Free Spider in the Corner of the Room (The Project Trilogy) by Nikki Owen Page B

morphine-induced sleep. They have tried to quiz me about the beating, about what Michaela did, but events are hazy, a blur of words and images, nothing concrete, nothing I can grasp on to. She must have hit my head harder than I thought.
    I reach out, pick up a newspaper. Pain shoots down my arm. I flop back and exhale. The hospital wing is bright and rest is impossible, so I have taken to reading periodicals. They keep me alert. Yesterday, my legal counsel againrefused to support my application for appeal and while I pleaded with them, while I begged them to help me, still they refused. Despite the Governor saying he would help, I do not know what I am going to do. I do not know anyone in this country. I have no friends here, no life. The appeal application deadline is fast approaching.
    It is on page five of
The Times
that I see it. An article. A QC has secured a famous chef his freedom after he was found guilty of murdering his sous chef. New evidence. Following a lengthy trial, the conviction was overturned.
    Overturned.
I scan for the QC’s name.
    Harry Warren.
    Could this be it? My new counsel? Could he help me? There is a photograph of him next to the article. I study it: black skin, wide smile, round stomach. Good-looking, once. A man of money and paid help.
    Metal clatters to my right. I glance up. A bedpan has been knocked to the floor.
    I return my eyes to
The Times
and look closer. The man looks familiar, yet how can that be? To the right of the page there is a short biography. It says he is married, two grown-up children: twins. His wife is a solicitor. They are both fifty-eight, both charitable figures. But all that to me is irrelevant, because, to arrange an appointment with him, what I really want is right there, at the bottom.
    His office: Brior’s Gate Chambers.
    Which means Mr Warren works here. In London.

Chapter 7
    F ive days in the hospital wing and now I am out.
    The guard links my arm like a crutch as I hobble to my cell. Inmates stare and whisper. No one comes near me, a leper, a marked woman, strange, weird. I hold my head up as much as I can as I shuffle forward, but inside I am lonely, sad, completely desolate.
    I enter the cell to find that I have a new cellmate. Her name, the guard says, is Patricia. She is moving around the cell now as I sit on my bed and touch the Bible, the new hiding place for my notebook, tucked behind the cover. Thankfully, prison is not a place where people read scripture. There’s no room for God here.
    ‘Hello?’
    This new person is standing before me. Her hair is shorn, fuzzy against her scalp like the blood-soaked fluff of a newborn chick.
    ‘Patricia O’Hanlon,’ she says, holding out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
    I blink at her fingers.
    ‘Well, go on then. You’re supposed to take it.’
    I shake her hand up and down five times, but my grip must have been too tight, because when I let go, she gives her arm a rub.
    ‘Jesus, you’ve got some muscles on you there.’
    Curious, I study her arm in lieu of a reply. On her wrist there are two small tattoos. One is of a blackbird. The other is of the Virgin Mary. She is the only person I have seen with a virgin on their arm. Her body, when it moves, is lithe, like a piece of wire, and her head almost skims the ceiling. The last time I saw someone that tall they were playing basketball.
    I bend forward to get a better look.
    ‘Whoa,’ she says, before taking a step back. ‘Getting a bit close there.’
    ‘Patricia,’ I say, stepping back. ‘It is the female form of Patrick. Patrick means “nobleman”.’
    She pauses for a second then smiles. There is a gap where a tooth should be, her cheeks sit buoyant and bobbing on her face like two ripe red apples, and when I sniff her, a scent drifts out. It reminds me of soft towels, warm baths, talcum powder.
    ‘Your accent’s not English,’ she says. ‘Where you from?’
    ‘Salamanca. Spain. I am Dr Maria Martinez.’ A wave of exhaustion hits me. I rub