First-12

‘What’s happened to my bed?’ I thought. ‘Why’s it so uncomfortable tonight?’

I stirred, trying for what seemed like the thousandth time to get comfortable. Unable to do so, I opened my eyes a crack. All the lights were on. That was weird. Where was Emilie? Why was I wearing these nasty thin tracksuit bottoms? I opened my eyes fully and propped myself up on an elbow. And then it all came back to me in a terrible flood. I was in a cell somewhere in the bowels of Chelmsford Police Station. And ‘bowels’ was right – for I was deep in the shit.

Soon I heard the door rattling and clanking before finally whining open. A middle-aged police officer with a bald head appeared on the other side of it.

‘Well, someone’s called him in,’ he said. ‘You got any mates know you’re here? Anyway, come on. Up and ’ave it. He’s waiting for you.’

I’d been out of the military for six months, having completed two successful tours of Afghanistan with the SBS. Going straight into responsible daily life as a husband, provider and father on civvy street had not been easy. As tough as military life can be, what it gives you is a structure and a routine. It’s like having a drill sergeant constantly living with you, telling you where you need to be, what you need to do and when to go to bed. When that suddenly vanishes, after you’ve spent most of your adult life relying on it, it’s not unusual for ex-servicemen to feel disorientated. Some get depressed. Some turn to drink. Some lash out in violence. Some end up homeless or even in prison. I’d managed to find some work, here and there, on the security circuit, but nothing permanent. For the first time in years I had no goal to set my sights on, no Everest to climb. I didn’t think it was affecting me too badly. Turns out I was wrong.

The police officer led me down an echoing corridor to a small interview room. Sitting waiting for me were two other officers and my solicitor, who was someone I knew from Chelmsford. On the table was a small portable TV monitor. After some not-very-pleasantries, one of the police officers switched on the screen and pressed play on the recorder. It was the CCTV footage from the previous night.

I’d been reconnecting with some of my old mates. Ten of us had met in Chelmsford town centre at 6 o’clock on a Sunday evening and we’d bounced from The Toad to Edwards to Lloyds to the Yates’s, ending up at Chicago’s nightclub. We’d blagged a large table in the corner to settle into, ordering bottles of vodka and Jack Daniel’s with jugs of Coca-Cola and cranberry juice to be delivered to our table. We’d probably drunk our way through about £600 already.

At just after 1 a.m. some of my pals went out for a smoke. I was pouring myself a fresh vodka and watching the dancefloor going up to ‘I’ve got the Power’ by Snap when I became aware of someone running towards me.

We pushed our way through the sticky, leery bodies and out into the cold street. I didn’t know what situation I was about to meet exactly, but I wasn’t worried. After surviving suicide bombers and AK-47-wielding Taliban thugs in the darkest hellpits of Afghanistan, I thought I could handle a few wallies outside an Essex nightclub.

Out on the pavement I discovered that three women had started an argument with one of my friends. They were jabbing fingers at him, telling him to go fuck himself. He, of course, was returning this in kind. I pushed my way in between them.

I put my arm around the pal who was at the centre of the row and began walking him in the direction of the taxi rank. As I was manoeuvring him away from the scene, I turned to the women. ‘And you lot, fuck off,’ I said.

I came back to find that the three women had not fucked off. Instead, they’d been joined by their male friends. The rest of my pals had now piled in properly, and the shouting had taken on a new and dangerous intensity. This, I realised, was seconds away from turning into a full-on street brawl. I started grabbing my friends, one by one, and putting them into taxis, all under a hail of abuse from the idiots. They were about half gone when two police officers arrived. ‘Thank God,’ I thought. ‘Back-up. At last.’

I knew from my training with the Met at Hendon that the first move law enforcement are supposed to make in a situation like this is to separate the fighting parties. If they’re no longer able to make contact with each other, the abuse stops and the trouble rapidly de-escalates. Nine times out of ten it’s the magic bullet that kills the aggression.

I carried on clearing my pals into cabs as the officers approached the women. I was expecting them to move them on, but for some reason they didn’t. They just stood there with them, allowing them to continue hurling abuse. I tried to ignore it, and had just put the last man in a cab, when the woman at the front, who’d kicked it all off, started insulting me.

