The World Out There - 26. Twenty-Six

He’d hated The Group since the first time he’d had to attend it.

During his first Group there had been a discussion about masturbation, though it had been dominated by one girl complaining loudly that the boys all did it. He had not said a word but silently he’d begged the universe to allow his chair to just swallow him up and take him away from there as embarrassment flooded his mind.

The ward’s patients were divided up into two groups, seven patients in each. The one Liam had to attend met on Monday and Thursday afternoons at four o’clock when he’d returned from the Education Centre. It was mostly run by Janet; but if she wasn’t on duty for some reason or other, then Val, one of the ward’s two Deputy Charge Nurses, would run it, and there would always be another nurse there too, though it was never Aiden.

The aim of The Group was to be “a safe place to talk about emotions and issues concerning them” as he was told at his first one. Even as he first heard it, Liam was certain he wouldn’t be taking advantage of that: talking about how he felt had never served him well in the past - why would it start doing so now? Quickly, he’d felt he had been proved right. So many Group meetings usually considered of someone there complaining about something or other, and the someone doing the complaining was usually the same person.

The other patients in his Group were Britney, Chrissy, TJ, Wayne, Arron and Jared. Though he rarely spoke in the meetings, except to tell Janet that he was “okay”, he had quickly grown to know the other members.

That Monday afternoon had been a warm autumn day. He’d have rather been sat out in Nurton Cross’s garden reading his book and enjoying the sun’s warmth on his body, except he had to get through an hour of The Group before he could. As always, they were sat on hard red plastic chairs arranged in a circle in the ward’s Meeting Room. Janet sat at one side of the group dressed in her usual neat clothes of dark trousers and ironed cotton blouse. Opposite her sat Gary, looking far more scruffy, in jeans and an orange long-sleeved top. The other members of The Group filled out the rest of the circle. Liam sat with his back pressed into his chair, waiting for it all to be over.

Britney was talking, as she had been for most of the meeting. “He didn’t show up, last Saturday, and I was like waiting for him all day, like some fucking idiot. What kind of dad would stand up his own daughter like that? What kind of bastard does that to his own daughter? It’s the sixth time he’s done it”

“Bet he doesn’t like you too,” Wayne said, with an obvious sneer in his voice.

“Wayne! We’re not negative to each other in Group! You know that!” Janet said.

“Have you thought your dad doesn’t like you?” Wayne said, staring straight at Britney.

“He does love me. All parents love their children - it’s only natural,” Britney replied with her usual confidence in what she had said.

Liam glanced down at his feet as she said this.

“My father said he hated me,” Jared said, his voice flat and toneless, the way it so often was.

“Yeah, after what you did, I’m sure he hates you,” Britney said.

“Britney! Don’t speak to Jared like that! You know the rules of Group,” Janet said.

“They’re all nasty to me and they get away with it. I’m honest about one other member of Group and you rip me a new one,” Britney replied, glaring back at Janet.

“Jared, did you feel Britney was being honest about you?” Janet asked.

“No,” Jared flatly replied, though Liam could see he wasn’t looking at anyone as he spoke.

“Britney, what do you have to say to Jared?” Janet said.

“Nothing, because he doesn’t know what I’m going through. My dad is the most important man in my life, and he’s let me down again. None of you lot know what that is like. I’m really hurting,” Britney replied.

Liam shuffled slightly in his chair. Why where they talking about this?

“Have you asked people in The Group if they’ve been let down by their parents?” Janet asked, her voice level but firm.

“They don’t care. They don’t feel things as I do. No one here is as sensitive as me - no one feels things the way I do,” Britney said.

“You’re so selfish,” TJ said, as he now stared back at her.

“TJ!” Janet said.

“It’s true. She makes everything about her. She’s always going on about things as if they only affect her. I’m sick of it,” TJ said.

“She is sitting right here and she does feel things more than you because you never say anything here,” Britney snapped.

Why did she thinking shouting made her seem more sensitive? Liam had heard his mother shouting enough and she hadn’t been that sensitive.

“Because no one gets a chance to say anything,” Chrissy said.

“Group isn’t a place to attack each other,” Janet said.

“But every time it’s always about Britney. No one gets to say anything because Britney is always talking. If we do say anything then Britney starts up with how she’s done it first and its always worse for her,” Chrissy said.

