The One You Shouldn't Hurt

By Mica Le Fox

I thought she hated me... after all I was just another woman prison officer to vent her sarcasm, to flirt with. Sophie van Beringer was due for parole after eleven years in high security institutions for committing a hideous crime as a child and I did my best to keep her out of trouble until her release, but somehow she found ways to make life difficult for me... dear God she was so cynical and manipulative. But here's the paradox: she had grown up to be intelligent and beautiful; a prize for the gang leaders who used her sexiness for their own ends and she was hopelessly entangled in the seedy underbelly of the institution.
Then one day I saw another side of her - a vulnerable side that needed me. She became caught up in an altercation and got a bloody nose. In the aftermath she was shocked and upset so I tried to comfort her... and suddenly she was in my arms, crying softly, kissing me and I just could not stop from responding. Yes, I realise it was wrong and I was consumed with guilt. I know what you're thinking... I was as bad as the pimps she was already a victim to. Yes, but my body simply took over and I kissed her back.
Soon after, Sophie was released with a new identity and that should have been the end of our little fledgling love story, but when I got a call from her parole residence officer saying Sophie needed me, I knew I had to go - and life would never be the same again.
This is a lesbian love story that starts in a young offenders' institute and should have stopped there. She, the girl who once committed a violent crime but the psychiatrists say is now cured. Me, the sensible, practical prison officer who should have known better but couldn’t help herself.
It contains adult and erotic themes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mica Le Fox
• Release date: Jun 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005544799

Mica Le Fox

Totally out of my depth at an academic school I mercifully discovered I could draw and blagged my way into a career in advertising and visual arts. So far, so not too bad. It's been OK, but writing has been part of my remit and I've always itched to do more, so here I am, blagging my way into book writing. It's all fiction. Fiction is often way better than real life and I spend most of my time thinking things up. But I will never try to make you accept the completely unbelievable. If you watch, say, science fiction on TV, it's alright to 'suspend your disbelief' - I do - but not to accept the unbelievable. I hope my books will introduce to you human characters (mostly) with ordinary human emotions and fallibilities. I especially like fallibilities... they are the most interesting thing about us all and certainly the best to write about. I want you to have a booky window on people sometimes making mistakes... maybe sometimes getting it right as well. And I will try to make you feel what they do, you know, like you are in their shoes... well, unless they're undressed of course. Whether I do all this well is another matter, I only write these stories so I have no idea. Anyway, it's for you to decide. Buy the books and let me know. Ha! Blagging again.

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The One You Shouldn’t Hurt

By Mica Le Fox

Copyright 2022 Mica Le Fox

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I’m not one for the sensational, but I would be guarding one of the most famous child-murderers in history and you couldn’t help but be curious, could you?

She was still famous… well, we should really call her infamous and after eleven years she could still fill a gap in a popular newspaper when news was a bit thin. She even got a page three article in a red-top on moving from Gaumont Secure Children’s Unit to Haveley four years ago when she was sixteen. ‘Mother Killer Grows Up’. That was the headline and the editorial writer barely concealed his satisfaction in giving us details about the hostile reception she would undoubtedly receive at the young offenders’ institution, even though Haveley was seen by some as a softer option. It’s a condition of my job to remain detached, but I think that must have been a hard time for her.

Well yes, Haveley was a big step from a children’s unit. Gone were any vestiges of childhood, even though some might say hers ended at the age of nine anyway. At a young offenders’ institute, she would now mix with some seriously violent girls with, if it were possible, worse reputations than her own. Look at it this way - she made just one fatal attack in her life, dreadful as it was, whereas most of the others were only there at all because they were repeated offenders of serious crime and sometimes horrendous brutality.

However, Haveley was far from the worst unit in the UK. In fact, it was considered a forward-thinking institution that put store by allowing girls more options, at least ten hours outside their rooms and access to the outside with sports courts and even an allotment, something almost unheard of in the realms of high security incarceration.

By and large it seemed to work - violence was significantly lower than every other similar unit, education uptake by inmates was higher and reoffending – the primary consideration – was lower.

All this is not to say a term at Haveley would be like a stay at Center Parcs. Bullying and attacks were still an everyday occurrence. Prostitution, phones, cigarettes and drugs were common currency and there was a hierarchy of unofficial authority amongst the inmates that made vicious despots out of some and brought misery to others. But if you were in her position and had a choice, you’d probably pick Haveley.

