Toni had indeed left the house-block for the yard and Bailey followed her outside. It was overcast and spitting lightly with rain. Scanning around, she spotted Toni walking towards the north end of the yard. Bailey cursed the bad weather. The rain meant that there weren’t many inmates in the yard so she would be much more conspicuous in the large open space. Keeping close to the outside wall of C-Wing, she headed briskly after Toni.

Up this end of the yard lay nothing much besides the library and the chapel, neither of which were places she would have associated with someone like Toni. Bailey reached the end of C-Wing and stopped there, peering around the corner of the wall. She was surprised to see Toni enter the prison chapel.

She didn’t expect Toni would have much respect for religion. Unless of course there was some other reason for her entering the chapel…

Bailey decided not to follow her directly in. Although she had never been inside the chapel, she imagined it was a fairly small place which would make her presence quite obvious. So she stood in the yard and watched while the spitting rain grew ever steadier, making dark blotches on her grey tracksuit.

She huddled, small and insignificant in the shadow of the huge granite walls, the leaden sky only serving to compound the bleak penal atmosphere.

After about ten minutes, the chapel door opened and Toni emerged. She looked around shiftily and then started to head back across the yard in Bailey’s direction, back the way she had come. With a burst of panic, Bailey realised that she was exposed and that Toni would spot her when she came around the corner of C-Wing, which she would do in a few seconds. Why would she be out alone in the rain in the middle of the yard? It would look mightily suspicious. There was no time to run anywhere and it was too far to go back to the entrance to the house-blocks.

Toni was almost upon her. Looking around frantically, Bailey’s eye was caught by the numerous cigarette butts littering the dirt by the wall. Thinking fast, she rapidly swooped down and picked one up. She then pulled her tracksuit hood up over her head and dropped her face to conceal her features. She slumped against the wall in an imitation of the junkie-style slouch that she had seen other inmates adopting, clutching the cigarette butt between her fingers, pretending as if she were part-way through smoking it.

Moments later, Toni strode by, passing her by a matter of centimetres, giving her little more than a cursory hostile glance up and down. Just another inmate out in the yard putting up with the rain for the sake of a smoke…

And then she was gone, heading back to the main entrance to the house-blocks.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Bailey flicked the cigarette butt away in disgust. She pulled her hood down and looked at Toni’s retreating back. Then she turned and made her way quickly across the yard to the chapel. Pushing the heavy wooden door open, she entered it for the first time since she had been in the prison. Inside, it was cool and dark and it presented an oasis of tranquillity in the otherwise tense atmosphere of the prison.