Nicole
Nicole
Nicole sits in the waiting room on a grey plastic chair, eyes trained on the door. Glancing up at the clock on the wall, she sees it is almost two-thirty, feels the now familiar tangle of nerves she encounters every fortnight when these visits take place.
On the chair to her right, a woman sits impatiently, knee jerking up and down, and Nicole looks quickly away, knows better than to stare at people in a place like this. It is knowledge she wishes she did not have, but this is where circumstances have brought her, and she now has experience of things she had never even contemplated before.
The door at the far end of the room opens, and Nicole scans the faces of those entering, searching for familiarity. Anonymous bodies swarm in, each one knowing how precious every moment is, and Nicole cranes her neck, strains her eyes, wills him to come into view.
And then there he is, his face filled with uncertainty, despite the regularity of these visits. Nathaniel’s eyes skim across the room, in search of Nicole, and she raises a hand, waves, the clock ticking loudly in her ears as the first of their allotted sixty minutes slips by.
As he catches her eye, she sees that Nathaniel is not alone. Her throat tightens with gratitude as she spies Jack behind him. Her chest contracts to see him here – no place a sixteen-year-old should ever have to come – and yet she is so happy he has made the effort. He did not accompany Nathaniel on the previous visit, and Nicole had been torn between disappointment and understanding.
‘Hey Mum.’ Nathaniel smiles awkwardly, hugs her stiffly. It takes all her self-restraint not to hold on to him – it is such a rare dose of physical contact, such a small ration of affection – but she releases him quickly, knows she will be reprimanded by one of the guards if she doesn’t.
‘Are you okay?’
Nathaniel nods, sits down at the small low table in the prison visiting room, well-drilled now in the protocol.
Jack hovers tentatively to one side, as if awaiting instructions as to what he should do next.
Reaching out and pulling him towards her, Nicole breathes in the smell of him, whispers into his ear. ‘Thank you for coming. I’ve missed you.’ There is an almost infinitesimal nod of Jack’s head before Nicole gestures for him to sit down next to his brother, watches him take a seat, sees him glance nervously around the room.
Sometimes, when Jack comes, she wonders whether it is the experience of visiting his mother in prison that unsettles him so much. Other times, she speculates that perhaps a part of his mind is elsewhere, thinking about what might have been: about how narrow his escape was from a similar fate, had his own sentencing turned out differently.
As Nicole sits down, there is the humiliating rustle of the neon orange tabard she must wear to distinguish herself as a prisoner. ‘How are you both? How’ve you been?’ She tries to keep her voice light, colloquial, but there is an inescapable formality to prison visit conversations, and in the five months Nicole has been here, she has not yet found a way to overcome it.
Nathaniel begins to talk. He is so good, so diligent, at keeping the conversation flowing, as though he feels that, in Andrew’s absence, it is incumbent upon him to be a responsible adult. Nicole listens, grateful for this temporary diversion from the monotony of prison life, for this brief insight into normality.
In a different world, Nathaniel would be starting university this week. Instead, he is telling her about his new school, the school to which he has transferred to repeat the second year of his A-level courses. It was the February half-term break when Nathaniel confessed to Nicole that he’d done no revision, that he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus on maths and physics when he was so preoccupied with Nicole’s upcoming trial. Her guilt had been overwhelming, but she’d known that apologies were not what he needed. Instead, she had listened, strategised, removed the pressure, put a plan in place. It had been such a traumatic time for them all – Nathaniel being issued with a police caution for sending anonymous emails to Isla, on top of everything else they were all going through – and Nicole did not want to jeopardise his wellbeing further by forcing him to sit exams for which he was unprepared.
