The lady in red and the lady in white - the Maggie Oliver Foundation Ball

I don't trust the police.

I don't like them and I don't trust them.

This is an in-built defence mechanism from a childhood Fran who knows - men in uniforms are not there to save you - they are to deprave you.

At least that was my first experience of the law.

The men in positions of power, there to protect.

Didn't.

They took part in a pass the parcel of a child at the hands of my biological father who served me up to his friends as a party gift to be shared.

My first experience of men - my first experience of men and authority.

Is it any wonder at the age of 36, I loathe the very concept of the systems and the people who uphold them to be honour bound and those whom we seek to protect and wield the hammer of justice on our behalf?

My father, by blood and creation, was a police officer. A disgraced one. Whose short lived career saw him move into a logical side step of entrepreneurship - hustling.

By day, a less than reputable pub landlord, by night, a pimp of women, children; his whores.

Me I suppose.

Sex worker by trade in a later life, honing my skills under the age of 4. What can I say, I'm a natural.

When it comes to abusers and my magnetic ability to find them, I've never been far from the suffering of male sexuality and it's horrors.

I sat in a packed room of women a few weeks ago, to celebrate International Women's Day; earlier that day, I had had the honour of being the one at the front, sharing my story, of inspiration some say, and perhaps I feel that too when I recount and recall all that came before the prison, the rise and fall and the climb and crawl back to reality, normality and hope.

As I spoke, I locked eyes with a woman and she looked angry and at the time, whilst in the flow of my speech, I thought - "well, I'm not for everyone," - and I'm not. I know that, there is an air of distaste in thebarkerbaker bouncing back with a story of triumph over adversity, I live with that in my heart, I know. But this woman - beautiful, but fiery eyes, I could feel it.

I continued with my speech, the eyes softened and I was relieved; acceptance.

Later that day, I heard her speak and it struck me to my core.

I felt like she was telling chapter one of my story, and I had just shared the current chapter of the life of Fran. We were ying and yang, before and after, past and present and it broke me.

I listened with tears in my eyes, locked on hers, much like she locked mine when I spoke and with my wife by side, I inched my fingers closer to hers to feel the safety, I needed to feel the safety.

I'm ok.

I'm ok.

I'm not ok.

Whilst our scars and stories of abuse vary and differ and I have heard many upon my journey, whether prostitution or prison, this one struck me unlike others have before.

"Just because an alcoholic doesn't like whiskey and they're a vodka drinker, doesn't mean they won't drink whiskey if there's no vodka in the house,"

I felt sick.

I remember that feeling of dread when I was a child, this fierce and ferocious fighter within me that thought every time it happened - take me, use me, but if you go near him, I'll kill you. I'll kill you.

I'll be the distraction and the plaything, I'll be the pretty little girl. But one look at him with the same eyes and I'll find away in this tiny body of mine to end you.

And I held that fight within me until we were plucked from that place.

I hold it still, as illogical as it is in 2024, I'd still die to protect him regardless of circumstance or time.

3 year old Fran knew that in her heart, that the vodka drinker would ultimately land on whiskey and it was a fear that kept me hyper vigilante and kept me playing the game.

The strange thing about being a child victim of sexual abuse and exploitation, is that you grow up with two personality traits from a young age.

1) blaming yourself for being the sexual provocateur

2) being a sexual provocateur

I was both. 

I remember asking the most beautiful of foster parents I ever had, and I had some shockers

"Was I sexual? Did I hit on you?" - I know it is a strange question to ask a man you've not seen for nearly 3 decades but I had to know the answer.

"Yes, but that was never unusual for little girls like you, so I would sit you on my knee, read you a book and make you a lovely, little buttery crumpet and be your daddy,"

If only there were more men like that in my early years.

More crumpets and less cock.

Forgive the vulgarity, I don't dampen my rage or sadness when I write, you know this to be true by now if you are here reading.

But why, you ask, do I write of such sadness and trauma on a Sunday night when my social media channels reflect and project a weekend of love and joy....

Well, that's exactly the point isn't it, the two things live side by side in a mind, body and soul as fragmented and damaged as mine.

I am happy, happier than I have ever been.

Safe, secure, well, healthy enough, busy, loved, and kind.

What a dream, what a joy. Something I never thought possible for a child like me, a teenager, a woman, a... Fran.

But there we have it. Happy healthy and sane.

With the caveat, the sadness and the broken lives within me. The trauma, the memories, the damage.

But mostly, the rage. The hypocrisy. The expectation.

That with beginnings like mine at the hands of men in positions of power and somehow the world expected more of me, to be kind, to be good, to be better.

With what help from you? With what justice? With what recovery and rehabilitation and piecing me back together?

- The Barkers have a lot to answer for, this we know to be true. Taking on a child of trauma and abuse and letting it fester, linger, take root and rot my growth and hope from the inside out.

To ashamed, too scared, too fucking arrogant to imagine a child they now called theirs was this creature of the night with more notches on the bedpost aged 4 than most whores down Piccadilly bridge, but alas, there I was, beautifully blonde, damaged and wild, but theirs none the less.

There's no more and I'm still angry.

I sat in a room full of white privilege last night; not a criticism, a summary.

I was amongst them. I was proud to count myself amongst them. I have been wild and lost a long time, I have tried to be the Cheshire daughter, I have tried to be the success story, the pillar of stability and failed, often to the cost of others.

But last night, in my custom black three piece tuxedo, looking oh so ever the dyke, but in beauty and power, I sat, wife by my side, in feminine attire, open tuxedo shirt, blazing red brassier, the epitome of feminine sexuality and power, and we emanated it across the room, together. We are here.

I digress.

In a room full of power, privilege and hope, there were morals and truths and authentic natures I have yet to see in a room like that. It was a joy. It was pure. It was purpose. I felt it.

So now I write.

A woman in white and a woman in red. Held the room in their power. Their purpose and their authenticity.

The woman in red, she laughed with the irony and I saw that sadness in her eyes like when we first met in that room as we both spoke our truths, hugged me and as a person who does not hug - who was raised in an adoptive family that was cold, without warmth or emotion, hugs were not something I knew, I never had hugs. I never had hand holds, reassurance. I never had bed tuckings in. Stories. I never had "love you" never had "proud of you"

I think to them, I was always "daddy's little whore" and they dare not touch the tainted child. At least that's how it felt to a little girl in a big house waiting for parents to love her. And it never came.

But there, last night in a bougie hotel in Manchester City centre, a hug was enough for two women to hold one another in pain and power and know, we're here.

We did it.

A beautiful lady in red, who has inspired me to own my truth and say it loud and proud.

You all know from snippets and moments of reference my beginnings were filled with trauma and sex. Now you know.

My father, was a disgraced police officer who abused me and allowed his friends and his networks to abuse me further still. My family did nothing. Nobody stopped it. He was enabled, allowed and empowered to do so and never ever held to account.

I was THRILLED to hear he died, clutching his chest in agony at a London tube station as he fell to his knees and died there and then of a heart attack. The coward's way out.

Had we have met in my adult years; I would no doubt have gone to prison a little earlier than planned and served for a lot longer.

What can I say, like mother like daughter. There's a murderous temper in my blood.

