And every morning she would queue for what seemed like hours in the hope of a shower, or better still a bath, and not complain if she missed out, which very often she did. The other women, the old hands who’d been here for months or even years, would shove ahead of her in the queue, steal her soap, or trample on her towel, and Gina never dared to object.
She kept her head down, as instructed by Alice, and said not a word. But the endless empty hours were stultifying, leaving her mind numb with boredom and paralysed by fear.
Gina discovered that some of the staff appeared friendly enough, one in particular, a plump woman known as Wilcox with dark curly hair, cut excessively short, very like Gina’s younger brother, Allessandro. She made a point of talking to Gina and asking her how she was settling.
Gina admitted that she was finding it difficult. ‘There’s no one but Alice willing even to talk to me.’
Wilcox laughed. ‘You’d be wise not to trust our Alice. Very fond of dipping her fingers into shop tills and other folk’s pockets.’
‘Yes, she told me, but only in order to feed her children.’
The woman laughed. ‘Those would be the same two children who were taken into care when they were found abandoned while she plied her trade, would they?’
‘Trade?’
‘I surely don’t have to draw a picture. Among her other many talents, our Alice is a prostitute.’
Gina was shocked. She tried not to be. She strived to appreciate that she’d entered a different world, and that Alice possibly had good reason for doing what she did. Yet a part of her shuddered at the thought of letting men do as they wished with you, quite unable to imagine ever being quite that desperate.
Despite her disapproval, she stoutly defended her new friend. ‘Oh, but she seems so nice, and has really been very helpful.’
‘Don’t try making friends in here, love,’ Wilcox warned, oddly echoing Alice’s own advice. ‘Particularly since you’re obviously from a decent home background and this place is a den of thieves, prossies and women not quite right in the head. Someone like you shouldn’t be in a place like this.’
‘I know. I keep saying I’m innocent but nobody will believe me.’
‘Poor love!’ The woman stroked Gina’s smooth cheek, looked deep into her lovely dark-fringed, tear-filled eyes. ‘Is there something I can do for you? Some little personal item you might need, for instance, to make life more comfortable?’
‘Oh, yes, please. I’ve a photo of my boy friend in my bag, but they took it from me at reception.’ She still wanted it with her, still loved Luc, despite his betrayal. She couldn’t seem to help herself. In any case, they’d been getting along much better recently, ever since he’d kissed her in the cinema when they were watching Elvis sing Jailhouse Rock. Their choice of film seemed almost prophetic in a way, she thought bleakly.
The woman officer smiled. ‘I’ll see what I can do, love.’
The picture was returned to her later that day.
‘Oh, thank you so much,’ Gina cried, hugging it to her, deeply grateful for this small act of kindness.
Wilcox squeezed her arm, her breath warm on Gina’s face, smelling faintly of the rice pudding she’d eaten at dinner time. ‘I’ll think of a way you can repay the favour one day.’
Alice appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and drew Gina firmly away. ‘Are you stupid, or what? Don’t mess with old Wilcox, for God’s sake. What was she after? You don’t get owt for nowt in this place.’
‘‘She’s let me have my boy friend’s photo back,’ Gina said. ’I don’t mind doing her a favour in return.’
‘You will when you find out what it is.’
And by the time Alice had finished filling Gina in on some facts of life which had hitherto passed her by, she knew there was indeed nobody she could trust in this place, not here in Strangeways, nor back in Champion Street Market. She was on her own.
One morning during what was known as association when the cell doors were unlocked and the women were free to move about for a while, to play cards, attend a class if there was one, listen to the radio or simply chat, a trio suddenly appeared at the door of Gina’s cell, crowding in, filling the small confined space.
‘So this is the new girl, eh?’ said one, clearly the leader. She was taller than Gina by several inches, athletic and strong with a long, narrow face framed by greasy blond hair, a high forehead and green, heavy-lidded eyes that seemed to rake over Gina with cold distaste. Her mouth was all dry and cracked, and running with sores.
