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the corner, the metal toilet, my locker, my noticeboard, the window high up on the wall – and each time I didn’t see them, my heart would flutter and panic. Then the memory would settle on my mind that I was out, I was free, there was no need to panic. I’ve been doing that all night. Maybe not even every hour, probably more often. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to prison when I first got there, but now the world feels weird not having all the noise and the creak of metal, the permanent chill that hangs in the air. Cotton sheets, a thick mattress, curtains on the windows, carpet under foot – all luxuries I’ve practically forgotten exist to everyday people.
    October, 1989
    It was so loud.
    Everything seemed so loud. Even from the hospital bed where they put me first of all – suicide watch, apparently – everything seemed so loud. And now, in my single cell, which I got because I was as notorious inside as I was outside, it was so loud. Every second crammed to its brim with noise, even in the dead of night it did not stop.
    I lay on my bed with my eyes wide open, the blackness of my tenth lights-out in this room sitting on my chest, swirling in my throat, scoring at my eyes. I reached up to touch my eyes, just to reassure myself that they were open, because I could not always tell. Sometimes I would think I had fallen asleep, and that the darkness was a part of that. Sometimes I would think that if I had my eyes open and it was this black, I could close them and open them and everything would be back to normal. I would not be in this box, I would not be drowning in blackness.
    ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,’ it was a loud keening, this time. My eyes had been drifting shut and they snapped open at the sound that was tearing through the landings and crawling through the sliver of space at the bottom and around the viewing hatches in the doors. This time keening, other times sobbing, other times the shouting of friendships separated by bang-up at the end of the day, other times the slam of prison vans, other times arguing, other times the sound of flesh on flesh, other times the dull swallowing of anti-depressants. Always there was noise and always it went straight through you, stampeded to your core and reminded you where you were in case, for a brief moment, you managed to forget.
    ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,’ the keening continued.
    I wanted to tell the silly cow to shut up. That we were all in the same boat. That just because she had children she wasn’t going to see for a while, or maybe she was innocent, or maybe she’d gone to court not expecting to be sent straight here, didn’t mean that she was worse off than the rest of us. Didn’t mean she could cry and wail so loudly that everyone in the prison could hear her.
    ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,’ she persisted, so loud and constant I had to raise my hands and slam them on my ears. I often did that when I heard someone telling how she’d hurt the person who was abusing her children, or abusing her, and now she wouldn’t be seeing her children outside of these walls for years; or someone was saying that she’d just not paid a fine and now she was stuck here for six months and her other debts would be building up. I never wanted to hear that because I had only just begun my life here and I did not want to hear how other people had been wronged, too. And I did not want to hear this cry of a wounded animal. It was probably reality setting in. That hideous moment when they finally realised that even if they were innocent, or were going to appeal their sentence, they would be here for a long time. It’s a moment you never forget. And it makes you cry out in pain. Or turn inwards, and think about doing yourself harm to make the reality an unreality.
    ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,’ the noise went on. ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.’ I pressed my hands harder over my ears, but I