But that would have been my justice. Because up until now, I've had none.

I've been the black sheep, the drug addict, the hooker, the homeless, the prisoner, the fraudster, the criminal, the lesbian, the shame, the blame, the embarrassment. I've been disowned, disembodied and stripped of my life, my history, my family, all that I knew. Gone.

Well fuck you and feel the shame of what is it to be less than.

I am strong. I am power. I am all that I am because of the trauma, the pain, the taint, the stain, the hurt, the hate. I am fearless, I am angry and I am waging a war on the bullshit.

The systems that protect the wrong people.

The systems that fail those who need them most.

The people who cast blame and shame without looking closer.

The people who name and stigmatise for life without cause or concequence.

Shame on you.

I was a child. Less than 4 years old before I was rescued from the rinse and repeat pass around.

My adoptive mother never made reference to my harrowing beginnings other than this

"Of course you think you're a lesbian, you don't have a great track record with men,"

At 15? An unacceptable, abhorrent thing to say to a child that knew, that felt, that lived and relived the pain and the memories but was never allowed to say it out loud.

I was 8, I had a nightmare, I was in a pub, it was dirty, mattress, men, pain, tears, I woke up.

I told my mother (she doesn't deserve that name)

She said "What a twisted little mind you must have to dream such disgusting things Francesca,"

I thought she was right.

I spent years obsessing over the fact I was sick. I had something wrong with me for dreaming such things. What an imagination. What a fucked up human.

That's why they don't love me I would think, I'm broken. They see it. There's something wrong with me.

Imagine my relief in my twenties at my first court case for my first crime; IMAGINE, laughing with joy at reading my child court case records and putting the pieces together.

Not sick. Not twisted.

An 8 year old girl remembering things from a dark night and trying to tell her mummy about it.

I trace my story, I trace the roots, and I see, how I came to be a person who can lack empathy, lack understanding, be selfish, make bad choices, want to set the world on fire. I see it. The angry little girl lives on.

But in a 3 pieces tuxedo (it's worth mentioning twice, as it looked fabulous) - I held that power in such a positive way.

I sought out tickets to go to the ball, to support the cause, because the woman in white, is an angel.

Maggie Oliver.

In a room full of people who all want her ear, her attention and words, she made time for each and every one. With warmth, words and love. But most of all, with thanks. To every one who had made the time, the commitment and the effort to stand with her.

A woman who stood against a broken system, to call it out, to shout it out loud, to speak for the victims, to speak for the broken, she did it.

And she fucking set it on fire.

And I am here for it.

I am here for her.

I feel it firing inside me as I write, the purpose of that moment.

We are our trauma, but we don't let it define us, we define what it means for the future.

And for me?

It's knowing if I can be held accountable in a court of law and a society that says what's wrong.

Then so can the rest of the nonces and perverts that got their hands on me.

Game on.

Justice is transparency.

Justice is change.

Justice is healing.

Justice is protecting all the girls that came before, and all that come next. To make a safer, more accountable world.

That fire I had to protect my whiskey brother. I have it for all the girls and boys who need a protector. I'm here. And I'll fight.

The head above the parapet

My friends are worried.

My family is on high alert.

Sarah's yo-yo-ing between trusting I know what I am doing, and being equally as haunted as I am by what is about to take place.

Tonight, I will appear on television, and as many of you who read this blog know full well, it won't be for the first time.

And therein lies the danger.

In another life, a different life, just 7 years ago, I was gearing up just the same, to grace the television for a few short minutes that in my distorted reality, would be the golden egg and the vehicle to reverse the bad business acumen I had unloaded and unfolded and laid out to rest.

It didn't. It was and still is, to this day, the most insincere I think I ever felt during that time period. Every fibre of my being was telling me "don't do this," but much like the catalogue and onslaught of poor decisions I made then, going on television was one of them.

So it was no surprise, to me, my friends, my family, and the people involved in my case, that once I had been sent down, and taken away, the press ran riot with "my story"

Once in the newspaper waxing lyrical about rehabilitation and bread, now plastered on the broadsheets and shit rags, branded, for life, it would seem and certainly, feels A LIAR.

I can take that on the chin, on both of them actually. I can, because I accept that to be true. I was, a liar. A cruel, thoughtless, thankless liar. I had my reasons, of course I did, but none that stand up to scrutiny or decency, not my own, not the courts, and not societies, and so a price was to be paid.

In blood and money, so it was. Never enough. Still, to this day, never enough, as pennies are snatched and scratched into my life now in 2024. The burden weighs heavy.

But it is the penance of misdeeds as drastic and detrimental as mine.

Prison, as you will see tonight on the television, was a punitive measure, even by today's standards. That so many years after the fact, the only real punishment left to impose, was, punishment. Cruel in it's definition and cruel in it's practice, and a poor reflection on our society as a whole that we deem cause and concequence to be met with impunity, inhumanity and inequity and certainly, lacking in proportionality. We are still biblical in our desire for justice, as humans, we are yet to evolve to a state of kindness and forgiveness and all too quick to action an eye for an eye justice.

Justice.

The journalist asked me when filming, did I think I deserved to go to prison. It such a powerful adjective. Deserve?

I don't think anyone I met in prison deserved to be there, we were all just... there? Removed from society, to protect it from us, the criminals, and I understand that, out of sight, out of mind, but also, out of action so that perpetual criminality is paused whilst women are locked behind bars - therein lies the madness of it. Locking women up is a bandage on a severed limb, it's a plaster on a floodgate of chaos and never stems the crime for long. Why?

Because prison doesn't serve any other purpose than removing women from society these days and as a concequence it creates a slow burning resentment reflected back onto the society that cast us out, leaving all us ladies of HMP wondering, why fucking bother? You don't want us out, you don't want us in, you don't want us back. What do you want?

An eye for an eye

Because everyone really knows, truly knows, that to be sent to prison, is a punishment and why?

Because it's depraved. Its undignified. Its dehumanising. Its death.

And it really is, death. That's why I spoke to the journalist. Because it's death.

Or at least for some of us, it is, it was, it will be, and that's not ok.

When I say its not proportionate justice sending women to prison, let me explain why.

We wither there. We lose ourselves, our homes, our family, our children, our jobs, our hope, our identity, our health, our minds, our everything.

For women who can and should be sentenced in the community for the proportionality of their crimes; they keep their home, their family, their children, their jobs, their hope, their identity. They don't break in the weeks, months, years behind bars to the point of no return.

Job prospects zero, housing nope, bank accounts never, kids back you're joking, safety not likely, addiction - familiar, crime - choice, and so it goes on.

Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - surely by now we've seen what we're doing isn't working?

I don't know how my piece tonight will come across. I don't know how it's been edited. I've put my trust in a journalist who I believe has the right ethics for this important message. 

I do know it will be met with outrage, hatred, dismay, disgust, that the boy who cried wolf barkebaker is harping on again about change and saving the world.

My friend told me not to put my head above the parapet because it will get shot off and no good comes from destroying myself for the sake of a message and a purpose and I got mad and said 

There are people from my past I'm sure who will watch it and rub their hands together thinking "we nearly got her, she nearly did it," 

It's not about me.

It's about the Annelise's.

