Fear In the Shadows

Summary

Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Epilogue

Prologue

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She turned on the television, the presenter’s nasal drone filling the room. Anything other than silence... Her dinner was getting cold on the table. The start of another evening. With bolts drawn across at 6 pm, day became night. The voice of the girl next door drowned out the sound of the television. Who is it’s got fags? As if it was time to be worrying about that now! It’d turn into another massive deal, with her yelling like she’d never stop until the woman officer came and stood outside her door. At any rate, it wouldn’t be her. If she got caught red-handed, she’d just say it was the hand of the girl next door...

Will you shut up? Linda started shouting.

At the sound of that voice, Jessica felt her skin ice over. Prison was dead hard as it was, but she’d also got to deal with that bitch Linda making her days utter hell.

You shut your face! blasted another girl.

Nice one. Her little evening pleasure, hearing what she couldn’t say herself because she was too afraid. Linda wasn’t a heifer though: she had thin arms like chewed up liquorice sticks; a face that was all angles with hollow cheeks; blue eyes washed out from seeing evil everywhere and wishing it ten times more; a puckered-up mouth which only let bile pass through. And at the moment, Linda’s bile was being directed at Jessica. As a result, no one dared speak to her anymore for fear of being tarred with the same brush. Through lies and rumours, Linda had transformed Jessica’s crime from theft into child abuse, sometimes attacks on helpless old people. It depended on her mood. Nothing that would hold water, yet still clung to her reputation like cobwebs. At thirty years of age, Jessica was living through her toughest imprisonment, and it didn’t look like it was going to get better.

The officer was prowling around in the corridor. If the girl next door didn’t bother to look out for the screw she was going to get busted. Jessica knocked on a pipe. A quick tap came in reply. Message received.

On the transparent plate, the beans had congealed in their greenish sauce. Jessica turned over the piece of meat with the end of her fork, put it to her nose, and sniffed. It didn’t smell bad, just had a strange colour. Got to eat, she thought. I ate gross stuff when I was outside. I wasn’t fussy even when I was having a flush day. When your money was spent on crack, any grub you could pick up became a feast.

Propped up against the pillow, legs stretched out the length of the coarse bedcover, Jessica tried to sink into sleep. Unfortunately, she only managed to get entangled in the sticky clutches of anxiety. She felt her heart pulsating beneath her scrawny chest with such a force that her body became no more than the blows of a hammer. She wouldn’t be able to get away from it: just like every other evening, her battle against anxiety was going to do her in that little bit more, just. I’m not going to fight it, she decided. At this point, one pill more or less won’t kill me. Seven, she was on seven a day. What was that compared with a concoction shot into her punctured veins? Had to go to eight.

She’d sort it out tomorrow.

‘Right, Jessica my girl, eight little treats on top of your drug replacement therapy, that’s quite a lot.’ There was no need for her to kick it behind the cell door though; that’s what she had coming to her if she didn’t barricade herself against the vicious beast that possessed her once silence fell. It was a miracle cure, so it seemed. So much the better. She could no longer bear the oppressive attacks which seized her in the evenings at best, at worst, at any possible moment.

Jessica clutched the tiny pink capsules. Two to be sure. To be taken in case of extreme anxiety.

In the evening, at the same time as the sleeping tablet, she’d been advised. That way, you’ll sleep like a baby.

It was funny: the sight of the two pink pills on the table already calmed her. It was still early though. She imagined the trolley trundling along on the cement floor of the corridor. Behind the doors, the obedient girls, or the ones who were chicken, would be waiting plate in hand.

Now what did they want?

Tavrier, plate.

I’m coming, I’m coming, grumbled Jessica. It’s not like there’s a fire or anything...

Plate on the table. Pink pill next to it. Shame she didn't have the guts to face up to her night terrors. Or the day ones. Linda, she didn't give up that one. What had she found to say in the middle of the yard that very morning? That Jessica was telling tales about her and the others to the officers and that she, Linda, was going to do her in if she carried on. Just a threat to scare the crap out of her. But then who knew with Linda? That bitch had trotted out her lie with such self-assurance even the loudest girls, usually like bees in a hive, had hushed their gossiping. That fucking silence, as sudden as it was ominous, had cut her breath short. Silence, Jessica hated it like the grave. No way therefore of freeing herself from her terror and coming back with as good as she’d been given, shutting that bitch Linda up once and for all. It wasn’t true, of course, and the other girls knew it. But to go from that to joking around with Jessica... Couldn’t ask too much of the young ones who hadn’t already spent years in prison like herself. The maison d’arrêt in Avignon felt so long ago. What a team they’d made! Amazing atmosphere. She had to get out of this place, plenty of nicks were much more chilled than this one. But what reason could there be to justify a transfer? In reality, it wasn’t a good idea and Jessica knew it. All she’d gain was being isolated from the others. She felt alone enough as it was, thank you very much.

