She's Out
Authors: Lynda La Plante
Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool. She trained for the stage at RADA and worked with the National Theatre and RSC before becoming a television actress. She then turned to
writing – and made her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful TV series
Widows
.
Her novels have all been international bestsellers. Her original script for the much-acclaimed
Prime Suspect
won awards from the BAFTA, British Broadcasting and the Royal Television
Society as well as the 1993 Edgar Allen Poe Writer’s Award.
Lynda La Plante has been made an honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and was given the BAFTA Dennis Potter Writer’s Award 2000. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s
Birthday Honours list in 2008 and inaugurated into the Crime Thriller Writer’s Hall of Fame in 2009.
Visit Lynda at her website: www.laplanteproductions.com
Also by Lynda La Plante
Backlash
Blood Line
Blind Fury
Silent Scream
Deadly Intent
Clean Cut
The Red Dahlia
Above Suspicion
The Legacy
The Talisman
Bella Mafia
Entwined
Cold Shoulder
Cold Blood
Cold Heart
Sleeping Cruelty
Royal Flush
The Little One: Quick Read 2011
Seekers
She’s Out
The Governor
The Governor II
Trial and Retribution
Trial and Retribution II
Trial and Retribution III
Trial and Retribution IV
Trial and Retribution V
First published in Great Britain by Pan Books, 1995
This edition first published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Lynda La Plante, 1995
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc.
All rights reserved.
The right of Lynda La Plante to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
B Format ISBN 978-1-47110-027-7
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-47110-028-4
Ebook ISBN 978-1-47110-029-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
I never had any intention of writing a continued series from the original
Widows
. Due to its success, I was encouraged to write
Widows II
, which happily also
proved to be very successful. I was subsequently persuaded by Verity Lambert the executive producer of both series, to contemplate another outing of the four women. I recall our meeting with great
fondness. Verity was my mentor and her constant support and encouragement was the basis of my writing career. She wanted to know what thoughts I had and if I would agree to write for the characters
again.
In the original series the character of Dolly Rawlins drove the emotional, bereaved widows into agreeing to pull off the robbery their husbands had died attempting. They were younger and
financially in debt, whereas she was wealthy, and lived in a sumptuous house. The reality was they never really believed in her proposition – that they could take over the planned robbery of
the security wagon – but Dolly Rawlins was very persuasive, offering to pay them for the time it would take to plan and put the heist into action.
She was the one who discovered the plans and she had an obsessive determination that was fuelled by her grief. Dolly had been desperate for a child; her adoration for her husband was such that
she believed by pulling off the doomed robbery, she would keep him alive. One by one the widows agreed to rehearse and work out the plans to re-enact the robbery, but never expected it would come
to fruition. They pocketed the cash she paid them, feeling certain Mrs Rawlins was unbalanced and would drop the idea eventually.
What then happened was a series of events that drew the women together. Dolly Rawlins was a force to be reckoned with. Originally grief-stricken and in truth not really believing in the robbery
herself, she discovered her beloved husband was a liar and, shockingly, still alive. He had planned to leave Dolly for his mistress after the robbery and her anguish at his betrayal was even more
brutal when she realised his mistress had a child by him.
Dolly Rawlins’s grief turned to a blind fury, an anger that made her cajole and encourage the widows into believing that her original plan could make them wealthy beyond their wildest
dreams. The rehearsals and detailed organisation pushed the women into a growing admiration for the woman they had thought crazy. The ‘Widows’ succeeded where their husbands had
failed... but for Dolly Rawlins there was no elation. At the end she faced the sad truth of his betrayal, and the grief that had consumed her was replaced by a friendship between the women that
gave her a future.
Widows II
saw how the women lost their fortunes, and were hunted not only by the police, but by Dolly Rawlins’ supposedly dead husband. Having committed a crime once, they were
tougher and hungry for more. They planned a jewel robbery and this time they paid a high price as one of them died in return for the glittering diamonds.
Dolly Rawlins also succeeded in tracing her errant husband and met him in a painful, hideous confrontation. The man she had adored, trusted and loved attempted to gain her forgiveness. Dolly
chose to commit the ultimate crime and she shot him dead.
The surviving widows disappeared with their share of the diamonds but Dolly was arrested, not for murder but for her part in the jewel robbery. She never named the other women, and was sentenced
to ten years in Holloway prison.