It's about the Deborahs.

It's about the Imogen's.

And it's enough.

So if my white privileged excon diatribe offends you, just change the channel.

But if, as I hope it does, it rings alarm bells and sends up red flags and makes you second guess why we keep sending women to prison; hold that feeling, sit in it, on your sofa, at home, and consider, what life looks like for those that don't come home when they've done their time, and if you're really ok with that.

Because I'm not.

A great writer; needs a great editor. So this one is for you dear Erwin

  A light as gone out in my life.

I have few, if any, strong men, male figures in my life.

I never have.

I have surrounded myself with the opposite in fact, strong women.

Perhaps that's my mummy issues.

But there's no denying there's daddy issues there too.

And when a strong man, of morals and kindness in equal measure enters my orbit, we find one another.

It's a rarity and it's treasured as such.

When I came home from prison, I was a shadow of my former self in many ways. An empty shell masquerading as the Fran people remembered.

One of the things that brought me back to life, was my writing. Something that has been at my core for as long as I can remember. For as long as I have been able to hold a pen, I have created, escaped and exuded my emotions on paper.

Much like my dear friend to whom I write now.

Whenever I write a blog, an article, a university essay, a cover letter, a chapter for my book, it all goes to the same place; the eyes I trust most, kind and blue, and gentle in their honesty.

Erwin.

A strange friendship I'll grant you and one he thanked me for daily, in little messages back and forth, should my WhatsApp ding on the daily, I fully anticipated it would be him.

With little notes of praise, support, direction - always welcomed.

But more often than not, updates on his life, well-being, writing, his bloody boat, pride and joy of his recent nomadic lifestyle.

On a literary pilgramage and journey of self discovery - "a man of his age" as he constantly reminded me.

Feeling woeful in his aging and youthful in our connection, we were, as he coined "literary soulmates," and I agreed.

When I write, he reads. When he writes, I read and we have a beautiful back and forth on our politics, passions and purpose. What was it all meant for? Why did we exist in this time and place as we did? And wasn't it a joy, a beautiful twist of fate, that we had found each other?

A Fran searching for a man, of safety, sanity, comfort and intellect and a man searching for a Fran, of conversation, liberation and literary reprieve. Here we were, the odd couple.

Recently home from prison and writing from a place of unfiltered anger and frustration, Erwin happened upon this very blog and sent me a message on Twitter asking if he could publish one of my pieces in Inside time - I was thrilled, and of course said yes.

He gently edited it and then, having read more of my blog, added the bio to my first piece in Inside Time

"Francesca Barker-Mills is a writer and prison reform campaigner,"

He sent it to me with a smile and merely said "I thought you would appreciate this - because this is who you are,"

He believed in me. Whole heartedly.

He knew my past, my present and planned my future with me. Back and forth on chapters, advice, pointers, words of inspiration, absolutely ridiculous tales of his past that never made it to the pages of his books but only for our quiet contemplation of life and resilience.

Resilience. That was, it pains me to write in the past tense and not have him here to correct my grammar and tell me it needs to IS not was.

Was.

Erwin was resilient. Always honest in his misdemeanour and mistakes, taking ownership of all the good and the bad, all that was and all that occupied his mind now.

Shunting from the welsh coast to the boat, Faithful. She fucking isn't now.

Sending picture updates of the trials and tribulations of a life and love of the sea. Upcycling like he was auditioning for a BBC television series and making it his new life work to be the best boat on Air BnB.

Always asking when Fran, when, when will you and Sarah come and see her in all her glory?

Videos of seals upon the marina, honking and waking him in the early hours with their amorous behaviours.

Seagulls shitting on his pride and joy and making his blue beauty of the sea and sight for sore eyes.

Diluted with trips to London to be the man we know and love, campaigning, speaking, sharing, caring, changing, fighting and shaping a new world for those who came after.

He didn't want the suffering of a new generation. He didn't want prison to leave marks and scars on people as it had done him and he was always for the idealistic notion things would get better, even when he felt they might not in the darkest of times.

He would pick me up, with a cheeky message and a dad joke or ten. I'd roll my eyes and reply "I'm at work!"

And he would ping back "Where are my chapters Barker-Mills?"

And remind me - a great writer needs a great editor, so we're well matched!

He was like a proud dad, and I suppose that was why I resonated and magnetised with him.

We shared an unshakeable bond of broken childhoods, and traumas we don't speak of, and lives complicated in ways we can't express to others even when we wish we could. So we did, for one another.

The writer and the editor.

A promise my dear friend, I'll finish the chapters. 

No editor will be as great or as kind. Or as pushy, or as ferocious, precocious and hopeful.

And I promise, yes I do.

The dedication on page one, will be to you.

Gone to soon, but with me and my writing and my pen, always.

How many more have to die?

Trigger warning* - talk of suicide

When I arrived into prison, I was a quivering wreck, shell-shock doesn't quite cover it and regardless of my naivety of hope in thinking I may not be sent to prison; there is nothing that can prepare you for what that process is, how it feels, what it looks like and the lasting impact it has on you.

I was 34 when I was sent to prison. An adult. A woman of the world who had lived and felt every second of it, the good, bad and ugly. The trauma, the trials and tribulations both mine and the consequences of my actions. 

The first time I got in trouble, the probation officer who met me at court said "bloody hell love, it's a wonder you're still with us," - he had listened to a tale of woe of a 20 something year old girl who had lived a life most would have ended by now, and that's what he meant.

I laughed awkwardly and replied "not for lack of trying eh?"

Cringe.

Sad.

True.

It hurts the ones I love to read what I write sometimes as they feel my pain and feel helpless in the moment knowing it was almost over.

Twice in prison, it came within minutes of the end.

The first, was night one in my prison cell. Alone. In covid. Freezing in a cell with a broken window on a cold Northern night. The banging of the cracked glass and lead frame in tune and time with the howling of the women on either side of me.

There was blood spatter on my wall, flecks of darkened red, nobody had bothered to clean, and as I came realise in later weeks - that was the norm. Flinching at blood stains fresh or faint, didn't shock anymore.

Naturally, in my moment of woe, I was jealous, who and how had managed to bleed in this place. I had no access to razors, sharps, the best I could hope for was my blue plastic knife which was in a lived and sorry state when handed to me as prisoner number 10000000000 through this estate.

I glanced around my room in manic panic, deranged with grief and anger and self loathing, it's over. It's done. And so am I.

Grasping, gasping at anything that looked like a possibility to end it.

I would list the options I considered but it's a bridge too far for gentle eyes and trauma doused souls and would be a selfish shopping list to put forward. Especially given the reason for this piece of writing.

I like to think of myself as strong. Resilient. Unbreakable. And lord knows, much like that probation officer in 2013, I am. Here I stand in 2024, not a shadow of what once was, not ashamed more than is embedded within me, not broken, not now, not ever. But in a moment, in a cell, alone, not knowing or understanding the system and expecting to serve over 2 years inside, no way to tell my wife I had been sent down, that I'd left her, on a Christmas night alone in our home with no idea of what was ahead.

