Today, Nico and Kelly are discussing their boobs. Kelly has ambitious plans for a body revamp when she gets out of prison, and has read up on breast augmentation with all the focus of a research scientist working towards their first Nobel Prize. Turkey is the place to go apparently, half the price and you get a free holiday after the operation. Clint will pay. Or perhaps she’ll blackmail some poor fucker more successfully next time and they’ll stump up. Nico is worried about general anaesthesia and has heard of a treatment where you can get an extra cup size added on through injections alone. Kelly looks disdainful at this idea. ‘Injectables for the face, babe, the tits need a little more work.’
They both turn to look at me. ‘What would you get done, Grace?’ Nico asks me, as they both assess my face before lowering their eyes to my chest. I’ve never minded the idea of surgery. I don’t want any part of the modern puffed-up plastic face phenomenon, but in general, a few tiny tweaks don’t make me outraged. I don’t think its mutilation, or an affront to feminism. If you hate something that you have to live with every day, then change it. I like my tits actually. They’re small, which means I can wear whatever I like without looking like a school matron from the Fifties. I like most of myself. Not in a desperately empowering millennial way, where stretch marks are rebranded as ‘warrior stripes’ and cellulite is referred to as ‘celluLIT’， but I know I’m nice looking. One day I’ll be as rough and wrinkled as everyone else, but right now, I have a cosmetic advantage. I use it to full effect. People cut me slack that others don’t get, why would I not acknowledge that? Energy spent on examining my every inadequacy would have been such a waste of my time.
And yet having said all that, I hate my nose. It’s a good nose by anyone else’s standards. I’ve been complimented by other women for its straight and clean line. But it’s an Artemis nose and that’s all I can see in the mirror. Marie used to rub it with her thumb when I was being naughty and tell me I had my father’s will. The rest of my face is all from her. Sometimes, not long after she’d died, I used to sit in front of the bathroom mirror at Helene’s flat, hovering so that I could only see my eyes staring back at me. I felt like I could see my mother in those moments. I would look into them, remembering all the times I’d looked up at her and felt safe. When my legs started to wobble from being bent in a precarious position, I’d have to stand up straight and the rest of my face would hove into view. The little comfort would be snatched away.
Bryony had her mother’s nose. Cute, small, tweaked a little bit by a surgeon. Identikit. If I didn’t see Simon in the mirror, I’d be grateful for my strong profile, proud to have a nose which didn’t adhere so strictly to rigid beauty standards. But as it was, I would have it changed in a second. I’ve consulted top-class surgeons before, I’ve seen what I could look like with a few tiny swipes of a blade. Cut the Artemis out entirely. The only reason I haven’t done it yet is because I wanted my father to recognise me as I stood over him and told him who I was.
I look up from the mug of tea in front of me, Kelly and Nico having completed their assessment of my face and body and are now waiting to see how my answer lines up with their suggestions. ‘Nothing,’ I say, taking a swig of the tepid water. ‘I don’t agree with surgery really.’
My solicitor comes to see me this afternoon, which is a rare chance to see someone other than Kelly or the stodgy, unsmiling guards who, honestly, I’m glad work here and not in one of the caring professions. Some of these women, I imagine, had a fork in the road where they might’ve become nurses, teachers, or therapists. Given their reaction when faced with mental illness, physical ailments, and even just scared young girls wanting a moment of reassurance, I can only say that they chose well to avoid those areas of expertise. At 11 a.m., I am led into the visitors’ room where George Thorpe is already waiting for me. His suit today is typically beautiful. A light navy wool, befitting the recent warmer days, and just a flash of a dull terracotta lining as he stands up. I do not look at his shoes. I, by contrast, am wearing a grey tracksuit. I wonder whether a stranger who walked into this room would pick me out as different, whether my demeanour or my posture would speak of a life so different to that of the other women in here. I have always recognised wealth in others, education in strangers, refinement in deportment. It’s a particularly British thing to know exactly where someone falls in the class system without a word being spoken, isn’t it? Some people claim not to notice, but they’re the same tiresome people who claim not to see race, and that’s almost always because they’re white and don’t ever have cause to. But the grey tracksuit is a great leveller. It’s hard to signal that you’re not like these others in an outfit made from flammable material that will be rotting in landfill for a hundred years. Even the earth doesn’t want it.