knew the woman was intelligent. It embarrassed Helen, even though no-one but her knew, to realise that Nikki had been more intelligent than Helen expected or would have guessed, bearing in mind her crime and where she had ended up because of it.

“Helen… darling… you’ve got to try to switch off.”

Helen’s thoughts drifted away as Sean’s touching became more focused on a particular area of her body. “Switch off… but aren’t you trying to turn me on?”

“Oh… perhaps a little. Why… is it working?”

Helen didn’t know if she was in the mood for sex or not, but she had to do something to stop thinking about bloody Larkhall. Helen was 100% serious about her career - but damn it, didn’t she need her own life?

Helen moved to respond to Sean’s touch and did her best to put the dark prison walls out of her mind.

30.

Alone in her cell, Nikki was naked.

It was hot. Very hot. One thing about being in prison was being subject to the vagaries of the weather. When it was winter - or even autumn or a frosty spring - and very cold, the prison was freezing. There was just no way of getting warm, even with the maximum number of scratchy regulation issue prison blankets on top of you and several layers of clothing on.

When it was hot, on the other hand, it was somehow much worse. When it was hot, it felt like being baked alive in there. It wasn’t as if you could crack open another window or turn on the air conditioning. And tonight was sweltering - the Julies had told Nikki that it had been 32 degrees during the daytime hours and tonight it felt just as hot… unbearable.

Nikki wiped the sweat from her brow. She couldn’t sleep in this. Surely animals would be kept in better conditions and allowed more water than this - there was just no way of cooling down. Elsewhere in the prison, other women were feeling the heat, shouting to each other from the windows about the conditions and demanding water from the guards.

Nikki sat on her bed and hoped for a storm. A storm would break the hot weather. Nikki fantasised about being out in the rain, feeling it wash over her completely. Nikki had never really liked getting wet (rainwater was never good for her hairstyle, which always went kind of fluffy, which Trisha found cute but Nikki hated) but she would do anything to run outside in the rain and get totally soaking wet from it.

Nikki had stripped off completely to try to make herself cooler but she didn’t feel much better. Her clothes had been pretty thin, anyway. What she needed was a nice long dip in a cool swimming pool…

Nikki tried to stay fit in the prison “gym” - which wasn’t much, just a few machines and a bench - but what she would really love to do was swim. On the outside, she had gone to the pool several times a week. She and Trisha had been members of a private, women’s-only club. Trisha used to sit by the pool drinking, but Nikki had taken it seriously, pushed herself, acquired stomach muscles which Trisha used to go mad for…

Nikki slapped a hand on her belly now. Huh. Not what it used to be. A lack of activity and a couple of years of stodgy prison food had pretty much ruined the athletic figure she used to be proud of and which other women used to admire. Nikki was still well-built though, and taller and stronger than most women inside - plus, she could handle herself and few women challenged her, though she had had a couple of run-ins before now.

Nikki sighed. What would she be doing on a night like this, if she were free? Perhaps she would step out of the club and go for a walk through Soho and enjoy the feeling of a warm evening in central London… a few drinks… and back to the flat…

Not being able to physically touch Trisha or make love to her made Nikki more depressed than she could express. At visiting times they could kiss each other and touch each other briefly - so long as they didn’t take too long over it or guards would be bothering them thinking they were passing drugs. As if. Nikki wasn’t into drugs. It wasn’t that she was averse to chemicals as such - she shoved too much nicotine and booze into her system to be able to claim that one - it was just that she had seen the way certain drugs changed people. It wasn’t like the educational films you saw at school, with people dropping dead as soon as someone spiked their drink with an E or something - the effect was much more subtle and gradual, but ultimately people could become someone else, someone who somehow amounted to less they had been before. Nikki had seen it happen to friends of hers before now.

In prison, the danger was that chemicals were an easy route to oblivion, to being able to forget you were here in a fortress of brick and iron designed to punish you for being a Bad Girl. Nikki could see the attraction, but she liked herself the way she was. Ten years of jellies - or worse - and what would she be at the end of it? Who would she be? Nikki didn’t know, and that was why she remained drug free. Not that it stopped them piss testing her at every opportunity, presumably because it looked good for their figures to have a lot of negative results.

No, there were better things in life than drugs. Like sex. Like the feeling of making a woman come so hard that she forgot about everything and everyone except what Nikki was doing to her. Nikki missed it - the closeness, the heat of another woman and the way it had made her feel to exert that power over someone else so completely, to control them and make then come at will, as she had been able to do with Trish and pretty much every other woman she had ever taken to bed.