But she certainly didn’t have that choice, so how come she was sent there? After all, she was portrayed in the media as a matricidal psychopath and leniency was far from what many believed she deserved.

The answer was simple: rehabilitation. By the time she left Gaumont, she had taken her first major exams and gained a sackful of A+ grades. She was academically gifted and this was seen as the gateway to successful reintegration into society.

Think about it. Everything was stacked against her... inconsistent teaching, disruption, peer hostility, jealousy and resentment and not least, her own traumatic history. But after moving on to Haveley, she simply strolled through the whole education thing and came out the other side with the grades and potential to gain a good degree and a career. That’s as rare as hens’ teeth for anyone going through the criminal justice system, which made the redemption pros outweigh the public opinion cons and she was sent to Haveley.

Yes, meeting her was going to be interesting.

Me? I’m Jane, the second eldest of four Winterburn sisters. Having an oversupply of sisters means that I am a robust sort of girl and growing up in a Catford family that had to work at making ends meet could be a war zone - or a rerun of the Yalta Conference - each one needing resilience and skilful negotiation to ensure an outcome that gained a slot in Mum and Dad’s en suite bathroom and at least an hour on Portal 2 after homework.

I can’t say I considered it at the time, but I think all this prepared me well for the life I have chosen and at Young Offenders’ Institution Trent, I had a reputation for equity… being open to discussion, but not a pushover.

Following graduation, I entered the prison service, which I have to say was viewed with some scepticism by my family and friends who could not quite understand how I could opt for a career in such a demotivating and frankly terrifying environment. On the contrary, I saw opportunities - I would rather make an impact in a challenging environment than be insignificant in a safe one. Anyway, it’s my career.

Starting out at Trent three years ago, I learned the finer points of containment. Inmates banged up for as much as twenty hours a day with minimal access to fresh air and what education and the learning opportunities available were largely treated with contempt by prisoners. This, I believe, turned our job into a rearguard holding operation, quelling corruption, aggression, bullying and insurrection.

I don’t know, sometimes it felt like we were an occupying force, the guards doing a capable job of suppression… but ultimately, authoritarian occupation is untenable.

From my first days at Haveley, I could see the difference. Here, not every girl took up what was on offer, but at least there was a conversation about options and consequently many completed their education. It’s true that Haveley is only half the size of Trent and new ideas are that much easier to implement, but that’s not the whole story. It is also about wider change in ideology and Haveley was the role model for the olive branch approach to penal reform. Put your hand out and expect to get it snapped at a couple of times, but then something amazing happens. The third time you do it, a girl may learn to play guitar… or write poetry… or grow vegetables.

I’ve always been a reform sort of girl and was a believer in what was going on at Haveley, even before I got here. At my interview for the job, sitting chatting to Governor Jennifer Cope, I knew that I eventually wanted to be on her side of the desk. It must have shown and I got the job.

Anyway, look, I’m not here to talk about the politics of the justice system. I’m here to tell you about one infamous girl who was making her way within it. Her and me - or she and I, as she would have said.

So now you’re wondering, there is going to be a she and I?

Well yes, in ways I could not have dreamed of there was going to be a she and I. But it’s a story - our story and we should begin at the beginning.

I first set eyes on her as I came to take up my position with my watch-buddy, Sian, to one side of the Rec – the recreation area. It was my third day and I was undergoing rapid assimilation into the system, which involved getting to know the protocols, the environment, the names and who to watch out for - you know, about the way things worked here. In return, as a newbie, I received plenty of cat-calling, vague, quickly retracted threats and even an offer of an afternoon of passionate love-making - although that’s not the term she used - in her cell.

Here in the Rec, it was our job to keep an eye on things, looking out for any sign of trouble. But today all was quiet with inmates sitting around playing games on tables or on their laptops.

We have the pleasure of the mother-slayer’s company today. Sian leaned towards me and nodded into the room.

I followed her eyes across the Rec to where a dark-haired girl sat at a table on her own, reading a book.

That’s her?

Yep, that’s Sophie van Beringer. She’s usually in some class or other, or maybe in the library. They must have chucked her out.

I gazed across the perhaps twenty feet to where she sat and saw what looked like a pretty girl in her late teens or early twenties, engrossed in a book. The whole scene seemed to belie the facts that here was Sophie van Beringer who, as a nine-year-old, walked calmly into her parents’ bedroom, climbed onto the bed, sat astride her mother and pushed a kitchen knife into her neck.

