One earring out, two now, in the palm of a strangers hand. My hands are sweaty and pale, shaking.
"Rings," she growls.
"No," I reply, my first push back against the prison system has begun, and I've only just left the dock. She grips my poorly packed "might go to prison bag" in her bullish fist and slams it on the table in the small room in which we stand.
"Rings," with a tap on my left hand.
"You'll have to take that wedding ring off my cold dead body," I say with defiance that will be eroded with every step I take beneath the surface of this building.
She rolls her eyes in exasperation, yanks open the packed bag and proceeds to list my dismal items packed so naively and in retrospect, arrogantly, on the words of my solicitor - who, plot twist, and a story for another day - turns out to a disbarred solicitor and as inept as his flailing representation behind an equally dubious barrister. The irony of my fraud conviction, is that I'm likely represented by two men abusing the legal aid system to line their pockets and have me empty mine - here in this room.
An assortment of boxers and knickers, I couldn't decide on what was prison appropriate underwear, my gender fluidity sprawled across the desk before me. French knickers assigned for the eyes of my wife and not the masses of HMP Styal and boxers that scream "lesbian," and I am now increasingly aware, that regardless of what cloth clads my derriere going forward, it will be seen by one and all in a women's prison in a variety of humiliating environments, this I know. This was indeed what came to pass.
From leather holdall, to perspex plastic, my worldly good are zip locked and labelled and banged in the van that waits at the bottom of the cold, stone staircase. They're not ready for me, so I'm taken to a holding cell.
How Victorian. Often one walks past Minshull Street Crown Court and marvels at the architecture and the history, the misery, the knowledge of who and what goes on behind the high stone walls and foreboding iron bars, and here I sit. I wonder, who has sat in this cell before me? Murderers? Monsters? Paeodofiles? And me, the barker baker, the barker faker. Considering my fate. Twisting my wedding ring on my finger.
It will be ok. We are going to appeal it. The solicitor promised me that much through the glass as they took me down. It's Thursday, which means by close of business tomorrow, we can have movement before the weekend. I'm sure I'm his priority. He promised. Suspended. "Get a bottle of wine in for dinner Fran," he said.
Silver light flickers in my eyes as the heavy metal door creaks open
"Barker-Mills," he drawls, like this is mundane work for him, and I'm just another body on the conveybelt now. It's true. I am.
I stand, legs buckle, and follow him, onto the prison van. No handcuffs, no chains, and I'm put in a box, like a horse on the motorway, shut behind a metal door with a bottle of water rolled underneath it. It's small, claustrophobic, I've never been caged like this, but the monster is penned, ready for the zoo, and the engine fires up with a jolt and the city lights blaze through the porthole of horror.
I see Manchester fade, my life disappear, in moments of street lamps, Christmas lights and it's gone. For a year at least, it's gone.
And no-one knows I'm here. Everyone is checking their phones, to see how it went, to cheer the grace of time, that 2015 was a different life, a different world, a different Fran and that 2020 is a married teacher lady, with friends and family and work, and hope, and babies and trust and integrity and and and and.....
I cry, an uncontrollable cry, so intense, I can hardly breathe, I'm caged in here, I can't escape. What the fuck is happening?
I'm sick, on my beautiful leather brogues. They didn't take my laces? Are they not supposed to take your laces when they take everything else?
Proper shoes for court, and a crisp black suit, I'm clad in my winter coat. Sarah calls it my teacher coat, because it swishes like The Matrix when I walk down Oxford Road to the office in the Manchester weather, with my laptop thrown over my shoulder, ready for a days teaching.
My students, my god. Tomorrow is Christmas jumper day at work and I promised a prize to the most ridiculous jumper. They will turn up, for 9, they will sit and wait and I won't be there.
They will ask, my boss won't understand what happened, this was going to be ok, work supported me, gave me references, they have my back, they will have to explain.
Oh god, the papers. The only way people will hear of my demise is the shitrag MEN, the world's most clickbait, fuckwit, crossed arms, Greggs sold me half a pasty drama filled faux journalism.
Will they believe that trash that was said in court? Is that how this will all play out? Does it even matter now? I'm on my way to HMP Styal. The irony.
Engine rumbles, radiator hisses, lock clanks, and I'm back outside in the cold December air.
Into reception to be processed.
"Could you stop crying and look at the camera so we can take your photograph please?"
I can't so I look up like a puffy ferret with red eyes and makeup stained beauty fading.
Flash - it's printed, A303*** prisoner number assigned.
Prisoner number.
Prisoner number.
I sit down, trying to steady my weight. The retrospective hilarity of understanding that the place I choose to sit is in fact the body scanning chair, that most people entering prison try to avoid, and here I sit, freely crying my heart out, with not a sheet of spice or bag of heroin stuffed up my hu-ha!
Some girls inside would say it's a missed opportunity. It's as beautiful and untainted as it went into prison thank you very much!
