Southampton: 2011
I was naked and covered in someone else’s blood. It was smeared across my flesh and dripping from the tips of my fingers onto the carpet.
Around me the room seemed to be spinning slowly, like a fairground carousel. My vision was blurred, but I could make out various objects. A door. A sofa. A flat-screen television. A wall painting. A bed.
A man’s body.
The body was lying on the bed, naked like me and face up. And there was more blood. It soaked the sheets and the rug of thick, grey hair on the man’s chest. There were even splash marks on the wall above the wooden headboard.
I knew instinctively that he was dead. His eyes were bulging out of their sockets and he wasn’t breathing. He was motionless.
The realisation that I wasn’t dreaming hit me like a bag of ice. I made an effort to scream, but nothing came out. The shock of what I was experiencing had rendered me mute.
I tried to bring my thoughts to bear on what was happening. Where was I? Who was the man? Why was there so much blood?
As I stood there, dazed and bewildered, the back of my head throbbing, it gradually came back to me.
A few moments ago I’d been lying on the bed beside the corpse. I must have been unconscious because suddenly I was awake and aware that something was wrong. So I’d rolled off the bed and onto my feet.
And that’s when I looked down and saw the shocking state I was in.
Oh God.
The room stopped moving suddenly and my eyes focused on something on the floor. It glinted in the wash of colour from the bedside lamp.
A large knife. And there was more blood on the blade.
I backed away from it until I came up against the cold, smooth surface of the wall. From here I could see the whole room. The full, horrific scene of carnage.
I felt my legs wobble. A wave of nausea washed through me. I reached out and grabbed the back of a chair for support. The chair stood in front of a dressing table, and there was a big square mirror in which I caught sight of my reflection.
There was so much blood. On my face, my breasts, my shoulders. It even trailed down across my stomach into my pubic hairs.
As I stared at myself the rest of it came back to me. I realised who the man was. I recalled what had happened in the room before I lost consciousness. The raised voices. The violent struggle. The drunken haze that smothered everything.
And it was these mental images that finally dislodged the scream from deep inside my throat.
Holloway Prison: 2014
‘I’ve got some bad news for you, Lizzie.’
They were the first words out of the governor’s mouth when I was escorted into her office. Maureen Riley had only been in the job for a few months so I’d never had a one-to-one meeting with her before today. I’d assumed she was going to read me the riot act, tell me that under her stewardship I would have to change my ways and become a model prisoner. But I could tell from the solemn expression on her face that I’d been summoned for a different reason.
‘I think perhaps you should sit down,’ she said, waving to an empty chair across the desk from her.
But I just stood there, rigid as a tent peg, my blood racing in anticipation of what was to come.
She had her back to the window, through which I could see a fierce afternoon sun beating down on the streets of North London. The stark light accentuated the lines around her eyes and mouth, and I found myself momentarily distracted as I wondered how old she was. Mid-to-late forties? Early fifties? It was hard to tell. Her brown hair was liberally streaked with grey and she had a fleshy, nondescript face.
‘I really think you should take a seat, Lizzie. What I’m about to tell you will be extremely upsetting.’
Everything inside me turned cold. My heart started thumping, thrashing against my ribs.
‘Has something happened to Leo?’ I said, my voice thin and stretched. It was the first fearful thought that sprang into my mind.
She clamped her top lip between her teeth and leaned forward across her desk. Her eyes were steady and intense, and I could see the muscles in her neck tighten.
‘I’m afraid your son had to be rushed to hospital this morning,’ she said. ‘He was taken ill suddenly at his grandmother’s.’
An awful stillness took hold of me. I tried to speak but the words snagged in my throat.
The governor rearranged her weight in the chair, took a long, deep breath and then uttered the words that every parent dreads to hear.
‘Leo passed away, Lizzie. It happened several hours ago. I just received the call.’
It took a couple of seconds for it to sink in. It can’t be true, I told myself. How can my little boy be dead? He’s only three years old, for Christ’s sake.
But then it hit me and a sob exploded in my throat.
‘No, no, no,’ I cried out.
I clenched my eyes shut and the world tilted on its axis. I felt myself falling, but the screw who had brought me to the office grabbed me before I fell to the floor. She managed to lower me onto the chair as the tears poured out of me.
The governor waited a few minutes before she spoke again.
‘I’ve been told that your mother was with him at the end, Lizzie. He was very ill, apparently. Viral meningitis.’
I felt a darkness rise up inside me. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this. My darling son was everything to me. He gave meaning to my life, a life that had been twisted out of shape by bad luck and mistakes.
And now he was gone.
‘I’m so very sorry, Lizzie,’ the governor said. ‘I know this is a terrible shock and I wish there was something I could say that would soften the blow. But of course there isn’t.’
Images of Leo cartwheeled through my mind. I saw him in my arms just after I’d given birth, and when he took his first steps across the living room carpet at nine months old. And then there was the very last time I saw him, not long after his first birthday. His bright blue eyes and curly fair hair. The smile that never failed to melt my heart.
Oh God how could he be dead?
I continued to sob hysterically. The governor got up and came around her desk. She placed a hand on my shoulder and spoke in a soft voice. But I didn’t take anything in because the shock and grief were all-consuming.
When finally I recovered my composure she gave me a tissue to wipe my eyes and said she would arrange for a bereavement counsellor to come and see me.
‘And of course I’ll keep you informed about funeral arrangements,’ she said. She then told the screw to take me back to my cell.
As I was led out of the room I broke down again, and through the deluge of tears I heard my mother’s voice in my head from long ago.
‘You’ve ruined your son’s life as well as your own, Lizzie,’ she told me after I was charged with killing a man. ‘I hope God can find it in his heart to forgive you, because I know I can’t.’
Those words had tormented my soul for three long years. The weight of guilt was a burden I’d been forced to endure ever since they locked me up.
And now it was going to be much, much heavier.
I stopped crying on the way back to the cell block, but I could feel the scream building