The Sculptress Read Free

out of her
mind? She smiled weakly. ‘Frankly, the rest is
irrelevant.’
    ‘ “It has always been obvious to me that Olive
is psychologically disturbed, possibly to the point of
paranoid schizophrenia or psychopathy.” Is that what
it says?’ Olive stood the glowing butt of her cigarette
on the table and took another from the packet. ‘I
don’t say I wasn’t tempted. Assuming I could have
got the court to accept that I was temporarily insane
when I did it, I would almost certainly be a free woman by now. Have you seen my psychological
reports?’ Roz shook her head. ‘Apart from an unremitting
compulsion to eat, which is generally considered
abnormal – one psychiatrist dubbed it a
tendency to severe self-abuse – I am classified
“normal”.’ She blew out the match with a gust of
amusement. ‘Whatever normal means. You’ve probably
got more hang-ups than I have but I assume you
fall into a “normal” psychological profile.’
    ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Roz, fascinated. ‘I’ve never
been analysed.’ I’m too frightened of what they might
find .
    ‘You get used to it in a place like this. I reckon
they do it to keep their hand in and it’s probably
more fun talking to a mother-hacker than a boring
old depressive. I’ve had five different psychiatrists put
me through the hoops. They love labels. It makes the
filing system easier when they’re trying to sort out
what to do with us. I create problems for them. I’m
sane but dangerous, so where the hell do they put
me? An open prison’s out of the question in case I
get out and do it again. The public wouldn’t like
that.’
    Roz held up the letter. ‘You say you were tempted.
Why didn’t you go along with it if you thought there
was a chance of getting out earlier?’
    Olive didn’t answer immediately but smoothed the
shapeless dress across her thighs. ‘We make choices.
They’re not always right but, once made, we have to live with them. I was very ignorant before I came
here. Now I’m streetwise.’ She inhaled a lungful of
smoke. ‘Psychologists, policemen, prison officers,
judges, they were all out of the same mould. Men in
authority with complete control of my life. Supposing
I’d pleaded diminished responsibility and they’d said
this girl can never get better. Lock the door and throw
away the key. Twenty-five years amongst sane people
was so much more attractive to me than a whole life
with mad ones.’
    ‘And what do you think now?’
    ‘You learn, don’t you? We get some real nut cases
in here before they’re transferred on. They’re not so
bad. Most of them can see the funny side.’ She balanced
a second dog-end next to her first. ‘And I’ll tell
you something else, they’re a damn sight less critical
than the sane ones. When you look like me, you
appreciate that.’ She scrutinized Roz from between
sparse blonde eyelashes. ‘That’s not to say I’d have
pleaded differently had I been more au fait with the
system. I still think it would have been immoral to
claim I didn’t know what I was doing when I knew
perfectly well.’
    Roz made no comment. What can you say to a
woman who dismembers her mother and sister and
then calmly splits hairs over the morality of special
pleading?
    Olive guessed what she was thinking and gave her
wheezy laugh. ‘It makes sense to me. By my own standards, I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s only the law,
those standards set by society, that I’ve transgressed.’
    There was a certain biblical flourish about that last
phrase, and Roz remembered that today was Easter
Monday. ‘Do you believe in God?’
    ‘No. I’m a pagan. I believe in natural forces.
Worshipping the sun makes sense. Worshipping an
invisible entity doesn’t.’
    ‘What about Jesus Christ? He wasn’t invisible.’
    ‘But he wasn’t God either.’ Olive shrugged. ‘He
was a prophet, like Billy Graham. Can you swallow
the garbage of the Trinity? I