Free Crimwife by Tanya Levin

going to McDonald’s on the way home from that visit and spending about $12. She heard Mark’s voice thanking her for saving him from an unknown fate, and decided she should send him money regularly. Kari sent Mark $20 without telling him and when she saw him the next weekend, he thanked her straightaway.
    “I needed that for the interest on what I owed,” he said. “Jail interest is pretty steep. Now I’m squared up. Thanks to you.”
    So he still didn’t have any money?
    “Nope,” he smiled, “but I don’t have a tuna can in a sock waiting for me either.”
    Kari put another $20 in his account after the visit. Mark called her the next day and said he would have it put on his phone account as soon as it was Tuesday. But when the money came through on Wednesday afternoon, Mark said he didn’t have a whole lot of phone calls left. Again, Kari didn’t want to question him over a small amount of money, but she assumed he needed a whole lot of other things too. Kari started sending Mark $40 a week. He was going to be out, she figured, in a few months. She knew how much it meant to him. He wrote it in the letters.
    He always thanked her, says Kari, always made a fuss over the money she sent. But it was never enough. Sometimes, he would send her price lists for clothes or for activity buy-ups. He would say these were just for her to think about, to get an idea of what could be useful if money fell into her lap.
    If you don’t ask, you don’t get, Kari had always preached. But somehow this was different. She wanted a relationship, not a sponsor child. But how to refuse such basic requests? Extra money for rice, a jumper or socks. She felt mean, but often she had to say no.
    Then Mark’s cellie moved and took his TV. Mark said having no TV was making him depressed again. Kari didn’t want to spend $300, the going price in jail, but he kept writing about it and a month later she sent the money. He wrote back and said she’d saved his life, as well as probably a bunch of other blokes’ lives too, because he wasn’t so stressed-out now.
    For a couple of weeks, Mark stopped asking. Kari relaxed a little, reassured that she was right. He was only trying to survive like everyone else. There was no mention of money in letters or calls, and Kari let go of the questions and resentments that had been building, like: was he setting her up to buy his love? Or was it survival? She’d wondered what she would do if she were in Mark’s position. She knew she’d ask people for help. But she wasn’t sure she’d pressure them. So she was pleased when Mark backed off for a while. She sent him the usual weekly money and he sent her love letters. She figured it didn’t matter after all.
    Then things changed. A month before he was due to get out, Mark came out to visits wearing a hollow, haunted look. The prosecution had received new statements about the brawl, and they had charged Mark with five new offences. He was going to be in for at least two more years, he told Kari. She started crying.
    Mark said he knew this changed everything. Kari waited for him to tell her that she was free to move on with her life, but he didn’t.
    “I know this isn’t how we started; I know this isn’t what I promised,” he said. “But it’s out of my hands. What I do know,” he smiled for the first time, breaking the tension, “is that we have the strength to get through it.”
    It was his bad news, she thought, not hers. She tried to be supportive, but while she wept, nothing he said made it any better. She’d become so attached to Mark and his calls and letters. She knew she didn’t want to leave him now, but she also didn’t want to spend her life like this.
    Then the other side of Mark opened up.
    “You know, babe,” he said, “I haven’t had a smoke since I’ve been in here, and with all the stress I’ve been under, do you think you could bring some in for me? I’ll organise it. You just have to pick it up.”
    Kari was