Read Online Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 by Sonia Paige - Free Book Online Page A

you can do is face the terror and walk naked with it. I wanted to meet the wrong people. And I did.’
    â€˜Bet ya still think you’re better than us lot, though, init?’ says Debs, pointing her long nose straight at me.
    â€˜Do I act like that?’ I ask her.
    â€˜To be honest with ya,’ Debs continues, ‘I’m not being funny, but you chose to chuck it all away. We never had nothing in the first place.’
    She’s right. I had choices. If I could have done what was expected of me: smiled at the right people, jumped the right hurdles… I have only myself to blame. Shooting myself in the foot again and again.
    â€˜Don’t take no notice of her,’ says Mandy. ‘You didn’t choose what you was born into. We’re all in the same boat now, ain’t we? Go on, mate.’
    So I carry on. ‘I lay there on the beach and the pictures danced in front of my closed eyelids. Until gradually the sunshine made them go still. I seemed to realize some important things, but they were those slippery thoughts you get on hash which slide away. Like sand through your fingers. Gone almost before you’ve thought them. From time to time we swam. The cold of the water was a shock which turned your body inside out until the shock of the heat worked its way back in again. In the evening they cooked a meal again and I ate with them. Then I walked back along the beach in the dusk to my room.’
    â€˜Wait a minute,’ says Debs. ‘The water. That cold? Even in summer?’
    I nod. ‘That cold.’ The woman has an eagle eye for detail. I wait but she seems satisfied so I carry on:
    â€˜On the third day when I arrived, Sigurd had clothes on – a pair of tan slacks and a T-shirt. He was going into town for supplies. He set off with an empty rucksack. Joris put the water on, and we lay in the sun waiting for the tea as usual.
    â€˜â€œToday are we alone,” he said very deliberately.
    â€˜After the tea we swam and spread out our towels on the beach. My skin was tingling from the ice-cold water. I shut my eyes and slept or day-dreamed, I’m not sure which. When I opened them, I noticed that Joris had moved his towel and was lying next to me.’
    There’s a jangling of keys outside the door and I hear it swing open.
    â€˜Exercise, put your shoes on, hurry up,’ says a plump officer, breezing in with a big smile. ‘You too, McPhearson.’ Beverly groans from her bed, ‘I ain’t going nowhere.’ The officer shrugs, ‘Your loss, love.’
    The yard is concrete, broken up by brick-built flower beds. Last summer’s flowers, if there ever were any, are long gone, and only a few wintry leaves stick to the barren earth of the beds. The rain has stopped but it’s wet underfoot. My old boots slurp along without their laces. The yard is surrounded on three sides by high brick walls, and on the fourth by a two-storey wing of the prison building. On the ground underneath the windows are piles of things thrown out of the cells: dirty clothes, apple cores, vomit. Underneath one is a collection of hamburgers and chips from last night’s supper, with paper plates and lettuce leaves scattered around.
    As we huddle together, our breath hovers and disperses in the bitter air. Debs asks me, ‘So was that it, then?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜With the blond guy on the beach.’
    â€˜Sort of,’ I say, hoping to leave it at that.
    â€˜You’re going to tell us, ain’t you? It was just getting interesting.’
    â€˜You really want to know?’
    â€˜Blow by blow,’ says Mandy, ‘We want to hear all the juicy bits.’
    â€˜It was a long time ago,’ I say.
    â€˜Bet you can remember. I bet if I’d been with a bloke in Greece I’d remember.’
    When we get back to the cell, Beverly is still asleep under the bedcovers. Debs goes to the toilet to throw up. Mandy watches her