“That’s not true!” Britney hissed. “I feel things more than the rest of you lot.”

“No, you just go on and on all the time,” Arron said.

“And you’re boring,” Wayne said. “Eastenders is fun even if it’s stupid.”

“They’re all having a go at me for being honest!” Britney complained, now staring straight at Janet.

“And you have been nasty to so many people here. No one has the right to be the centre of attention all the time. You have to give other people the chance to talk too,” Janet replied.

“I haven’t upset anyone! I’m never been nasty to no one!” Britney protested.

“You were nasty to me all the time,” Jared said.

“You don’t count,” Britney snapped.

“Yes, he does,” TJ said.

But Britney seemed to just ignore him too. She carried on saying, “I was hurt and let down by my own dad. None of you lot has gone through that. None of you lot knows how I’m hurting. Isn’t that the worst thing, being let down by your own dad?” Britney’s last remark was directed straight at him, she obviously wanted Liam to agree with her now.

“My mum refuses to see me here. She says I stress her out too much, but I miss her so much,” Liam said, the words falling out of his mouth before he had chance to think about them.

“Yeah, but you’re only a little kid and don’t count,” Britney hissed.

“Don’t speak like that! Everyone is important here and you have been monopolising all the time. Let someone else talk,” Janet said, her voice level but still commanding.

“Like they matter?” Britney muttered.

“Liam, do you want to talk about what you’ve just said?”

“No… No,” he quietly replied.

“Okay,” Janet said.

“It’s still shit though, when it happens,” Jared said, and Liam nodded his head in agreement.

“And it’s far worse for girls!” Britney announced.

“And this a space for everyone to talk, not just you,” Janet replied.

<><><><>

As he did most times, Liam had hung back at the end of The Group, just watching the others there leave the room. He liked to watch them, even Janet and whichever nurse it was. Today it had been Gary. He liked to just look at them when they didn’t know he was doing so, to just watch them for a quiet moment.

Liam knew what these six other kids all looked like: he spent so much of The Group watching them. He avoided speaking there as much as he could because the other kids were so much older than him - they were all in their late teens, three, four and five years older than him - and they were all concerned with things that seemed so alien to him. He also knew that keeping quiet was still the safer choice, especially in situations where there were more than one other. He knew what Aiden and Dr Sayeed had said, and he was trying to do so, but it was so much easier when there was only one other person there, and The Group never felt a safe enough place for him to talk, let alone to try and make friends.

He had hung back on the opposite side of the Meeting Room, slowly moving the red plastic chairs back to their place at the side of the room, carefully watching the others leave the room.

The first to leave, almost hurriedly bursting out of the room, was Britney. Her very blonde hair was cut into a short style that was almost sculpted into the contours of her head, while her face was always highlighted with make-up - that day she was wearing bright red lipstick. She always wore body hugging clothes - skinny jeans or leggings and t-shirts and tops that were form hugging tight, even though her figure did not have many curves to it. Her breasts and hips barely caused any curve to her figure.

Next out of the room were Chrissy and TJ. They always seemed to be together. They didn’t walk around hand-in-hand, but they were always together, sitting together in the Common Room, eating all their meals together. They even sat together in The Group. Chrissy had a much more curving figure than Britney, but she always wore baggy and oversized clothes, dull blue jeans and always long-sleeved tops, hiding her body away with both her arms always covered. Her round face never seemed to have any make-up on it, but neither did she seem diminished by this. Her lips were naturally dark red. A blush of pale freckles was painted across the top of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, under her bright green eyes. Most days she wore her strawberry blonde hair tied back in a ponytail which trailed down past her shoulders.

TJ was as equally attractive as Chrissy, though he was attractive in very different ways. He did nothing to hide his muscular body under his clothes. He always wore skinny jeans or snuggly fitting shorts, while the tops and shirts he wore clung tightly to the contours of his chest and back. TJ was mixed race, with golden brown skin and brightly shining brown eyes, while the features of his face were strong and sharply defined. He kept his dark brown hair carefully styled, trimmed short at the sides and back but he allowed it to stay long on top, where it fell back over his head in shiny and spiralling curls. Liam tried to sneak appreciative glances at TJ during The Group, his guilty pleasure in glancing at TJ’s good looks. He took a moment to indulge in one of those furtive glances now.

