Overlapping Lives Read online

  Unusually, the weekend was free of social events so Julie decided to stay at home and research ways to murder people. There was plenty of plausible advice on the internet and stories of people who had done it. The world seemed to be full of women murderers. Her resolve strengthened. She decided that the least complicated and most practical method would be stabbing. In the kitchen drawer were several appropriate knives. She learnt that to stab someone successfully it was necessary to use surprise and a lot of force. An accurate stab to someone’s neck would penetrate the carotid artery and almost certainly be fatal. From an anatomy website she painstakingly learnt the anatomy of the front part of the neck and its vulnerable blood vessels.

  She phoned Sally, the girl friend who had brought Trevor to the party. They had been close friends at university where they had done a great deal of partying together. Sally was similar in temperament and appearance to Julie, apart from being blonde, but with the same striking pale blue eyes. After her hurried departure from the party Sally had realised that bringing Trevor had been a mistake and was anxious to put things right. She apologised, and as Julie had intended, arranged to meet on Sunday afternoon in a local pub with a garden. Would it be okay if Trevor came as well? Julie hesitated momentarily and then said yes, it would be fine. She spent a long time sharpening one of her kitchen knives which had a seven inch blade and a solid handle. It would fit easily in her shoulder bag.

  Julie felt calm and happy as she joined Sally and Trevor in the pub. She was determined to end Trevor’s life. Knowing it would change her life irrevocably, at least as it had been up to now, she also knew that her own survival depended on it. They sat in the sunshine at a table in the pub garden, drinking wine. The murder went perfectly. Julie rummaged in the bottom of her bag, gripped the knife tightly, stood up suddenly, and moving with the deadly speed of a venomous snake, buried the knife in Trevor’s neck using as much force as she could muster. A bright plume of blood arced across the table. Sally screamed. Trevor slumped forward and exsanguinated on the pub table. Julie left the knife in Trevor’s neck; there was no need for a second assault. She sat down and watched and waited contentedly, loving the sensual warmth of the sunshine on her skin.

  Julie and Morag

  Julie left the knife buried deep in Trevor’s neck and sat and watched as he bled to death. Initially, he had slumped forward but gradually slipped sideways in his chair and fell limply to the ground. Julie was certain he was dead. Sally, her friend, had stood up, stepped behind Julie, wrapped her arms around her neck and whispered: ‘Julie, what have you done?’ and held on to her.

  Pandemonium spread through the pub. Paramedics arrived, laden with boxes of equipment, too late to resuscitate Trevor. Then the police arrived with yards of blue and white plastic ribbon with “CRIME SCENE” written on it. They cordoned off the pub garden where Julie and Sally remained with Trevor’s corpse. A policewoman placed herself in front of Julie and announced that she was arresting her on suspicion of murder, and anything she said might be taken down and used in evidence against her. The policewoman pulled Julie to her feet. Two oversized policemen pinioned her arms behind her. She was handcuffed, marched out of the pub to a waiting police car and bundled unceremoniously onto the back seat between the very large policemen. Nothing seemed to happen for a long time. The following days were filled with long expanses of time, also waiting for something to happen.

  Julie was kept in a series of holding cells, all equally overcrowded, smelly and threatening. A solicitor had appeared and advised her that she must show remorse for her actions if she were not to spend many years in prison. She had been allowed back to her flat with a police escort to collect a minimum of possessions: mainly paperbacks, a pen, a pad of lined paper and underwear which she had been told she would need. Changing her clothes seemed needless; she still wore the pale blue jeans and the tight white tee-shirt in which she had met and murdered Trevor. She appeared before a magistrate on a murder charge and was summarily referred to a court presided over by a judge who sentenced her to the statutory twenty-five years in prison for murder with a knife; she did not offer a defence. After twelve years she would be given parole if her behaviour was exemplary. About a month after she had killed Trevor she had been loaded into a prison van, shackled in a small space with a shaft of daylight from a window near the ceiling, dehumanised, her identity diminished to a prison number by which she was known; no one told her anything apart from her statutory rights and that she would spend the foreseeable future in a prison in Surrey.

  In vain, the forensic psychiatrists and counsellors had tried to find evidence of a mental illness which might have motivated Julie. She did not regret removing Trevor from the realms of the living. In order that Julie was to survive Trevor had to die. Expressing remorse seemed pointless, but she felt sad that he had violated her and had to pay the price. Sally, who seemed to be her only friend in the world, had tracked her down in the prison and became a regular visitor and contact with the outside world. She had tried to talk to Julie about whether she had ever felt able to forgive Trevor, but the reality was that it was too late and Julie had no regrets. Later on, Melanie, who had become intimate friends with Sally, also visited regularly. At Julie’s suggestion, Sally agreed to move into Julie’s flat and pay a small rent which would cover the mortgage repayments.

