‘I didn’t realise reservations applied here,’ said Bailey.

‘You trying to be clever?’ The blonde inmate drew her lips back in an aggressive sneer, revealing a gold tooth set in her upper jaw.

Bailey instantly regretted the quip. She realised that she had to strike the right balance between not drawing too much attention to herself and not appearing to be a weakling.

The rest of the canteen had suddenly gone quiet and all eyes were now on her table.

‘It’s okay. I’ll move,’ she said. Better to keep a low profile for the time being rather than rile anybody.

She stood up and picked up her tray. But the gold-toothed inmate knocked it out of her hands. Her lunch splattered all over the table.

‘Now look what you’ve done, you clumsy bitch,’ said gold-tooth. ‘You’ve gone and knocked crap all over our table. Clean it up. Now.’

‘Maybe she should lick it up,’ said the oriental one with a smirk.

The others sniggered.

‘Good idea,’ said gold-tooth. ‘Lick it up.’

Bailey stood there looking at the remnants of her meal. She’d hardly begun to eat it.

The group of inmates crowded around her in a menacing fashion. The big one towered over her, no glimmer of emotion in her dead piggy eyes.

Bailey’s heart was beating hard, adrenaline pumping through her system, as she tried to determine the best course of action. Everyone else had paused eating and was now transfixed. This was prime entertainment.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ said gold-tooth.

Bailey slowly clenched her fists. They could forget it. Submitting to their humiliation wasn’t an option. To do so in front of everyone else in here would open her up to all kinds of abuse further down the line.

Instead, her jiu-jitsu training kicked in and she moved into the basic defensive yoi stance: her body positioned side-on so it formed a narrower target, her knees slightly bent to give her a lower centre of balance, one foot positioned in front of the other to ensure maximum stability, her arms raised up in front of her, poised ready to parry and strike. She marked their positions, eyed them individually in turn, took a deep breath and prepared to go down fighting.

‘That’s enough of that,’ said a firm voice.

She looked around to see one of the prison officers standing there. A tide of relief rolled over her. The prison officer was young, with a somewhat prim and starched appearance. Her blonde hair was tucked into a tight bun and bright blue eyes looked out from behind a pair of large thick-rimmed glasses.

Gold-tooth scowled at her. ‘She’s dropped her food all over our table.’

‘You can find somewhere else to sit today, Toni.’

They all stood there for a few moments, glaring at the prison officer. Bailey wondered what would happen. But the prison officer stood her ground, her hands on her hips, fearlessly staring them down.

‘Your lunch is getting colder the longer you stand there,’ she said.