BEFORE YOU KNOW JAMES

Before you know James the way she did — before you hear his story through letters, memories, and heartbreak — you need to see one moment that says it all.

It’s not the beginning of his story, but it’s the one that never left her. The one that still wakes his sister, Donna, in the dead of night, reminding her how fragile life became with him in it.

James wasn’t always this way. There was once laughter in his eyes — the kind that made her feel seen, safe, certain he could conquer whatever life threw his way. But by this point, that light had dimmed, swallowed by shadows stronger than love or reason could reach.

That day, he was restless — pacing the backyard like a storm contained in human form, muttering to ghosts only he could see. His tracksuit pants hung loose, one hand gripping them to keep them from sliding down, the other flailing as he argued with no one. Donna knew then: getting him into the car, or anywhere safe, would be impossible.

Then, suddenly, his muttering stopped. His eyes darted — sharp, frantic, like a cornered animal’s. He pulled a black elastic from his wrist and tried to tie back his hair, his trembling hands making the motion look painful. Then his hand went behind him, fumbling. Her stomach turned cold. When it came back up, he was holding a needle.

Donna froze. It was one thing to know your brother used — another to watch it unfold before your eyes. Her fear of needles had always been bad, but this was terror. Her breath caught. Her heart hammered. “James, please,” she whispered. “Not here. Not in front of me.”

But he didn’t hear her — or maybe he did and simply couldn’t care. His world had shrunk to the promise of relief inside that syringe. In that moment, she was no longer his sister. She was just a shadow at the edge of his chaos.

Tears burned her eyes. Every instinct told her to run, but she couldn’t move — trapped by love, by fear, by the unbearable truth that she couldn’t save him. Watching him prepare the needle felt like watching his soul slip further away.

“James, stop!” she tried again, her voice breaking into the void between them — a gulf carved by years of pain and denial.

He jabbed at his arm, searching for veins long since collapsed. Frustration twisted his face. A guttural sound escaped him — half anger, half agony. Then, desperate, he turned the needle toward his hand and pushed it in. His body tensed, breath catching, chasing the oblivion he craved.

When he fell, it was silent. Just a dull thud — and then nothing. Donna’s world stopped. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even cry. Her phone was in her hand before she realized it, calling his friend, her voice shaking:

“I think he’s dead… he’s not moving… I can’t go near him.”

They told her to check if he was breathing, but she couldn’t. She was gone — trapped in a void of pure horror. Then, a gasp. A sound so fragile it barely existed, yet enough to shatter the silence.

“He’s alive,” she whispered, as tears blurred her vision.

He rolled onto his side, eyes heavy, face softening as the drug took hold. Relief flickered across him, but for Donna, the damage was done. The image of him — broken, desperate, unreachable — was burned into her forever.

That was James. Her brother. The boy she grew up with. The man she loved and could not save.

This isn’t where his story begins, but it’s the moment that changed everything.

He was born into a life most would envy. Not one of excess or luxury, but of something richer — love, kindness, and unwavering support. His parents, though not wealthy, were abundant in the things that mattered. Their home in Yarloop was a haven of laughter and adventure, where dreams were nurtured and boundaries tested beneath open skies and tangled scrub.

James’s childhood was stitched together with sunburnt afternoons, the crunch of dry leaves beneath bare feet, and his sister’s laughter echoing through the bush. He was untameable — headstrong, wild, endlessly curious. Rules were challenges. Limits were invitations. To the world, he was a troublemaker. To his family, he was a spark too bright to dim.

But even then, there was something else — a pull, a shadow just beneath the surface. A restlessness no one could name.

As the years passed, that hunger turned inward, carving at his spirit, tempting him to escape a life that had every reason to succeed. What began as rebellion mutated into something darker. Drugs became a way out — or maybe a way in — to quiet the noise, numb the ache, or feel like he belonged somewhere, anywhere. Crime followed close behind, bound to it like blood.

Each bad decision built upon the last, until the boy who once dreamed of cricket stardom became a man with a rap sheet. The warmth of home gave way to the cold indifference on prison walls. The world forgot him — but his family never did. Especially Donna.

She remembered the boy who caught tadpoles in a dam with a filthy slab of foam. Who pulled rabbits from burrows. Who helped her build gings in trees and teased and protected her in equal measure. Even as he drifted into darkness, her love endured — tattered, bruised, but unbroken.

And now, sitting alone in a concrete cell, James remembers too. The whisper of his mother’s voice, soft and steady, anchoring him to the world beyond. His father’s proud eyes. His sister’s laughter. The warmth of sunlight on skin. He aches for what once was.

“My name is James Michael Scott,” he says, voice raw. “And I am a drug addict and convicted criminal.”

But this isn’t just a confession.

It’s a reckoning.

