across her back.
Any problems like, for example, she objects violently… Was she completely out of her mind? She smiled weakly.
“Frankly, the rest is irrelevant.”
‘“It has always been obvious to me that Olive is psychologically disturbed, possibly to the point of paranoid schizophrenia or psychopathy.” Is that what it says?” Olive stood the glowing butt of her cigarette on the table and took another from the packet.
“I don’t say I wasn’t tempted. Assuming I could have got the court to accept that I was temporarily insane when I did it, I would almost certainly be a free woman by now. Have you seen my psychological reports?” Roz shook her head.
“Apart from an unremitting compulsion to eat, which is generally considered abnormal one psychiatrist dubbed it a tendency to severe self-abuse I am classified “normal”.” She blew out the match with a gust of amusement.
“Whatever normal means.
You’ve probably got more hangups than I have but I assume you fall into a “normal” psychological profile.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Roz, fascinated.
“I’ve never been analysed.” I’m too frightened of what they might find.
“You get used to it in a place like this. I reckon they do it to keep their hand in and it’s probably more fun talking to a mother-hacker than a boring old depressive. I’ve had five different psychiatrists put me through the hoops. They love labels. It makes the filing system easier when they’re trying to sort out what to do with us. I create problems for them. I’m sane but dangerous, so where the hell do they put me? An open prison’s out of the question in case I get out and do it again. The public wouldn’t like that.”
Roz held up the letter.
“You say you were tempted. Why didn’t you go along with it if you thought there was a chance of getting out earlier?”
Olive didn’t answer immediately but smoothed the shapeless dress across her thighs.
“We make choices. They’re not always right but, once made, we have to live with them. I Was very ignorant before I came here. Now I’m streetwise.” She inhaled a lungful of smoke.
“Psychologists, policemen, Prison officers, judges, they were all out of the same mould.
Men in authority with complete control of my life. Supposing I’d pleaded diminished responsibility and they’d said this girl can never get better. Lock the door and throw away the key.
Twenty-five years amongst sane people was so much more attractive to me than a whole life with mad ones.”
“And what do you think now?”
“You learn, don’t you? We get some real nut cases in here before they’re transferred on. They’re not so bad. Most of them can see the funny side.” She balanced a second dog-end next to her first.
“And I’ll tell you something else, they’re a damn sight less critical than the sane ones. When you look like me, you appreciate that.” She scrutinised Roz from between sparse blonde eyelashes.
“That’s not to say I’d have pleaded differently had I been more aufait with the system. I still think it would have been immoral to claim I didn’t know what I was doing when I knew perfectly well.”
Roz made no comment. What can you say to a woman who dismembers her mother and sister and then calmly splits hairs over the morality of special pleading?
Olive guessed what she was thinking and gave her wheezy laugh.
“It makes sense to me. By my own standards, I’ve done nothing wrong.
It’s only the law, those standards set by society, that I’ve transgressed.”
There was a certain biblical flourish about that last phrase, and Roz remembered that today was Easter Monday.
“Do you believe in God?”
“No. I’m a pagan. I believe in natural forces. Worshipping the sun makes sense. Worshipping an invisible entity doesn’t.”
“What about Jesus Christ? He wasn’t invisible.”
“But he wasn’t God either.” Olive shrugged.
“He was a prophet, like Billy Graham. Can you swallow the garbage of the Trinity? I mean, either there’s one God or there’s a mountainful of them. It just depends on how imaginative you feel. I, for one, have no cause to celebrate that Christ is Risen.”
Roz, whose faith was dead, could sympathise with Olive’s cynicism.
“So, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying there is no absolute right or wrong, only individual conscience and the law.” Olive nodded.
“And your conscience isn’t troubling you because you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.”
Olive looked at her with approval.
“That’s it.”
Roz chewed her bottom lip in thought.