In that very cell, on another freezing night, a piece of paper slid under my door. I had had limited communication, staffing levels were at an all time low, covid was rampant, there was a standard 3 day wait on any post coming into the prison, and with Christmas within days, it was minimal and quite frankly, the prison didn't give a shit if you got your christmas cards from home or the letters that gave you life. They had better things to do with their time and freedom. 

Imagine then my elation at something coming under my door - a letter from home perhaps, an approved application to move off the cell block and into the houses even?

No, a notice of death.

That a young girl had died in the prison.

I remember holding it in my hands and wondering what sort of world we have built where even in prisons, we slip notices of death under doors with no welfare checks, no sadness, no pause for thought, no notification of remembrance or prayer. I'm not religious but it felt like even the god squad should have rallied to reflect and bring the women together.

18.

A vulnerable, mentally ill, young girl. In prison.

Why?

We as a society will read the daily mail with the beautiful pictures of her life and take a moment, a second to say outloud "oh that's sad" and then go about our business - it's not enough.

We are all accountable. For as long as we allow women to go to prison for crimes that are best served in the community and with proper support; be it mental health intervention, addiction recovery - it's on us.

For as long as we pick up the paper and demonise the criminal. For as long as we don't challenge the MP's who crack down on harsher sentences and a government that builds more prisons. For private companies that line their pockets profiteering off the misery of the prison population. For the prisons who fail in their duty of care and then parade with sad faces at inquests full of regret and "learnings"

FUCK YOUR LEARNINGS - you don't learn.

It happens again and again.

You fail us, you fail the men and women in your care time and time again.

And we get a letter under our door to mark the passing of another life.

You don't remember her name unless it's in the press and line of scrutiny.

You don't remember to check on her

You don't remember to ask her if she's ok

You don't do ENOUGH.

I was there when Annalise died, and it was only after the paper slid under the door that I understood what had happened from behind my cell door.

The roar of the prison - in response to an ambulance entering the prison estate and the silence that followed.

You have normalised the death of women in your care and somehow shaped it as our fault and not yours. You have decencitised the women in your prisons to the point that when prisoners talked about a death, it was "just another one,"

Prisoners joked about the hope that another suicide would see the prison shut down for good because surely SURELY it would show the world that some prisons are not fit for purpose.

How many deaths does it take for us to feel it? 

How many?

Young girls? Mothers and their babies? Women who scream to be heard but are seen as problematic.

Women who hit the call bell again and again in anger and frustration and cries for help - silenced. Ignored. Labelled - problematic.

When prison officers run bets on whose likely to off themselves and joke about it infront of the women they're supposed to care for.

We're scum to you.

If we die behind bars, all the better. One less crook. One less criminal. One less blight on society and the tax payer. Good riddance.

I recently wrote in an essay submission for university a quote from HG Wells "Crime and bad lives are the measure of a state’s failures and all crime in the end is the crime of the community,"

Never truer words written.

If we don't see the horror in what has happened with Annalise Sanderson, with Deborah Clayton and so many more - I refer to these ladies as the ones who died in the establishments I was incarcerated in, whose passing broke the hearts of the women I love and am friends with still - then there is no hope for equality, humanity and community.

If you don't feel disgust that we are society that send women to prison KNOWING their lives will only get worse there. KNOWING that their sense of self will be destroyed. They're hope snuffed out in the knowledge that the prison system sometimes just doesn't care. Well then, shame on you.

Not shame on us.

We know what we did. We said our sorry's. We paid our dues. We survived those places. Shame on you for allowing the perpetuation of lives destroyed.

Victim impact? 

We work on victim impact from day one in prison.

Do you?

I am spent.

 

It is tiresome.

And we grow weary, the both of us.

Having lived it, felt it and somehow, someway, come out of the other side together.

I don't necessarily refer to the incarceration, as that was the climax of a tumultuous period. Years of chaos, all veering towards the edge of a cliff.

We married in 2019. It was conditional, having been engaged for so many years prior.

"Are you done now?" she said, having watched the royal wedding on the television with white dresses and flowers and hopefulness.

"Are you done?" with a seriousness that was matching with optimism and trust just as much.

"Yes," I replied.

And so, from the moment on the sofa watching the royals marry, we too hustled and bustled towards our own vows, planned a year to the day of that very moment.

We've had many incarnations of love and trust in our 13 years together, most of which, have felt like trial and tribulation as opposed to ease and safety which to the outside world, would probably leave most wondering - why bother?

I suppose that's a burning fear within me - why does she bother? So many years in, it's almost as if she doesn't know any better and part of me wishes that at times, she did and ran like a wild woman into the wilderness away from my orbit, because like a black hole, a vortex, a whirlpool, I draw darkness and absorb all that is good, stable, safe, sane, and good.

Not these days.

But to write it in black and white paints a stark reality of what our love is. Resilient, no doubt. Blinded by her altruistic nature to see the good in me at all times, no matter how bleak a presentation.

Through rehab, she sat. In waiting rooms. Of drug rehabilitation centres. Or probation appointments. Of mental health sessions. Rape crisis meetings. And that was the first time I set the world; our world on fire.

But she persevered, knowing that the woman, person she loves implicitly without skipping a beat - is good. 

She knows it, believes it, see's it, feels it. It's the choices that are hard to palate on occasion.

We sat side by side in our car, parked outside the bakery, in the pouring rain. Biblical rain. And with exasperation and desperation of a woman who couldn't take anymore she screamed at me 

"I don't know what you're doing but you will end up in prison if you don't stop it,"

That was 2016.

She was right. And had I the bravery and sensibility and honesty to stop and think, I would have told her everything there and then, but I was still very much of the thinking that "what she doesn't know can't hurt her,"

It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. And we are in 2024.

Of course, now she does know. In all its hideous existence what I was doing, but thankfully, being the woman who knows me better than most, she also knew why.

It didn't make her any less angry, any less disappointed, frustrated, exasperated, that I hadn't unpicked these poor qualities and plucked them from my being to ensure I didn't burn our life to the ground... again.

On the plus side, at least this time, there was no rehab.

There was prison.

And so, I disappeared, on a December night, so many years after the fact and after a marriage and a promise and a life well lived with integrity and decency, one foot infant of the other, rebuilding my dignity, honour and sense of self, putting in the work to make sure I understood those qualities and navigated them.

I'm always the first to say; there is no magic trick, all that I was, I am, it's within me. The ticking time bomb and the anxious mind that presses the detonator and fails to recognise the collateral damage of my calamitous behaviour and choices. However, in 2024, much like 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and onwards - I know myself, I've taken the time to know, to learn, to mitigate, navigate, medicate, meditate and understand the motivations, limitations, frustrations that lead to decision making that's unjust, unfair and unlawful in all reality. That actions have consequences no matter how big or small and my orbit of choice is mine, the ripple effect of my actions must now only be a positive thing. It has to.

And so, a lifetime of behaviour management and cultivating a better conscience and a more accountable me.

Days like today, leave me screaming WHY BOTHER. It's the childish response, I know.

It's the "its not fair,"

An unattractive quality, but for now, for an hour or more, I'll allow it.

I'll stamp my feet, I'll have my temper tantrum. Publicly, I'll fight and shout. The injustice. The inequality. I'll take it on the chin that the masses will say SHUSH. Will say "what did you expect?"