Sian must have seen my fascination, watching me watching her, because she gave a slight smile. She has that effect on people.

I snapped out of my trance. Hmm. What’s she like?

A total Braniac. She’s got the best ever set of exam results from justice system education and a place at Manchester University to study biochemistry.

I heard she was clever. Does she get stick from the other girls?

Sian nodded. Yeah, some. Can’t not, can she? I mean, not only is she amazingly clever - but look at her.

I screwed up my eyes to focus in on her across the distance. She did look very attractive and as I observed her, she looked up and caught my eye, holding my gaze for a few seconds before turning a page and looking down again.

From experience, I immediately thought of the darker implications of her appearance. Yes, she looks like she might be a target.

Yep. She’s a bit of a babe magnet, but she’s also irritatingly arrogant. Sian glanced at me. Which is not good for dealing with life in here.

Something in me welled up at the sheer paradoxical travesty of it. Here was a girl who appeared to have a surfeit of good looks and intelligence, but eleven years ago had committed an act so brutal she would go down in the annals of history ranked a couple of notches below Jack the Ripper. I mean, she did what she did to her mother and that was truly horrific, but Sophie van Beringer had also, after just nine years of her life, blighted the remaining… well, possibly seventy years.

But like I said, I have to remain detached.

By the end of the week, most of the inmates knew me. I’d established I was going to be friendly and that I would happily stand and banter with anyone, unless it crossed the line when I’d be much more on the nail of official procedure. You know… I was putting my hand out first.

But I’m no shrinking violet and when push comes to shove - and it does exactly that sometimes - I can handle myself. I may look slight, but I keep myself fit with running and Muay Thai and could blunt the attack of a much larger person if necessary – with a bit of luck.

The thing is, they are mostly teenagers with the same problems and worries as any on the outside, so if I see a girl is upset, I give her my time and come back later to see that she’s OK.

One evening at dinner time – you will not hear me calling it feeding time – I paced slowly around the perimeter of the dining hall. Van Beringer was sitting on my side of the room and I noticed her flinch. Looking more closely, I saw the girl sitting opposite use her spoon as a trebuchet to launch mashed potato at her across the table so I made my way down the aisle to arrive at their bench just in time for Sturridge – I read her name tag – to score a direct hit on Van Beringer’s tee shirt.

What must your mealtimes have been like at home, Sturridge.

She looked up at me insolently. At least they were better than this. We didn’t have psychos at the table.

You should understand that in places like this, the word ‘psycho’ trips off the tongues of inmates. For the person using the word, everyone else is a psycho.

Well, that may have been the case, but you’ve just let us all know that in your house, there was at least one person with the table manners of a chimp.

Oh, you’re funny…

She was about to say more, but I put my hand up to halt her. Just try to get your food into your mouth and nowhere else, as difficult as that seems to be for you, Ms Sturridge.

I glanced at Van Beringer who had been quietly observing me do my job. She looked back for a moment, her face a surly mask of disinterest, before I turned and resumed my patrol.

I had stepped in to curtail Sturridge’s bullying with, I hoped, a veneer of humour and a light touch, but knew that intervention was a tricky area and could easily make life much worse for the victim after I’d gone so it could well have been that Van Beringer didn’t want my interference.

. . .

The girl sitting on a chair in the kitchen watched as I unpacked the groceries I’d picked up on my way home from work, her bare heels balanced on the edge of the chair, hands clasping her shins to keep her knees up under her chin.

Maisie is my live-in girlfriend and she is, well, what I’m working for. She’s pretty, intelligent, great fun to be with and caring. If I take a BDF home with me – that’s a Bad Day Fallout – usually after I’d been subjected to some serious verbal abuse or even been bounced off the walls of a cell, Maisie will pick me up and revive me with some of her creamy fettuccini, perhaps half a bottle of Chardonnay and then a dessert of cuddles in front of the television.

What? I feel her eyes upon me across the kitchen.

You, she replies enigmatically.

Do I have something on my face?

In response, she releases her shins and her feet drop to the floor. She stands and makes her way over to me, swaying her hips in a theatrically provocative way.

No, it’s just… your uniform.

I say, What about it? But I know what she’s doing.

Oh, nothing. It’s just a bit… you know…

If you want to have sex with me, you can just ask.

I’m tall, about five ten, so she has to go on tiptoes to put her nose up against mine. "What I want is for you to take your uniform off very slowly, then I’ll decide if I want to have sex with you."