Wayne and Arron hurried after Chrissy and TJ, but they always seemed to be together too, though theirs was the comradery of best friends, bros together. Their doughy white bodies were always enclosed in an almost uniform of over-loose jogging bottoms, oversized t-shirts, oversized hoodies if the weather was particularly cold, and always brightly coloured trainers on their feet. For more than several weeks, they had both been wearing the same style of bright orange trainers. Their round faces were framed by the same crew-cut hair styles, bristling stubble covering their heads. Liam never had any problems telling them apart: Wayne had dirty blonde hair and his hands were always hidden away in his pants’ pockets, while Arron had black hair and a chin that seemed permanently covered in angry ache.

Jared slowly followed behind them. He was in his late teens, like everyone else in The Group, except Liam, but he was no taller that Liam. His body was slight, hidden away inside baggy and dark clothes. Liam had quickly noticed that so many of the other kids on the ward wore dark and baggy clothes. Jared’s clothes seemed to revolve between a dark blue woollen jumper and a black jumper, and two pairs of very dark blue jeans. His skin was very pale, so pale that it seemed as if Jared had never seen sunshine, not once in his life. This was in contrast to his very black hair, which covered his head in a thick but very messy pellet that stretched down to rest on his slim shoulders. When he walked, he kept his head down, his body moving purposefully forward, as he was doing now.

Liam went to pick up the next plastic chair when he heard Janet’s voice, “Liam, you can’t stay in here on your own.”

He glanced up and saw she was still in the room. He hadn’t noticed that she had stayed there. Hadn’t she left with Gary?

“Yes, I know. Sorry,” Liam mumbled, as he too headed towards the room’s door.

<><><><>

It was the following Friday afternoon, about an hour or so before dinner, and Liam was working in the Common Room. He was sat by himself at the table there and writing another essay for Mrs Williams. This one was about Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, mad Catholic Mary. All he had to do was argue his point, but he didn’t know what his point was. She had been the country’s Queen, but also, she had a lot of people burnt to death and she seemed fanatical about her religion. What was with it the woman?

He was staring down at his notes and only realised someone else was there when he heard a chair being pulled back. He looked up and saw Britney sitting down on the chair next to him. She was broadly smiling at him, her lips painted a very bright red, causing her smile seemingly to cut across her face.

She lent her head in towards him and hissed, “Your shit doesn’t smell so sweet.”

“What?” he replied.

“I know all about you.”

She pushed a brown, manila folder across the table towards him. It was one of the folders they used all the time in the Education Centre, but he hadn’t seen her place it on the table.

“People around here won’t like you much when they know about you,” she said.

“They don’t like me now,” he quietly said.

“Then they’ll fucking hate you.”

She pushed her folder into the pages of the note pad he was using.

“If you shame me again like you did, then I’ll fucking tell everyone about you,” she hissed at me.

“Britney! What are doing?” Cindi’s voice called out, as she walked up to the table.

“I’m just having a chat with my new mate Liam here,” Britney replied, now smiling up at Cindi, who had stopped next to the table.

“Why don’t you go and annoy someone else? Wayne and Aaron look bored. Why don’t you go and upset them?” Cindi said to Britney.

“They’re so fucking boring. I bet their fucking gay,” Britney said.

“Leave Liam alone,” Cindi said.

Glaring angrily up at Cindi, Britney slowly pushed her chair backwards and slowly stood up.

“I’ll go and talk to Wayne and Aaron,” Britney said. “Remember Liam, you need friends around here.”

Britney turned her back on them and slowly walked away. As Cindi’s attention was on Britney for a moment, Liam pushed the manila folder into the back of his note book.

“Are you okay?” Cindi asked him.

“Yes. Yes,” he told her, looking up into Cindi’s face. She wore a slightly concerned expression, her mouth in small smile and her dark eyes watching him.

“Ignore Britney, she really does talk crap and she hasn’t got any friends here either,” Cindi said, before she walked away from the table.

<><><><>

He didn’t open that folder until he went to bed that night. He’d left his notebook with the folder inside of it in his room before they all went into the dining room for dinner that night. He decided he couldn’t go straight to his room after dinner: that would have looked far too suspicious. He’d quickly realised the nurses there watched them and the nurses were good at it. So he’d sat in the Common Room, reading his book for a couple of hours. He didn’t want anyone thinking he was up to anything. But again and again his mind kept turning to Britney’s folder. What was in it? Why had she given it to him? What was happening? He had to see inside that folder.

