She's Out Read online

  Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool. She trained for the stage at RADA and worked with the National Theatre and RDC before becoming a television actress. She then turned to writing—and made her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful TV series Widows. Her novels have all been international bestsellers.

  Her original script for the much-acclaimed Prime Suspect won awards from BAFTA, Emmy, British Broadcasting and Royal Television Society, as well as the 1993 Edgar Allan Poe Award. Lynda has written and produced over 170 hours of international television.

  Lynda is one of only three screenwriters to have been made an honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and was awarded the BAFTA Dennis Potter Best Writer Award in 2000. In 2008, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Literature, Drama and Charity.

  If you would like to hear from Lynda, please sign up at www.bit.ly/LyndaLaPlanteClub or you can visit www.lyndalaplante.com for further information. You can also follow Lynda on Facebook and Twitter @LaPlanteLynda.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © La Plante Global Limited, 1995, 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Typeset by Scribe Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

  Cover photograph © Getty images

  Author photograph © Monte Farber

  First published in Great Britain by Pan Books, 1995

  First published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., 2012

  This ebook edition published in the United States of America in 2019 by Zaffre

  Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  80–81 Wimpole Street, London W1G 9RE

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-4998-6220-1

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4998-6218-8

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4998-6219-5

  For information, contact

  251 Park Avenue South, Floor 12, New York, New York 10010

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Readers’ Club

  A message from Lynda La Plante . . .

  Extract from Buried

  A Q&A with Lynda La Plante

  Chapter 1

  The date was ringed with a fine red biro circle, March 15, 1994. It was the only mark on the cheap calendar pinned to the wall in her cell. There were no photographs, no memorabilia, not even a picture cut out of a magazine. She had always been in a cell by herself. The prison authorities had discussed the possibility of her sharing with another inmate but it had been decided it was preferable to leave Dorothy Rawlins as she had requested—alone.

  Rawlins had been a model prisoner from the day she had arrived. She seemed to settle into a solitary existence immediately. At first she spoke little and was always polite to both prisoners and prison officers. She rarely smiled, she never wrote letters, but read for hours on end alone in her cell, and ate alone. After six months she began to work in the prison library; a year later she became a trusty. Gradually the women began to refer to Rawlins during recreational periods, asking her opinion on their marriages, their relationships. They trusted her opinions and her advice but she made no one a close friend. She wrote their letters, she taught some of the inmates to read and write, she was always patient, always calm and, above all, she would always listen. If you had a problem, Dolly Rawlins would sort it out for you. Over the following years she became a dominant and highly respected figure within the prison hierarchy.

  The women would often whisper about her to the new inmates, embroidering her past, which made her even more of a queen-like figurehead. Dorothy Rawlins was in Holloway for murder. She had shot her husband, the infamous Harry Rawlins, at point-blank range. The murder took on a macabre undertone as throughout the years the often repeated story was embellished, but no one ever discussed the murder to her face. It was as if she had an invisible barrier around her own emotions. Kindly toward anyone who needed comfort, she seemed never to need anything herself.

  So the rumors continued: stories passed from one inmate to another that Rawlins had also been a part of a big diamond raid. Although she had never been charged and no evidence had ever been brought forward at her trial to implicate her, the idea that she had instigated the raid, and got away with it, accentuated her mystique. More important was the rumor that she had also got away with the diamonds. The diamonds, some said, were valued at one million, then two million. The robbery had been a terrifying, brutal raid and a young, beautiful girl called Shirley Miller had been shot and killed. It was never discovered that Shirley Miller had been one of the women who took part in the infamous robbery at the Strand underpass.

  Four years into her sentence, Rawlins began to write letters to request a better baby wing at Holloway. She began to work with the young mothers and children. The result was that she became even more of a “Mama” figure. There was nothing she would not do for these young women, and it was on Rawlins’s shoulders that they sobbed their hearts out when their babies were taken from them. Rawlins seemed to have an intuitive understanding, talking for hour upon hour with these distressed girls. She also had the same quiet patience with the drug offenders.

  Five years into her sentence, Dolly Rawlins proved an invaluable inmate. She kept a photo album of the prisoners who had left, their letters to her, and especially the photographs of their children. But only the calendar was pinned to the chipboard on the wall of her cell. Nothing ever took precedence over the years of waiting.

  She would always receive letters when the girls left Holloway. It was as if they needed her strength on the outside, but usually the letters came only for a couple of weeks then stopped. She was never hurt by the sudden silence, the lack of continued contact, because there were always the new inmates who needed her. She was a heroine, and the whispers about her criminal past only grew. Sometimes she would smile as if enjoying the notoriety, encouraging the stories with little hints that maybe, just maybe, she knew more about the diamond raid than she would ever admit. She was also aware by now that the mystery surrounding her past enhanced her position within the prison pecking order, allowing her to remain top dog without fighting or arguments.