The boy who cried wolf. The criminal eternal. The Barker Faker. The girl who conned an entire village for a loaf of bread and a dream.

I am angry.

And despite what society expects of me; I have every right to be.

When is it enough?

A 27 month sentence. Prison. Tag. Probation. License. Lifelong DBS disclosure for fraud. Public humiliation on loop in press and public domain.

When is it enough?

When do we get to just be?

The thing is; Sarah and I don't do "just be"

We do "change the fucking world because we can,"

For 13 years now we've connected at our core, that we are here to change something, do something. Neither of us knew what that was until I went to prison.

All of this, this life I've lead, that she's been pulled into and shared with love and hope, it has to be for something.

Cue, Sarah doing a masters in ethics.

Cue Fran doing a degree in Criminology.

Cue Fran quitting a job and moving into the VCSE sector to work with ethics and values that matter.

Sarah, daily, working her socks off in the cancer hospital making peoples lives better.

And lo' - applying to be on the police ethics committee.

Why?

1) When she was sexually assaulted in Manchester, the police did a horrific job of case management, CPS fuck ups and a prosecution so weak, the man walked free

2) When I was interviewed for my crime, she was pulled in and treated like a criminal, belittled, and pressured into "flipping on me"

She has never seen, felt or been protected by the police. 

When I was in prison she was harassed, threatened and terrorised by people involved in my court case. When I came home, that harassment continued for the both of us, literally, the day I was released, relentless messages began. The police did nothing. The victims had every right to voice their frustrations. I was the criminal.

It was only when things took a more dangerous turn they paid attention.

Failed. On loop. By a system designed to protect her.

I know all too well having been the child victim of sexual abuse from police officers back in the 80's what it is the distrust the establishment. Long since embedded in my mind.

My mind.

Two separate people. 

Sarahs purpose is always to improve something, heal it, sooth it and understand the source of its failing. It's the scientist within her. The ethicist too.

She was never swayed by public rhetoric with regards to the police, she only ever saw a system that needed accountability and proportionality to ensure its transparency and integrity, if anything, she approached the ethics committee, much like she approaches me. With a vacant hopefulness that the moral compass will centre, and do the right thing, with the right questions and support, recentered and refocused.

She went for the interview the day before her fathers funeral.

She wasn't going to. Overwhelmed with grief but fired up and powered by that sense of purpose, that she is here to bring about a change.

Having seen, lived and breathed the justice system up close and personal, she felt compelled that her lived expereience would add a level of empathy, due diligence and perspective.

She was welcomed with open arms, immediately respected, heard, appreciated.

A few months in - removed from calendar invites : vetting from GMP failed.

The Greater Manchester Police (of whom the ethics committee were instructed to evaluate), took the decision that due to known criminal association, she could not be trusted to remain on the ethics committee.

Interesting? That the police force who have an INDEPENDENT ethics committee in situ to evaluate their behaviour and practice, but only GMP approved persons can sit upon that committee - me thinks independent is really stretching its meaning.

So I write, furious, at me. At the system. At the injustice.

That my mistakes are her mistakes, and she is bound by love and marriage to suffer the concequences so many years after the fact; despite full disclosure, and taking pride in having me as her wife, she stands by my side in power and purpose to challenge these systems.

And we will.

I will.

I'm sure, as the criminal, I'm supposed to keep my head below the parapet and hide in shame of all that's come to pass.

I won't.

I'll keep pushing back until equality for Sarah in the least is achieved.

If I live with the noose around my neck, so be it.

But I will not have hers beside me.

A ring upon her finger, not around her neck.

So, GMP, GMCA, lets talk.

I'm dying to hear the rhetoric surrounding your reducing reoffending strategy 2022-2025 and how it ties into family and community ties and placing the value on lived experience.

Coming Home or Going Home? Back behind the prison walls

It's very unusual for me to take a moment, pause and then sit down to write.

It's even more unusual for me to type, write, scribe, scrawl and then hit delete. My writing is always a literary purge of emotion and the unexplainable for my often broken processing machine of a brain, to lay it all out so that once I've written, I read back and somehow, what I feel, what I felt, make sense and it's all there in black and white.

If my emotionally unstable personality disorder has taught me anything; it's that I like a world of black and white, as grey area's are alien, often unstable and unknown to me. 

Many of you won't know this, when you read my work, but whatever words fall upon these pages, these screens, gleaned, are always scattered and thrown out in minutes, I sit, I write, and I don't stop for breath until the final drop of what I feel in that moment has ebbed like ink from a pen, in this now digital format.

It's only ever once I hit "publish" on this blog, that I go back and read what it is I churned, purged, and posted out, to you, dear readers.

After nearly a decade of Fran ramblings, here we are together on a cold December afternoon.

This is not just any cold December afternoon. It's the 10th of December.

I got off the reliably grotesque and dreary 192 bus, where the game of "what's that smell?" can lead you back into Manchester City centre and by the time you depart, and evacuate the double decker of doom, you're still none the wiser but glad of the wet windy whip around the face of Manchester's finest - the rain.

A rain that can wash away any emotion, happy or sad. Pensive or glad. And today it does. It washes over me like a tsunami of everything I've felt for the past 3 years, cascading like a never ending deluge of pain, emanating from every pore.

I step off the bus "next stop, Minshull Street," and my cold hand finds hers, just a little squeeze today, as we are both feeling the grief of a past life, and the ghost of Fran who once walked into that building, but did not walk out.

I have walked past this building a hundred times since I've been home, and it's always an act of defiance, or fuck you, with two fingers firmly up at the system that stole me, that failed me, as much as I failed it. Because for 3 years now, I've been battling with that brand, that notion of self, I'm the pariah of society, and for some bizarre reason, prisoners, ex prisoners and criminals like me are left with the dark mark, that we failed someone, somewhere, ourselves, our families, our victims and at no point do we reflect that back and scream at the grey skies of this city

YOU FAILED US TOO. 

This year I submitted a piece of work for my criminology degree - it was a summary piece, "what is crime" - I proposed that crime was a social construct and backed up this summising with a quote from HG Wells "Crime and bad lives are the measure of a state's failures and crime in the end is the crime of the community," - it just so happens, my eclectic mix of references for that piece of work was graded poorly and I was told it was a piece that was "overexercising my intellect," and I will admit, I was affronted and then considered perhaps my propositions and presentations had an air of arrogance to them in my selection of Aristotle, Marx, quotes from The Golden Bough were indeed perhaps a little "let me show you" and then I thought about why I was doing an undergraduate degree in Criminology at the age of 36, and it was because I wanted to use and consolidate all of my learned and lived experience and make use of it in some pragmatic way and pull together a life of education and chaos into something meaningful - let's be honest both you and I - I'm doing it because I need to understand still, that there's more to the choices I've made than just bad character, just qualities that have grown and developed in the wrong way and that I can hang my hat on something that shows me - you are more.

Practice what you preach.

Practice what you teach.

Take today for example. 3 years ago, I wore my finest polyester primark suit with some particularly shiny second hand brogues from Vinted and disappeared into the night, and as I walk through the city with early evening dark skies, I'm aware the Christmas lights I saw in 2020 on a December night, haven't changed much as I see them, walking the pavements outside Minshull Street Crown Court a free woman.

