Back in London, I had chosen my A levels, settling on English, French, and Business Studies. Jimmy spent a lot of time going over university prospectuses with his parents, and discussing the merits of different Oxbridge colleges over dinner as Annabelle and I made a great performance of rolling our eyes and sighing loudly. I wasn’t going to uni, much to the dismay of John and Sophie, who seemed not to understand that there was any other option. In their eyes, finishing education at 18 would fast-track you towards a job packing boxes in warehouses, pregnant, on drugs, or possibly worse – it might mean you had to move out of London and live miles away from an artisanal cheese shop. But I wasn’t wasting three more years on rigid learning, getting into debt, and wasting time with other students, who I assumed would spend their free time talking earnestly about safe spaces and organising ineffective marches on rainy days. I had things to do.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Unsurprisingly, most prison activities are compulsory. Some of it is set up as though you might have a choice, ‘There’s a quiz night tonight in the TV room, we’ll need you ladies to pair up!’ but when you politely opt out, a guard will drop the forced smile and say, ‘Six p.m., Grace, I expect to see you there with a partner.’ And then Kelly will grab my hand and announce loudly that we’ll be playing together and I will unsuccessfully try to disassociate from my body. Today there is a non-optional lecture on how to be a boss. All morning, Kelly has been singing ‘Who run the world? GIRLS!’ at the top of her lungs as though the seminar will be the first step towards managing a FTSE 500 company and not an exercise in platitudes designed to tick a box on a government target form somewhere. ‘Empower these women,’ some young wonk in a short-sleeved shirt has said, ‘we need to encourage them to channel their specific skills into more mainstream work opportunities!’ As if Kelly and all the other women on my wing will be shown how to make their blackmail, theft, fraud, and other assorted crimes work in a more respectable way. To be fair to some of these girls, in another life they would have made great bankers. But even for bankers, a line in murder might be frowned upon. I have a few hours before the ghastly talk so I shall get back to writing.
When I left school and refused to go to university, so upsetting John and Sophie, I got work in the Sassy Girl shop in Camden. An obvious plotline for our heroine I hear you say, but I was 18, had to start somewhere and I naively imagined that working for one of Simon’s businesses would give me an advantage. I started in the stockroom, unboxing deliveries and affixing price tags, and graduated to the tills shortly after. The days were long and frantic. Stock flew off the shelves. The brand knew exactly how to appeal to teenagers back then, selling whatever had been on the hottest celebrity mere days ago. This process was a mystery to me – I remember imagining that the in-house designers must have had their finger so on the pulse that their clothes matched up with the latest couture completely. I later understood the reality: Artemis Holdings had grim-faced women in head office subtly altering said couture designs and running the amendments past the legal department. Once greenlit, the garments would be made up in any kind of synthetic fabric they had at the ready. The teenagers didn’t give a shit. Glittery jean shorts as seen on their favourite singer for ￡15, who cares that they smell faintly of rubber?
I surprised myself by enjoying my time on the shop floor. I didn’t have a minute to stop and think, I just worked really hard and did whatever was asked of me. Folding up stained and crumpled polyester after it had been discarded in the changing rooms put me off cheap clothes for life, but my diligence got the attention of my boss, a slightly scrawny woman who I thought was ancient but was probably under 30. She put me forward for the Artemis trainee manager scheme, a grand title which just meant I could be entrusted with handling the day’s profits. Aged 19, I was a titled employee with a badge and a lanyard and the power to discipline new backroom staff.
Jimmy was off to uni, along with most of our year group. There were a few who made it to Oxbridge, but mainly they flocked to Sussex, where it was said that drugs and parties were most plentiful, and Manchester, which gave cosseted North London kids some delusional idea that they were really roughing it. Sophie, bless her, managed to spin Jimmy’s rejection from Oxford as a sort of moral triumph.
‘Well, Oxbridge is just too stuffy really, Sussex is such a vibrant campus and so progressive. The kids really learn so much more about the world than we did at St Hilda’s. Lucky Jim!’