chapter4

Helen stood by the window and stared at the moon. It was full and beautiful, its gentle light penetrating the gloom of her cell. It revealed a ten-by-twelve-foot room, painted lime green and furnished with a bed, sink and toilet, all of them screwed to the floor. This was Helen's world now.

It was long after lockup, but she was often to be found like this, preferring this lonely vigil to the “comfort” of her narrow bed. The bedstead was old, the mattress lumpy, and besides, Helen could never sleep because of the noise. As soon as the lights went out, it started. Inmates calling to one another, calling to their mothers, calling to God. It was as relentless as it was predictable. When the shouting stopped, you heard the moaning. When the moaning stopped, you heard the crying. And when the crying stopped, you heard the vermin.

A large rat had run right over her on her first night, scurrying across her bed, before vanishing into the brickwork. It was one of many that felt they had the run of the place. Bluebottles circled the toilet day and night, sharing the tiny cell with the cockroaches that emerged after dark. The first few times Helen had spotted the latter scuttling across the floor, she'd stamped on them. But as each victim was quickly replaced by another, she'd given up. They were trapped in there too, so she'd decided to live and let live.

She now spent the night hours watching them go about their business, before exhaustion eventually drove her to bed. The hours after lockup were the toughest for Helen, when the horror of her situation made itself felt. It seemed impossible, but there she was in Holloway—the prison that had been her sister's home after she murdered their parents. A few lifers still remembered Marianne, speaking approvingly of her intelligence and wit, and slightly less warmly of the violence she meted out. Her son, Robert Stonehill, had murdered three people in order to frame Helen, which was why she now spent her days in the company of liars, thieves and killers.

Retrieving a piece of chalk from the window ledge, Helen crossed the room and drew a single line on the wall next to her bed. It was one of many in a long, neat row—Helen religiously chalked off each day of incarceration. She had survived forty-six nights behind bars thus far—if she could make it through another fifty, she would have made it to her trial. It was this, and this alone, that kept her going.

Helen still hoped to prove her innocence in court, though she knew this would be tough. Robert had been thorough—planting her DNA at the murder scenes, killing on nights when Helen had no alibi and tempting her to lie to fellow officers about her personal connection to the victims. Her lies had been exposed, and after that her fall from grace had been swift. With no female Category A prison in Hampshire, she'd ended up there. Her one remaining ally, DS Charlie Brooks, was working to secure her release, but what were her chances? Robert seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

Every day, Helen told herself to be optimistic, to have faith in the criminal justice system. But each night brought fresh doubts, and Helen was starting to fear she'd be stuck in Holloway forever. Was such an injustice possible? Could people really be so badly fooled?

At times like this Helen felt as if the whole world had forsaken her. She was a pariah, starved of company and bereft of sympathy. Helen had always been a private person, but even so the isolation there was crushing. There was no one she could really trust, no one she could confide in, and as the nocturnal parade of rats and bugs proved, the only inmates willing to spend time with her now were the vermin.