I type, on a rather osetentatious computer, something I dreamt of owning as my own but would only have delved into unhealthy purchasing habits to have called one "mine" once upon a time, and now, in 2023. It's mine, shiny and bright and the light upon which I share my thoughts with you, my university work, my VCSE work, my Coming Home project work. It's my little ray of hope in electronic form, that things do get better and that there is no greater sense of pride in reaching a goal, no matter how silly it may seem. That this computer is the vehicle that will power the changes I'm trying to make. In every area of my life.

She sits beside me, typing away with a frown upon her face, frustrated. The dissertation distinction eludes her within mere marks of effort, dedication, blood, sweat and tears. A dissertation that has been written under duress, stress, death and defiance. She's never had it easy and we're 13 years down the road. But here we sit, side by side, click clacking on our machines, typing to the next step, the next stage of our ambitions. And we do it together. Something that didn't always look like it could happen, as the distance, disintegration and desolate nature of prison took both our freedoms and lives and turned them upside down simultaneously.

Another gross mark upon the criminal justice system's long standing history of crime - the suffering of those we love most. The nay sayers will say, if you don't want to lose what you have, if you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime. It's always a novel notion to me "want" - I don't think I've met a single woman on my journey through the justice system where "want" to do crime has ever been a motivating factor.

It's not.

The "want" is always for other things, failings and vulnerabilities we feel we have, that we plug the gap, the gaping hole of what's missing. 

That's what I'm trying to unpick for myself and have been for many years and it's what makes me particularly "low risk" these days I suppose; my breaking of law, breaking of trust came in the fallout of 2016 and thereafter, so in 2023, I'm the furthest away from an act of crime I have ever been and that stands for something, for me. Desistance can be statistical, analytical, measurable, but for me, it's personal. It's my morality measurement, it's my accountability checker; that's not to say I've not been a liar and an arsehole in between, I can change my severity of impact, and I can change my motivating factors, I can address my behaviours, but as I said recently in a BBC and PRA piece, those qualities are within me and always be. The key to me being reformed, changed, is for me to measure and hold. No-one else, and with that, there is true freedom.

Freedom. Taken for granted by the many, treasured by the few. We are all prisoners to something, someone, somewhere, somehow. Never more true in today's society, global or not.

So why then, would someone who cherishes their freedom, take it back inside the prison gates? Go back to the place that it was taken and held for ransom until time ticked down and society "ok, you can have it back,"

- you can have it back BUT, we don't want you back. Remember that as a type and you read along with me.

But go back I did.

A strange thing. Email communications back and forth, with various HMP's across the UK. Cordial, jovial, polite "best wishes" firing into inboxes both mine and theirs.

No longer am I A3039EP, I am, by name, Francesca Barker-Mills, and addresses as such. The key burning anger I came home with on Friday night was this - if you can sit, chat and drink coffee with me as a fellow, an equal, a human - why couldn't we do that 2 years ago when we shared the same address, the same place, same space? Does equality only kick in when we say so?

There's the first odd and unsettling but sweetly welcomed change of pace and change of station.

"Francesca, would you like a coffee? I'll have someone bring you one whilst you're waiting,"

The conversation continues, what kind of coffee would I like, it's brought to me, with thanks and cordial conversations.

I made the coffees in 2021. That coffee machine burnt the living shit out of my right hand as I naively dabbled with cappuccino vs latte milk frothing in a vague attempt at securing a level 2 in barista skills and supporting my friends who were falling apart under the faux Starbucks pressures of prison coffee shop rush hours. Officers with keys, jangling change and coins in their black polyester pockets. Change. It was a strange feeling in my hands back then. Having had my money taken from me upon entry to prison, the feeling and weight of pound coins in my palm was a familiar but alien sensation. The trust of the prisoner, taking the money from the officer, putting it into the till, handing the change and the coffee and going about routine prison process. 

The prison coffee shop shares the name of a friend of ours and when I was asked if I wanted to pop in and get some lunch, I smiled, remembering the familiarity of that name used to bring me joy and sadness entwined whilst I was serving my sentence there. I would still enjoy the process of ordering a coffee and drinking it with friends on cheap leather sofas pretending we were anywhere but here.

I talk of this with the people I'm meeting with.

The power of friendship behind bars. I glance out of the window and see the picnic table I spent hours, days, months sitting at with my little safety net of love and family in that place, and as the prison people talk, I'm swept away like some sort of time travel moment in vision - I see us, sitting together, laughing together, crying together, sneaking hugs of raw emotion and love when it's covid and we dash out of sight of the prison cameras so as not to get in trouble for human contact. When there's despair, distraught heartache, heartbreak, family ties, family dies, we hold each other in secret, and we hold each other still.

I would go to work, I would come "home" because home is what it was, and there they'd be, cackling like naughty hyenas, talking filth and fun, and silliness as only women can, stirring cups of coffee that I've never drunk since, and knowing my little pink shirt was due to appear, a little dinner, a picnic packed up of sandwiches or toast, with a hot drink to sit, together and spend time the only way we knew how to - together. That hasn't changed. For the most part.

From flashbacks of fun, family and heartache, I'm back in the coffee shop, talking shop. I feel my power returning, coarsing through my veins, I can hear my heartbreak, in a completely different way to how it used to feel in this place.

Fire, I know my eyes are flashing the brown ring of anger and passion as they tend to do, and often did in these hallways as my politics fought the system even then. Fran the equalities rep tackling hot topics like neurodiversity and equal education within these walls - I laugh, I read the prison report and saw they now have a neurodiversity specific person in place; so some good did filter through the barricade of prisoner vs prison system.

I say that, but it's no reflection on this place in its heart and soul. It was built differently, it merely suffers through the mass suffocation of policy, bureaucracy and politics of what prisons are and are "there to do" but as I saw when imprisoned and now here, free, it tries it's best. And that's all we can ask for when the chokeholds of media, propaganda, a tory government, a crackdown on crime and criminals runs riot through our society, morality and equality. 

I wouldn't be here if I thought there was no hope of real change here. I left scarred, marred and traumatised and this place has it's part in that, but for the most part, it gave me space and opportunity to begin healing from what came before, and what came before that.

The mental health support I got here, saved my life. A prison officer, saved my life. When a blade was plucked and letters were written and scattered without care across a room that might as well have been a prison cell like the one's I had begun my journey in; as much as prison broke me, parts of it saved me.

I glance around the estate, the Christmas decorations are out and being putting up - and this is where you see the true reflection of a prison and it's care or lack of.

These are not some shitty old, dusty, knackered, ill-thought, fuck that decorations. They've been cared for. They look good. They're in keeping with the place, the space, it's accessorising the pain of the season, I know that - a Christmas light can make you want to die. If I saw another fairy light through the prison van window 3 years ago to this day, I would have worked harder to find my end than giving up at the lack of decent noose locations.

Forgive me, it's stark and it's harsh but it was never going to be full of the joys of Christmas, because prison isn't, and coming home from prison takes time to recover.