Several women had propositioned Nikki since she had been inside but Nikki had rebuffed all advances. Nikki knew women were interested in her, but she wasn’t about to do anything that could hurt Trisha.

The night felt as if it was getting hotter. Several women were still calling for water and calling the guards every name under the sun. Nikki supposed she should try to get some sleep so she could wake up at the time prison rules dictated - hours earlier than she ever used to get up on the outside, because out there she was running the club, which closed at two, which meant she never seemed to get to bed before four or five once she had closed it up and cashed up and dealt with all of the problems that tended to be generated during the evening. Now her routine felt as if she was at school again, as if she were a kid, unable to control her own sleeping patterns, eating patterns…

Nikki had hated school. Her parents had sent her away to boarding school when she was seven years old and it had not been like Malory sodding Towers. At that age, Nikki had actually been pretty small for her age and the subject of quite a bit of bullying. It was at boarding school that she learned to stand up for herself, and at boarding school that she learned that she liked other women. Later, before her parents threw her out, her mother had wrung her hands and wondered whether they had been wrong to send her away so young and whether the all-female environment had somehow “turned” Nikki gay. But Nikki knew that she was just gay and that was the way it was. Perhaps being at all-girls school had made her a bit more aware of it a bit earlier - perhaps if there were blokes around, she would have wasted a few years trying to be straight before she realised her true nature… well, that was possible, although unlikely, because Nikki felt her gayness would have come through anyway… she was a lesbian and that was the way it was. It wasn’t as if there weren’t blokes around. There were always blokes around - gardeners and maintenance men and delivery men and teachers and boys from the town a few miles away or the boys’ school from a few miles up the road. All the girls who wanted to sleep with men pretty much could if they wanted to… but Nikki had never wanted to. It had always been women…

In prison for murder nearly twenty years after the events she was thinking about, Nikki cast her mind back to being sixteen and being in love with a girl in the sixth form - a girl about to be elected Head Girl. Camilla Jacobs was the girl all the blokes who ever visited the school tried to get into bed. She was the daughter of a school governor - wealthy and well-bred. Nikki was pretty much middle class, her father being a Naval Officer who had risen through the ranks - but Camilla was positively upper class. Her father was a Lord. Her family had a massive estate in the country and Camilla, thought Nikki now, didn’t just have a pony but a whole stable full of horses…. But the most important thing about Camilla was that she was bloody gorgeous.

Nikki admired her from afar. They were in different years and never in any of the same classes. But when the school play came around, Camilla, a keen amateur actress, was going up for the main part and on a reckless whim, Nikki auditioned too and discovered a hidden talent for drama. The rehearsals meant Nikki and Camilla spent a lot of time together and Nikki was in secret raptures, never daring to let anyone - especially Camilla - know how she felt.

A new teacher was organising the school play, one Nikki had never been taught by before. Miss Hamilton, her name was. She was young and new to teaching and she had lots of “new ideas” which a lot of the older members of staff in the school found somewhat objectionable.

Rehearsals went along with Nikki learning her lines and playing her part and doing her best not to look at Camilla too much. One time, Camilla said “Hi” to Nikki and Nikki felt herself blush and thought it must be immediately obvious to everyone that she liked Camilla. She waited a few seconds for the accusations, the recriminations, to start, but none were forthcoming.

One day, Miss Hamilton asked Nikki to stay behind after rehearsals. When everyone else had left the classroom they were using to rehearse the scenes, Miss Hamilton closed the door.

“Nicola”, she said, leaning against a desk and folding her arms. “I can imagine how hard it must be for you. This is a difficult time in your life, your emotions are all over the place.”

Where had this come from? Nikki wondered. “Sorry, Miss?”

“It’s normal, at your age, to have crushes on other girls. And Camilla - well, she’s very attractive. It’s normal, and natural, to be a little bit confused. But it will pass.”

Nikki reddened and was astonished. How could - how could she have known? Nikki was convinced that she hid it so well…

“I- I -” Nikki stammered.

“Don’t worry. I don’t think anyone else can see it. Perhaps it’s just if… perhaps it’s just that I can recognise these things. More than others would, perhaps.”

A realisation crept over Nikki.

“And… so… well… does it pass, Miss?”

