The Woman Before Me by Ruth Dugdall

an orderly. The officers, recognising her obedience, appointed her to this prized position. She cleans the admin block, the rooms of the psychologist and governor, dusts the filing cabinets where precious files are kept. She’s a good cleaner; she would scrub a toilet with a toothbrush if they asked, she’s that type. But being submissive is also a flaw. What makes her a good orderly also makes her a good informant. Today she cleaned the new probation officer’s room.
    “Tell me what you found.”
    “Well, it’s a small office, just a desk and a chair really.”
    “Did you check the desk drawers?”
    “Yup. There was an open pack of custard creams, so I took some.” She sniggers at her own daring.
    “What else?”
    “There was a notepad. With your name on it.”
    “What else was written on it?”
    “I’m not sure. Nothing much.”
    I curse Janie for not being able to read very well. I’ll have to get her to steal Cate’s notes to know what she’s written about me.
    “And there was a photo of a little girl on the desk. Real pretty. Hair in bunches. Licking an ice cream.”
    “That’ll be her daughter. How old did she look?”
    “Four or five, I reckon. There was a picture on the wall, y’know a kid’s drawing, with her name on it.”
    “You know the girl’s name?”
    “Yeah, it was on the picture. In big letters. A– M –E – L – I – A.”
    “Amelia.”
    Janie has risked a lot for me. If she were caught snooping she’d lose her cleaning job and probably be sent to segregation. She put herself in danger, for my sake.
    “Good girl, Janie. You’ve done really well. Now you need to find out if Cate Austin has a man.” I breathe in the free air and smile into the night.
    Nights are so hard, Jason. I can’t sleep. Do you still sleep with your body splayed in total submission? I would watch you at night, as you dreamed, amazed that you were mine.
    I’ll tell you a story now, write it down for you in my black book, which I’ll give to you one day. It’s more about a girl named Rose who lived by the sea.
    My life before you met me, made me what I am.

9
    Black Book Entry
    I was brought up in Suffolk, in a seaside town where my family owned a shop. Lowestoft had seen better days and the oncegrand town houses along the front were now split into flats and lived in by single mums and teenagers on benefit. There were four of us: me, my mum and dad, and Peter. He was two years older than me, a beast of a boy with piggy eyes in a pale podgy face and a brain the size of a pea. He had my mother’s pale colouring but none of her delicacy. He used to bully me endlessly, as older brothers do, but Mum said I had to make allowances because Peter was ‘special’, meaning he was stupid.
    Our shop was by the beach, the type of seaside convenience store that sells everything and Mum was supposed to look after Peter and me but she went through periods when she just couldn’t handle us and would stay in bed. When she was well she’d be full of fun, taking us swimming in the sea, letting me play with her long sunshine hair. But those days would be suddenly eclipsed by her ‘loony spells’, as Dad called it, when her hair would be greasy and her eyes dull.
    I was just a child and didn’t know much, but I’d noticed that one of the customers, Mrs Carron, popped in the shop a lot. She was a flouncy woman with musky perfume and pink lips. Lots of the housewives in the terraces would come in for loaves of bread or packets of biscuits most days. My dad was friendly with them all, and if he was even friendlier with the Mrs Pink-lips, that seemed okay. Why should I think anything of him joking with her or staring at her bottom when she walked away? He was a man, after all, and she was one of those women who dolled herself up and laughed like a spoon in a glass, so it all seemed normal, nothing strange or bad. But Mum didn’t think so.
    I heard her shouting about it, and knew the words were bad even if I didn’t