Free No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary Page B

into work. ‘I found a match for the peach label, but it’s a huge mail-order firm that ships around the world. They supply some of the bargain-brand supermarkets too. I’ll keep digging, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be less of a lead than Fran hoped.’
    ‘We’ll take whatever we’ve got,’ Marnie said. ‘Which means we’d better look into the travellers, too. Cover all bases.’
    ‘After gutless Douglas?’
    Marnie pointed the car towards Blackthorn Road.
    ‘After him,’ she agreed. ‘And the press.’

16
Lawton Down Prison, Durham
    Esther is facing the wall where she always sits. You’d think there was something to see, the way she studies it, something other than the new paint job over the old graffiti. The wall’s full of lumps and zits, like a teenager’s skin. I can’t stand it. It’s like looking at something I’ll never see. Something I can’t even remember properly, thanks to the drugs.
    Esther takes everything they give us. I think she’d take more, if it was on offer. Me, I’d prefer something old-fashioned and brutal. Like ECT, or a baton to the back of the legs. A woman on the next floor got Tasered the other day. She’d gone for someone with a pair of scissors. They sat on her until she stopped shaking and I swear I could smell her burnt skin, like bad sunburn with a topspin.
    Me and Esther . . .
    We wouldn’t dare touch a pair of scissors, let alone the rest of it. We’re too busy being good. Esther with her face to the wall and me with my head stuffed so full of drugs I can’t remember what they smelt like, or how long ago they died.
    Being good . . .
    We’ll never be that. They should stop pretending it’s possible and get back to the business of punishing us. We’re back where we belong, at least. Behind bars. The public-places experiment is over, judged a success. I still can’t believe they’d let us out, knowing what we’ve done. Some things should never be forgiven.
    Lyn, the therapist, says, ‘The important thing is that you’re better now.’
    I can’t believe she believes this.
    The important thing is that we’re punished .
    The important thing is that we’re never let out, certainly not where there are children.
    ‘Rehabilitation is possible,’ that’s Lyn’s line.
    Yes, but is it preferable? Is anything preferable to keeping the likes of us locked up?
    If I was ever let out – and I can’t believe they’re even thinking about it, let alone sitting us in hospital waiting rooms, for God’s sake, as if there’s a cure for what we did, what we are – if I’m ever let out, there’s one place I’ll go, and only one place.
    One thing I’ll do when I get there.
    One way to say sorry, and one chance to say it.
    I think Esther feels the same; in fact I know she does. You can’t live with someone the way she and I have lived – elbow to elbow in this place, sharing everything, sharing even the sounds and smells our bodies make – you can’t live like that and not know.
    She’s the same as me, even if she never says it. If she sits facing the wall and doesn’t flinch for anyone, not for that silly sad bitch with the scissors, not even when they brought her down with the Taser.
    Esther’s become an expert at hiding. And frankly?
    That scares me.
    I prefer my monsters out in the open, where I can see them.
    It’s one of the reasons I’m stopping the pills.
    I’ll take them, but I won’t swallow. The pills make everything foggy, and I want to be able to see clearly, to see and to think.
    It isn’t right that I can’t remember how long it is since they died. I ought to have the number of days – hours, minutes – carved into the jelly of my brain. There ought not to be a single second I don’t remember. Instead, whole days go by, fog-banked by the drugs, until a crack emerges and a shaft of light stabs through – stabs me .
    I want to be stabbed, over and over, by the memory of what I did. And by the other memories, the good