We put our tree up this year, a gigantic, glorious, Spruce, fresh, green, abundant in smell and festive beauty. A pretty penny was spent, but we decorated on December 1st, as is our tradition. And with every bauble we hung, we felt the pain of what is was when we did this together in 2020 and I saw the beauty of our tree and our home for just 9 days of December and then it was no more; but my wife, lived with that Fran tree, and it was an offensive reminder of what was lost. The presents wrapped by me underneath, like I knew I might not come back, she let that tree stand in our home until it's beauty faded and it's needles fell and then in a moment of pain and hurt, she marched through the city to find a saw, and carved it like a lunatic consumed with the pain of a hundred Bronte novels, and piece by piece, it lay and died. Much like it felt we did, day by day. Faded beauty, ebbing and cut into pieces.

So we feel it, when the tree goes up. And up it goes. Because the Christmas I came home, was lost in another life, another wife, another Fran, and whatever went up in 2021, was like holding our breath to see if it would end the way 2020 did, hacked to pieces and left to die.

Pheonix like instead, we set it all on fire, and from the ashes something new grew, reformed, rehabilitation but changed. Marked and scarred, but healing together.

Like wounded animals. But equally as determined to grow.

She was terrified for me, for us, going back there.

She refused to come. 

Because whenever she's been there, it's not been me that she's found. It wasn't me that came home in the little red car, playing Taylor Swift, wearing the cardigan I love, eating little doughnut balls of my favourite Canadian kind, a Diet Coke in hand and my best friend riding shotgun. They had waited so long for me to come home, and I didn't.

I stayed.

So I went back, to collect the ghost of me and put it to bed, and whatever phantom existed within the prison faux Fran, died on Friday, and I buried her amongst the picnic benches, where the flowers grew. She's there now and she can stay there. Much like a grave, I can visit, I can mourn, but it's over now.

So from death to life ever after - that's why I went. To breathe life into that place. Because I feel alive, I feel on fire, with passion and purpose and hope.

It's 3 years to the day and if I can sit in a coffee shop, typing on my little laptop of joy, with my wife typing her postgraduate work next to me, with a happy, warm home with christmas tree extrodinare standing loud and proud, cook dinner and talk life, love and futures, fall asleep in her arms and know it's the safest place on earth, wake tomorrow to go to work, to do something I care about, that cares about me, mutual respect and interest, roll into Tuesday to rock up to lectures, listen, learn, write and rewrite the world around me. Then anything is possible.

It's not my privilege that made this life. I did.

I burnt it to the ground a hundred times over and then I rebuilt it better than ever before, with the foundations everyone strives for - love, kindness, trust, hope, hard work, happiness.

I once said in a class back in 2020 before Covid took the world, before prison took me, to a room of students when teaching them about Maslow's hierarchy - that many say nobody reaches self actualisation and in 2020, I felt so close.

It's 2023, and I have lived more lives than most, and I've lived to a point where I could reach 40 and I've never felt that possible for reasons a-plenty.

Fucking Maslow, I eat that hierarchy for breakfast.

Coming Home is the overarching purpose of all that I do, because I want to help as many women who have lived as I have lived, felt as I have felt, hurt as I have hurt, recover and find themselves amongst the noise. It might be for the first time, it might be like meeting an old friend, but they're in there and they deserve to live a life of love, happiness and stability even if the worlds says no, and says you can't, you shouldn't, you couldn't, the suffering must endure - I'll stand in the way of that time and time again with a defiant fuck you to that.

Yes you can.

Forever over, you can. Fuck it up once, twice, thrice, or four. There is no such thing as a closed door.

Coming Home began with the notion of a project I coined "Snakes and Ladders," that was it's original iteration, initiation and that stands to be true - Snakes and Ladders, because that's the life we live and battle and triumph and trial and continue - zoom up that ladder, succeed, smash back down that snake and suffer a setback, a hurt, a hole. But you take it square by square, step by step, ladder, snake, ladder, snake, until you reach the end of the board.

I'm just trying to create something that makes that hop, skip and jump a little easier, so instead of seeing the snakes dead ahead and feeling like they're inevitable, showing you, they're not, take a different route, jump right over. Or face it down if you have to. With power, with support, with purpose. 

Coming Home will achieve what The Barker Baker never could, authentic, whole hearted, walk the walk, talk the talk and always, together.

No Fran is an island.

I googled her

Once a month, sometimes less, sometimes more. I google her.

Mostly to check she’s still alive and not had some glamours funeral I knew nothing about, as has happened with other family members that have been, gone and are dead and buried before I happen to stumble upon the fact.

She is. Alive.

Although that’s an interesting concept within my heart and mind, because to her, I’ve been dead a long time, and to me, she’s been equally as dormant in emotion and existence and yet, this morning. I had a little google, just to check.

 

Why today?

I sat an exam, I passed it, more than passed it, I smashed it and I had that ebb of joy and pride that seeps in on occasion. A quiet smile to myself that I’ve done good and whenever I feel that feeling, it comes hand in hand with the irrational but unstoppable thought “she’d be proud of me,”

Let’s face it, that’s never been the case, pride doesn’t feature in our relationship and it never has. I think being proud of me reached it’s peak when she vicariously celebrated my incarceration with others who have come to see me as nothing more than… this?

 

We occasionally bump into eachother in the city where I live, and it’s a perturbing frequency and always so poorly timed – leaving magistrates court with my own solicitor for example and neglecting to realise, that my mother, too leaves the magistrates like clockwork in her endeavours to tear people apart – matrimonial in her case; not criminal, in mine. How far the apple fell from the tree.

 

I think of the most recent interactions; she’s pissed, with posh friends in prada coats, mulberry handbags swinging, after one too many gin and tonics they dare to call a working lunch, that’s rolled into a working dinner and a drink too many. Staggering with less grace than a stag she’s shot on a Sunday morning; and into me, my wife, and my mother in law.

 

I can’t explain the hate radiating from her. It’s something only a few have seen up close. Sadly, my wife being one of them. But it explains a lot. When I cry and explain the pain of loss, of emptiness, of anger and all that comes with the separation, disintegration and decimation of my family ties; it’s Sarah who picks up the pieces but more often than not, can only listen, because she’s not lived it with me, or seen it first hand. And then she does. And her firery eyes blaze as she steps into protective mode.

The drunk mother, masquerading as more, with words of venom and looks of loathing, pokes and points the finger of judgement I’m so accustomed to, the jab and jibe no longer hurt, they’re expected.

Poke.

 

Words were had, mine were “how are you?” in a childish voice I’m sure. Hers were wicked and met with Sarah fronting up like she’s the one who’s been inside.

Needless to say, the two women who love me most, held a hand each and took me to the nearest bar for a stiff drink.

 

It’s like being haunted by a ghost, living your life in oblvious wonder and then the rattling of chains like Jacob fucking marley himself is about to grace you with his presence. That’s what grief of loss in this way feels like. Haunted.

 

I find myself wondering – was it real? 

Did I imagine it?

 

I’ve lived in the land of delusion more often than not over the past 36 years and as such, it takes therapy and fine tooth combing to evaluate the truth and the lies, the fantasy and the faux. 

 

When you’re a child of abandonment and abuse, you create your own little world, it’s safety, it’s sensible, it’s selfish and it’s all for you. When you’re a child of abandonment who’s adopted into something that’s purporting to be those things in real life, you leave yourself vulnerable.

