A dirty look passed between Toni and Keisha. Bailey wondered what Toni meant, but she didn’t ask them to elaborate. It was a bit too early to start asking questions, particularly as she had the feeling that the answers wouldn’t make very pleasant listening.

Chapter 33

All in all, Bailey spent three days in hospital recovering from her injuries before the prison’s medical staff felt reassured that she had improved sufficiently to be released back into the prison population. All the while she lay in the ward, her mind was riven with concerns that she had been out of contact with Frank and was wasting valuable time, but she managed to assuage her worries to a certain extent with the knowledge that all of this was ultimately serving a valuable purpose in helping to insinuate her with the gang.

By the time she was released, her black eye had gone down considerably, the other bruises had started to fade and the multiple aches and pains had subsided to the extent that she could move around without wincing too much. It turned out, fortunately, that none of her ribs had been broken and her tooth was fine, but she had required several stitches for the cut in her lip; the stitches would apparently fall out of their own accord within the next few days as the wound healed.

On leaving the hospital, she made her way across the prison yard in the direction of the phones to call Frank. The sun was shining brightly and she welcomed its warmth on her face. She felt like she hadn’t been outside in ages. The weather seemed summery and she recalled that the calendar in the hospital had read 31 May. Summer was indeed almost upon them. She worked out that she had been incarcerated for just over two weeks now, although it felt like much longer.

Bailey had got about halfway across the yard when the gang appeared out of nowhere to intercept her. They closed in around her in a menacing fashion, Muscles looming up behind them, blocking out the sun. Bailey held herself upright and tried not to look scared.

‘It’s not quite over yet,’ said Toni.

Bailey’s stomach turned over for fear of what might be next. She prayed it wasn’t going to be a repeat of what they’d just put her through. Or worse.

‘Yeah,’ said Keisha. ‘We’ve got to get you inked up.’

Poppy was a member of the gang Bailey hadn’t met before – a biker goth with pale skin and large green eyes, her black hair cut in a ragged fringe with a shaved undercut. She wore a dark grey vest which revealed numerous tattoos of a particularly striking quality. A psychedelic Day of the Dead skull ornamented with multi-hued flowers dominated her upper left arm, while a rattlesnake coiled down the entire length of her right arm. She had a knuckleduster engraved on the side of her neck and Bailey could make out some kind of French writing etched in an antique font across the top of her chest. The writing looked elegant, pretty even, but Bailey suspected its sentiments didn’t match its style.