The Woman Before Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

Officer Deborah Holley practically ran the prison, since she was in charge of security. Officer Holley was an intense-looking woman, with her shirt buttoned high on her scrawny neck and creases in her trousers like knives. She peered out of a nipped face, looking like a clerk. She didn’t get up from her chair, but swivelled around to face Cate, shaking her hand once, a tight pull downwards. When Cate’s hand was released it throbbed. On the desk, laid out in precise order, were a pen, a pad, and a plastic lunchbox, on top of which was balanced a banana and a can of Red Bull. Callahan perched on the desk and immediately started to fiddle with the neat display. To Cate’s surprise Officer Holley’s look was indulgent, even when he picked up her telephone receiver and began tapping it with his finger. “Hey, Debs, did you know your phone’s not working?” Callahan asked.
    “Fucking thing. I need a new one but supplies say the budget won’t stretch to it.” Holley snatched a tissue and wiped the mouthpiece before replacing it.
    “Yeah, they’d find the money quick enough if it was for a con, though. There’s always money to spend on them.” Callahan and Holley exchanged a sardonic look.
    “We just went to the hospital wing.”
    “Did you see Thomas?”
    “Yup. She still isn’t talking.”
    Holley smirked, “Well, no-one likes a grass.”
    Callahan remained swinging his leg as Holley talked Cate through the security procedures. It was delivered in a dull monotone, a lecture on how inmates could not be trusted, how Cate must never agree to take a parcel or letter for an inmate… and on, and on, until Cate had got the message that they were at war and the inmates were the enemy.
    “You met Chatham yet?” Holley asked.
    “Not yet.”
    “He’s the kind of probation officer we like. Doesn’t get in anyone’s way, keeps his head down. Even the Governor rates him.”
    “Yeah,” agreed Callahan, “Chatham’ll never work on the out again. Knows when he’s onto a good thing.”
    “He understands that the bitches are banged up for a reason. They deserve to be here, especially the nonces. I hate kiddie killers. If it was up to me,” said Holley, “I’d bring back the noose.”
    Cate’s office was through several locked doors – open, remove key, go through, replace key and lock the door. If such a small, dark room deserved to be called an office; really just a cupboard housing a desk and filing cabinet. Even the computer was just a word processor with no Internet access. Officer Holley told her that ‘civilians’ are always a liability, so it’s best if they have no external e-mails or mobile phones. The only communication Cate could have was within the custodial estate. From 9 to 5.30 this would be her world, and she was as cut off as the inmates. Well, good, at least there will be no distractions. I can just do my job and go home.
    Into the desk drawer went lunch: cheese sandwich, an apple and a can of Coke. She had a half-eaten bar of chocolate in her pocket that she might polish off as well. Even though the canteen – or ‘mess’ as Callahan called it – served hot food, she was still new and the idea of sitting alone while the prison staff gossiped around her was not a tempting prospect. Maybe she would brave it when she had got to know people, she told herself. After all, it was only her first day so she must be positive.
    Onto her desk she propped a photo of Amelia, enjoying an ice cream in the park, and a picture she’d drawn at Julie’s last week. In it a girl was on a swing, being pushed by two people, one with a triangular skirt and the other with a tie. Presumably her mother and father. To Mummy , she’d written, love Amelia . Cate taped it to the wall.
    There was a single knock at the door and then it opened. It was the Governor, whom she’d seen on TV every time a prisoner from the open side absconded.
    Governor Wright was a large man, used to standing over people, and he stood