Tumbledown by Cari Hunter

Author:Cari Hunter [Hunter, Cari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2014-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The sandwich consisted of stale, tasteless white bread enclosing something that might have been bologna. Sitting in the dark, trying not to disturb the woman sleeping on the bunk below, Sarah persevered with her first mouthful but couldn’t face a second.

It had been after “lights out” by the time the doctor released her. Despite Bridie’s assurance that remand prisoners were kept segregated from the jail’s general population, Sarah had been escorted to a shared cell in the main block. Kendall had made a non-committal reference to a transfer once a single cell became available, before locking her in for the night.

The metal frame of the bunk bed swayed and creaked as Sarah’s cellmate turned over. Sarah froze, halfway through placing the sandwich back in its packaging, but any noise she might have made was drowned out by a door slamming somewhere down the corridor and a high-pitched yelling that drew progressively closer. A fist or a boot suddenly collided with her cell door, startling her into knocking the plastic pack over the side of the bed. She held her breath as it dropped onto the tiles. For a second, she thought she had gotten away with it, but then she heard a yawn and a low, drowsy voice.

“If you’re through with that, can I have it?”

Peering toward the floor, Sarah could just distinguish a pale hand reaching for the sandwich. “Sorry I woke you,” she whispered.

The woman managed to laugh and chew at the same time. “Reckon Lou-Anne had more to do with that. That girl’s been like clockwork, every night for a week now. She’s comin’ off crack,” she added, as if that was explanation enough.

“Where will they take her? The infirmary?” Sarah had long contemplated what her first prisoner-to-prisoner encounter would be, but this scenario—a hushed conversation over a midnight snack—had never featured.

“Naw, probably down to solitary. Let her bounce off the walls there and sweat it out.” Plastic crinkled as the woman took the second half of the sandwich. “No one told me I was gettin’ a fish. You done your time in the tank, then?”

The woman’s lips smacked together wetly as Sarah tried to decipher what she had just been asked. Prison dialect was as mysterious to her as her own slang was to Alex. She smiled, imagining getting home and holding a conversation in fluent jail-speak just when Alex thought she had all her colloquialisms figured out.

“I don’t know what the tank is,” she admitted. “I don’t think I went there.”

The woman chuckled. “Oh, you’re definitely a fish,” she said without malice. “That just means brand new in here, honey.”

“Right.” Sarah vaguely remembered hearing the term on a television show. “And the tank?”

“Fish should go in the fish tank. Stay there for a few weeks to get used to how things are. Get a cell and work duties assigned.”

“They put me straight in here. I think the jail might be full.”

“Probably. Had three of us to a cell not a month back.”

“Bloody hell, how’d

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