A boy once full of promise, now a man living with the consequences of choices made in moments of weakness and pain. Twenty-one years in and out of prison. Twenty-one years of violence, shame, and survival.

He has lived a life in instalments — fragments of freedom between long stretches of captivity.

And yet, his mother still visits. His sister still remembers.

And in their eyes, he catches fleeting glimpses of the boy he used to be.

This is not a story of blame.

It is a story of love. Of loss. Of addiction and crime and the quiet, stubborn hope that maybe, somehow, it’s not too late.

This is the story of a man who had everything and lost it all.

A story of life in instalments.

When I was young, I’d watch prison movies and think the horrors behind those walls were fiction — someone’s dark imagination. I know now they weren’t. Jail is real, and it changes you in ways you can’t undo.

At first, I clung to memories of the outside world. Faces. Laughter. Freedom. But they faded. Bit by bit, prison stripped them away until all that was left was survival. The change wasn’t sudden — it crept in, hardening me from the inside out.

In the beginning, I thought I could hold on to who I was. I was wrong. Vulnerability is blood in the water here. You build walls fast or you get eaten alive.

Trust dies first. In here, it can get you killed. Friendships don’t exist — just temporary alliances and quiet calculations. You learn to read people like threats. To strike before thinking. Paranoia becomes muscle memory.

Feelings have no place here. Anger makes you reckless. Fear freezes you. Sadness is useless. So, you bury them all. Numbness is survival.

Routine keeps you sane — the only control you have in a place built on chaos. You follow the rules, keep your head down, disappear into the grind. Until you don’t.

I am no longer James, Scott, or whatever my name was before. I have become my inmate number— faceless, stripped of identity. The past and future blur. Only the present matters, and how to make it through another day.

The hardest part is realizing this place is remaking me. Colder. Harder. Someone I barely recognize. I didn’t choose this — prison chose it for me.

Sometimes I think about the man I used to be. He’s gone now, buried somewhere deep. I only hope, when I finally walk out of here, I can find the part of me I hid away in the dark — and bring him back to life.

(Letters from the inside)

Years later, the chaos of that backyard would feel like another lifetime — replaced now by the cold echo of prison walls. Mary and Michael stepped out of their car and looked up at the grey concrete fortress that now held their son. No matter how many times they’d made this trip, it never got easier. Each visit was a wound reopened — a reminder of everything James had lost and everything they still refused to give up on.

Mary smoothed her blouse, steadying herself before walking inside. She’d faced this routine countless times, but today was different. The guard’s tone was sharp when she was pulled aside for a random search.

“Ma’am, you’ll need to undergo a strip search before the visit.”

The words hit like a slap. Mary’s heart sank. She could refuse — walk away and keep her dignity — but that would mean not seeing her son. A year’s ban. She didn’t even hesitate.

“I’ll do it,” she whispered.

In a cold, sterile room, she removed each layer of clothing with trembling hands, her dignity peeling away with every movement. The humiliation burned through her, but she kept thinking, I’m his mother. He needs me. I’ll do whatever it takes.

When she finally emerged, her face was pale but composed. Michael waited outside, jaw tight, fury trembling beneath his calm. He wanted to rage, to demand they treat her with respect, but he said nothing. They both knew the cost of defiance.

When they finally reached the visiting room, Mary’s heart lifted at the sight of James. He looked older, harder somehow, but he was still her boy. She smiled through the ache and reached for his hands, grateful just to touch him.

Not long after, during a different visit, it would be Michael’s turn — pulled from the visitor line when a sniffer dog stopped at his feet. Another search. Another blow. Inside, James’s eyes darkened when Mary told him what happened. His fists clenched.

“Why the hell would they do that, to my dad? He’s not one of us,” he snapped. His anger flared, protective and proud.

Mary just stared at him for a long moment. The words stung. When she had been stripsearched months earlier, James had barely reacted — a shrug, a hollow, “That’s just how it is in here, Mum.” But now, with his father facing the same indignity, he was enraged.

She tried to hide the hurt, but it lingered. How easily a mother’s pain was expected — how naturally she was supposed to bear it all in silence. She would walk through hell just to see her son, even if he didn’t see the cost. That’s what mothers do.

Donna had made herself a promise: she would never visit James in prison.

This was his punishment, his alone. She couldn’t bear to see him behind those walls.

Instead, she kept him alive through letters and phone calls — pretending, sometimes, that he was just away somewhere, anywhere but locked up. She knew he wanted her there, had even begged through tears, but she couldn’t do it. Maybe, she told herself, her absence would be what finally broke him enough to change.

Then came the call. The attack.

James had been taken to Royal Perth Hospital — injured, barely conscious. Under the medical act, visitors were allowed. And there was only one name he asked for.

Donna.

His voice on the phone was faint, every breath ragged and wet with pain.