‘Me name’s Lorna Griffith but you can call me Griff. Everyone else does. Have you explained how things work in here?’ she demanded of Alice, without taking her gaze off Gina who was visibly shaking. The three girls who accompanied her were poking about in the cell, riffling through her few belongings and throwing things around; turning back the sheets and blankets on her bunk, stripping the pillow case off Gina’s pillow, searching through her clothes. Gina hated them for this intrusion.
‘She came in wi’ nowt,’ Alice told them. ‘Yer wasting yer time. She’s clean as a whistle.’
‘Oh, dear, nothing to contribute to the Griff fund then? I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘She doesn’t even smoke,’ Alice said.
Gina said nothing. She’d no idea what they were looking for but prayed they’d soon grow bored and leave.
‘Maggie, add her to the sheet,’ Griff instructed a small wiry woman with red hair and a beautiful heart-shaped face. Her mouth was a perfect cupid’s bow, seeming to curl up at the corners as if she were smiling over some secret known only to her.
The expression on Griff’s own face might have been classed as a smile, if you considered a slight stretching of her sour cracked mouth worthy of the word. ‘A girl like you needs looking after. I dare say Alice here has explained? Sadly, some girls take more looking after than others. With a lovely face like yours, you’ll be very popular with the bent screws, and hated by the old lags, if you catch me drift.’
She stepped closer to tower over Gina, her voice dropping to a hissing whisper. ‘I’ll be generous though and settle for a shilling a day.’
‘I don’t understand. A shilling a day for what?’
‘Nay, Alice, You said you’d told this lass the facts of life, in prison terms, that is, though perhaps not quite clearly enough, eh? A bob a day my little innocent, is for protection.’
‘But I haven’t any money,’ Gina protested, hating the whining note in her own voice but fear was overwhelming her for she really didn’t know how to deal with this frightening woman, or what she was offering to protect her from.
‘Your family isn’t short of a bob or two, I’ll warrant, and they’ll be only too happy to make your life as comfortable as possible during your stay here. Have a word with them when next they visit.’ Turning back to Alice, she said, ‘Fill her in on the fine details, love, and do it properly this time. You know I don’t like to be messed about.’
Then pinching Gina’s cheek, showed off a row of bad teeth in an evil smile. ‘Who else is there to look after you, chuck, but good old Griff? And by the look of you, scrawny thing that you are with that limp, you’ll need a lot of attention, wouldn’t you agree, Alice me old chum? A cripple always costs extra.’
Griff and her band of mischief-makers turned to go but Gina’s face had turned crimson. Something had snapped inside her, that part of her which hated to be referred to as a
cripple
. ‘I’ll pay you nothing, not a bean! I won’t be bullied just because I have a limp, and don’t you dare call me names!’
The silence following this unwise outburst was terrible to behold. The woman’s green eyes seemed to blaze, her entire body swelled and puffed out, her face turning purple. Gina was certain, in that moment, that Griff, as she termed herself, would lash out and strike her. A part of her almost wished that she would, then she could hit back and get rid of some of the pent-up anger that had built up inside without her even realising it.
Instead, Griff burst out laughing then perched herself on Gina’s bunk, pulled down her knickers and urinated on the mattress that had been stripped bare by her friends. They seemed to find this highly amusing and roared with laughter while Gina looked on, her face a mask of horror.
When she was done, the girl calmly pulled up her knickers again and said, ‘Oh, dear, you seem to have wet your bed, chuck. What a shame! And getting someone to dry it for you in this rotten hell-hole is well nigh impossible.’
How Gina would have dealt with this she was never to discover as they were interrupted at this point by Wilcox. ‘Visitor for you, Bertalone. Hey, what’s going on here?’
Gina’s heart leapt at mention of a visitor as it always did when her parents came to see her. They represented her only contact with the outside world. She snatched up a comb to start dragging it through the snarls of her tousled hair.