At just before nine o’clock, he told Elizabeth, the nurse in the Common Room, that he felt tired and wanted to go to bed. She let him go to his bedroom without any questions.

Once he was left alone in his room, he changed into his pyjamas: again, he didn’t want anyone thinking he was up to anything usual. He’d complained of feeling tired, then he should be in bed, or it look like he was. He didn’t question why he was suddenly being so underhanded - he just had to read the contents of that folder without anyone else knowing. It seemed so important to do so.

He climbed into bed, pushing his body under its covers, and when he was finally sat upright there, he opened that folder.

Inside were a collection of newspaper cuttings and news articles from newspaper websites. He recognised all the tabloid newspapers they came from. They had obviously been printed off from the web, on the flimsy printer paper used in the Education Centre. It quickly became obvious that they were about him, well, about his crime and trial.

The first were reports about his crime. Angry and large headlines shouted out, “Killer in the Playground”, “Knife Welding 12yr Old”, “Cold Blooded Killer of 12”. All of these articles were short of details but high on sensationalism and self-righteousness. Repeatedly they called him savage and uncontrolled. They seemed to have been written in a way to heighten what had happened and were trying to make people afraid of him, even though they never used his name.

Next were two newspaper articles about Rhys Clarke being named as the boy Liam killed. Both of them were written in an uncomfortably sensationalist way. They both claimed that Clarke had been a star pupil and “all round athlete”, tapped to be the captain of both the school’s football and cricket teams when he was old enough. Both of them were filled with quotes from Gemma Clarke, claiming Rhys had never been in any trouble, never hurt anyone and had always been a “loving son.” Gemma Clarke, though not naming him, had called him a “sick monster” who hated her son out of sheer jealousy. He didn’t recognise the Rhys Clarke described in those articles, but he felt painful stabs of guilt as he read them.

Then there were a handful of opinion pieces, all written before his trial, the first two headlined “When Will This Madness Stop?” and “Our Children are Scarified to Knife Crime.” He stopped reading the titles after that. These articles all seemed to have the same theme: children and knife crimes. They all used his crime as a way to complain that society was falling to pieces because children were using knives to kill each other. Their arguments were blunt, that he was the typical of children being swept up in knife crime, using knives to solve their arguments where once only fists were used - immoral children who would rather kill than try to work out their problems. The articles made him so uncomfortable, and many times just sad, because none of them seemed to have known one thing about what really happened, but they were very quick to jump to judgement against him.

Next came another news article dated two weeks before his trial and titled, “A Call for Rhys Law.” It was an announcement of a campaign, headed by Gemma Clarke, for something called Rhys Law, which turned out, as he read it, to be a ban on all under-eighteen-year-olds being able to buy knives. It was being supported by two backbench Tory MPs and a third retired one, none of whom he had ever heard of. The article seemed low on details, how this ban would actually work, but high on sensationalist claims, the last of which was made by Gemma Clarke, that her son would still be alive if the country had this law. The untruth of this could have made him smile, but the over-emotional language of the article had made him feel far too uncomfortable to even recognise it.

The next bundle of short articles was all about his trial and all seemed so black and white in tone, matching their black text printed on white paper. They just reported the testimony and evidence that made him look guilty, again in that sensational language they seemed to favour. They painted him as guilty almost from their first words, yet so few of them said anything about him. A few times he was described as sitting in the dock “emotionlessly” or “cold and detached.” None of them saw how scared and confused he had been, sat in that dock. He was only “detached” because he barely understood anything that was happening around him. The articles did report, in an almost gleeful detail, the pathologist’s evidence. They reported the number of times he’d stabbed Rhys Clarke and where he stabbed him. They reported this evidence as if it was the most important thing that was said during his trial.

The news articles about the verdict seemed to be almost as many as there were about his trial. They reported his guilty verdict with a glee almost equal to the way they reported the pathologist’s evidence, but they also reacted with an almost victorious tone, as if his guilty verdict was in any doubt. But in almost the next breath, those articles were decrying the sentence he received. There were calls that he had “got off lightly”, that he should be sent to prison, that his punishment wasn’t “harsh” enough. They seemed ignorant of why he was sent here, what had actually happened to him. None of them knew him but they hated him and condemned him, demanding he be punished far more severally.

