When she turned her lamp on, there was nothing under the warm light she hadn’t seen before – no impressive parts within the drawing that she might’ve undervalued. It was every bit as poor as it was yesterday. The shudders worsened as she sat down on her stool. She tried to lift her pencil, but her right hand shook so much she had to press her wrist against the table. The only thing that she could think to do was sit there with her eyes shut, letting it wash over her. This was all her fault for listening to Mal Duggan. She should’ve torn up every letter that he’d sent her.

Your not going about this right, the way I see it. In Borneo I had another private peel the spuds for me so I could get some kip. He did it for two packets a week at first and then just cos I told him to. Thats what you need. Another private who can do it for you.

She’d taken this advice because it offered hope, no matter how unpleasant.

The announcement of the borstal drawing competition had come directly from the governor. They’d all been herded into the association hall, where they’d stood in rank and file, arranged by houses. ‘Now the boys’ part of the contest has been won, the architects are looking to appoint –’ There’d been sniggers from a few in line at hearing ‘boys’ part’, and someone in the row behind had done a funny whistle. ‘All right, settle down, behave … As I was saying, the architects are looking to appoint a pair of young apprentices: one boy, one girl. This means, in effect, a place has been reserved for someone in this room. So, even if you’ve never thought much of your drawing skills before, I hope you’ll have a go – year on year, an Aylesbury girl discovers talents that she never knew she had before she got here. As for those in Mrs Graham’s hobby hour, I trust that you’re already thinking of your contributions …’

At first, she hadn’t been remotely interested, and neither had the other girls in laundry party (some of them had even wondered if a woman was allowed to be an architect). Like most, she’d had a plan set in her mind for what to do when she got out, and she’d passed the long hours while she scrubbed and rinsed and hung up uniforms imagining the day they let her out.

She was going to borrow cash from Mal to buy herself a van and start up as a signpainter. Her grand idea was that she’d use her father’s name, J. Savigear, and go round all the pubs and shops and restaurants in Gillingham with photos of the work he’d done as proof of her experience. Once she’d got established, they’d be comfortable again. Her brother would have better options then. Either he could stay with her until he got a decent job, or else he’d join her in the family business and they’d share a house until he found a girl to marry. She’d been practising her lettering in readiness, by writing her own name a thousand times in different styles on watercolour paper. It was such a solid plan that she’d begun to dream on the foundations of it, seeing the nice two-up two-down they’d buy eventually, around the corner from the graveyard where her parents were at rest, and the sleek white van emblazoned with J. SAVIGEAR & CO. But then: