Dead Secret

She knew Dixie searched her belongings for pills, not trusting it to the Correctional Officers who conducted daily shakedowns of the cells. None of the inmates dared to sell Jodie drugs, not since Dixie had said Meatloaf would crush the kneecaps of anyone who tried.

The hatch was closer now. Two inmates peeled away from the head of the line, giving Jodie an uninterrupted view. Steel-wool hair, rimless glasses. Shit.

It was Kendrick.

Dixie lowered her voice. ‘You won’t die in your sleep, like people think. That stuff’ll take days to kill you. Days of pain, real slow, with you lying there waiting for your liver to fail.’

Jodie closed her eyes briefly. ‘I know.’

She moved up one more place in the queue, watching the nurse’s brisk dealings at the hatch. Santos would have given her the pills to take away, which meant she could have added them to her stash. But Kendrick was a stickler. Kendrick would remember Jodie’s stint on suicide watch, and the rule that all her medication had to be supervised from now on.

Kendrick was going to make her swallow the damn pills in front of her.

Jodie moved forward. Almost her turn. Small hairs prickled up her arms. She’d been planning this for some time, collecting pills no more than once a month so as not to attract attention. One more dose should do it.

Her termination plan, she called it. Ceasing to live, rather than planning to die.

Sometimes she woke up and forgot that Abby was dead. In her dreams, her little girl was alive and warm. Those mornings were the worst, full of gut-ripping pain, the agony waiting to annihilate her all over again.

She didn’t believe in the hereafter. Not really. She didn’t know where Abby was supposed to be now. All she knew was she wanted to be with her daughter. And if her daughter was nowhere, then nowhere was fine by her.

Jodie stepped up to the hatch. Coached herself to relax. The nurse watched her over her glasses, eyebrows furrowing up into her forehead.

‘Back again, Garrett? Let me guess, more cramps?’

Jodie shrugged. ‘Every month, regular as clockwork.’

The nurse eyed her for a moment. Then she tipped two tablets into the palm of her hand and passed them through the hatch, along with a plastic cup of water.

‘Tylenol. Let me see you take them.’

‘Can’t I save them for later? It gets worse as the day goes on.’

‘You know the rules, Garrett. Swallow them now, or I take ’em back.’

Jodie prised the pills up between her fingertips. Took the cup in her other hand. Physical movement was suddenly onerous. She clamped her mouth shut, biting down on the urge to cave in. She could wait till Santos was back. Another week, maybe two. She could last.

Slowly, she raised the tablets to her lips.

‘Hey bitch! Picasso!’

Jodie paused. Turned round. Magda was thundering towards her, the woman’s frizzy tangerine hair marking her out like a beacon. Her huge thighs swished together as she moved, pushing her legs outward, knock-kneed style. She barged up to the hatch and thrust her face close to Jodie’s.

‘I heard you stole my soap, bitch.’

The funk of sour sweat radiated from her like heat. Jodie made her face blank.

‘You hear me, doll-face?’

Jodie shrugged. ‘It was mine to begin with, you stole it from me.’

Dixie grew still beside her. Jodie sensed Nate stepping back a pace, while the other women in the queue shifted uneasily.

‘You know you’re gonna pay for that?’ Magda’s eyes looked dead; dull marbles, half-buried in pasty flesh. ‘You know I’m gonna cut you, right?’

Jodie kept her mouth shut. Rumour had it, the woman was in prison for kidnapping and assault, having tied up her best friend for seventeen hours while she tortured her with knives and hot skewers.

Magda whacked the plastic cup from Jodie’s hand, sending it airborne. Behind the hatch, the nurse was on her feet, craning her neck to locate a CO.

‘Got something for ya, doll-face.’ Magda’s tongue flicked along her lips. ‘You and me’ll get together later. You’ll enjoy it, I know you will.’

Then she held out her arm, wrist upwards, third and fourth fingers curled against something that poked out from under her sleeve: a razor blade melted into the tip of a toothbrush. A homemade slashing device.

Jodie’s gut tightened. She flashed on confrontations from the past, in the shelters where older kids had bullied the newbies. And on the advice from an ally: Make your face dead-pan, like a soldier on parade. Make them think that you just don’t care.

She stared straight ahead. Impassive. Aware that the faint tilt to her features helped to make her expression unreadable. Sphinx-like.

Beside her, Dixie snorted in disgust. ‘You’re wasting your breath, lunkhead. She ain’t afraid of you. She ain’t afraid of pain, nor death, nor nothing. Can’t you see that, you dumb bitch?’

Magda’s eyes became slits, still trained on Jodie’s face.

Then her gaze shifted. Rapid footsteps smacked along the corridor, and the line of women parted to make way for two approaching COs. In one practised movement Magda relaxed her stance, backed away, then raised her palms, the weapon already tucked out of sight.

She wheeled away, herded on by the COs, with a final look at Jodie that said this wasn’t over. One of the COs caught it, a gruff, heavyset guy by the name of Grochowski, though the inmates all called him Groucho. He threw Jodie an uneasy glance, then marched his charge away.

The line of women seemed to exhale. Movement rippled through them as the queue reformed, and behind the hatch the nurse was settling down, preparing for the next inmate.

No one noticed as Jodie slipped away, two pills buried deep inside her fist.

4 (#u954ce44e-e0f1-5430-a507-a96fdcd4e48a)

Jodie flicked another look at the clock.

Still only 3:45 p.m.

All day, time had seemed bloated, every minute feeling like five. She leaned against the wall, clamping down on an urge to pace the room.

‘Jodie?’

Mrs Tate peered at her from behind an easel, white hair fluffed around her head like an ermine hat. She pointed with her brush.

‘Ruth needs some help back there.’

Jodie glanced past the other inmates to where Momma Ruth was sitting, hunched in front of a large canvas. She nodded and set off across the room, picking her way around the jumble of desks and easels, avoiding the small, plastic mannequin posed for figure drawing on the centre table. Art paraphernalia cluttered every surface: jars of brushes, tubes of paint, thick blocks of drawing paper carefully meted out by Mrs Tate.

The woman’s sharp eyes were like needles on her back. Normally she made Jodie participate in the class, but so far today she’d left her alone. As though she’d sensed that today was somehow different.

For a long time, Jodie had avoided the art room. When Mrs Tate had finally summoned her there, six months into her sentence, she’d hovered in the doorway, reluctant to go in. The retired schoolteacher was rinsing brushes under a tap, her skirt and high-necked blouse protected by a billowing smock.