Free No More Tomorrows by Schapelle Corby

at him through the thick steel bars of the door. I had a strange impulse to reach out and touch it but thought it might make me throw up.
    I’d never before felt such fright and gut-wrenching loneliness. It cut through my soul. It was agonising. I collapsed to the floor and cried my eyes out. I cried and cried and cried, like a baby. My chest was heaving with sobs. I wanted my mum. I was venting twenty-four hours of primal fear and anguish.
    Slowly it started to pass. Calm, calm, calm, the voice in my head started to again say. It will be OK on Monday . . . Just two days and it will be OK. I had to believe it.
    I slowly turned to gaze around my little cell and take it all in. It was gross. I was surrounded by four faded, yellow cement walls, stained with thick layers of dirt, grime and graffiti. They were covered in drawings of naked girls and scrawled writing in many different languages, most notably Arabic. Later, I was to learn that some of it was done in pen and some, revoltingly, inhuman shit.
    A paper-thin, old green and red carpet covered the cement floor. It was filthy with a musty stench and God-knows-what gross diseases living in it. For sure, no carpet shampoo or vacuum cleaner had ever touched it. In the far corner was my very own covered-in-shit squat toilet with complementary bucket and ladle, and a basin. That was it; there was nothing else.
    I don’t know how many stars I’d give it but definitely not five! I wasn’t going to be slipping on a fresh towelling bathrobe and lathering myself in free bottles of sweet-smelling bath oils in this place. I’d sure taken the wrong hotel pick-up bus for that. There was no luxury here, no mattress, no blanket, no table or chair, nothing to sit on, nothing to sleep on, nothing to eat off. My pale-blue sarong became my furniture; I sat on it and slept on it. It didn’t create physical comfort, but it provided a psychological barrier between me and the infested carpet, me and my new life. I needed that.
    That afternoon, I deeply felt the pain of my lost freedom. Merc and our brother Michael came to see me. Michael had arrived in Bali with his girlfriend on the Friday afternoon, too, flying in from Perth, where they’d spent a few days visiting her family. This was my first chance to see him.
    But the bastard guards wouldn’t let them in or me out, though they easily could have if they’d felt like it. I stood at my cage door looking out. Merc and Michael stood outside looking in. They were both crying. From either viewpoint, looking at someone you love in that situation is brutally painful. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow, Schapelle. You’ll be OK – we’ll come back tomorrow.’
    I stood there holding the bars of my cell door, desperately fighting back tears. I refused to hurt them more than they were already hurting. I loved them too much to let them know that I was so upset and traumatised.
    ‘Yeah, I’m OK, I’m OK . . . It’s all right,’ I told them.
    It’s so hard not to cry. I’m trying so hard to keep a strong spirit in front of everyone when they visit. So they can leave and know that I’m handling this OK.
    I feel so awful. Although this happened, I know all my friends and family know I didn’t do it. Still, it’s all me: everyone’s been so excited and saving so hard for this holiday, and now everyone’s sitting around crying, worried sick, not drinking, not eating, not surfing, not partying – just worrying.
    Diary entry, 12 October 2004
    When Merc and Michael left, I decided to try to brush my teeth, because I hadn’t cleaned them since Friday morning at Mum’s house and now it was Saturday afternoon. I knew I was fragile but thought I could handle it. I was fooling myself. Putting the toothbrush in my mouth just forced me to lean over the disgusting toilet and vomit.
    In the cell behind mine were about eighteen guys, including the Aussie who Brian had mentioned, Chris Currall, who was arrested with 60,000 ephedrine tablets and 1.5