Gangs and Roses

Epilogue

Epilogue

Fifteen years later...

I'm free.  

The sun shone down on face, warming up my bones. I smiled to the sky, taking a moment to feel the wind through my hair, to breathe the fresh air, to open my eyes at the buds on the apple tree, to be free.  

For fifteen years, I've waited. I've waited so long for this moment and now that it's finally here, I can barely believe it. I thought maybe, at any second, I would wake up in a white cell again on the top bunk, to the sound of a woman below me snoring. I thought this was just a dream, this point in time was just the distant future that would never come but now it has. I wanted to pinch myself as I looked around. It felt so real, that it couldn't be something my brain had thought up.  

In all the time that I've been locked away, I haven't been outside. My closest connection has been what I've seen through the barred windows and the occasional pop outside for a walk in the courtyard. I haven't inhaled fresh hair in fifteen years. I haven't walked down the streets as a free woman for even longer than that. And it's about time.  

All the things that I could do were running through my head: I could go shopping, I could go and skip down the street, I could meet someone, I could buy flowers, I could buy a house.  

I could meet up with my Mum.  

I could see my ex-gang members.  

I could see my daughter.  

There was a taxi in front of me and he honked his horn loudly. I managed to smile at the prospect of getting into a cab for the first time in one and a half decades. I picked up my suitcase and got in. The soft click of the seatbelt reminded me of everything I had missed.  

"Where to?" the taxi-driver asked.  

I think of where I could go. I have cash in my pocket and a credit card in my bag. I could go anywhere I wanted to go. But instead, I chose somewhere that felt like home.  

"West London," I said, before giving the rest of the address. Mum's house. She was going to be so happy for me. She doesn't even know. The last time she visited in prison, I refrained from telling her the news. I wanted to surprise her when I got out. I wanted to ring the doorbell and watch her expression as her daughter, her only daughter, stood before her. No longer a young adult but a grown-up woman.  

"Okay," the man said, before changing the gears and pulling away from the curb. I couldn't not watch as I draw away from the prison. It had been my home for the past fifteen years. Not really a home but the place in which I had stayed in. I hadn't left its walls. I hadn't stepped out of the premises. I was leaving. Forever.  

I was a free woman and no-one could stop me.