Free Till We Meet Again by Lesley Pearse Page A

colour of ripe conkers whom she envied for the normality of her family! Beth had loved Suzie too because she had told her she looked like Snow White!
    ‘Oh, Suzie,’ she gasped aloud, leaning forward on to the steering wheel. ‘I thought you of all people would be happily married with a parcel of kids.’
    Memories came flooding back to her, the pair of them whooping with glee as they free-wheeled down hills on their bikes. Paddling in the river with their dresses tucked into their knickers. Making a den in the woods, and practising hand-jiving as they listened to the Top Ten in Woolworth’s.
    Everything that had been good in her childhood was shared with Suzie. Not just the fun they had, for it was far more than a casual friendship. Beth had lived for August so she could be with Suzie, for it was only there in Stratford that she felt free from oppression. It was Suzie who made her believe she was clever. The way she used to rush to hug her when she arrived each summer made Beth feel loved. The two of them had complemented one another in every way. Maybe if Beth hadn’t allowed their friendship, which had been for so many years the most important relationship in her life, to fizzle out and die, she wouldn’t be such a cold fish now?
    Her eyes prickled with tears as she remembered that one of the excuses she’d made to herself for not writing back to Suzie the year they were both seventeen was because Suzie kept telling her about what it was like being stuck at home looking after her mother. After what had happened to Beth that year, taking care of someone you loved, and who loved you, didn’t seem so very awful. She thought Suzie should be grateful that she could sleep without nightmares. That was more than Beth could do.
    The sudden realization that she was dangerously close to allowing the terrible events of 1968 to surface in her mind made her feel irrationally angry. She opened the car window and took some deep breaths to try to calm herself. She couldn’t stay on the hard shoulder, it was a dangerous place to be, but how could she face Susan Fellows now she knew who she really was? She couldn’t handle her defence objectively, nor could she deal with the memories she knew would be stirred up.
    She started up the car again, signalled and pulled out. It was very tempting to call the prison and say she couldn’t make it today, then drop Susan as a client later.
    As Beth drove on, she saw that was out of the question. Susan would know immediately it was because she’d found out who she was, and Beth would be left with cowardice on her conscience. The very least she could do now was go and talk to her. Whatever she’d done as a grown woman, Beth owed her for their happy times as children. Maybe Susan would rather have a different solicitor anyway. But it had to be her decision.
    Beth shuddered as she turned off by the pub and on to the road that led to the prison. Eastwood Park wasn’t anywhere near as grim as some other prisons she’d visited clients in. It was small, housing only some 140 women, and it was set in beautiful Gloucestershire countryside. But once inside the wire fence, past the neat gardens and the first of the locked grilles, there was no mistaking it was a real prison, with all that entailed.
    Maybe Suzie had changed beyond recognition in the last thirty years, lived through hardships Beth couldn’t even imagine. Yet there would still be enough of that carefully brought up little girl inside her to be horrified by the harsh regime, the bullying, the other vindictive prisoners, the dreadful food and lack of fresh air.
    As Beth was led by a prison officer to the interview room, she felt decidedly shaky and unsure of herself. Nothing she’d planned to say before she got that phone call from Steven was appropriate now. She didn’t know whether to launch straight into what she knew or wait to see if Susan was intending to tell her.
    But as the door opened to the interview room and she caught