From what she could remember, the anxiety acted as a prelude to her attacks. Locked up for the night... The feeling of oppression was powerful and became the only real thing once again. The world fell away. Jessica was nothing more than a mass of flesh. A coffin with her body inside. It was almost as if her soul was flying overhead.

Jessica filled her glass with a trembling hand. For once, she didn’t automatically hold her breath so as not to inhale the smell of urine that rose to her mouth from the toilet. The liquid slipped down her throat, the pink pill stroking the sides of her digestive tract. She felt the medicine enter her, returning to her the feeling of actually existing.

"For guaranteed effect, you need to take the sleeping tablet at the same time as the pink capsule," she’d been told. Ten minutes Jessica had been lying on her bed. The medicine was beginning to work. Her muscles were relaxing. The beating of her heart in her ribcage no longer threatened her. She was at peace.

The officer’s foot brushed against the door. The sound sought Jessica out in the depths of her sleep. Was she awake? No... It was as if she was floating. A dream surely... Or one trip too many... Let’s see, who’d sold her her fix yesterday? Impossible to remember. Trying to gather together the images of last night. A street, a house, a piece of puzzle onto which she could fit the memory of her evening.

Jessica tried to stir in her bed. Just one movement, to try to stimulate the congealed mass of her brain clotted against her skull. Nope. A hand then, a finger... Her body was no longer listening to her. The peace which had been lulling her to sleep a few seconds before now shattered. Something wasn’t right...Where was she? And why couldn’t she remember the dealer’s face? Perhaps there hadn’t been one? Yes, there was someone. A hand, a pink pill. To be taken in the evening with the sleeping tablet, no questions. Who's speaking? Eyes behind a door. Shut. And then the gates. And the evening's silence. Prison...She was in prison! No overdose then. All the better, she thought she was going to die there. But no. She was in prison and was sleeping in ‘her’ bed. Thanks to the pill, Jessica felt calm. In that case, why was her hand not moving? Why was her body refusing to obey the urgent need to check whether she was still alive? Worry started working its way in again, standing alongside the sense of calm which made her peaceful in spite of the inevitability. Because she knew... But why? By which twisted path of fate had she survived the hell of drugs only to come and die in this prison?

The sound of the officer’s footsteps rang out in the corridor. Jessica tried to gather the little strength that she had left. She had to call out... Yet no sound came from her throat. She tried however, over and over. Then, resigned to her fate, lulled by the sense of plenitude that overcame her, Jessica stopped her struggle against death.

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Part 1

1

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I never actively decided to let myself be carried along by events. I was already one of those girls who suffer from a severe lack of self-esteem when I resigned myself to no longer struggling against fate. My desire to just be happy had not been able to withstand the first waves on the horizon: a mother troubled by her hatred of her own daughter.

I haven’t always been lazy and futureless. It wasn’t better then though, just different. I have gradually become what I still am today, a young woman who lets herself bob along. I know that resistance would be useless... There is a strength in me though, the only one I obey in spite of myself, and this strength leads me to my story.

In the eyes of the few people I rub shoulders with, I’m docile and smiley enough to be useful to them. For example, I can act as window dressing on those evenings when there aren’t enough guests or when someone’s pulled out at the last minute. I have a decent circle of acquaintances as I never turn anything down. None of these people seek to deepen our relationship and, if they did, I’d run away as fast as I could. But I’m not being fair. There is someone I do actually take an interest in: my own daughter. Unfortunately, she had to understand from quite a young age that something wasn’t quite right with me. Emma is four years old, and I love her. She and I don’t live together. Not out of choice: I’m not capable of looking after my own child, that’s all.

You shouldn’t imagine I got rid of Emma to ‘live my life’ or anything stupid like that. No, one day I left the Moses basket at her grandmother’s house and, there we are, she stayed there. What else could I do? Those lovely theories about maternal love, instinct and all that nonsense are just padding for women’s magazines and telly programmes, nothing more. Real life is completely different! No, it’s better I hand her over to my mother. Maman isn't perfect, of course. Actually she’s fit to bursting with faults: I’m in a good position to know. However, she is capable of looking after Emma. I have to be content with the situation.