Then there was one opinion piece on its own. It was a single column long, consisting of only four, short paragraphs, and it was called “Bring Back True Justice.” It used his crime, conviction and sentence to claim that it was time to bring back capital punishment, to bring back hanging. It said that he had “got off lightly” and in civilised country he’d have been hung for his crime. It was written by someone called Anne Hodginson. Why did she hate him so much? Why was she saying what she did?

Then there was an interview with Gemma Clarke, published a week after his trial. It was called “No Mother Should Bury Her Child”. In it, Gemma Clarke and the journalist both used Liam’s full name, though the article claimed another newspaper named him the day after his trial. Gemma Clarke was still angry at him, and that anger rushed out from her words. She, too, called for him to be hung. Reading her words, he could hear her shouting that out in the courtroom, at his trial. He couldn’t finish reading that article and just turned it over for the next one.

The next articles were two interviews with his mother, both given to separate newspapers, in the week after his trial. In both of them, she claimed he was a violent, almost psychopathic child, who had caused her to live in fear of her life. She claimed he played with knives since he’d been a little child and regularly threw them at her, which he enjoyed doing. She claimed she had tried to get him help, to stop his violence, but no one would listen to her. She claimed so many different things in those interviews, all of them were untrue.

He stared down at the photograph of his mother, in the second interview, staring into the camera with a serious and almost sad expression across her face. Her brown hair hung lankly down at either side of her face, which seemed not to be wearing any makeup. She looked so sad and plain, but that didn’t give him any comfort. She had lied about him, over and over and over. Why had she done that? She knew what she was saying wasn’t true, but she’d said them all the same. Did she hate him so much? Did she… Did she really want him here, well away from her?

A heavy weight sat in his stomach, pulling down at his body and making a bitter taste to seep into the back of his throat. She’d lied about him, deep and nasty lies and… and he hated her. In that moment he hated her, there was no other way to call it.

The rest of the folder was filled of copies of letters to newspapers and print-offs of comments added to the end of news webpages. They seemed to be dated right from the day after he’s killed Rhys Clarke until after he had been sent here. Though the letters to the newspapers used more restrained language, not so many of the online comments - they were all about the same thing: how guilty he was and how severe his punishment should be. So many of the online comments were calling for him to be hung, angry and blunts comments calling him to be killed for what he did.

He forced himself to read all of them, pushing himself to read to the end, not giving up on them the way he had done with the Gemma Clarke interview. In those online comments, he could hear the voices of those people who had crowded outside the court at his trial, those who shouted loudly for his death.

It hadn’t been unusual for those people to rush his prison van as he was being taken to and from his trial: they had been there for him. They had wanted to harm and even kill him. Complete strangers had wanted to kill him, and they had come to his trial to try and physically attack him. Was he such a monster?

But his answer was there in his hands: those newspaper articles and news websites had whipped up all that hate towards him. It had been the same at school. Rhys Clarke would tell lies about him, paint him as physically dirty and a liar, to get other kids to hate him too. Was that a way Rhys Clarke bullied him too?

He closed the folder, hiding away all those articles and webpages and lies about him. How could they all tell so many lies about him? Why had nobody bothered to find the truth? But everything in that folder had made people hate him. So many people hated him.

And Britney knew about him now. Would she tell everyone there about him? All the nurses, especially Aiden and Janet, had told him not to tell any of the other patients why he was there, and not to ask anyone why they were there either. Aiden had explained that coming to Nurton Cross was his new start, the same for the other patients, but Liam knew to keep quiet about his trial and sentence. Would Britney follow that rule? She was always breaking other rules and annoying the nurses. And somehow, he’d made her angry.

He didn’t know what to do. His imagination could fill in some of the blanks but mostly he was just stuck there, not knowing what would happen to him.

Eventually real tiredness overtook him, and he knew he needed to sleep. He hid the folder under his mattress. Somehow, he knew he couldn’t get rid of it, but also, he knew he couldn’t let anyone else find it. It gave away far too much about him. So he lifted up the side of his mattress and pushed the folder into the centre of the bed’s frame.

Once the mattress was back in place, he climbed into his bed and pulled the bedclothes over himself.

<><><><>

He found sleep difficult that night.

