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Roxie forced herself not to think about the future.
If the past few years had taught her one thing, it was that anything could happen. Live for today. Love for today. Forgive for today.
She repeated the mantra softly to herself as the train rattled on.
The worst thing about prison life was the boredom. The monotony of each day, broken only by bells and meals, and divided into chunks of time—work, leisure, exercise, sleep—that seemed to bear no relation to reality, to the rhythms of the world outside.
The only way to make it bearable was to detach from your former life completely. To forget who you had been on the outside, and accept this new world fully and without question.
Inmate 5067 had
become adept at such detachment. Of course, having a famous name made things harder. Other prisoners were less willing to put aside the past, to forget who Inmate 5067 really was—who the prisoner had been. They remembered why Inmate 5067 was here, despite the aristocratic name and political connections, rubbing shoulders with drug dealers and killers and stooping to manual labor just like the rest of them.
There was no violence. No intimidation. At least, there hadn’t been yet. But Inmate 5067 would never be accepted into mainstream prison society. Life was lonely. Then again, that was part of the punishment, wasn’t it? Part of what I deserve. Roxie’s visits were a lifeline in some ways, but they were also painful, a sharp reminder of all that prison had taken away.
Waiting in the visitors’ room as the prisoners’ families and friends filed in, Inmate 5067 felt breathless with anticipation. What if she hadn’t made it? What if something happened and she changed her mind? But no, there she was! Roxie, smiling as she maneuvered her wheelchair through the tables, the proverbial ray of sunshine.
My daughter. My darling daughter. God bless her for finding it in her heart to forgive.
Roxie opened her arms, full of love.
“Hello, Mother.” She was beaming. “It’s so good to see you.”
Chapter Forty-three
When the full story of Alexia De Vere’s past life and secrets emerged in the British press, it caused the biggest political scandal since the Profumo Affair back in the 1960s. Politics didn’t get dirtier, or more salacious than this. Shoot-outs on an American beach, murder, perjury, a secret identity and a string of corpses as long as your arm. The whole affair was a Fleet Street editor’s wet dream.
Of course, for those actually involved, the reality was both more tragic and more prosaic. Alexia De Vere herself felt lucky. Lucky to be alive—Lucy Meyer’s shot on the beach had merely scratched her shoulder, and the police rescue team had pulled her out of the water and given her mouth-to-mouth before any permanent brain or other damage was done. Minutes later, seconds later, and it could all have been over. Alexia tried not to think about that.
She was lucky in other ways too. Lucky to have had a chance to reconcile fully with Roxie, and with her darling Teddy before he died. (Teddy De Vere suffered a massive heart attack in his prison cell, the same week as Alexia’s extradition hearing in America.) She even felt lucky to be here, in a British jail rather than an American one, atoning at last for the sins of her past. Maybe now, finally, her dues to the gods would be paid. When she finally walked out of Holloway Women’s Prison, she would be a free woman, in more ways than one.
That terrifying day on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard had changed everything for Alexia. Whether it was God who saved her, or fate, or blind luck didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had been saved. She was convinced that she was alive for a reason. And the reason, at last, was clear.
She had to tell the truth. To bear witness.
There could be no more secrets.
From her hospital bed in Boston, Alexia told the police everything. She admitted being negligent in Nicholas Handemeyer’s death, from all those years ago, and allowing Billy Hamlin to go to jail in her stead. Double-jeopardy rules meant it was too late for her to be tried for involuntary manslaughter. In the end she was given a six-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
She also told the authorities that Teddy had been responsible for Billy Hamlin’s murder. She’d kept his secret thus far, but the whole truth had to come out now. Teddy was serving a life sentence anyway, and Alexia owed poor Billy that much at least.
Teddy had been good about it, writing Alexia a typically kind and amusing letter from his own jail cell. The worst part about it is that I shall have to go back to court and face all those ghastly reporters again. I’d happily sign up for a year in solitary if it meant never setting eyes on another white-sock-wearing pleb from the Sun ever again.
He still had no remorse about what he’d done. It was as if there were a gene missing. He seemed incapable of guilt. But by the same token, he shared none of Lucy Meyer’s hatred for his victims, none of Lucy’s blind, psychotic thirst for violence and for vengeance. In Teddy’s mind, he had merely done his duty—protected his family. The fact that two innocent men lost their lives as a result was dismissed as collateral damage, an unfortunate side effect that couldn’t be helped. Teddy died in his sleep a week before he was due in court for Billy Hamlin’s murder. Perhaps it was more than he deserved, after all he’d done. But Alexia took comfort in the fact that he had died peacefully. She loved him to the last.
As for herself, she’d already applied for permission to serve her sentence in England. Thanks to her full and frank confession, the fact that she had two “disabled” children in the UK, and her political and personal links with the country, the U.S. courts agreed. Alexia had arrived at Holloway three months ago and had seen Roxie on three occasions since.
“Has anyone else been to see you since I last visited?” Roxie asked.
“No, my darling. But you mustn’t worry. There’s no one else I want to see.”
Roxie found this hard to believe. She thought back to her childhood and how social her mother had been. Both her parents, in fact. Politics was a social profession if ever there was one. It had been Alexia’s drug for well over half her life.
“Really? No one from the old days? What about Henry Whitman?”
“Henry?” Alexia laughed loudly. “You must be joking. Do you know, the entire time I was in the Home Office, he thought I was about to expose him for having an affair? Can you believe it? He only appointed me because he thought it would keep me quiet. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“Why would he think that?”
