Heaven

DAY 207 SUNDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2002

7.21 am

Gail is angry. She’s recently bought a smart new dark green Peugeot, which she parks outside the hospital. Yesterday, one of the prisoners put matchsticks in her locks, so that when she tried to open the door, she pushed the matchstick further in and jammed the lock.

4.00 pm

Club Hospital meets for tea and biscuits. One of our new members, who has only been with us for a month, will be released tomorrow. He was charged with road rage and sentenced to three months. He will have spent six weeks in prison. I’ve watched him carefully at our get-togethers and as he goes about his business around the prison. He is well educated, well mannered and looks quite incapable of swatting a fly.

He tells the group that he stopped his car to go to the aid of a woman who was being attacked, but for his troubles, got punched to the ground by what turned out to be her boyfriend. The two of them then drove off. He returned home, but was later arrested for road rage as the woman bore witness that he attacked her. Had he gone to the police station first and reported them for assault, the other man would now be in jail, not him. He has lost his job with the pharmaceutical company he’s been with for twenty-one years, and is worried about getting another one now he has a criminal record. His wife has stuck by him, and she hopes that one of his old firm’s rivals will want to take advantage of his expertise. [24] This brings me onto the subject of wives.

Of the seven married Club members present today, two of their wives have had to sell their homes and move to smaller houses in another area; two have had to go out to work full time while trying to bring up children (three in one case, two in the other), and the other two have received divorce petitions while in jail. I’m the seventh.

I make no excuse for the crimes committed, but I feel it bears repeating that it’s often the wives who suffer even more than the husbands – for them there is no rehabilitation programme.