  It soon became apparent that Julie was a rarity in the prison. Almost all the incarcerated women were serving short sentences. Julie and her cell mate, Morag, were among the few murderers serving long sentences. Morag was a thin woman with frizzy, brown hair and soft, dark eyes. She spoke in a quiet Irish brogue. She had been the victim of a violent rape. When she had recovered from the immediate physical trauma of the experience, and her abuser remained free, she realised that she had lost her capacity for intimacy. She could not bear to be alone with men and withdrew into a solitary, introspective existence. After long reflection she had decided that if she were to regain her self-confidence, her assailant must die. She tracked him down and watched him from a distance. On the same sunny Sunday afternoon on which Julie had killed Trevor, Morag had impaled the neck of her abuser with a filleting knife, using the elements of surprise, speed and force. Like Julie, she had watched her victim die in a spreading pool of blood. The paramedics arrived too late. The police had arrested Morag and she too had been subjected to the depersonalising process prior to sentencing, which ended when she had been ushered into Julie’s cell and the door slammed behind her. They both had the same sentence and would spend the next twelve years together until they were released on parole. The conscience of the prison authority facilitated their cohabitation, realising that more harm than good might result if they were separated.

  Their parallel stories became a bond. Within hours of being incarcerated in the same small space the women realised that they had a strong mutual affinity. They became inseparable friends. By the end of their first week together they slept naked in the same narrow bed after they were locked in for the night. Theirs was not a lesbian epiphany but a rediscovery of their capacity for intimacy. They lay in the narrow space of the prison bed, their limbs entwined, bathed in the faint, sweet, feral smell of their bodies, wallowing in the sensuality of their smooth, soft skins and fell perfectly in love.

  Morag and Julie were model prisoners. They were obedient; they did not rebel; they attended training courses and did menial work in the prison kitchen for very little pay. Encounters with a great many dysfunctional women were commonplace, some obviously with mental illnesses, others pedalling drugs and occasionally women threatening violence. They regularly reminded each other cynically that prison works. At every opportunity Julie asked anyone prepared to listen, ‘What is prison for?’ No one seemed to know. A week after the funerals of the girls’ victims the public had forgotten about the existence of the two women murderers. If anyone stopped to wonder about their fate it was more with a sense that the rapists had deserved to be punished, and the victimhood wi
th which the women had become endowed in the public imagination, invested them with a paradoxical power.

  Contentment in their own company became the cornerstone of the women’s survival. The futility and tedium of prison life made them acutely aware of how their lives were being wasted. Julie had killed Trevor just after her thirtieth birthday; she would be forty-two by the time she was granted parole. Morag was a year younger. The years dragged by with soul-destroying monotony.

  *

  One week before she was due to be released Julie was handed a piece of paper by a warder, advising her to be ready to leave the prison the following Wednesday. It was well known among prisoners that when a male inmate was released there would be a reception party at the prison gate. Family and criminal friends would spirit the freed man to the pub and fill him with lager. Women were put out like the cat and abandoned. And that was how it was for Julie. She had been given the clothes in which she had been sentenced. They had lain in a locker for twelve years, labelled with her prisoner number. The pale blue jeans fitted still as did the tight-fitting, white tee-shirt which had turned slightly yellow. Julie stepped through the prison door onto the pavement on a warm, breezy morning at the end of May. The door closed behind her. She had a plastic carrier bag with a handful of possessions in it, forty pounds in cash and a travel warrant. To anyone watching, she looked deliciously alluring, her eyes still a bright forget-me-not blue, only the lines at the corners of her eyes betraying the years which had elapsed during her incarceration. Feeling bewildered, disorientated and vulnerable she followed the street signs to the station, boarded a train to London and two hours later arrived at her flat where Sally was expecting her. The other occupant of her flat was the cat which had grown old, sleek and fat. It seemed to recognise Julie and wrapped itself around her ankles in a welcoming way. She had no idea what she needed to do next. Years on parole stretched thirteen years into the future until the end of her sentence with no prospect of work or income. There was a painful hiatus in her life that had been filled by Morag, who was not to be released for another week. Julie’s life became preoccupied with the prospect of visiting the prison to see Morag for an hour. The following Wednesday Julie installed herself outside the prison gate, through which she had left the prison the previous week, and waited for Morag to appear. Eventually, the door opened; Morag stepped to freedom and Julie’s impatient embrace.

  Initially, the terms of parole seemed onerous. They were far from being free women. Numerous appointments with probation officers, attendance at rehabilitative courses and strict limits on their movements intruded on their sense of freedom. Non-attendance at an appointment could lead to an immediate return to prison. Gradually, the pressure lessened, but the requirement to stay connected to the authorities stretched far into the future. Sally withdrew to the spare room to allow Julie and Morag to sleep together. She was fascinated by the nature of the relationship between the convicted murderers, but she was ambivalent about how she fitted into the new ménage. Sally had remained loyal to Julie while she had been needed. She had acquired a boyfriend older than herself after the memory of Trevor had faded. Her reason for living in the flat had ceased and she decided it was time to move on with the boyfriend. Julie and Morag were left to fend for themselves. They had to survive on benefits as it became depressingly obvious that discrimination against people with criminal records was alive and well and no employer would look at either of the women. The system obliged them to go through the rigmarole of applying for work in order to continue to receive the benefits which were insufficient to live on. Their forced occupation of the same small space in prison for twelve years had welded them together. They were joined by their mutual affection and dependence on each other. Doing everything together, contriving not to be separated for even brief periods of time, helped to affirm their closeness.