  After seven years, Rawlins was the “Big Mama”—and it was always Dolly who broke up the fights, Dolly who was called on to settle arguments, Dolly who received the small gifts, the extra cigarettes. The prison officers referred to her as a model prisoner, and she was consequently given a lot of freedom by the authorities. She organized and instigated further education, drug rehabilitation sessions and, with a year to go before she was released, Holloway opened an entire new mother-and-baby wing, with a bright, toy-filled nursery. This was where she spent most of her time, helping the staff care for the children. For Dolly, who had no visitors, no one on the outside to care for or about her, the babies became her main focus—and began to shape a future dream for when she would finally be free.

  Dolly Rawlins did have those diamonds waitin
g and, if they had been worth two million when she was sentenced, she calculated they now had to be worth double. Alone in her cell she would dream about just what she was going to do with all that money. Fencing them would bring the value down to around two million. She would have to give a cut to Audrey, Shirley Miller’s mother, and a cut to Jimmy Donaldson, the man holding them for her. She would then have enough to open some kind of home, buy a small terraced house for herself, maybe in Islington or an area close to the prison, so she could come and visit the girls she knew would still need her. She contemplated opening the home specifically for the children of pregnant prisoners, who, she knew, would have their babies taken away. Then they would at least know their babies were in good care, as many of the girls were single parents and their babies might otherwise be put up for adoption.

  This daydreaming occupied Dolly for hours on end. She kept her idea to herself, afraid that if she mentioned it to anyone they would know for sure she had considerable finances. She did have several thousand pounds in a bank account set up for her by her lawyer and she calculated that with that, a government grant and the money from the gems the home could be up and running within a year of her release. She even thought about offering a sanctuary for some of the drug addicts who needed a secure place to stay when they were released. And, a number of the women inside were battered wives: perhaps she could allocate a couple of rooms for them. The daydreaming relieved the tension. It was like a comforter, a warm secret that enveloped her and helped her sleep. But the dream would soon be a reality as the months disappeared into weeks, and then days. As the ringed date was drawing closer and closer, she could hardly contain herself: at last she would have a reason to live. Being so close to newborn babies had opened up the terrible, secret pain of her own childlessness. But soon she would have a houseful of children who needed her. Then she could truly call herself “Mama.”

  They all knew she would soon be leaving. They whispered in corners as they made cards and small gifts. Even the prison officers were sad that they would lose such a valuable inmate, not that any of them had ever had much interaction with her on a personal level. She rarely made conversation with them unless it was strictly necessary, and some of them resented the fact that she seemed to have more power over the inmates than they did. A few years back, Rawlins had struck a prison officer, slapped her face, and warned her to stay away from a certain prisoner. She had been given extra days and been locked up in her cell. The result had been that Rawlins was fêted when she was eventually unlocked and the officer, a thickset, dark-haired woman called Barbara Hunter, never spoke to or looked at Rawlins again. The animosity between Hunter and Rawlins remained throughout the years. Hunter had tried on numerous occasions to needle Dolly, as if to prove to the Governor that the model prisoner 45688 was in reality an evil manipulator. But Dolly never rose to the bait, just looked at her with ice-cold eyes, and it was that blank-eyed stare that, Hunter suspected, concealed a deep hatred, not just of herself, but of all the prison officers.

  Finally the day came, March 15, and Dolly carefully packed her few possessions from her cell. She had already given away all her personal effects: a radio, some tapes, skin cream, books and packets of cigarettes. She had lost a considerable amount of weight, and the suit she had worn the day she arrived hung on her like a rag as she waited for the call to the probation room for the usual chat with the Governor before she would finally be free. The years she had spent banged up had made her face sallow and drawn; her gray hair was cut short in an unflattering style.

  As she sat, hands folded on her lap, until they called her to go into the first meeting, she appeared as calm as always but her heart was beating rapidly. She would soon be out. Soon be free. It would soon be over.

  The old Victorian Grange Manor House was in a sorry state of disrepair, although at a distance it still looked impressive. The once splendid grounds, orchards and stables were all in need of serious attention. The grass was overgrown and weeds sprouted up through the gravel driveway. A swimming pool with a torn tarpaulin was filled with stagnant water, and even the old sign “Grange Health Farm” was broken and peeling like the paint on all the woodwork of the house. The once handsome stained-glass double-fronted door had boards covering the broken panes, many of the windows had cracks and some of the tiles from the roof lay shattered on the ground below. The double chimney-breasts were tilting dangerously. The house seemed fit only for demolition, while the once vast acreage that had belonged to the manor had been sold off years before to local farmers, and the dense, dark wood that fringed the lawns had begun to creep nearer with brambles and twisted shrubs.

