The Ruth Dugdall Collection: The Woman Before Me ; The Sacrificial Man ; Humber Boy B ; Nowhere Girl by Ruth Dugdall

Author:Ruth Dugdall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787198265
Publisher: Legend Press

4

Ben

Something’s wrong.

At first I think it’s the sun, it’s too bright and making me blink. There was a storm yesterday, grumbling thunder then cracks of lightning, but today the sky is as blue as… as…

I haven’t seen blue in very many different ways since I was ten, so all I can think of is blue as a prison shirt that’s just come out of its plastic. I only had that happen once, a prison shirt that hadn’t been worn by fifteen other sweaty bodies. As blue as the water after that shirt’s first washed, when the dye seeps into the milky bucket. I saw that a lot when I was working in the laundry, last prison but one. It was a good job, a privileged one for cons close to release, but my fingers wrinkled and cracked and then got itchy. Turns out I have eczema. So when I was moved to Suffolk, my final prison stay in open conditions, I asked for a different job. My personal officer said I should be working in the community anyway, get some experience of the outside world after being locked away for so long, so I got placed down the road with the Suffolk Punch horses. I’d never touched a horse before, not even a normal-sized one, and a Punch is a giant. When I was told I’d be grooming Axel, the stud, I was scared. I had to learn how to move around the horse, not behind its back, and slowly, so it could see what I was doing.

That horse was just like me. It just wanted to see what was going on and not be taken by surprise, no-one could be blamed for that. An animal only kicks out because it’s scared, but the kick will be vicious and a bone is easily broken.

And then I realise it isn’t the sun that’s the problem, it’s that I can’t see all that’s going on and there are people behind me, moving and talking. I want to kick out because I’m afraid.

For the first time in my life I’m on my own. I haven’t been alone in eight years. Our home was a narrow terrace, upstairs was only Mum’s bedroom and a smaller room that I shared with my brother, Adam. Half-brother, technically, and his dad Stuart lived with us too, when he wasn’t on an Icelandic trawler out in the Arctic somewhere. Sometimes, Mum would get tired of waiting for him to show up with the brass so other men would come and go, and we’d eat for a few days. Stuart would always return eventually, with a pocket of cash and enough fish so we’d be sick of it after a fortnight, telling us about waves as high as buildings and fish as tall as a man. Cuffing me round the head every chance he got, giving Adam treats, then disappearing again for weeks on end, sending Mum into a spiral of sadness that meant she slept lots and there

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