The Choice by SJ Ford

Author:SJ Ford [Ford, S.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781801101363
Publisher: Head of Zeus

THIRTY-THREE

JANE

Life in prison is worse than I could ever have imagined. Not because I’m being treated badly; quite the opposite is true in fact – everyone else in here, prison officers and inmates alike, treat me with kindness and respect – but because of the helplessness, and the separation. To have been removed from everything I know, from the people I love, and to have no ability to change anything, is draining me away down an existential plughole. The one thing I’m holding onto is the hope I’m lucky enough to have burning inside me. Some days it’s so powerful it rages into an inferno that consumes me, it’s all I think about, all I focus on. I can’t help but sink deeply into it. Other days it’s an ember, barely glowing; but it never dies. Not yet, anyway, not while there’s a chance I can still get home. I have to keep the embers fanned on my lowest days, for my children need me, Neil needs me. While I might have simultaneously saved them and let them down in the same moment, they need me to stay me, for when we are reunited. However much I sense the shadows of doubt about that outcome flickering at the edges of my conviction, I cannot allow myself to acknowledge them, for that would be the undoing of me, and I cannot possibly accept that, not when it would mean Molly and Joe losing the only piece of their mum they have left.

I cannot resent being here, I feel no hatred – I killed a man, and I understand the need to clarify in court the fairness of that. I still wonder whether what I did was fair in the fight – was my force justified by his threat? The pounding of my heart that creates a drumbeat in my ears, tells me ‘yes’; as does the iceberg in my gut. Yet there is a yawning vacuum, pulling at my skin, sucking my soul, that laughs at me and tells me mockingly ‘as if’.

From what Simon has said though, I am concerned that fairness won’t feature in my trial for even a second. Six months ago, I would never have believed him – I felt the comfort of a world-leading justice system wrapped around me, the safety of a strong and authoritative police force protecting me. Now, I feel fear – if it is as Simon says, it was all smoke and mirrors to cover cracks and crumbles.

Today, the hope is a gently popping and hopping flame – I’ll be meeting with someone who Simon says could be the key to the lock of the cage around me – an expert witness he believes has the ability to rouse the jury to my self-defence position in an uprising of conviction.

The prison officers are at my door now, to take me to an interview room so that she can meet me, so that she can pore over my life with a microscope and see into me.

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