‘God, it looks awful,’ said Lila. ‘Like a haunted house or something.’
‘Or a concentration camp. Look at all that barbed wire . . .’
They had driven to HMP Blackmoor in Anju’s Citroen C3, that her parents had bought her for passing her GCSEs and to bribe her to keep studying. She had laughed as they drove off, asking Lila what they would think if they knew she was using the car to drive her friend to see someone in prison. Lila had laughed along, but apprehensively. Parents buying gifts like cars for their children and nurturing their education was completely alien to her. A world she had never been in and could never be part of.
The morning was crisp, the winter sun shining and the sky a pale robin’s egg blue. Consequently the drive had been pleasant, Lila almost forgetting the purpose of the trip, feeling instead they were just out for the day. She felt slightly guilty about Tom for thinking that.
She also felt very nervous about seeing him again. It had been over two weeks since he had set off on this assignment and she hadn’t heard from him at all. While she admittedly hadn’t tried to contact him, he had told her not to. If he could, he’d said, he would phone her. She hadn’t expected him to, not really. And he hadn’t. She knew it would be difficult for him and talking to her would make it even worse. That was the reason she hadn’t reached out either. She felt he would understand. Or hoped he would. But now she was changing all that by coming to see him. She just hoped neither of them would regret it.
They pulled into the car park. Looked at the prison once again. It seemed to suck all the light from the sky into itself, making the day darker, colder. Lila felt her stomach turn.
‘Here we are, then,’ said Anju turning the engine off.
The mood in the car changed, reflecting the prison, turning from light to dark. No more laughing or singing along to music, no more convincing themselves they were on a carefree day out. This was it.
‘Well,’ said Lila, ‘time to go in.’
She looked over at the main gate where other visitors were beginning to gather. Dressed against the cold they resembled a huddled, sad mass of broken people in Primark clothes, their urban dress at odds with the surrounding countryside. Blank-faced women, old before their time, holding on to small sullen children, their hard eyes counting down the years until it would be their turn inside, their tiny fists clenched to demonstrate how they would get there. Older relatives beaten down by time and circumstances, their prematurely aged features roadmaps of wrong turns and dead ends. A few wild-eyed, gap-toothed crackheads trying to pretend they hadn’t taken anything before coming, hoping they wouldn’t be turned away.
Lila knew she would have to join them. Be one of them.
‘It’s hard to tell,’ said Anju quietly, ‘whether they’re like that because visiting the prison made them that way, or it’s the end result for them being like that.’
‘We do sociology,’ said Lila, equally quietly, ‘I think we know the answers.’
Anju said nothing.
‘It’s like stepping back in time, going to join that lot,’ said Lila.
Anju frowned, turned to her. ‘What d’you mean?’
A hard sigh from Lila. ‘I used . . . I wasn’t always like this. Student, regular life, all of that. I used to . . .’
‘Don’t. You don’t owe me anything.’
‘No, I . . . I feel like I should. I didn’t used to have a . . . what could you call it? A life like yours. It was more like theirs.’ She gestured to the crowd.
Anju smiled. ‘So what? Doesn’t matter. You’re here now. You’ve come a long way from . . . wherever you were before. And you fought hard to get there. I can tell.’ She placed her hand on Lila’s knee. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not who you are now.’
Lila felt a near electric charge from Anju’s hand, the warmth penetrating through her jeans. She looked up, straight into Anju’s eyes. ‘Who am I now?’
Lila would think back on this moment, try to remember who had moved in first. She couldn’t remember, didn’t know. Sometimes it had felt like her, others like Anju. Most of the time it had felt mutual, both at the exactly the same time. But the result was the same. They kissed. Long and with increasing passion, hands gripping the other’s body, each pulling the other towards them, getting as close as the car would allow. Lila’s heart hammering like it was about to explode, shaking from everything. Fear, lust, desire, love. And things she couldn’t name too.
Eventually they pulled apart. Eyes wide, chests heaving, as though they had both run marathons. Both still staring at each other.
‘That’s who you are now,’ Anju said eventually.
Lila just stared. Couldn’t find any words.
From out of the corner of her eye she saw the gate open, the mass of visitors move forwards.
‘You’d better go,’ Anju told her.
Lila nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She didn’t move.
‘Quick, before they shut the gate.’
She nodded, got out of the car, closed the door, her movements seemingly done by someone else.
She made her way to the gate. The words, questions, in her head bursting like fireworks before they could properly form.
She tried to pull herself together. Prepare herself to see Tom.