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Simmo walks into the kitchen for breakfast on the first morning of her latest sentence. She’s walking slightly awkwardly and the other women, never slow to pick up on something different, seize on it instantly.
“Ehhh, Simmo!! Fella sent ya off in style, did he??”
“Maybe it was the screws, got a bit too handsy searchin her..”
Prison life. She grins and says nothing, hoping they’ll get bored and find fresh prey. No such luck. There’s fuck all to do in here, and this is as good as a crack as they’ve got for now. Pun most definitely not intended. She grabs a breakfast tray and turns, only to find one of the younger junkie bitches, right up in her grill.
“Might be a fuck ton of gear she’s got up there, causing her to walk all funny, aye?”
Cheers and whoops from the room. Great, just fucking great.
“Come on Simmo, don’t be a tight arse. Sharesies, right??” The mole rat grabs her arm, part playing to the room, part deadly serious, hoping she really has got a fat packet of junk stuffed up her fanny. She shakes her arm loose.
“Fuck off, alright?”
“C’mon!! At least let us have a look!!” The junkie goes to grab her again and she whirls, the tray now held defensively in front of her. The room goes quiet. This is getting decidedly too close for comfort.
“I said fuck off!!”
The trailer troll backs off at last, hands raised in mock submission. The room erupts in catcalls and jeers, but nobody seriously thinks she’s holding, and soon the commotion dies down to the usual noise level. Prison life. Simmo fills her tray and goes to sit by Bea. Bea, who she used to loathe in the days of Jaqs, but with whom she has recently formed a fragile and surprisingly unlikely friendship. Well, more of a temporary alliance, really.. although when Bea lost her daughter, Simmo thought immediately of Carly, and how she would have felt if what happened to Debbie had happened to her. Motherhood, particularly that of young adult daughters, and especially when said motherhood is perforce conducted from behind bars, seems to have raised them to a level slightly above that of the usual con bullshit and they have bonded almost involuntarily because of it.
Bea looks at her and raises her eyebrows. “You alright? What was all that about?”
Simmo dumps her tray and sits with a slight wince. Bea observes this, but says nothing. She waits, knowing Simmo will share, or she won’t. Simmo sighs.
“Don’t tell the others, right?”
“Course not”
Simmo takes a breath, looks all around the room, sees no distraction, finally looks back at Bea. Bea is still watching her, but smiling slightly. She takes a spoonful of yoghurt. No pressure there. No drama. Simmo leans forward and whispers fiercely.
“It’s fucking Franky, alright??”
“Franky? What’s she done now?”
Oh god, this was embarrassing. Simmo sighs inside and just decides to tell it all. She doesn’t think Bea will laugh at her, or at least not too much, and maybe she needs someone to laugh with her about this anyway, just to take the sting out of it. And the humiliation, which she just can’t seem to shake.
“She thinks I smuggled in yesterday.. you know.. up there..” She drops her eyes to her lap significantly, then raises them again. Bea’s eyebrows raise still further.
“Well, did you?”
“Of course I fucking did!! But that’s not the bloody point!!” Her voice has started to rise and a couple of people turn round, staring. Bea shushes her, and now there’s definitely amusement twitching at the corners of her lips.
“So what’s the problem? I gotta say I’m more impressed by how you managed to get it past the intake search, but then actually I don’t think I really want to know”
Bea isn’t a user, and she isn’t really cool about hard drugs, especially after what happened to Debbie, but she is also a realist, and she knows how things go down, and she also knows that a certain amount of reliably sourced dope entering a prison is actually more of a calming measure than when the supply is suddenly cut off entirely. Prison life.
“Never mind about that. The point is, Franky thinks I’ve still got them, and she searched me!”
“Searched you?”
“Yeah!! Had her hand right up there, checking..”
Bea snorts now, definitely finding this funny.
“Her whole hand??”
“Shut up!! And it isn’t fucking funny, Bea!!”
Bea tries to stop laughing. “Okay, okay. It isn’t funny. But come on Simmo, you’re a woman of the world, you knew what you were doing, you put ‘em there and you must have known Franky’d find out?”
Simmo huffs. “Well, sure. And maybe it wasn’t actually her whole hand. But it fucking felt like it! And that isn’t the worst of it anyway..”
Bea’s eyebrows are most definitely soon going to run out of any room to raise further.
“Well?”
Simmo sighs again, and spills the rest.
“She says she’s going to keep searching me, once every fucking day, until she finds them”
“And they’re not there?”
“Of course they’re not fucking there!! Don’t you think Franky would have found them if they were? They’re gone, Bea!”
Bea regards her over her coffee cup.
“And Franky knows they’re gone”. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yeah, I reckon. I think this is more a punishment, y’know? Teach me not to cut her out..”
Bea looks at her. The twitch is back in her mouth.
“Every day?”
“Every fucking day, Bea!! And you know I can’t say no to her!!”
“For how long?”
“Christ, I dunno!! Until she gets bored, I guess. But fuck, Bea.. I thought I was coming to prison to give my poor old snatch a break from the old man, demanding it morning noon and fucking night, and now I’ve barely got past processing into me stretch and I’m already being five fingered daily by a relentless she devil on a power kick..”
There’s finally humour twitching at her own eyes, and when they meet Bea’s and they both process what she’s just said, thats enough. The table erupts into howls of laughter, enough to again turn the whole room around to stare. They both know this is nothing, really. This is just how prison is. She’ll get through it, snd eventually it will be something else, and someone else’s turn. They also know that, pain in the arse as Franky is, she has some morals, she’d never do anything like this to some frightened drug smuggling nineteen year old, say. She has her morals, fucked up as they are, and she follows the rules of the establishment. So, until then..
“Guess I’ve just got to suck it up then, aye?”
Bea nods, still giggling. She reached into her toiletries bag, hanging on her chair. She brings something out, close fisted, and holds it out to Simmo.
“What’s this?”
“Something that might help..”
She opens her fist to reveal a small tin of Vaseline.
“Oh, go fuck yourself, would ya??” And thats it, they’re off again, cackling like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. And for this moment, on this day, it is. Prison life.
The door opens and slams against the frame. Franky struts in, seemingly displeased to hear hilarity happening without her.
“What’s so funny, ladies?”
Then, without waiting for an answer, she clicks her fingers at Simmo.
“You. Up. Now. Check time” She grins, a feral grin that always seems like it should reveal meth teeth, even though it doesn’t. Bea and Simmo look at her, smiling slightly now. Franky is a brat, her star is high now but stars always fall, in the end.. and when it does, Bea and Simmo will be there to show her how to be without it, how to wield a quieter, more gentler power. A power more subtle and tempered in the ways of prison life.
But for now..
Simmo glances at Bea, and stifles a chuckle when she rolls her eyes exaggeratedly, where Franky can’t see. Bea winks and pushes the Vaseline minutely closer to Simmo, who now has to pretend a cough to cover the bubble of laughter that threatens to erupt. She gets up as Franky narrows her eyes, tapping her fingers on her wrist meaningfully. She follows Franky as she turns and whirls out of the kitchen, deliberately exaggerating her wincing wide legged temporary new walk, and grins as she hears Bea begin to giggle again behind her. Prison life.