‘You silly fucking cunt,’ she said. ‘What are you? A babysitter? Do you change their fucking nappies an’ all? Fucking prick.’

Now I was getting angry. I turned to the male officer, who was just standing there, his hands in his pockets, with a silly, nervous grin on his face.

‘Why don’t you take them round the corner rather than leaving them here, gobbing off?’

‘Don’t get all attitude with me.’ I walked towards him. ‘I’m the one that’s defused the situation.’

‘Just answer me one question,’ I said. ‘Why are they still here? I’m doing your job for you and you’re stood there with them doing nothing. Move them five metres down the road and they’ve got no one to abuse.’

He stretched his finger out and poked me in the middle of the chest. I can’t remember what he was saying, because by now everything was darkening and narrowing and stretching out. I looked down at what he was doing.

‘You want to watch what you’re doing with that finger,’ I said. It happened in slow motion. He jabbed me again, this time hard between the ribs. Its force pushed me back slightly. Before my body had had the chance to right itself, my fist had made impact with his jaw.

He was on the pavement. Flat. Sprawled. Silent. To my left, I saw the female officer reach for her CS gas. She blasted me with it. I turned and blocked the spray with one arm. As I was doing so, the officer beneath me roused and tried to stagger to his feet, while grabbing for his cosh. In his semi-conscious daze he tumbled back into a shop window. As he flailed about, trying to regain his balance, I took a step towards him, grabbed fistfuls of his uniform with both hands, lifted him off the ground, raised him up and slammed him back down. He landed on the pavement with a thud. He didn’t move. I pulled the cosh from his hand. For just a second I had the strange sensation of stepping out of my body and looking down at the scene: there was me, crouched over an unconscious police officer. And there, in my hand, was a cosh. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘does not look good.’

My footsteps echoed along a narrow, empty street. Within seconds it sounded as if the whole of Chelmsford had gone up with the cat’s-cry of sirens. The police must have been watching it all on CCTV, and by now they’d had enough time to leap into their cars and vans and flood the town centre. I took a left and a right, making the most of my knowledge of the back lanes, stopping briefly beside a drain, down which I posted the cosh. The sirens seemed to be getting louder. The walls of the buildings around me flashed blue. I took off, only for the slap-slap-slap of my trainers hitting the ground to be joined by the thud of boots. I was being chased. I nipped down an alleyway and turned a corner, hoisted myself over an eight-foot wall and landed into a crouch. I waited, in total silence, not even letting the sound of my breathing betray my position. They passed by.

The sirens were so loud they’d become deafening, like something out of the Blitz. I crept forwards, cat-like, peering up, trying to see where the CCTV cameras were. As far as I could tell there were none back here. But I had a problem. In front of me there was only one way I could go: the River Can. I moved towards it, keeping low in the shadows. The water was black and deep, and an icy, metallic breeze whipped off it. The far shore was a good twenty feet away. I’d have to swim it. I bent down and dipped my fingers under the choppy surface. It was freezing. I had no choice.

I put one foot in and then the other. The river filled my trainers. Lowering myself down, I felt the level of the water’s surface rise up my body in a line of crackling, numbing pain. When I was up to my shoulders I pushed myself into the middle of the river, my toes quickly losing touch with the river bed. I told myself to be careful – the River Can was no doubt littered with several decade’s worth of shopping trolleys and other hazards. There was a chance I could get tangled up and stuck.

In the streets above me sirens blared and vehicles tore about. It felt oddly quiet and separate down here in the water, as if all the commotion were happening in a faraway place that wasn’t quite real. To my right I saw an arched footbridge and, underneath that, clinging to the bank, a large, dark bush. It gave me an idea. Rather than swim across to the other bank, and most likely directly into the arms of a waiting officer, I’d glide over there and just wait it out. As I made a silent breaststroke down the river, the freezing water lapped against my chin. My fingers were turning numb and my feet were being dragged down by the weight of my socks and shoes, but before long I was there.

