Land Of Hope & Glory
Looking down at her feet, with the sound of heavy barred doors opening, gave her the essence that it wouldn’t be long now. The chanting abuse and shouting began as it would on its usual basis. The noise grew louder as they reached Gale’s cell. She needn’t look up as she knew that, that P.O would have his dirty smug expression on his face. Just a glimpse would honestly make your skin crawl, but Gale just laughed to herself with her head down avoiding that evil look and tucked her hair behind her ears. The sharp sound of the cell door sliding open made her grasp her hands. She stepped forward, held out her arms to be handcuffed and turned around to the right and began to walk slowly forward with two P.O’s behind her holding her shoulders. Step by step she began to walk up the corridor. Other inmates in the cell block sneer and spit at her in disgust, but Gale’s not bothered. The one thing you learn in prison is to keep yourself to yourself. For what she did would make even the toughest of killers weary of the woman. She was reaching the end of the corridor when she turned around, stared at the ceiling security camera and took in a last breath of the musky smell that you could almost taste. She was free… At noon Monday fifteenth March 1994 she was free. The sound of her heels on the cold concrete floor was a delight. It was her feet alone, hers to take herself wherever she wanted to go. With the money she has she first goes to get clean clothes. She walks through the doors of C&A’s but feels completely absent minded about her future life. She buys some smart new apparel and heads back to where it all started. It’s not the same as it was. Sitting in the back of a black cab driving through the gangland streets of Lambeth really made her see those frightful scenes where she had killed him all over again. They say that love can be dangerous. But she hadn’t a choice. Not in the circumstances of those three months back in the November of 1987. These visions, continuously playing over and over again in her head would make you turn insane. For Gale she’d been in similar situations before. The only thing that really meant that much to her was the fact that this was the man she truly loved. The man whom she could live with in solace and forget about the past. The cab pulled to the side of the road where she stepped out slowly and paid the driver. She stood still in the same position on the side of the road and listened to the all but familiar sound of sirens echoing in the night. As well as the sight of drug addicts lurking down alleyways at some unearthly hour in the morning. She walked around the block, past the newsagents and council estates all the way to her apartment building, not that the residents would take kindly to the sight and thought of her. Still though, she was out of that hellhole and was beginning to live a new life… If only it was that simple. A force to the door and she was in, back home. Untouched. Unloved. Too many memories. She couldn’t stay anymore it was time for a fresh start in her books. She found a new place, a couple of miles from her apartment. She awoke the landlord at about five o’clock that morning. A visible sign on his door advertising a room for let caught her eye. He opened the door as long as long as the door lock chain would allow. He poked his head to the side of the door and asked what it was she wanted. She answered with a stare. This was someone who truly didn’t recognise her. It made a change from the remarks others had aimed at her over the years. She asked about a room and he removed the chain and opened the front door. She began following him up the stairs while she struggled to understand what he was muttering. All she understood was that his name is Didier and that if anything need be provided she should see him. A foreign man… must’ve been French, smelt like heavy booze and had something strange about him, her room with peeling wallpaper and constant leaks was a luxury compared to the pig sty that she once called home. Behind bars. Anyway she wasn’t planning on staying long. Only until she got herself back on her feet again.
really when you think about it, what do you deserve? Do your rights still apply? That you can have a say? Not really. Some rights of course still apply but if you can get heard in a place like this. You’ll be lucky. Maybe it’s not a case of what to expect but what you actually deserve.