Nikki’s eyes met the teacher’s. Miss Hamilton couldn’t have been any more than twenty-two or so, Nikki thought now, regarding her properly for the first time.

“It’s not so long since I left this school myself, you know, Nicola. And I - I went through a similar thing to you. Her name was Heather McCrory. She was the hockey captain.”

“Oh - very sexy”, Nikki said, somewhat mischievously, and Nikki observed a momentary twinkle in Miss Hamilton’s eye.

“Well - anyway - we had a mad passionate affair for two months before she left me for her brother’s best friend. Odious little… ratbag, that he was.”

Nikki, despite the fact she had managed an almost reflex sarky comment (these were becoming slightly more common in her day-to-day speech.....) was astonished. She had never met anyone before in her life who had spoken so casually about a gay relationship. Well - people hardly ever mentioned homosexuality at all. Last term they had read “The Rainbow” for English Literature and the teacher had spoken very sniffily about the lesbian subtext that occupied all of one page of the text.

“Who”, the teacher had asked, “wants to read about lesbianism?”

Nikki had had to bite her lip to avoid answering “Lesbians, Miss?”

Now she stood staring at Miss Hamilton as Miss Hamilton talked about an affair with another woman as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“So you see - she got over it. Moved on to the straight world, and so forth. These feelings.. they pass.”

Nikki noticed what the teacher was not saying as much as what she was saying.

“Do you think…”, she said, “do you think that’s true for all of us? That these feelings pass?”

The dinner bell rang. This was a special bell summoning everyone to dinner in the Grand Hall. Attendance compulsory, else you had to go to the nurse and try to convince her you were not a “faddy eater” - what probably now would be considered anorexia, Nikki supposed.

Saved by the bell. How clichéd, Nikki thought. Why was she thinking of this now? And then Nikki thought that probably the heat of tonight made her think of the hottest summer she could remember, her final summer at boarding school… before the shit hit the fan, good and proper…

There was a knock at the cell door.

“Want some water, Nikki?”

It was Dominic, by the sounds of things. Nikki pulled some clothes on to look decent again and the cell door swung open.

“This is a bit unorthodox, innit? Handing out Evian to the cons?”

“Well… Wing Governor’s orders. She ordered it and left instructions that you were to be given it if the temperatures hit what the forecasts were predicting.”

Inwardly, Nikki scoffed. Stewart trying to win favours with them with a bit of water! Whatever. But she took the water anyway. It was a very hot night tonight.

Dominic locked the cell up again and Nikki lay down once more, looking at the bricks on the wall, before closing her eyes and trying to will herself to sleep…

An update to this story is very much overdue, but I have been inspired by the great fanfic on here to dust off my very old story and try to move it forward a bit!

Please forgive that above I suggest Nikki has Monica as a cellmate - already. Ignore that, it doesn't match the chronology and shows me I need a beta reader who knows the show :D I can't edit the post as it has been reposted here but just wipe all memory of that Monica reference from your minds :D :D

31.

It was Sunday afternoon, and it was raining. Helen sat on her sofa with the Sunday paper and a glass of Alka Seltzer. Any other Sunday, Helen would be willing the time to pass as slowly as possible, hoping to stave off the end of weekend for as long as she could. But today, Helen would be glad if time would pass a little more quickly – anything to not feel so appallingly hungover as she did right now.

Last night had been a serious drinking session. Four pubs – or five – then on to some nightclub, the name of which had completely escaped Helen. It was, quite frankly, dangerous to go out with her old university friends. Helen could drink most people under the table, but Claire, Toby, Ben and the rest – they were a different proposition.

Still, Helen had held her own, she thought to herself. She’d managed to keep up with the boys, though Claire possibly won the drinking contest outright, as usual. Helen took a sip of Alka Seltzer and was rewarded with a searing pain in the back of her neck and a sudden flash of a remembered memory of last night. Helen recollected standing on a bar table doing… karaoke…??!

“Hello, darling – ” Sean beamed, bounding through the door like a gleeful puppy. The noise of his yapping almost split Helen’s skull and Helen remembered why she was anti-guns – had she had a shotgun in her lap at the precise moment her boyfriend had burst in, she may have blasted his head off.

“Oh”, Sean said, at the sight of Helen in her dressing gown, holding her head and whimpering on the sofa. “You still feeling worse for wear?”

“Urrrgh”, Helen said, signalling that this was correct.

