The Woman Before Me Read Online Free PDF

over Cate as she sat at the desk, battling against feeling like a schoolgirl.
    “Just wanted to see how you’re settling in.”
    “Okay, thanks. Dave Callahan showed me round the prison this morning.”
    “Callahan’s a good officer, keeps the landings in order. My days of pounding the landings are long gone,” he said. “Back then, inmates were treated like the low lives they are. It’s all gone too far the other way now, if you ask me. Prison’s more like Butlins.”
    As he spoke he pulled a Twix wrapper from his pocket, removed the remaining chocolate bar and ate it in two quick bites. Despite being very fat, the Governor kept preening his copper-wire hair and his suit looked expensive, dark and well cut, with white pinstripes. At his wrists were glitzy cufflinks, and an inscription was sewn on the cuff: NKW.
    “A word of advice. You civilian workers need to remember your place. It’s all very well being the dayshift, but the prison officers are here round the clock, and it’s them that’s in charge. I like to run a tight ship, and I won’t stand for any nonsense from you Care Bears.”
    “By ‘Care Bears’ do you mean workers who are interested in issues beside discipline?”
    “You’ll get used to the prison lingo,” he said dismissively.
    “I’m looking forward to working here.” She thought it was the right thing to say even if it wasn’t true. “Preparing the women for release will be rewarding.”
    “Yeah, well don’t let yourself be sucked into feeling sorry for ’em. I’ve no time for their hysterics. All that weeping and wailing, most of ’em are mental. At least with men you know where they’re coming from.”
    He wasn’t fond of probation officers but she tested the water by asking about the other PO who worked on the men’s side of the prison. Surprisingly he answered with some warmth.
    “Paul Chatham’s sound as a bell. He’s been on holiday for two weeks, but he’s back today. I told him to brief you on your first case. Now there’s someone who knows how to keep his head down and his mouth shut.”
    “Is that what you expect from your probation staff, then?”
    “It’s what I recommend. If you copy his example you’ll do okay, though I won’t pretend I like women working in prisons. After all, what good are they when there’s trouble kicking off? And some of these cons may look normal, but they’re fucking vicious. No offence, love, but I’d rather have a man around when the shit hits the fan.”
    Paul Chatham had been working in the prison so long that Callahan said he was almost part of the furniture and, despite belonging to a low-status profession according to most prison officers, judging by what Cate had been told he’d evidently managed the shift from ‘outsider’ to ‘one of us’. While she was ‘sussing out the territory’, as Wright put it, he suggested she and Paul Chatham could meet regularly as part of her induction. Their first meeting was imminent, and she only just had time to grab a coffee.
    The coffee machine was a locked door away, and the drink too weak, but she bought one for herself and one for Paul, reminding herself to buy a kettle for her room to avoid this regular trip for caffeine. She was still blowing the heat off the coffee when he arrived, handing her a packet of custard creams.
    “Welcome gift! You don’t need to be mad to work here, but it helps.”
    Paul Chatham was a handsome man, with thick white-grey hair and a face lined from years of good-natured smiling. His eyes were an unusually warm blue, and he looked easy in his tanned skin. He accepted the cooling coffee and, in the absence of a second chair, perched on the desk. In the cramped airless room she could smell the musky scent of him. It was the closest she had been to an attractive man for a long time but she sensed that Paul’s groomed looks were not intended to attract women.
    “So, you’ve obviously fallen from grace with the powers that be,” he joked.