This is a global original podcast in partnership with the Story Lab.

The following episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse, some bad language, and may not be suitable for everyone.

Please see the episode notes for more information on support services.

It's Christmas Eve 2020 and tomorrow is the 59th birthday of prisoner 02879-509.

At the time of recording this final episode, she is on suicide watch in her prison cell in the Metropolitan Detention

Centre in Brooklyn, New York. Her name? Shirene Maxwell. In prison, her lawyers say that she's

lost £20 in weight because of the bad food. They say she's losing her hair and can't sleep because she's woken up every 15 minutes

by a prison guard shining a torch in her face.

And her lawyers say she's innocent of all the charges she faces.

In the summer, she will go on trial for supplying underage sex slaves to super-rich pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

If she goes down, she could spend 35 years in prison, and at her age that could be a life sentence.

As I said at the very start of this series, this is a dark fairy story and one that happens in reverse.

The fairy princess starts life in a palace and ends up in a dungeon.

2020 has been grim for everybody.

As the talking head song goes,

and you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Prisoner 02879-509,

sitting in her cell must be thinking exactly that.

How the hell did I get here?

She remains a prisoner of her past.

It's just before Christmas, 1953.

There's a young publisher, 26 years old, who's been invited to the Savoy to meet his boss for Christmas lunch.

...