Free For Better For Worse by Pam Weaver Page A

the
Woman
magazine – hardly high-class living – but right now every penny counted. And then there was that pot of tea she’d had this morning. Mr West already had five bob and the rent was due in two weeks’ time. Annie held her head in her hands. What on earth was she going to do? She wasn’t even in a position to earn any money. Who would employ a woman about to give birth? She lowered herself into a chair as her thoughts grew even darker. How was she going to visit Henry with no money? She hardly had enough to feed herself for three weeks, let alone travel all the way to Lewes. Then she remembered the gold watch Granny had given her for her birthday. She could pawn it for the time being. Once Henry’s trial was over and he was proven innocent, she could get it back. It was heavy, so it must be worth a bob or two. Annie searched the place high and low, but she couldn’t find it. It was all very puzzling. She had it on the day of her wedding because she remembered that Henry had remarked how much he’d liked it. She was sure she’d put it back in the box but it wasn’t there now. She racked her brains but she couldn’t remember seeing it again. Where on earth could it have gone? Having drawn a complete blank, there was only one other way forward. She had to open that drawer.
    *
    Angry and frustrated, Henry Royale lay on his cot facing the wall. How could he have ended up in such a place? He didn’t ask much out of life. A little money, a loving wife, a son … and yet it had come to this. He drew his knees up as he thought of Annie. Why, oh why, had she let that witch in? If he’d told her once, he’d told her a thousand times, ‘Don’t let anybody in the house while I’m at work.’ Of course, he’d never for a minute believed that Sarah would track him down, but if Annie had done as she was told, he could have bluffed his way out of it, same as he always did. And if she’d got a move on with the packing, they would have been long gone before the police arrived as well.
    Lewes prison, No. 1 Brighton Road, turned out to be a castellated flint and brick building. Built in Victorian times for far fewer inmates, he and another 149 prisoners were incarcerated two together in a one-man cell, with the stinking toilet stuck in the middle of the room. Only a wooden lid kept the body odours in check and, from where he lay, it wasn’t very effective. They’d told him that if he’d been a convicted man rather than a prisoner on remand, he would have been put in isolation straight away. Frankly, he would have preferred to be on his own. He hated having no privacy and, to add insult to injury, he only had a thin mattress, a stained and smelly pillow and a prison blanket on his bed, so no comfort either. He didn’t even have any more of his favourite sweets. He’d eaten the last coffee crunch before he’d been remanded in custody.
    A noxious smell filled the air as the other prisoner farted.
    ‘Whoops, sorry mate.’
    Henry pulled the blanket over his nose. His cellmate, a skinny man with a broken tooth who had obviously been drinking heavily the night before, wasn’t the only animal to share his room. Before he’d turned his back on his fellow prisoner, Henry had seen at least two cockroaches running around the perimeter of the room.
    The fat solicitor Annie sent seemed to think that if he was convicted, he’d get three months. Three months wasn’t too bad. There was a vague possibility he’d miss the birth of his son, but he’d be back with Annie before the child was more than a week or two old. He could have done with the man earlier but he’d arrived too late for the short hearing in the magistrate’s court where Henry had elected to conduct his own defence rather than wait. He realised now that he shouldn’t have been so hasty, but what was done, was done. Right now there were more pressing things to think about … like getting his story straight and winning the sympathy of the jury.

Six
    Annie