“That’s all right. I’m used to it. Everyone is afraid at first.”
“Does that upset you?”
A ificker of amusement twitched the fatness round her eyes.
“Would it upset you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. Have you got a cigarette?”
“Sure.” Roz took an unopened pack from her briefcase and pushed it across the table with a box of matches.
“Help yourself.
I don’t smoke.”
“You would if you were in here. Everyone smokes inhere.”
She fumbled her way into the cigarette packet and lit up with a sigh of contentment.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Married?”
“Divorced.”
“Children?”
Roz shook her head.
“I’m not the maternal type.”
“Is that why you got divorced?”
“Probably. I was more interested in my career. We went our separate ways very amicably.” Absurd, she thought, to bother with pain management in front of Olive but the trouble was that if you told a lie often enough it became a truth, and the hurt only returned occasionally, in those strange, disorientating moments of wakening when she thought she was still at home with a warm body wrapped in her arms, hugging, loving, laughing.
Olive blew a smoke ring into the air.
“I’d have liked children. I got pregnant once but my mother persuaded me to get rid of it. I wish I hadn’t now. I keep wondering what sex it was.
I dream about my baby sometimes.” She gazed at the ceiling for a moment, following the wisp of smoke.
“Poor little thing. I was told by a woman in here that they wash them down the sink you know, when they’ve vacuumed them out of you.”
Roz watched the big lips suck wetly on the tiny cigarette and thought of foetuses being vacuumed out of wombs.
“I didn’t know that.”
“About the sink?”
“No. That you’d had an abortion.”
Olive’s face was impassive.
“Do you know anything about me?”
“Not much.”
“Who’ve you asked?”
“Your solicitor.”
Another wheeze rumbled up through the caverns of her chest.
“I didn’t know I had one.”
“Peter Crew,” said Roz with a frown, pulling a letter from her briefcase.
“Oh, him.” Olive’s tone was contemptuous.
“He’s a creep.”
She spoke with undisguised venom.
“He says here he’s your solicitor.”
“So? Governments say they care. I haven’t heard a word from him in four years. I told him to get stuffed when he came up with his wonderful idea to get me an indefinite stay at Broadmoor.
Slimy little sod. He didn’t like me. He’d have wet himself with excitement if he could have got me certified.”
“He says’ - Roz skimmed through the letter without thinking ‘ah, yes, here it is.
“Unfortunately Olive failed to grasp that a plea of diminished responsibility would have ensured her receiving the sort of help in a secure psychiatric unit that would, in all probability, have meant her release into society within, at the most, fifteen years. It has always been obvious to me-“’ She came to an abrupt stop as sweat broke out