His body had been physically tired, but his mind was still racing. He lay on his side in bed, drawing up his knees to his chest, but he couldn’t sleep. His mind kept racing: Britney knew all about him. What would she do next? How would she destroy him? How would she make his life impossible here? As the time stretched into the early hours of the morning his mind raced into even more fanciful scenarios. Britney would turn everyone on the ward against him. Britney would get all the nurses there hating him. Britney would get him removed from the ward. Britney would…

Exhaustion finally caught up with him and somewhere he fell asleep, but it wasn’t a peaceful sleep. He was soon dreaming. He dreamt he was back in the prison van and being taken back to court, he was once again on trial. He was locked away in that tiny metal cell with the grate in the floor that stank of piss, and he knew everything was over for him. The prison van stopped and the pounding on the outside of it began, in the same moment. Fists pounding on the van’s walls, human voices shouting for him, shouting for his death, shouting for him to be hung. He’d pushed his body back as far as he could, away from the outside wall of his tiny cell, as it vibrated with those pounding fists, but the cell was so tiny he couldn’t escape it, he could barely put a foot of space between him and that wall. The pounding became worse, vibrating the whole cell, shaking all the walls around him. Then the hands were ripping at the outside wall, breaking that metal open, peeling it open like a tin can, voices screaming for his death, angry and bleeding hands reaching for him, and…

He’d woken up suddenly from that dream, his heartbeat pounding in his ears and the images from that dream dancing over and over in his mind. He’d sat himself up on the edge of his bed and stayed there as his mind slowly returned to the real world of his room, that nightmarish dream slowly easing from his head, though the feelings it had generated in him still remailed alive.

Eventually he had stood up in his darkened room and had taken the few steps over to his wardrobe. There, from its hiding place at the back of it, he retrieved Mr Bear. Holding the teddy bear tightly inside his arms, he returned to his bed and covered himself with his bedclothes, again. There, back in his bed, he again curled up into a foetal position, but this time he hugged Mr Bear close to his body, pressing his face into the soft fur on the bear’s head, and hoped for sleep again.

Sleep eventually returned to him. He could not remember when, but Mr Bear was held tightly in his arms when it did.

<><><><>

The next morning, Saturday morning, he’d got up as he always did. His body was tired, but he’d washed and dressed himself as always. If he’d lain in bed all morning, then one of the nurses would have quickly come to his room to find out what was wrong with him and doing what he always did was always his best cover.

Once dressed he’d left his room and walked down to the Dining Room for his breakfast. There, he joined the end of the queue waiting for their breakfasts from the open serving hatch in the wall. Normally the queue would move quickly, but that Saturday it had ground to a halt. He glanced along the queue and saw that there was a woman behind the serving hatch, dressed in the same white overall as all the kitchen staff there, but he didn’t recognise her as one of the usual kitchen staff who served their meals. The woman was leaning over the big, polished chrome food trolley that their food came to the ward in. She actually seemed to be trying to open it. She certainly didn’t seem to be serving any breakfasts.

To one side stood Cindi and Gary, just watching what was happening.

Liam stepped into the end of the queue. Breakfast was going to be late.

Suddenly, the Dining Room’s door was thrown open and Britney stomped into the room.

“Britney!” Cindi called out.

“Morning plebs!” Britney called out to the room, obviously ignoring Cindi.

Liam looked down at his feet as Britney joined the queue behind him.

“Read any good bedtime reading, little boy?” Britney hissed to him.

He didn’t respond, but he could feel something cold and uncomfortable creep up the back of his neck.

“I’m not doing this shit!” Britney again announced to the whole room, before she marched to the head of the queue, amongst quick and loud protests from the others in the queue.

“Where are you going?” Cindi demanded of her.

“My mate, Liam, said I could cut to the front,” Britney replied.

“Stop being childish. Get to the back of the queue, where you were,” Cindi said.

“I’m not a child, Lesbo!” Britney shouted back at her.

“Back of the queue,” Cindi demanded, staring straight back at her.

“Lesbo,” Britney hissed back at her, and then slowly returned to the back of the queue.

When she returned to her original place, stood behind Liam, she hissed at him, “Next time you fucking stand up for me or I’ll tell everyone about you.”

“Britney, leave Liam alone,” Cindi called out.

“Fucking lesbo,” Britney hissed.

There came the sound of a metal door being slammed closed and then breakfast began to be served.