Truthfully it did seem that it would be very hard to resurrect yet another outing of
Widows
, but dear Verity Lambert was a very persuasive producer and I didn’t want to disappoint.
I mulled ideas over and ran them past her at our next meeting. For many years I had been a visitor to Holloway prison, giving talks and writing lectures and I spent considerable time with many
inmates. On one of these visits I had met a notorious female prisoner who was serving time for murder. One of the prison officers had told me that she was a formidable character, very much the
‘top dog’ and that many of the younger inmates looked up to her. She had an excellent behaviour record, and was a model prisoner. She gave the appearance of being a ‘mothering
type,’ helping in every aspect of prison life. This also included time in the maternity wing caring for pregnant prisoners and those who had given birth whilst serving their sentences.
I started to think about the possibility of this prisoner being Dolly Rawlins. I was even more drawn to the idea when the same prison officer said that due to her good behaviour her sentence had
been shortened and she had proved to the parole board she was a worthy candidate for an early release. What she added gave me more ideas . . . ‘She’s an ice woman beneath all the
smiles, you can’t trust her. She’s got women in here eating out of the palm of her hand. They think she’s a mothering figure. If she’s released, she’ll use any of the
kids that she’s befriended, never mind the ones that have already got out.’
Dolly Rawlins became the ‘ice woman’. Tougher, meaner and without the ‘friends’ from her early days. She would need fresh ones, gullible girls, and this time she would
plan a robbery that was so audacious her previous crimes would pale in comparison!
She’s Out
is dedicated to the wonderful actress Anne Mitchell who brought Dolly Rawlins alive on the screen. And so popular that graffiti was scrawled on walls around the East End
saying ‘Go for it Dolly’.
Lynda La Plante
2012
Chapter 1
T
he date was ringed with a fine red biro circle, 15 March 1994. It was the only mark on the cheap calendar pinned to the wall in her cell. There
were no photographs, no memorabilia, not even a picture cut out of a magazine. She had always been in a cell by herself. The prison authorities had discussed the possibility of her sharing with
another inmate but it had been decided it was preferable to leave Dorothy Rawlins as she had requested – alone.
Rawlins had been a model prisoner from the day she had arrived. She seemed to settle into a solitary existence immediately. At first she spoke little and was always polite to both prisoners and
prison officers. She rarely smiled, she never wrote letters, but read for hours on end alone in her cell, and ate alone. After six months she began to work in the prison library; a year later she
became a trusty. Gradually the women began to refer to Rawlins during recreational periods, asking her opinion on their marriages, their love lives. They trusted her opinions and her advice but she
made no one a close friend. She wrote their letters, she taught some of the inmates to read and write, she was always patient, always calm and, above all, she would always listen. If you had a
problem, Dolly Rawlins would sort it out for you. Over the following years she became a very dominant and respected figure within the prison hierarchy.
The women would often whisper about her to the new inmates, embroidering her past, which made her even more of a queen-like figurehead. Dorothy Rawlins was in Holloway for murder. She had shot
her husband, the infamous Harry Rawlins, at point-blank range. The murder took on a macabre feeling as throughout the years the often repeated story was embellished, but no one ever discussed the
murder to her face. It was as if she had an invisible barrier around her own emotions. Kindly towards anyone who needed comfort, she seemed never to need anything herself.
So the rumours continued: stories passed from one inmate to another, that Rawlins had also been a part of a big diamond raid. Although she had never been charged and no evidence had ever been
brought forward at her trial to implicate her in it, the hints that she had instigated the raid, and got away with it, accentuated her mystique. More important was the rumour that she had also got
away with the diamonds. The diamonds, some said, were valued at one million, then two million. The robbery had been a terrifying, brutal raid and a young, beautiful girl called Shirley Miller had
been shot and killed.
Four years into her sentence, Rawlins began to write letters to request a better baby wing at Holloway. She began to work with the young mothers and children. The result was that she became even
more of a ‘Mama’ figure. There was nothing she would not do for these young women, and it was on Rawlins’s shoulders that they sobbed their hearts out when their babies were taken
from them. Rawlins seemed to have an intuitive understanding, talking for hour upon hour with these distressed girls. She also had the same quiet patience with the drug offenders.
Five years into her sentence, Dolly Rawlins proved an invaluable inmate. She kept a photo album of the prisoners who had left, their letters to her, and especially the photographs of their
children. But only the calendar was pinned to the identical chipboard in every inmate’s cell. Nothing ever took precedence over the years of waiting.