  A motorway had been built close to the edge of the lane leading to the manor, cutting off the house from the main road. Now the only access was down a small slip road that had been left, like the house, to rot, with deep potholes that made any journey hazardous. The rusted, wrought-iron gates were hanging off their hinges, and the chain threaded through them with the big padlock hung limply as if no one would want to enter anyway.

  The Range Rover bumped and banged along the lane as it made its slow journey toward the house, the hedges either side hiding the fields and grazing cows.

  Ester Freeman swore as the Range Rover hit a deep rut; it was even worse than the last time she’d been there. She was a handsome woman in her late forties. Five feet six and slender, she was a smart dresser, who always wore designer labels, and there was an elegance to her that belied the inner toughness that even her well-modulated voice sometimes couldn’t disguise. Now, with her dark hair scraped back from her face and her teeth clenched, she looked anything but ladylike. She continued to swear as the Range Rover splashed through yet another water-filled pothole on its lurching course down the lane.

  Sitting beside Ester, Julia Lawson looked equally unhappy. She was much younger than Ester and taller, almost six feet, with a strong, rangy body made to seem even more mannish by her jeans and leather jacket. She wore beat-up cowboy boots and a worn denim shirt, and there was an habitual arrogance to her expression that sometimes made her seem attractive, at other times plain. She had a deep, melodic, cultured voice, and was swearing fruitily as they bounced along. “Jesus Christ, Ester, slow down. You’re chucking everything over the back of the car!”

  Ester paid no attention as she heaved on the handbrake, jumped out and crossed to the wrought-iron gates. She didn’t bother with a key to open the padlock—she just wrenched it loose and pushed back the old gates.

  As they drove up the Manor House driveway, Julia laughed. “My God, I think it needs a demolition crew.”

  “Oh shut up,” Ester snapped as they veered round a pothole.

  “You know, I don’t think they’ll find it.”

  “They’ll find it, I gave them each a map. Don’t be so negative. She’s out today, Julia. Come on, move it!”

  Julia followed Ester slowly out of the car and looked around, shaking her head. She stepped back as a front doorstep crumbled beneath her boot. “You know, it looks unsafe.”

  “It’s been standing for over a hundred years so it’s not likely to fall down now. Get the bags out.”

  Julia looked back to the piles of suitcases and bulging black bin liners in the back of the Range Rover and ignored her request, following Ester into the manor.

  The hallway was dark and forbidding: the William Morris wallpaper hung in damp speckled flaps from the carved cornices and there were stacks of old newspapers and broken bottles everywhere. The old wooden reception desk was dusty, the key-rack behind it devoid of keys.

  Their feet echoed in the marble hall as Ester opened one door after another, the smell of must and mildew hanging in the air.

  “You’ll never get it ready in time, Ester.”

  Ester marched into the drawing room, shouting over her shoulder, “Oh yes I will, if everybody helps out.”

  Julia picked up the dust-covered telephone with a look of surprise. “Well I never. The phone’s connected.”

  Ester stood l
ooking around the drawing room: old-fashioned sofas and wing-backed chairs, threadbare carpet and china cabinets. The massive open stone fireplace was still filled with cinders. “I had it connected,” she snapped as she began to draw back the draped velvet curtains, turning her face away as years of dust spiraled down. Even when Ester had occupied the place, no one had ever been that interested in dusting.

  The Grange Health Farm had been defunct when Ester bought the manor with all its contents, but she had no plans to refurbish the old house as it was a perfect cover for her real profession. All Ester had done was spread a few floral displays around the main rooms and bring in fourteen girls, a chef, a domestic and two muscle-bound blokes in case of trouble. The Grange Health Farm reopened, catering to clients who wanted a massage and a sauna, but if they wanted a little bit more physical contact, Ester provided that too . . . at a price.

  “We should have started weeks ago,” Julia said as she lolled in the doorway, looking around with undisguised distaste.

  “Well, I didn’t, so we’re gonna have to work like the clappers.” Ester looked up to the chandelier, trying the light switch. Two of the eighteen bulbs flickered on.

  “Bravo, the electricity’s on as well,” laughed Julia.

  Ester glared around the room. “We’ll clean this room, the dining room and a few bedrooms. Then that’s it, we won’t need to do any more.”

  “Really?” Julia smiled.

  Ester pushed past her, wiping her dusty hands on a handkerchief, and Julia followed her back into the hall, watching as she banged open shutters.

  The dining room was in the same condition but with empty bottles and glasses scattered on the table and smashed on the floor. Ester was flicking on lights, dragging back curtains with manic energy. But she seemed to deflate when she saw the wrecked kitchen, broken crockery and more smashed bottles. “Shit! I’d forgotten how bad it was.”

  “I hadn’t. I told you this was a crazy idea from the start.”