Free Bobby's Girl by Catrin Collier Page A

over her head and looked around for somewhere to leave it.
    â€˜On the floor,’ the officer barked.
    She took her time over folding it, hoping for a respite. She simply couldn’t believe what was happening. The first girl to remove all her clothes was pulled forward. One of the officers snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and subjected her to a rough, intimate and public body search. The entire time the officer’s fingers prodded and poked, the girl kept her eyes tightly closed.
    She’d never felt more embarrassed or humiliated in her life. She was the sixth in line to get the treatment. Although she’d avoided watching the other girls being searched she thought she knew what to expect. But her imagination hadn’t prepared her for the sense of violation she felt when the most intimate and private areas of her body were invaded by brutal and insensitive fingers. As soon as the officer had finished, she wiped the tears of humiliation from her eyes, stumbled back to her clothes and pulled them on as quickly as she could.
    â€˜Satisfied, now you’ve mauled us about? Were you expecting to find anything up there, or did you want alesbian thrill?’ The girl with the shrill voice had her face slapped for the gibe.
    After they’d all been searched, the officers marched the girls into a corridor studded with metal doors. They were pushed in through the open doors, four to a cell intended for one.
    She found herself in the company of two painfully thin blondes who sank to the floor, wrapped their arms around one another and started sobbing as soon as the door slammed. She steeled herself for the sound of the key turning in the lock, but the reality made her blood run cold.
    â€˜Not like watching a film, is it?’
    Swallowing her tears Penny looked at her fourth cellmate with gratitude simply because she appeared calm. ‘Penny John.’
    â€˜Rose Meyer. You been arrested before?’
    â€˜No. You?’ If Rose had, the fact she’d survived gave her hope.
    â€˜No. I only went to the stupid demonstration to be with my boyfriend. He’s into politics. I’m not, and I won’t be anymore after this. You were with Bobby.’
    â€˜I’d only just met him.’
    â€˜On the bus?’
    â€˜In the square. He pushed me out of the path of a police horse.’
    â€˜That’s our Bobby. Save the world and anyone in trouble.’
    â€˜Your Bobby?’ She felt unaccountably disappointed, not that she’d believed the fast-talking American had been sincere.
    â€˜He’s a friend of my boyfriend’s. They’re draft dodgers, prepared to risk England with all its dangers of bad plumbing and warm beer as an alternative to fighting in Vietnam. We’re at Oxford. Mike – that’s my boyfriend – is reading Classics, I’m French. Bobby’s graduating this year but he’s returning to do a masters in medieval history in the autumn.’ She looked around the cell. ‘It’s bloody freezing in here.’
    â€˜Icy.’ A single naked bulb illuminated yellow painted brickwork. The clothes she’d thought warm that morning did little to keep out the cold without the top layer of her combat jacket.
    â€˜I suppose this is where we wait for someone to open the door while hoping those two eventually stop howling.’ Rose curled up on one end of the bare metal bunk and closed her eyes.
    She took the other end, wrapped her arms around her knees and curled into a ball to conserve what little warmth remained in her shivering body. She’d never felt so abandoned or afraid. And it didn’t help that the two blondes were still sobbing.
    Â 
    â€˜Penelope John?’
    She opened her eyes with a start, what could have been one or ten hours later. She glanced instinctively at her wrist, but her watch had been taken along with the rest of her personal possessions. Not that it would have made any difference. It was