She and Nathaniel have talked at length and in depth about those emails to Isla. It seemed to Nicole so out of character for Nathaniel to do something like that – she had never heard him utter a sexist word before, let alone that kind of misogynistic bile – and she was worried that perhaps he’d been indoctrinated by an online forum or incel culture. What transpired was, in some ways, both better and worse. His unrequited feelings for Isla, together with Isla’s relationship with Andrew, had left him feeling angry, resentful, humiliated. Full of misdirected rage, and with a warped sense of love, relationships, trust. In the months between Nicole’s arrest and her sentencing, she had worked hard with Nathaniel, helping to reset the barometer through which he engaged with the world. Helping him understand that Isla was a victim not a perpetrator, that she deserved their compassion, not their antipathy. That no seventeen-year-old girl should ever end up in a sexual relationship with a forty-eight-year-old man, least of all one she has known – like a second father – her whole life.
Now, Nicole’s priority is for Nathaniel to be happy and settled at his new school, a school she chose in part for its unparalleled pastoral care. To find his tribe, make new friends. She thinks back to a year ago, how oblivious she was to Nathaniel’s social isolation. She recalls the night of Isla’s death, her belief that Nathaniel was at Meera’s party, having fun with his friends. It was only later – after so many other, more difficult truths had emerged – that he told Nicole where he’d really been that night; sitting in the park by himself, scrolling through his phone in the dark, too embarrassed to come home and confess that, for the fourth weekend in a row, he had not been invited to whatever social gathering was taking place.
It was Nicole who had insisted – even before her trial began, long before her custodial sentence was handed down – that they sell the house, move out of London, settle the boys somewhere they could begin afresh, free of the stigma that now surrounded their lives. Andrew had been resistant – he’d wanted the boys to stay in London – but it wasn’t, in the end, his decision. After the divorce, the boys chose to live with Nicole, and she took the decision to move to Surrey, find a smaller house, apply to a boarding school for Nathaniel and Jack, so that if she was sent to prison, the practicalities of their daily lives would already be taken care of.
It is difficult, now, for Nicole to think about Andrew without deep-seated hatred. That night in the police interview room, when she was asked whether she’d confided in anyone about what had happened, it struck her that the reason she hadn’t told Andrew about Jack killing Isla was because she knew he wasn’t to be trusted. She knew by then the extent of his betrayals; treacheries that proved to be the catalyst for the devastation that followed.
Now Andrew lives alone in a flat in Shoreditch, and the boys refuse to see him. She cannot blame them. The irony – the bitter irony – that Andrew was the cause of this succession of tragedies and yet he is the only one who has escaped scot-free – in judicial terms, at least – provokes a sense of fury she suspects will never fully abate.
Nathaniel finishes talking, and Nicole tells him how happy she is that he is settling into boarding school life, that he is making friends and is focused on his studies. For the first time since Nathaniel left Collingswood last February, she feels a glimmer of hope that he might be okay; that the upheaval of the past year may not ruin his chances at this critical juncture in his life.
Turning to Jack, she asks how he’s finding the new school, watches him hesitate before he tells her it’s good, he likes it. She can see his desire to reassure her, wishes there was some way to impart to him the truth about motherhood; that, having witnessed your child’s every facial response since the day they were born, their expressions are like words in a book – as legible and clear as sentences on a page. Nicole can sense, immediately, that Jack has not embraced his new school as easily as Nathaniel, that he may still need additional support, and she resolves to call his Head of Year the next time she is allowed access to a phone.
Changing the subject, she asks Jack about his football training, sees him begin to relax, though his shoulders are still tight, his hands clasped one inside the other as though it is the only way to keep his emotions in check.