“Will you come?”

Those three words tore through her. They cracked something open that she had spent years sealing shut. The guilt. The love. The fear. All of it came flooding back.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll come.”

The hospital felt ordinary — bright lights, nurses, the smell of disinfectant. But from the moment she gave his name, she felt it — that quiet judgment, the kind that follows you when your last name is tied to a criminal.

She followed the receptionist down sterile corridors, each door locked, each turn colder than the last. Finally, she asked, “Where are you keeping him?”

Without looking back, the woman said flatly, “We can’t keep him with the general public, now can we?”

At the end of the hall, two officers stood guard outside a closed door. Donna’s feet felt heavier with each step. She wanted to explain herself, to say she wasn’t one of them. But they barely looked up, just nodded her through.

The door opened with a low creak.

The air hit her first — cold, metallic, lifeless. Then her eyes found him.

James.

Shackled at the wrists and ankles. Naked under a thin hospital sheet. His skin raw, flushed, trembling with every breath. He turned his head at the sound of the door, tried to smile — a weak, cracked attempt that shattered her.

She froze.

The man on that bed was her brother, but he didn’t look like James. His face was swollen, bruised, hair matted to his forehead. His eyes — those eyes — were filled with pain so deep it hollowed her out. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Just stared at what prison, at what life, had done to him.

She wanted to scream. To call for help. To tear the shackles off and wrap him in her arms.

This was a hospital — why did it feel like a cell?

He must’ve seen the horror on her face.

“It’s alright, bub,” he rasped. “I’m alright.”

She shook her head, voice trembling. “You’re not alright. Why haven’t they given you anything?”

He managed a faint, bitter laugh. “Perks of being a drug dealer. Just Panadol. Every six hours, if I’m lucky.”

“That’s cruel. It’s inhuman.”

A nurse entered, eyes avoiding his. She hovered near the monitor, never too close.

“Blood pressure’s high,” she said flatly, clicking her pen.

Donna snapped. “Of course it’s high! Can’t you see he’s in pain?”

The nurse’s eyes flicked up, cold and cautious — not at James, but at her. The fear in that look stung worse than anything else. She didn’t see a patient. She saw a criminal. And now, maybe, Donna too.

Donna wanted to tell her. He’s not a monster. He’s my brother. He’s made mistakes, but he’s still good.

But the words wouldn’t come. They stayed trapped behind the same wall that separated who James used to be from what he had become.

And as she stood there, watching him chained and broken, she realised — this visit, the one she’d sworn she’d never make, didn’t just hurt — it broke something in her she could never put back together.

You don’t come back from moments like that. They stay, etched into you. But somewhere along the way, Donna stopped trying to erase the pain and started learning to live with it —not healed, not whole, just moving forward.

Now, years later, she writes about it. About him. About them.

Putting our story on paper wasn’t about forgiveness or redemption — it was about truth.

About giving a voice to the silence that swallowed our family for so long. Writing didn’t fix what was broken, but it gave the pain somewhere to go. And in those words, I found a way to keep breathing — to turn all that hurt into something that might matter to someone else.

I never set out to write a book. I started with one chapter — a small act of defiance against the chaos consuming my life. When everything around me was falling apart, writing became the one thing that kept me standing. It wasn’t about ambition; it was about survival.

Each sentence was a release — a way to make sense of the heartbreak and guilt that had taken root in my life. Writing didn’t erase the pain, but it gave it shape. It turned something unbearable into something I could finally look at.

When I wrote Life in Instalments, I wasn’t chasing closure. I was chasing understanding. The story follows a sister watching her brother disappear into addiction and the devastating ripple effect it has on a family. Writing about someone you love, someone who’s hurt you, is a brutal kind of honesty. I didn’t write to accuse or forgive — I wrote to understand. James wasn’t just an addict or an inmate; he was my brother. That’s the truth I wanted to hold on to.

I learned that healing doesn’t come from forgetting; it comes from telling the truth — even when it hurts.

Now, as an author, I see that my book isn’t just about loss — it’s about endurance, family, and the quiet strength it takes to keep loving someone through the darkness. If my story helps even one person feel less alone, then every word was worth is it.

We all have chapters that are hard to read, question is, do we let them define our story?

If Life in Instalments has taught me anything, it’s this: when we tell our truths, we don’t just free ourselves — we give others permission to do the same.

Danielle Sartorelli is a first-time author and primary school teacher. With a passion for storytelling and an understanding of the transformative power of words, Danielle has crafted a heart-wrenching recount of her life, exploring the complexities of family dynamics through her experiences as a sister to a troubled brother. Danielle lives in Australia with her husband of twenty-three years, their two sons. When she is not writing, or teaching, Danielle is busying tending to all the animals on the family’s hobby farm.