Free Preservation by Fiona Kidman Page B

time for concepts.’ Leonie was almost spitting the words. ‘I thought you of all people would understand.’ At the time, Sabrina was struggling with political science.
    ‘Sort of,’ she said, and it was the nearest she and Leonie ever came to understanding each other. Afterwards, she wondered about Jan’s trances, and hoped she could deal with emergencies on aeroplanes.
    Jan was the first to get married, too, something she has done only once, and the first to get divorced, although this is something Elsa has never done, and Sabrina believes that she is happy with Daniel and can’t imagine she will repeat separation. Jan never had children. Not her scene, she said once.
    And now Leonie is dead, and Jan is locked up, and there is nobody to see to her mother’s funeral arrangements.
    The car park is filling up as Elsa ducks out of her car in the rain, her expression distraught. ‘Sabby,’ she says, climbing into the passenger seat. Beneath her raincoat her cashmere sweater is tight over her ample breasts; her dark pleated skirt doesn’t conceal that she is getting stout. ‘What on earth is this all about? Did you know Jan was in here? I never saw anything in the paper about Leonie dying.’
    ‘No, but remember Jan’s got a different surname to Leonie. I can’t even remember what it is. Perhaps we’ve missed it.’
    Elsa sighs heavily. ‘How did we ever get in tow with Jan?’
    ‘I think Jan got in tow with us,’ says Sabrina, half laughing at the memory of the way Jan was always at their heels when they first went to high school. By that time, she and Elsa had known each other forever. There was something adoring about the way Jan spoke to them. Sabrina thinks they were flattered. Jan was sensational — the way she looked, the way she came top in everything — and yet she chose them. ‘She was a good mate.’
    ‘I feel awful for her,’ Elsa says in a small miserable voice.
    ‘Well, we’re here now. We can do it, can’t we?’
    ‘I haven’t told Ross,’ says Elsa. Ross is her husband. ‘He wouldn’t like me coming here. Thank God he didn’t pick up the phone when she rang yesterday. I thought it was a hoax at first.’
    Jan had called them both the day before. A recorded message had come on the end of the line, a flat cold man’s voice saying: ‘You are about to receive a phone call from a prison inmate. Press one if you do not wish to receive it, otherwise hold the line. Your call will be recorded and may be used as evidence in court.’ And then there had been a click and a rustle, and Jan’s voice. She had a special dispensation to phone people because of her mother’s death, she explained. As a rule, she had to have people she rang approved of first, but this was different. Besides, she said, there weren’t all that many people she could ring. You know how it is, she had said to Sabrina, in that kind of drifting voice she sometimes used at school when she wasn’t paying attention. Her brother had been brought up by their father, and Lord knows where he is now; they don’t keep in touch. She can’t even let him know that their mother is dead.
    She had pulled herself together, hurrying on to explain that she needed to see Sabrina and Elsa urgently. It was visiting hour the next day; if they could come she’d be grateful, because her mother was a bitch most of the time, as they knew very well, but she couldn’t let her be disposed of without someone in charge.Disposed of, that was the phrase she used. ‘I’m banged up,’ she said and laughed, or that’s how it came across. Because of the circumstances they are allowed a special dispensation to visit at short notice. They will have to carry identification, but their names are already down on the visiting list.
    ‘We’d better get on with it,’ says Sabrina, turning to face the wall of wire fences. ‘Come on, Elsa, they won’t keep us in there.’
    Elsa shivers, adjusts her fine floating navy scarf. It’s decorated with tiny