Listening as Jack tells her about his football fixture last weekend, it strikes her that he is – in the circumstances – coping remarkably well. Whenever she begins to think about what might have happened, she has to forcibly stop herself going down that particular rabbit hole. It is a form of self-harm, she knows. She is only too aware how lucky Jack is, how his life could have diverted onto so different a path had the judge not decided against a custodial sentence; had they not concluded that there would be no benefit in sending him to a young offenders’ institute, had they not taken into account the extenuating family circumstances leading to the accident. The judge had accepted Jack’s version of events – that he never meant to harm Isla, that he merely wanted to talk to her, that he was upset, flustered, that he never meant to slam his foot down on the accelerator. The judge took on board Jack’s guilty plea and his obvious, profound remorse. Instead of sending him to prison, she issued him with a twelve-month youth referral order and instructed him to write a letter of apology to Abby. She also recommended he undergo counselling, which has, Nicole thinks, been good for him in so many ways. But she knows Jack’s guilt is, at times, crippling. It manifests itself in nightmares, anxiety, in periods of all-consuming self-loathing. Nicole will forever be grateful that Jack is not serving a sentence in a young offenders’ institute – she dares not imagine what that might have done to him – but she knows he will serve a different sort of life sentence nonetheless. He will forever have to live with the fact that he took another person’s life, and there is nothing that anyone – not Nicole, not Nathaniel, not Jack’s therapist – can say or do to change the debilitating truth of it.
She thinks about Callum, as she so often does, about the second chance he was given, just like Jack. She blanches at the thought of her lack of generosity towards Callum when he first started at Collingswood. She regrets the fact that she never stood up for him when other parents were jumping to conclusions, even though she knew categorically he wasn’t involved in Isla’s death. Now, she can only hope that Jack will not face similar whispers of judgement if peers at his new school discover his own troubled past.
Glancing up at the clock, she sees that their time is already half spent, feels the familiar stab of panic that, in thirty minutes, it will all be over for another two weeks; she will hug her boys, say goodbye, knowing that she will not be allowed to see them again for another fourteen days. It is, for her, the harshest reality of prison life; being separated from her children is the gravest punishment she can imagine, the experience she finds most difficult to bear.
And yet she understands that she, like Jack, has got off relatively lightly. Only half her fourteen-month sentence for perverting the course of justice will be spent in prison. In two months, she will be released – in time for Christmas, she hopes – and reunited with her boys. They will be able to come home from school every weekend, or transfer to being day pupils if they so choose, as she expects they will. She can have both her children in her life. It is a luxury, she knows all too well, that Abby will never be afforded.
So many times every day, Nicole’s thoughts turn to Abby; she thinks about those five weeks between Isla’s death and the truth emerging. Lying to Abby was one of the hardest things she has ever done. For those thirty-five days, she felt as though she were living two parallel lives: the life in which nothing had altered, in which she was Abby’s best friend, in which she was supporting her through the worst trauma any parent could face; and a separate, simultaneous existence in which she knew that everything had changed – changed beyond all recognition – and that the future would be altered irrevocably by what had happened.
She thinks about Isla, her promising future cut so tragically short, about the exploitation Isla suffered at the hands of Andrew. Often, she dreams of Isla; memories of the times they spent together merging with imagined scenes until she wakes, unable for a few seconds to separate truth from fiction. She grieves the death of Isla with a profound sense of loss even as a part of her feels she does not have the right to mourn her.
Over the past eleven months, Nicole has written countless letters to Abby: so many apologies, so many attempts at explanation. She does not expect forgiveness, knows she does not deserve it. She carries her guilt like a heavy backpack slung over her shoulders. All she would like is for Abby not to be eaten up with hatred for her: Abby, who has already suffered so much. Nicole hopes that Abby’s animosity towards her does not compound her already unimaginable grief.
Nathaniel begins telling a story about his new physics teacher, and Jack laughs – the first time Nicole has seen him laugh unselfconsciously for months – and she listens attentively, wants to ingest every morsel of family life with her boys despite these surroundings, despite the surreal situation in which they find themselves.
Her main aspiration now is that, at some point in the future, the past will be behind them. It is, she knows, not something they will ever get over. There is no forgetting, no time when the three of them won’t think about what has happened. It is woven into the fabric of their family now, just as Abby’s losses are braided into her and Clio’s lives. All she dares wish is that there is hope for all five of them beyond the experiences of the past year: hope that each of them can rebuild their lives, find some form of happiness, some means of fulfilment. Some kind of peace.