My daughter isn’t like me, she’s intelligent. She’ll often stare at me with her beady little eyes, measuring me up, inspecting me. Sometimes she looks under my clothes, her pudgy little fingers lifting my skirt, the bottom of my trousers or even sliding under the sleeves of my jumper as if to feel for what’s hiding beneath the surface. In those moments, I’m overcome with such tenderness for her that I take her in my arms and hold her very tight. That’s my way of expressing to her what’s in my heart.

For some time now, I haven’t missed any opportunity to get myself into deep shit, and so my life unravels a bit further in every single way. To begin with, I’ve changed jobs yet again. No matter how I try to pull myself together, I never manage to realise how badly I’ve been had. All the more as I wasn’t too badly off at my last place: it wasn’t El Dorado, nothing to fantasise about, but I never felt myself to be in too much danger. No men for me to sniff around, an easy job where only my arm got tired from slipping labels onto parcels of tatty old clothes for the local supermarkets. Badly paid, but that wasn’t anything new.

I just had to listen to this guy who seemed as down on his luck as I was talking about his plans. About his friend who was starting up in business, a gold mine apparently. A matter of urgency, no time to think. Do you want a job or not? There was a little voice in my head telling me this man was a loser and fairy stories don’t exist. But I still said yes.

I found myself jammed between a counter and empty cardboard boxes giving the impression of through-the-roof demand. The moment I passed through the door of the so-called business, I knew I’d made a mistake. Another one, and so I found myself unemployed once again.

I make myself feel bad about it afterwards, naturally. My head badgers me with questions. Good reasons go round and round my head without me being able to grab onto them. If I could, I wouldn’t start up the same stupid stuff. I wouldn’t have a fatherless child, a membership at the job centre, nor a flat with just me in it. It was because of my out-of-work loneliness that the worst of it started up. Though I didn’t know how, I knew, as per usual, I was going to get it full in the face.

Almost as if I enjoyed it.

2

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Louise, my girl, this is not a good plan, I say to myself. But the more I persuade myself of the absurdity of my plan, the more I stay nose glued to the lonely hearts ads. Let’s see, no, that one’s too old, I’m not going to turn my hand to gerontology... Blonde, forties, never married, high-powered job, takes women for complete idiots... The worst of it is I want to let myself be trapped in his fool’s game. The sheet of paper goes flying, joining the pile that scatters the floor. The job adverts are riddled with annotations and raging pencil marks. Nothing, empty.

It’s so I don’t have to face another day without the shadow of an interview that I fell back on the personals ads.

I’m tired of being alone. Or rather, of feeling alone. Because I do know people, not enough to fill my diary, sure, but enough to create the effect of having a social life. I also have a four year old daughter and, although quite small in number, a family that’s together enough to look after her. In spite of everything, I feel a sense of hopelessness taking up too much space in my head. It ends up filling enough to suffocate what life there is still left in my heart. I therefore decided, and this is the second reason, to find a man who understands me.

This is where the idea of the personal ads came from, though I know there’s nothing serious in them.

My message went live on a free dating site the following week. Terse in the extreme, it took up one line. Woman, 32, would like to meet man. What more is there to say? I don’t know who I am; I’m barely capable of even giving the colour of my hair or my eyes. It’s better this way: I don’t want to see a man showing up because he’s been attracted by my fake blondness or the golden brown of my pupils. I want him to come for my soul, if I’ve even got one.

A week later, I received a reply. I opened the message as though backing away from it, one hand on the paper knife my mother gave me one day when she was most probably wishing I’d open my veins with it. A widower, retired, and sufficiently broke to look for a female housemate to act as prostitute and housekeeper. I regretted the time wasted in producing the one line, feeling short-changed. Then a few days later, other messages arrived. I liked one of them, guess why. The sentences sagged down towards the bottom of the page. The gurgle of words sickened me. I needed to read it several times to understand he’d just lost his job, his wife and his house all at the same time. A well-off man, recently turned into a complete loser by life. His despair spoke to mine. I agreed to meet him.

I recognised him in the middle of the crowd from the folded newspaper he held in his hand. He came towards me, back curved over in a big duffle coat, an uncertain gait which corresponded with the sloping lines of his writing. We looked at each other a bit foolishly, embarrassed at meeting each other thanks to an ad I’d composed and to which he’d replied, incapable as we both were of managing to meet someone in a simpler way.

He doesn’t know what to say now so he tells me the story of his divorce. His wife must have been a gem. Her picture dances before my eyes, and the more clearly I can picture her face, the uglier and clumsier I feel.

I attempt to save our new relationship by talking about the rain which won’t hold off for long. He pouts childishly, as if I’d taken his favourite toy off him. Completely out of the blue, I turn right at the corner of the street.

The emptiness I feel after this distressing encounter proves to me there’s nothing left to hope for from the