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Back What I Did Save as PDF
Chapters (87)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Seventy-One
  75. Seventy-Two
  76. Seventy-Three
  77. Seventy-Four
  78. Seventy-Five
  79. Seventy-Six
  80. Seventy-Seven
  81. Seventy-Eight
  82. Seventy-Nine
  83. Eighty
  84. Epilogue
  85. Acknowledgements
  86. Extract from To Keep You Safe
  87. About the Author

I don’t think I ever visited a prison without half-expecting a hand to drop onto my shoulder and a guard to say that a mistake had been made and I was no longer at liberty to leave.

I could do the routine with my eyes shut. I knew the drill better than most.

I passed the prison officer my ID and he checked me off against the list. I waited as another officer asked me to sign a declaration that I wasn’t bringing in anything I shouldn’t and then I was checked again, patted down once more and my pockets checked. When she’d finished with me, she scrutinised Jack’s pushchair, and then I had to lift him out so she could examine where he sat, and also the back of him.

The first time I visited my mother in prison with Jack, I was outraged. She was still in Holloway then, and the austere Victorian walls had frowned dourly upon prisoners and visitors alike. Before I’d been pregnant, I’d seen other prams searched, but never thought much about it. But when my son, tiny then at only a few weeks old, was searched, my maternal instincts had kicked in and I’d shouted at them, creating a scene. I couldn’t bear them searching his pram, running their hands over his Babygro back. It’d all felt so awfully Dickensian, so persecutory, as if the system was torturing the tiny and innocent.

But time has a habit of getting you used to things – things that once you’d never have believed you could possibly endure.

After submitting to the search, I pushed Jack’s pushchair into the corridor to the waiting room.

The room was overlit and filled with plastic stackable seats. Around it sat about thirty people, some I recognised, some I didn’t. When I first started visiting as a teenager, I hated the visiting rooms, because I never felt that my mother was the same as the other prisoners. But as the years went by, I changed my mind. As I got older, I got a clearer perspective and I realised that she was just like the other women. I think that prisons are stuffed full of women like my mother – women with similar tales of suffering, subjugation and careless violence – and always have been and always will be.

Sitting there waiting to be called in, with Jack still dozing in the pushchair, I rubbed a bruise I had hidden under my sleeve and realised I was probably more kith and kin with these female inmates than with Issy and the others. I just didn’t want that to be true.