My parents never understood what it was to have a child living in perpetual fear of abandonment, a child that would jump through any hoop, no matter how high, hit the bar set higher than most, because what would happen if you were found out? What would happen if you really just were, the street rat from London who got passed around the police force daddy and co like a party gift?

 

I did an interview recently, you will get hear it this weekend actually. Something I was unsure about, as I’ve been the person who puts themselves on the pedestal and in the limelight and 1) it was never for a good reason 2) it was indicative of all the motivations listed above and 3) when you do that, you put a target on your back if you’ve lived the way I have lived 

HOWEVER, it was the right space, the right place, the right people and I felt I needed to put my voice to the narrative that has been so grossly misrepresented otherwise in the public domain. I’m not sure if I did, the whole experience was more cathartic and therapeutic than it was directive and directed. Perhaps that’s honesty in that. Be that as it may, the radio piece begins in an interesting way “You’re a very smiley person Fran,”

And it’s something that we talk about at length – I am. And I go on to explain why. A smile is a mask for many of us. It’s also an invitation. Of kindness, of care, of empathy. At least I like to think so, hope so.

Mine means and has meant many things to many different people. My mother would say “I’ll wipe that smile off your face,” and my father would proceed to as she was rarely a smacker, a slapper, a chin grabber, a poker, but never a smacker. Small joys in that I think as I write this.

She wasn’t innately cruel by violence, neither of them would say that, never admit to that. My father would say only I could drive him to such things and deny any existence of a raised hand. Whether it be a bare bottomed smack in a restaurant in Portugal or a split lip in Manchester renaissance hotel, the outcomes the same : who believes the girl who cried wolf anyway?

It was an interesting thing to speak so freely with the BBC; which wasn’t particularly BBC, it was Prison Radio, much more of my core values and the women involved were genuinely interested in my story, my life, my past, present and future, which is unlike any press or public showboating of past lives and past times. Which is perhaps why I did speak to freely; these were women who work in prisons with the biggest, baddest criminals, and whilst my convictions and criminality may feel small comparatively, it doesn’t feel small to me and it certainly doesn’t feel small to my victims.

Or my family.

 

The Barkers that is, not the Barker-Mills and Mills encompassed.

 

I am a product of lived experience, I preach that, I do. And its true.

I am everything from the moment of abandonment and abuse, child court case records of horror, ward of court titles, foster care, foster parents, the good, the bad and the ugly, the adoption, the fragmentation of what it was to be a child wanted but unloved, woe is me.

My parents will tell you, as my father did on my wedding day – I had everything I ever wanted. I did. But it’s not what I wanted. Everything I wanted was a mummy and a daddy and my brother to be my best friend forever, and for us to appreciate the whole, the broken bits, the trauma, and fix it. Fix me. I suppose this lead to deep rooted resentment and that much is true, I’ve hated them, never wanted to, it’s an unnatural emotion to have, direct and envelope the ones you want to hold closest, but it’s corrosive and inevitable when you find yourself more broken than you were upon arrival into a family unit.

It is a toxicity I’ve lived with all my life, why me, why won’t you see me, fix me, want me, love me. Childish in its origins and met with disdain across the board from my parents who are perplexed that monetary projections of love are not enough.

 

Recently I’ve begun full time study of an undergraduate degree in Criminology, because I have wanted to understand myself more, the women I was incarcerated with more, the who, why, what how and when to see how we can bring about real change to the justice system. To understand the functionality, fragility of the systems and society we live in.

It’s been a journey! And it’s only semester one, but sometimes I find myself listening to lectuerers talk of criminal behaviours, motivations, ideations, triggers, traumas and I think – was I ever going to turn out any different given the life I have lead? Of course, there were choices, better decisions to be had, made and changed, we all have “what ifs” but my what ifs are the difference between life and death, addiction and recovery, fraud and deception or failure, and it’s all wrapped up on the bow of “I don’t feel I had a choice,” which is quickly followed by – we all have choices. That’s why I went to prison. I broke the law. I made that choice.

 

So how do you tell a judge, it’s not fair, this is who I am.

Because even being who you are has been decided unfit for society, unsafe, unsanctioned and you’re best placed out of it. For the greater good. It’s a familiar feeling.

When you don’t fit, you’re cast out. 

Echoing my abandonment issues I know; but cast out, cut out from my family, left me feeling much the same : fuck you, fuck this. Set the world on fire, because it’s not fair. 

 

Let’s look at it in black and white.

Born by chance, mother wanted an abortion, violent father could have spelled the end of the pregnancy on loop.

Born into destitution and biological parents who chose addictions and solicitations, violence and abuse over love, safety, sanitation, food and innocence.

Often starved, stinking of piss, but cleaned off for a pass around the old men, otherwise alone, with my baby brother, also soaking in his own stench, unfed, unclean and unloved. 

So I scrounged and scavenged scraps and salvation for us both. And then, saved by the system. With a broken down door and police men who were there to save and not deprave me. Trust broken from day one.

First there was Aggie, the demon foster carer. Not much better than the desolate abandonment of a London pub.

Then there were angels. But it didn’t last.

Plucked from bliss and into middle class suburbia with barren Barbie and Ken.

Faux heaven, shining lights and flashy things. Dazzled by brilliance. And an uncanny similarity of looks and brains. She hates that. She always has.

“Gosh **********, doesn’t your daughter look like you,” – a roll of the eyes usually. But alas, we do. Blonde with blazing hazel eyes, green with brown rings, the three of us. Me, him and you.

 

It looked great, there’s no doubt about that.

Private school education, 5 holidays a year, an allowance that ka-chinged into the bank account every month like a paycheque, more designer gear than Selfridges, glamorous friends with high placed jobs and houses and villas and more.

And me?

Intelligent perhaps too much for you.

Arrogant, created by the things you taught me.

A liar, like for like.

A faker – “fake it till you make it,” you told me once before a big interview.

Disappointment, at the grades that weren’t 100, at the size that wasn’t 0, at the face that wasn’t painted, in the sexuality that wasn’t hetero, in the trauma that wasn’t hidden, the baggage that was heavy, the nightmares that were talked about, the questions you didn’t want asking, the rape that didn’t happen, the degree that wasn’t enough, the job that didn’t last, the daughter who became a whore, it’s all full circle.

And like you told me, I’m better in the gutter where you found me. 

 

So I googled her this morning.

She’s alive.

Happy.

A mother, a grandmother.

Still working full time, even thought she said she would retire after we’d been to uni.

Working at 72, that says a lot.

 

She’s still lifestyles of the rich and famous, literally. And waxes lyrical about her family values in press, public and work; and people who meet me now and I mention in passing often look confused, as they “didn’t know she had a daughter” and we have uncomfortable moments of silence.

 

I’m still here. Succeeding in my own way. And it’s less tangled in my pangs of a life that once was and instead wrapped up in my own sense of self worth, pride, purpose, happiness and core values. Something prison taught me ironically.

 

I’m hoping someone does tell me if she dies and I’m not sure if that really matters now, because nothing changes for either us when that happens, but I still want to know.