“You need some grease to mop it up, my love. Let’s go out to that café around the corner – they do all-day breakfasts.”

“Mmmgh…”

“You can’t move?”

Helen attempted to shake her head, but thought better of it once that action began to hurt. “No.”

“That Claire. Such a bad influence. OK – I’ll get us a takeaway.”

Sean wandered off in search of sustenance. Helen, unable to face the thought of food, lay back on the sofa, with the Sunday paper planted on her face to shield her eyes from the fading daylight.

32.

“You coming to the rehearsals tonight then, Nik?”

Nikki banged her dinner tray against her leg absent-mindedly.

“Hmm?” she murmured, to whichever Julie it was – if not both of them – who had asked her the question.

Nikki was thinking about her school again. She was thinking, not for the first time, that boarding school was similar to prison in a lot of ways, even down to the sadistic males in power. Glancing over at Fenner, strutting around the tables, Nikki recollected a particularly unpleasant Chemistry teacher who had been sleeping with a girl in her glass. As with Fenner and Dockley, the relationship between the teacher and Nikki’s classmate was obvious to anyone with half a brain paying any attention whatsoever, but, as with Fenner and G-Wing’s resident psycho, the so-called “authorities” did precisely nothing about the abuse of power going on right under their noses.

“The fashion show rehearsals! Are you coming? Only, we’ve had to give that dress to Dockley – she just wouldn’t stop hassling it until we handed it over.”
Nikki tried to snap back to the present. If she was going to daydream, then casting her mind back to her schooldays, or thinking about Fenner and Dockley, probably weren’t the best of options, after all.

“Good choice, Julies”, Nikki said, with a smile. “Cut-up curtains – definitely the Dockley look.”

The Two Julies giggled. “You should come along tonight!” they both said, more or less in unison.

Nikki nodded. Maybe she would go. It was something different. Something to break the monotony. The truth was that she was hoping to be able to get hold of Trisha on the phone today. Trish had been a bit elusive of late, but Nikki hoped to be able to catch her in on a Sunday evening. Somewhere at the back of Nikki’s mind, there was a niggling feeling about why Trisha had not been around to answer her calls, but Nikki pushed this thought back down firmly where it had come from as Dockley, with a look between a scowl and an evil grin, served up the slops this place called dinner onto Nikki’s plate.

33.

Helen rolled over in bed and woke with if not a start, then a sudden throwing open of one sleepy eye towards the alarm clock.

She had been having a nightmare about being back at school, with five minutes to go until an exam in a subject she had never studied and consequently had done no preparation for, but the passing of which was vitally important to her future success and happiness. Being certain to fail the exam, Helen’s sure ruination was to follow. The worst thing about it had been that her boss, Larkhall Prison’s Number One, its governing governor, Simon Stubberfield, had, thanks to her subconscious adopted, the role of headmaster, dressed for the part perfectly with a cape, a black cap and a cane.

Shuddering first at the thought of this image – not one she wanted connected with being curled up in bed – Helen then took a few moments to savour the relief that it had all been just a dream, albeit one with an exceptionally obvious meaning. The exam dream – nightmare – was one Helen had often. The addition of Stubberfield pointed pretty clearly towards Helen being anxious about her job – Helen didn’t need the psychology modules she had done at university to tell her that.

Strangely, the only other nightmare that came back to Helen time and time
again was the one where she was in prison – usually, for a crime she had not committed.

Helen rubbed her eyes, which gradually assumed the ability to focus and revealed the time on her alarm clock.

8:26am.

“Shit!”

It was Monday morning, and she was going to start the week being late for work. Great. Helen attempted to leap from the bed, but tangled up in the duvet as she was, hit the carpet within a second or two. A string of unladylike expletives issued forth in a soft Scots accent, until Helen managed to assume an upright position and make for the bathroom.

In the shower, Helen turned the heat up high and let water that was getting close to being a little too hot cascade onto her body. Helen felt like she needed another weekend to recover the weekend. These last couple of days, when she hadn’t been drinking – or recovering from drinking – she had been in bed with Sean. Sex and alcohol were both things Helen used as a form of release – in non-work hours only, of course. Helen allowed herself a rueful smile at the thought of her options for sexual satisfaction in Larkhall. Fenner – ugh. Dominic was sweet, but about twelve. Stubberfield – well, possibly kinky dream about him spanking her for failing an exam notwithstanding, Helen was hardly likely to go there. And that was Larkhall’s male population exhausted.