She brushes the epaulette on my shoulder.

Mais, you can’t have it both ways. I assume an air of long-suffering tolerance, as if I am educating a novice in the ways of high deviancy. "I’m in the uniform so I get to be the dominant female. You get to be the supplicant femme. We have hot sex with me on top and then I get first dibs at the last Magnum in the freezer. You know that’s how it works."

She says, "Oh yeah? Actually, it’s just the uniform that turns me on. There could be almost anyone in it and it would make no difference so crack on and get it off."

So, I pinch her bottom and she goes, Ow! I offer to kiss it better and we inevitably end up in bed before dinner.

We’ve been together for eighteen months, having met at Trent where Maisie is a social worker specialising in the rehabilitation of girls coming to the end of their terms. We’d shared a coffee break, got to talking about food and I said I thought she’d be a vegan because she had magenta streaks in her hair. She said, hmm, I’d need to come to dinner to discover if that were true and for her to discover if I was a judgemental fascist or just made risky jokes to strangers.

She made a memorably awful Spaghetti Bolognese but on the plus side turned out to be a memorably amazing lover and at two in the morning I asked if she had anything to eat. I’d eaten only a very polite portion of spaghetti at dinner and sex always makes me hungry so we went to the kitchen and returned to eat pikelets and Nutella in bed. Two months later, we moved in together.

. . .

Ah, Jane. How are you settling in? Jennifer Cope smiled when we met in the corridor, she about to go into her office, me on my way to the staff room.

Good thanks. Getting the hang of things, Governor.

It’s ‘Jennifer’ while we’re away from the inmates.

I smiled and nodded. It’s a fair bit calmer here than at Trent.

Yes, well I know we have our skirmishes, but we’re making progress.

We chatted for a minute then she asked, Have you met Sophie van Beringer?

I told her about the mashed potato incident at which she remarked on our having to deal with the fusion of schoolgirl humour with outright adult aggression but she said it sounded like I’d handled it well.

But what with one thing and another, Sophie is remarkable… and quite a puzzle. Jennifer peered at me over her rimless glasses. You know she has done phenomenally well in her exams and has a place at The University of Manchester?

Yes, I did hear. That must be almost unheard of in the justice system.

It is. What it means is that I expect her to be released to start the new term at Manchester in five months’ time. All things being well and with the psychiatrists agreeing, the parole board will almost certainly take the opportunity to allow her to start with the university intake in September. It does make a lot of sense and avoids the unnecessary transfer to a full prison when she’s twenty-one, which would be a pity.

Yes, I see. That is amazing. She must be very clever.

Oh, she is, she is. But that’s the quandary. She’s the smartest girl in here by far and if I’m honest that includes much of the staff as well. The problem is, she lets everyone know it. She has a painfully superior attitude and gets everyone’s back up. Her psychiatrist says it’s a classic defence mechanism.

I nodded. Does she get abuse?

Almost certainly. She never reports anything of course, but I’m pretty sure she comes in for some unwanted attention, bullying and sexual.

Somehow, I had a feeling this was going somewhere.

Which brings me to my point. I wanted to ask a favour, Jane.

There, I knew it. How can I help?

I want you to keep an eye on her. It doesn’t have to be anything official; she already has a supervisor. Harriet MacDonald is very good, but she’s older. You’re not much older than Sophie and you are good at getting the girls on your side. I think she’d benefit from that.

Cope’s secretary began to gesticulate from her office door, her attention needed elsewhere now. She nodded at him and put a finger up to ask for a minute more.

The thing is, Jane, she will be released in five months with a new identity and lifelong anonymity, but we need to get her there with as little trauma as possible. I mean, her life has been traumatic enough already, but when she leaves here, after eleven years it’s going to be a real shock to the system for her. All right, I know we’re making a fuss about someone who a lot of people would rather we left to rot, but somehow, I think the effort will be worth it with her.

She turned towards her office. Look, I know it sounds like I’m asking you to babysit the most notorious inmate in Haveley just because you’re both young, but let’s just say I’m optimising my resources. Jennifer chuckled at her own ironic use of bureaucratic jargon. Get to know her, look out for her and try to keep her out of trouble… and a bit of life mentoring will help her, I think. Nothing on the record, just a bit of guidance with a light touch might make a difference when she tackles life on the outside.

OK, I’ll… um… introduce myself.

The garden would be a good place to catch her – and keep me posted on progress now and again.

Then she was gone,