  As time went by Morag and Julie felt increasingly like pariahs. They seemed to be unemployable; the probation and social services, with whom they were obliged to maintain contact, regarded them with an unspoken homophobia; it was not clear that anyone wished to help; more often than not they felt rejected by the agencies who were supposed to facilitate their reintegration. They were poor and Julie could no longer afford the mortgage. The neighbours did not understand how to approach them and found it easier to avoid them. They withdrew into a Diogenes-like existence. Only the sleek, fat cat who had adopted them, seemed to be capable of appreciating them, and that was mainly self-interest.

  It dawned on Julie that during the years of their incarceration her flat had increased in value. It turned out to have a market value three times as much as she had paid for it years ago. They decided to sell the flat and move away. Inevitably, this plan caused consternation in the probation service. As women murderers, still serving many years on parole, they were a rare responsibility. The women were threatened with reprisals and even reimprisonment if they did not follow the arcane rules of the probation service to the letter. They found they were not at all free to move as they wished despite circumstances necessitating it.

  More than anything they desired invisibility. The only thing that mattered to them was their devotion to each other. Sally rescued them again. She spent her weekends driving the women from property to property, often far from London. Eventually, they found a bungalow on the edge of a village deep in rural Buckinghamshire where an ancient widow had lived and died. It needed a great deal of redecoration, and the long garden, which stretched a hundred yards to open fields, was like a jungle. They moved in. The fat cat became feral and regularly brought dead offerings to the back door. Cloistered in the calm of the countryside, they began to feel undisturbed as long as the probation service could be pacified. The obligation to present themselves at the probation office in Buckingham seemed insuperable. Driving had become a thing of the past. There seemed to be no public transport. To their mutual amazement they were informed that, in the circumstances, their nominated probation officer would be visiting them once a week. Equally surprising was the amount of interest which the women provoked in the small village community. Neighbourliness, unknown to them in their urban lives, was a priority in the countryside. No one judged them. Every day they were visited by well-wishing local people, often bearing gifts of home grown fruit or vegetables. Slowly, they began to feel the warmth of the community invade their isolation. The long established village community was fascinated by the presence of convicts in their midst. They had been accepted and enjoyed a quiet celebrity because of their outrageous deeds and long imprisonment, the story of which became part of the local mythology. Their nearest neighbours were Ben, and Catherine at weekends. Catherine started to make a habit of visiting the bungalow every Saturday morning. She felt a need to care for her rural neighbours. Their story, which she gradually gleaned, made her certain that dispensing kindness and making them welcome was essential. Two women, evidently in love, were irresistible for Catherine. She gradually cajoled them into joining Ben and herself on their regular Sunday evening visits to the pub, to meet the neighbours and catch up with the gossip.

  *

  Their first rural Buckinghamshire winter was freezing. The women could barely afford to heat the bungalow, so they dressed in layers and layers of shapeless clothes which disguised their thin bodies. They scraped the walls and painted everywhere with cheap, white emulsion. When the weather permitted, they started to clear the garden and furiously dig, planning to start growing their own vegetables because everyone did. A man appeared with a chainsaw and cut several fallen trees into logs, teaching them to light fires in the three functioning fireplaces. Another neighbour brought round a rotavator and transformed the landscape into a rich, cultivable plot.

  Winter receded and gradually the countryside warmed. Their quiet contentment grew. Money was scarce but neither was there anything to spend it on. They learnt to bake bread, acquired profusely-laying hens from a neighbour, and became vegetarians. The egalitarian neighbourhood assimilated
them. For the first time since the triumphant afternoon when they had murdered the men who had raped them, they found they had friends. The colourful, blossoming spring advanced to summer.

  One day in June a man appeared in the garden who introduced himself as Alan. He was middle-aged, bespectacled, with a greying beard and explained that he was a local historian and writer. The women’s celebrity had been much in the local gossip and he had met them briefly in the pub. He pointed out that their presence in the village was the most exciting thing which had happened for decades. Had they considered making their story into a biography? The simple answer was no. They were too wrapped up in their introspective beguilement to have considered that their story could possibly be of interest to the public. On reflection, the degree of local interest in them belied this assumption. Alan’s intention had been to sow the seed of the possibility that making themselves public property might have some currency. The women liked him immediately; he seemed a kind man. He asked if he could return in a few days with a proposal. They could not think of a reason to say no.