Alice took a hasty step forward to block the officer’s view of the wet mattress. ‘Nowt’s going on. They were just going.’
‘Aye, we were,’ Griff agreed. ‘Come on girls, let’s leave our new friend to her visitor. We’ll talk again later, Gina love, after they’ve gone. Don’t forget what I said now. I’m always ready to help a newcomer.’
‘That would be a first,’ Wilcox drily remarked. ‘Get on your way, Griffith.’
Gina stood, comb frozen in her hand at the thought of a continuation of this difficult conversation, while the girl and her trio of malicious helpers strolled nonchalantly away, clearly attempting to make the point that they were leaving of their own free will and not because Wilcox had told them to.
The woman officer gave Gina a shove, breaking her out of her paralysis. ‘Stop that titivating and look sharp about it. We haven’t all day.’
Gina was marched along the wing, Alice’s parting words ringing in her ears. ‘Sometimes, it’s hard to keep your head down low enough.’
It wasn’t Papa or Momma waiting for her in the empty visitor’s hall, but Luc. He stood up when she appeared and Gina’s heart sang as she saw the expression on his face. He did love her, after all. It was written there for all to see. She thought she could tolerate any amount of abuse in this hateful place if she could be certain that he still loved and would wait for her.
She half ran towards him but Wilcox put out a hand and made her sit across the table from him, instructing the two lovers not to even think of touching each other, or he’d be sent packing.
Gina bleakly nodded. Wilcox moved back a few paces but her looming presence made her realise that they weren’t even to be granted the luxury of a few private moments.
Luc too seemed unnerved by the large woman. He cleared his throat, clenched and unclenched his hands, desperately wanting to grasp Gina’s but not quite able to find the courage to defy the officer. He looked beseechingly at the girl he loved, his gaze telling her how much he wanted to hold her and kiss her while his voice calmly said, ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’ She’d never felt less fine in her life.
‘Are you getting enough to eat?’
‘Yes.’ She was almost permanently hungry, not trusting any food prepared for her following the incident of the woman spitting in her soup.
‘And your cell, is that okay?’
Gina nodded, quite unable to answer. How could she tell him that right now it looked as if a tornado had hit it and a fellow inmate had just peed on her mattress? ‘How are
you
?’ she managed. ‘And Momma and Papa?’
‘They’re coming next week, as usual. They want you to know that they are doing everything they can to get you out of here. Your father says he’ll prove your innocence if it costs him every penny he possesses.’
Gina’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Tell them I love them - that I miss them - and my brothers and sisters.’
Luc nodded. ‘I will. They were desperate to see you this week too but I persuaded them to let me come instead. There’s something I need to tell you, something important, and I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.’
Gina’s heart now flipped in the opposite direction, sinking to her boots. ‘Something bad has happened, hasn’t it? Is it to do with Carmina?’ She saw how he avoided her probing gaze. ‘You’re back with her, aren’t you?’
‘No ! Well, yes, at least she thinks so, but not in the way you mean. It’s difficult to explain but the fact is ...
Drat it, Gina, there’s no easy way to say this, Carmina
is
pregnant, after all, so ...’
He got no further. Gina was on her feet in a flash, walking away from him. ‘Goodbye Luc. Don’t bother to come again.’
Luc leapt to his feet and called after her in desperation, ‘Noooooo! Don’t go, Gina, don’t go till I’ve explained.
Listen to me
!’
But she wasn’t listening to anyone, had certainly no wish to listen to Luc Fabriani ever again. Wilcox was at her side in a second, ready to unlock the door and allow Gina back on to the wing. Luc was left punching his fist into the table, his last hopes and dreams shattered.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The very next time Amy said she was going out for the evening, Chris made secret plans to acquire a baby-sitter. He arranged for Dorothy Thompson, Aunty of any number of foster children, to look after Danny for a couple of hours. He needed to be completely free to follow his wife and see exactly where she went. He wanted this matter resolved, once and for all, even if she was seeing another man. Not knowing for sure was doing his head in.