How to Kill Your Family: A Novel by Bella Mackie

Author:Bella Mackie
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Coming of Age, City Life, Humorous, Family Life, Black Humor, Literary, General, Siblings, Fiction
ISBN: 9780008365912
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2022-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

George Thorpe runs through every development surrounding my appeal. He’s meticulous, I’ll give him that. So meticulous that I’m nodding along silently wanting him to hurry up and just give me the highlights. The man seems to think he has to recap every single part of the case before we can get to the part which hopefully gets me out of this place. Am I bored by my own wrongful conviction? Now there’s a thing.

Once he leaves, curtailed by the buzzer which signals the end of visiting time here at Limehouse, we’re escorted back to our cells in silence. I want to write down what he’s said and absorb it all in my own time, but prison doesn’t recognise the need to be alone. Sure, you can be incredibly lonely here, but you’re never actually given any time to just be by yourself. And for me, that usually means that Kelly will be hovering nearby. In this case, she’s sitting on my bunk when I get back.

I don’t believe in God, but I swear sometimes I think that Kelly was sent by some vengeful angel to piss me off. If an all-seeing deity really does live in the sky, then bravo for conjuring up a suitable punishment for my actions in the shape of Kelly McIntosh as a cellmate. Kelly is bent over her foot, filing her toenails on my mattress. There are nail clippings on my bed.

‘Wotcha!’ she says, without looking up. ‘How was the brief?’

As far as I know, Kelly has never attempted to appeal her sentence, nor met with a lawyer, nor protested her innocence like so many others do in here. As if anyone else cares about your situation when they have their own to contend with. It’s like hearing about other people’s children – or worse – hearing about other people’s tiresome mental health problems. She’s been in here before. This time it’s for blackmailing men over sexy photos, when she was younger it was for robbing people on the Caledonian Road. She likes to say that the crime rate in N1 dropped by 80 per cent when she was put away. Kelly is a woman who doesn’t like change. Her crime works, she says, blithely ignoring her repeated incarcerations, why change your modus operandi? Except she doesn’t say modus operandi because Kelly would undoubtedly think that was a Latin American soap opera.

‘Oh the usual,’ I say as I hover over her and look pointedly at the toenail shavings with what I hope is a suitable amount of withering disgust. Nothing gets to Kelly though. You cannot shame her, upset her, embarrass her. It would be fascinating, if she weren’t such an empty vessel. A psychologist could spend hours with her before reluctantly concluding that maybe there’s not always something hidden in the depths of the psyche. Some people inhabit shallower pools. Kelly spent most of her time in the paddling variety.

‘So are you getting out or what? Did your fella find what he

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