What had happened? Why had he come to her house and why had he died and what had she been doing?
Her solicitor believed she had murdered him. What did she, Tabitha Hardy, believe? She didn’t know. She didn’t know, and not knowing tipped dread through her like poison.
She didn’t know what to do. She had no idea. She had no one to turn to and the night went on and on and on and when morning came she still didn’t know.
Fifteen
“Are you all right?”
Tabitha looked around. Ingrid was looking at her with concern. Tabitha had been standing in a corner of the exercise yard. The prisoners were legally entitled to one hour of exercise in the open air every day. It was on the schedule; many things were technically on the schedule and available, but schedules could change at the last minute and availability was always liable to suspension without notice. Even during Tabitha’s time at Crow Grange, the exercise had been suspended several times for reasons of security, because of staff shortages, and once for no reason at all.
Today, after her awful night, Tabitha had just felt grateful to get outside. The yard was surrounded on three sides by buildings and on the fourth side by a high fence, on the other side of which was another vacant yard. But you could look up at the sky and that was a relief, even on a day like this that was cold and gray.
Some of the women used the hour for exercise. One woman was preparing to run a marathon. She was serving a thirty-year sentence for her part in the murder of three gang members so she wasn’t going to be running through the streets of London. Her marathon was going to be on the day of the marathon but limited to circuits of the nearby football pitch: two hundred of them. The yard reminded Tabitha of the school playground, the girls dividing into groups of the cool ones, the hangers-on, the excluded, the defiant, the bullied, the lonely. Tabitha did what she had done at school, which was to retreat to the farthest corner and hope that nobody would pay her too much attention.
When Ingrid spoke to her, she had been leaning back against the wire fence, with her eyes closed and her head tipped back.
“You don’t have to be polite,” said Tabitha.
“I’m not being polite,” said Ingrid. “You looked worried.”
“Are you going to tell me another of your prison rules?”
Ingrid looked around. “You don’t want to be too standoffish,” she said. “I’m not saying you should try and join one of the gangs. But if you’re too much on your own, people get suspicious.”
“I’m not going to be here for long,” said Tabitha, though dully and without conviction. “I don’t care how suspicious they are.”
“Look, I’m in the same position you are. I’ve got my parole hearing coming up. There’s always something to hope for. You start fantasizing about life outside.” Ingrid smiled. “You know, food, company. But mainly I imagine just going for a walk.”
“Don’t,” said Tabitha, trying to smile back as if they were just two women having a normal conversation.
Ingrid’s expression became more serious. “Honestly, how are you?”
“I was always taught growing up as a young English woman that when someone asks you how you are, the only answer allowed is ‘fine.’”
Ingrid put her hand on Tabitha’s shoulder. “You can’t get by here alone,” she said. “You need to talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be me. But you have to find someone. The people who don’t, they end up cutting themselves or getting high or even worse.”
“All right,” said Tabitha. “The answer, just at the moment, is I’m not doing so well.”
And then she took a deep breath and told Ingrid about her meeting with Mora. When she was finished, she looked at Ingrid curiously.
“More advice?”
“Yes. You can lie to everyone. You can lie to your friends, you can lie to your cellmate, you can lie to me. But you have to tell your lawyer the truth. Your lawyer is like . . .” She hesitated. “If you believe in priests, your lawyer is your priest. You tell them everything. Good and bad. Unless you’re guilty, of course, and then you do lie to them.”
“I don’t think she believes me anyway.”
“She doesn’t need to believe you. She needs to get you out of here.” Ingrid narrowed her eyes and looked at Tabitha with a concentration that made Tabitha laugh nervously.
“What?” she said.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” said Ingrid. “What is it?”
Tabitha pushed her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker. Suddenly she felt as if the weather had turned even colder.
“You know when you’re going over things at three in the morning?”
“That’s another rule. Don’t go over things at three in the morning.”
“I was thinking about how bad it looked to Mora. I’ve been charged with murdering Stuart Rees and I had said that I had no reason to kill him; there was no motive. But I knew that there was a motive. He had sex with me when I was underage. People would call that child abuse. I’m not sure if I would.”
“I think I would.”
“Well, whatever, it looks bad that I didn’t mention it.”
“I hope that she was sympathetic.”
“I wouldn’t say she was sympathetic. Mainly she was angry. But that’s not what I wanted to say.” Tabitha paused. It felt difficult to utter the words out loud. But she needed to get it clear. “I’ve been through difficult times. I’ve been confused and depressed and I was given medication to deal with it and sometimes it made me feel better and sometimes it made me feel worse.” She had been talking almost to herself and now she looked directly at Ingrid. “Do you really want to hear this?”
Ingrid nodded.
“It may have saved me but it also messed with my head. There are bits of my life that are blanks, things I just don’t remember. Like I’ve been wiped. So
