Chapter 28

When the phone rang early on a Monday morning, in the autumn of 1978, two days before Steve's appeal hearing was due to start, I yawned my way to the desk I had recently installed in the corner of the bedroom, and picked up the receiver. Felicity had warned she might call early.

"Your girlfriend's dead," said a flat, deep female voice, before I could even say hello.

Three faces seemed to flash before my eyes, Sarah, Steve, and oddly, Margaret. I dropped the phone and sat down quickly. A tinny squawking alerted me to the dangling receiver. I grappled it back to my ear.

"Stephanie Nash died in her cell last night."

A stark gasp of horror ripped itself from my throat.

"H ... how? Why?" I croaked

"Her latest cell-mate got the better of her. Good riddance to shit."

I knew the voice, because it was imprinted in the dark side of my brain. Sgt. Ruth Preston. Hatred rose like vitriol, choking me with a corrosive loathing. I heard her familiar, mirthless cackle.

"Don't laugh, 'cos you haven't heard the punchline yet."

A dreadful chill settled in my heart.

"They put Sarah Byers in with your Steve. Looks like they tore each other to pieces over you, you worthless cunt. I've never seen anything like it. There was blood all over the walls. It's a miracle either of them survived. Byers is in hospital, but she's lost the plot completely ... she'll be on her way to Durham soon with the other psycho murderers..."

I dropped the phone, and was promptly sick all over the desk. The tinny voice squawked on unheard. I wanted to die. I might as well be dead too. Steve had been ripped from my heart, and Sarah had been used to do the dirty work.

By the time they found me, I'd almost managed it. Mel and Jodie, who had been visiting Mel's parents for the weekend, rushed to Camden the moment they heard. Someone, quite possibly Preston herself, had leaked the news to the press. My friends ... Steve's friends, had to fight their way past a scrum of reporters, all fired up and lascivious at the idea of murder perpetrated by jealous lesbians and terrorists. When Mel burst in, I was standing in the middle of a gas-filled kitchen with a cigarette lighter in my hand, staring at it, willing myself to flick the wheel and join my dead lover.