There was a knocking on the bathroom door.

“Everything alright, sweetheart?”

“You bastard!” Helen bellowed, shutting off the water. “I told you not to let me sleep late!”

“You looked so cute”, Sean said, swinging open the bathroom door and leaning, with a grin, against the doorframe. “I didn’t want to disturb my Sleeping Beauty. Prince Charming wouldn’t do such a thing, not after he’d been keeping her up all night shagging!”

“I don’t think Prince Charming would ever use the term ‘shagging’, actually”, Helen said, stepping out of the shower and reaching for a towel. “Now mind out of the way, I’m in a rush!”

With a theatrical bow, Sean stepped out of the doorway and Helen dashed back to the bedroom, already impossibly late for her 9am start at Larkhall.

34.

Trish had not answered the phone, and so Nikki had made the fashion show rehearsal after all. Nikki let out a sigh as, leaning against the wall with her arms folded, she thought how much she’d rather have heard the beautiful, sexy voice of her lover instead of the Bee Gees last night. Especially when she’d had to witness Dockley’s dancing as well.

Nikki thought of Trisha dancing, and then tried to suppress that thought. That was a thought for late at night by herself, not first thing in the morning, before she’d even had breakfast.

Other things. Think of other things. Nikki thought of Carol. She hadn’t been at the rehearsal. Nikki had tried to check on her, but Bodybag had stopped her in her tracks. Stupid old bat. Nikki looked around now for Carol, but didn’t see her anywhere.

35.

There hadn’t been enough time for Helen to do her make-up before she left home, and so Helen had employed the use of her rear view mirror to try to apply mascara.

An angry beep from behind told Helen she had missed the change in the lights.

“Shit.”

Helen didn’t really like driving to work, but she liked the thought of the tube or the bus even less. At least in the car she got some time to herself before she got to work. As she drove, Helen had mentally crossed her fingers in hope of there having been a quiet weekend on G-Wing. Things always seemed to go wrong at the weekend, when Helen was generally not required to be at Larkhall, but Helen was hopeful that the hot weather had been the expected crisis and that her orders to distribute the water would have dealt with that.

At the gates to the prison, there had been a funny moment where the guard looked at her strangely, something Helen was bemused about until she had a glance at her compact and noticed her mascara was smeared around her eyes in a panda sort of look – not exactly the height of fashion.
And now, Helen sat getting on with paperwork. There was always paperwork to be done, but Monday mornings tended to be full of distractions. Fenner, for example, who had been in already to talk about one of the prisoners. Mind, Helen thought, he had sounded genuinely concerned about the girl. Perhaps she shouldn’t judge Fenner too harshly just yet.

There was a knock at the door.

Helen sighed. Another distraction.

“Come in!”

It was Dominic, looking fretful.

“Miss Stewart – one of the prisoners – she’s not very well.”

Helen’s pen hovered above some documents she needed to sign. “Well, has she been sent to the hospital wing?”

“Yes, Miss Stewart, but Officer Hollamby – well, she told me to tell you, there’s a bit of a problem.”

Helen put the pen down. “Officer Hollamby? Can’t she tell me herself? Spit it out Dominic, what’s the problem?”

“It’s Carol Byatt, ma’am. She’s been very ill, and, well – there’s a bit of trouble on the wing, and some of the women aren’t very happy… Well, Sylvia – Officer Hollamby – she didn’t tell me that, I saw what was happening, you see – well, not with Carol, but with the other inmates – they’re not happy…”

Fenner arrived in the doorway. He glanced at Dominic.

“I was just telling Miss Stewart, about Carol – and well, the…”

“Carol Byatt’s had a miscarriage, ma’- Helen”, Fenner said, matter-of-factly. “Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of a mess in her cell, and some of the other inmates have seen it and got spooked.”

Oh bloody hell, Helen thought.

I'm soooo happy you have brought this fantastic fic back from the dead!! I can't wait for more! Please don't leave us hanging :rolleyes: :popcorn :innocent

thanks for giving cpr to a great story... :D

ok, ok I'm hooked!
Loved the 'first meeting' between H&N, and I followed your advice and just ignored the Monica references.
Now, you're not going to make us wait too long for an update are you??
:rolleyes:

Very nice. Can't wait to read the rest. Here's hoping for all three series with focus on our favorite couple. :clap