I get a phone call, I need to call Sarah and tell her what's happened, tell her where I am.
I call "this number cannot take your call right now," - she's turned her phone off, she doesn't want to know me, it's over, she hates me, she will never forgive me, she doesn't even want to know what happened.
I cry hysterically.
"It's off, can I call again please?" They let me as they can see my clear desperation. The same automated response.
"Can I call my sister please? It's the second number down?"
I am clasping a crib card, I had written a few numbers down that very morning just in case - a crib card I have a stack off in my desk at home with digital marketing geek facts and quiz questions on for sessions, my Christmas jumper quiz...
Again, they let me, my hysterical shaking and crying is persuasive and concerning in equal measure.
She answers "Donna, I'm in prison," - she laughs, she thinks I'm joking and asks how I really got on.
They have given me 1 minute for the call, I tell her I don't have time to explain what a shitshow it was but that I needed her to tell Sarah I was in HMP Styal, I got 27 months, and was going to be spending a year at least in jail.
(Turns out I had written Sarah's number down in my haste and she hadn't turned her phone off, I was calling a wrong number)
However, in my vunerable and disoriented state, I was convinced it was all over. End of days.
I clasped my bag of items once they had been sorted through by the prison - they took most of it, I still don't know why - the internet and my knowledge and lived experience now tells me, I was allowed them but to hell with my whitening toothpaste, proper toothbrush, and stamps. Instead, prison issue toothbrush and toothpaste, and a plastic bowl with mini soap and shampoo sachet and oddly enough, a washing powder tablet.
Confused, I carry them through the darkness, walking through the prison compound, following the prison officer who is taking me to the cell block.
She takes me to my cell, and it's everything I imagined and worse, Dickensian, metal, old school prison cellblock wing, like Bad Girls, but filled with real bad girls. A mixture of the lost, the loony and the fuck ups (I'm in good company)
"It's not as bad as it seems, and you're a first timer, you seem like a nice girl, you will probably get out on tag in 12 months," - this prison officer has kind eyes, she's young, clearly in this job for the right reasons and after a year in jail, I came to learn, prisoner officers like this are few and far between. The majority fall into two categories - disenchanted and frustrated and therefore disdainful, or, the worst, powermad, egotistical, small men and women who enjoy the hierarchy of prison to feel superior and revel in the misery of those "beneath them," - those kind of officers also fall into two categories, downright narcissists, or sexual predators.
And to think, the majority of women I meet here have been victims of men, abuse, violence, sexual exploitation and are now being herded, controlled and subdued by men of a similar temperament - remind me why prison DOESN'T work?
She shuts my cellblock door, heavy metal, loud. I knock on it from my side, she opens the little door flap.
"What's the bowl for?"
She opens my door and shows me an itinerary with my name on it. Covid isolation 14 days.
Shower day 8.
I read it again
Shower day 8.
The bowl is for washing. Washing oneself. Ones clothes, knickers in particular and even more dignified following those two things, ones plate, cup and cutlery.
So this is life now.
Like an animal in a zoo. Shower day 8. Exercise outside, day 5.
The strip lights flicker on the ceiling, I ask how to turn them off.
She smiles and tells me, because I'm high risk and on an ACCT, the lights will stay on for the first few nights as the officers will need to observe me every hour.
I laugh.
A suicide risk, yeah I can see that. I have literally been surveiling my cell for options and opportunities since she opened the door, and they are LIMITED.
I have nothing to live for. No wife, no life, no job, no home, no family, no friends, no dignity, no integrity, no honesty, no hope.
So of course, I wonder, why waste a year? To maybe get tag? I can't do this. It has to end tonight.
Bedsheets. That's what they do in the films. But where can I tie it?
I deliberate as she leaves.
I make my bed, this isn't the Hilton, and bless my soul since coming home, the making of a prison bed has benefited my real life as I am now a superstar at bed changing at home.
It's bedsheets or nothing. The bars on the windows are clad with glass, the window doesn't shut and the cold winter air rattles it open and closed, clanging and banging. Combined with the lights on full, sleep is out of the question.
Besides, the woman in the cell next to me is screaming, and the rest of the cellblock are screaming back and telling her to shut the fuck up.
I concur but wouldn't dare join in the chorus.
I think the pipes are the best bet. Perhaps the telephone wire.
This is what prison does.
It sends women who have broken the law, who can and should be rehabilitated and supported in the community to maintain their employment, relationships, homes, and commitments to recover and do better, it sends them away, in the dead of night on a thursday in december, for a year, to deliberate how to kill themselves, because none of it makes sense.
Sending women to prison like this for short periods of time in the name of justice and punitive punishment is cruel, senseless and a waste of tax payers money.
Next story : How many days did HMP Styal let me stay banged up in my cell without my citalopram? 10? 20? 54?
