Now
The salty sweet smell of warm pastry rushes up my nose. I quickly pull the scalding-hot tray of scones from the oven and slide them onto the rack to cool off just as the phone rings.
‘Yep!’ I answer, hooking the receiver between my ear and shoulder while gently prodding the pastry to check it’s cooked through.
It’s Paul, he manages the Angela Reed café, which is just off the main square in the picturesque town of Saffron Walden in Essex. Nice guy. He has a way about him that keeps the customers happy. Bites his tongue, unlike me, who can’t help saying what I think. That’s probably why I’m never front of house but spend my time downstairs in the basement, cooking. That, and the fact I love baking.
‘We’ve just had a woman come in who’s bought your entire batch of fruit scones,’ he exclaims. ‘How long until the next batch is ready?’
It was a bigger shock to me than anyone when I heard my culinary creations had become legendary in the town. Me, who has spent the best part of my life living off microwave meals, who wouldn’t have been seen dead attempting to make a gluten-free lemon and almond sponge. Just one of many on my repertoire these days.
‘I’m on it,’ I say, scooping the scones into a bowl and placing them in the dumb waiter. Door shut. Button pressed. Hey presto and then, all of a sudden, it strikes. Blood – everywhere, spraying across the kitchen surfaces, pooling on the floor. I scrunch my eyes shut, trying to push the memory away.
‘Alrighty, what next.’ I chat to myself, hoping that will keep me in the present. I grab a Pyrex bowl and get to work on making my signature cherry almond Bakewell cake.
Butter and sugar – I start beating it together. I’m looking for a light and fluffy texture. The mixture clumps, sticking to the spoon like mud. I prise it off with my forefinger and thumb and begin again. Round and round I beat it, giving it some welly.
I’ve been downstairs baking away since I began my shift at 8 a.m. My face is powdered with a dusting of flour. Dough is crusted into the corners of my fingernails. Upstairs it’ll be getting busy. Locals coming and going, picking up a slice of their favourite cake. Dropping in for their morning cup of coffee and a catch-up. Saffron Walden is a bustling market country town where gossip is rife.
I’m the one secret no one knows about though.
The pressure is on to get my almond and cherry creation into the oven. Four eggs – I crack them one by one on the side of the bowl and mix them in. There it is again, hitting me like a tidal wave. All of a sudden, I’m back inside. Thrust into the industrial-sized kitchen in the bowels of the prison …
The long chrome work surfaces were laden with platefuls of the day’s lunch. White stodgy baguette filled with coronation chicken with a sprig of lettuce and cucumber on the side and something very dodgy moving through the lettuce. The yellow strip light above was flickering; it was enough to drive anyone around the twist. It would be next year before anyone got around to fixing that. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the hotplate – the silver trolley we were loading up with lunches to take through to the wings. I looked exhausted, my under-eyes a bruised purple thanks to many a long shift.
‘Ready, ladies?’ I said. I had a woman who’d been done for arson and attempted murder on my left and a child sex abuser on my right. Today’s kitchen helpers.
It happened in the blink of an eye. Quite literally. One minute I was giving Jane Finch orders, the next her cheek opened up. It was like watching something move in slow motion. There was no blood at first, the skin simply parted to reveal pinky-white flesh and thread veins.
Jane touched her face. ‘What’s that?’
Before I had time to answer, the blood rose to the surface – gushing. There was claret everywhere.
She stared at her red fingers, her body began to tremble, her eyes were bulging with fear and shock. I thought she was going to pass out.
‘What’s happening?’ It came out as more of a whisper. The unharmed side of her face had turned as white as ash. Blood was spraying across the hot plate, splattering the baguettes.
‘Oh my God!’ She found her voice. ‘Arrrrrrgh.’ She erupted into an ear-piercing scream.
One of the officers punched the alarm on the wall while me and another prison officer jumped on Carrie Webber.
Carrie Webber – one of the most violent female prisoners I’d ever encountered. Prisoners, officers, she wasn’t fussed who she attacked. She spent her days making weapons out of whatever she could get her hands on. Every night we’d search her cell and without fail we’d find something deadly she’d made or adapted out of prison materials. Shanks. Knives welded together from plastic and razor blades. Every morning we’d go in again and there’d be the garrotte woven from toilet paper, as strong as any rope. She slept with it all night long hidden under her pillow, plotting who to hurt next.
The officer held Carrie down while I removed today’s weapon of choice. A toothbrush with two razor blades melted into the plastic. Deadly, deliberately so. Carrie had designed it to cause maximum damage. She’d known full well that two slices across the skin, close together, would be much harder for the nurse to