Angel (84) back inside.

Being back inside wasn’t a shock. Nothing the governor or prison officers said touched her. She got a job in the laundry, the racket of the industrial sized washing machines spinning sheets and towels thousands of revs-per-minute and the fibres flung off by the dryers which settled like snow on the floor and had to be brushed was considered a health hazard nobody was too worried about. To be written up for later, like everything else in the rotten prison. The smell of fabric conditioner on cotton she crushed in her hands when folding garments and held it to her nose. It took her home to a safe place – she was holding Adam and rocking Lisa to sleep in her cot.  

‘Keep up the good work,’ shouted an officer as he hurried past the laundry section. At the end of the path was a locked gate.

Officers coming back the other way caught her on the hop. Someone had grassed her and she’d a fair idea who it was.

‘RIGHT!’ he said. ‘Drugs test. We want you to pee into a wee bottle.’

A woman guard stood beside him. They’d labelled her The Munchkin because of her size and the way she gave any male figure the gooey eyes.

She folded the towel and placed it carefully in the cart with the other. ‘I’ve already been.’ She licked her lips and pushed out a hip and directed her attention at Officer McDermid. Although he was a stocky old man of about forty he’d a reputation for being a bit too hands on with some of the girls, they’d put it more bluntly than that, of course.

‘Can’t we do it later?’ she asked, smiling, all teeth, ‘When we’ve got a bit more time’.

She glanced at the Munchkin’s glaikit face and knew the answer before he even spoke.

‘You’ve got to be fuckin’ jokin’,’ he replied. ‘Spot test.’

They escorted her back to the wing. The Munchkin stood outside the cubicle of the toilet but with the door open. Angel crouched over the toilet bowl with her knickers down and faked trying to pee into a plastic bowl.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘No wae somebody watchin’ me.’

The Munchkin huffed out of her nose. ‘Hurry up,’ she said in a bored tone. ‘We can do it now, or we can do it later – it’s up to you.’

Angel tried a different tack, opening her legs a bit wider, running her index finger up and down her clitoris, making it stand out like a jewel. She’d mannish girlfriends in both wings since she’d be in and they got her stuff, said they loved her, fought over her.

‘Shut the door,’ Angel urged her. ‘Come a wee bit closer and I’ll lick you out –good. I’ll do anythin’ you like. Nobody will ever know.’ She stuck out her small breasts and passing the bowl into the other hand, dotted her forehead, stomach and her left arm with the sign of the cross. ‘I swear on it.’

‘I’m putting you on Report,’ the Munchkin said. ‘You finished here or not?’

Angel squeezed her bladder and splashed a thimbleful of pee into the container.

‘Here, yah cow,’ she said to the Munchkin, passing her the bowl, almost sloshing it over her clean uniform. ‘Hope that makes you very happy.’  

‘That’s going into the Report as well,’ said the Munchkin.

‘Suit yerself,’ Angel replied.

McDermid was waiting for them outside the toilet a bored expression on his face. He’d heard the last of their exchange. ‘Watch yer tongue,’ he warned Angel.

‘Or whit?’ Angel stood her ground. ‘You’ll put me in the Bully Book? Big, fuckin’ deal.’

He grabbed at her arm and she tried to shake him off and his grip got tighter. She kicked him on the shins. And he wrestled with her and the Munchkin put the pee dish on the floor and tried to grab her around the neck. She jerked her head backwards and felt the crunch as it hit the cartilage of her nose. An alarm went off and she heard the running of feet, but the male officer was too strong and had already nicked her. Lying over the top of her chest, his weight pinning her to the ground, fags and the stink of an unwashed body rising from sweating pores.  

‘Go on yah pervert and get a good feel of my tits,’ she screamed.

The Munchkin sobbed lying over her legs and feet a hand up at her bloody nose. Other officers when the appeared stood around looking down at her, arms folded, talking among themselves and laughing. Angel felt her body sag, the fight go out of her as quickly as it had sprung up. Then a lightning bolt of pain as The Munchkin punched her hard in the fanny, made her body jump as she screamed almost lifting McDermid into the air.

Other officers were quick to pin her arms and legs down with renewed force and The Munchkin retreated to a place behind the uniforms.

They marched her and hands under her ochters, half carried her, through the medical block. She heard the rattle of keys and McDemid pushed her into a cell with nothing but a stained mattress on the floor. The door slammed behind her and when she turned McDemid was eyeing her through the hatch.

‘You disgust me,’ she said.

The hatch slid shut and Angel went and sat on the mattress, her back against the wall, hugging herself. She wondered if the dish with her urine had been knocked over and how long they’d keep her in basic before she got to see the Governor. What worried her most was not being allowed visitors. Her last request had been turned down and she hadn’t seen her son, Adam, for over two months. Bruno and Tony when she spoke to them on the phone said he was getting on fine. But she knew that was a big fat lie. She could feel it in her stomach and in her bones. That was what being a mother was really about.