I don’t know how long I waited underneath that bush, gripping on to the chains above that lined the pathway, with only my head above water. The ruckus above me echoed noisily as the numbing spread and my body became heavier and heavier. They seemed to be zeroing in on my location, somehow. Somewhere in the upper world I heard a voice.

Less than five minutes later I heard the slamming of van doors and the animals above my head, barking, sniffing, claws clattering on the ground. I lowered my head into the river as far as it would go, leaving only the tip of my nose, my eyes and forehead above the surface. They didn’t seem to be having much joy up there. Despite my discomfort, my spirits rose. I knew that being down here in the water was ideal for avoiding having them pick up my scent.

The crackle of a radio. ‘Go ahead?’ said a woman on the bridge. She listened for a moment. ‘Hey, guys, hang on – someone’s said they saw him go into the water and no one’s seen him get out of it again.’

‘Let’s get the dive team in,’ said someone else. ‘And tell them to get on with it, yeah? If he’s in there, and we can’t see him, there’s a chance he’s at the bottom of it, or will be soon. What was he wearing? Do we know?’

Down in the water I noticed the surface of the river around me had started vibrating. I was wondering what was causing it, then suddenly realised it was me. I was violently shivering. I’d been under that bush for at least twenty minutes by now, and my jaw was starting to lock. This, I knew, was the onset of hypothermia. I watched helplessly as the juddering of my body sent more and more ripples out onto the surface of the river in rapidly expanding circles.

‘Here, Ian! Look down there,’ said the woman’s voice. ‘Do you see that?’

I could see, in the dark reflection on the water’s surface, two police officers bending over the side of the bridge. I was done. It was over. I pushed myself off from the bank and floated out into the middle, right underneath where they were looking, and trod water.

‘Good evening officers,’ I said. ‘Is there something I can help you with?’

‘Get the fuck out of that fucking river now or you’re going to get fucking tasered,’ said the guy.

‘You’re going to taser me in the water?’ I said. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘I’m obviously under arrest, I get that,’ I said. ‘But if I get out of this and you start fucking pissing me off and roughing me up, I’m going to start up a whole new feud. I’m warning you.’

‘You’re under arrest on suspicion of assaulting a police officer,’ he said. ‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Ten minutes later I was shivering in the back of the police van, handcuffs around my wrists, four space blankets draped over my shoulders.

Back in the interview room the officer pressed pause on the remote control. There I was, on the little screen, crouched over an unconscious policeman with a cosh in my hand.

I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. Whatever they had decided to do with me – fine me, issue me a caution – as long as they hurried up about it, I didn’t really mind.

Half an hour later, when I finally stepped out of Chelmsford police station into that grim, milky-skied morning, the most immediate thing on my mind was coffee. My solicitor took me to a nearby Costa and we sat in the window with large lattes as I tried to get my head around exactly what had just happened.

‘I thought …’ I said, rubbing my temples. ‘I was expecting a fine. A caution. I can’t believe it. What are they charging me with again?’

‘Actual bodily harm against the male officer and common assault against the female.’

‘Common assault?’ I said. ‘That is so much bullshit. I didn’t lay a finger on her. How can that be assault?’

‘I’m afraid that’s how it goes these days,’ he said. ‘If you spit at someone, that’s common assault. If you swear at them, it’s common assault. You don’t have to make physical contact with them. If you do anything that makes them fear for their personal safety, that’s an assault.’

‘But she’s a police officer,’ I said. ‘No one should be attacked, I get that, but isn’t what happened to her last night just part of the everyday job? If she can’t even handle standing one metre away from a little ruck between two guys, then she’s not qualified to be on the force. She should be on the tills in Waitrose, not out on the streets.’

‘I didn’t say I agreed with it,’ he said. ‘It’s just how it goes these days.’

I picked up my coffee and looked out of the window, scowling. My clothes were still wet from the river, my trainers sodden.

‘This fucking society nowadays, everyone’s so protected,’ I said. ‘They’re mollycoddled. They’re wrapped up in cotton wool. Even the coppers. It’s a blame culture. It’s pathetic.’

‘And I’m afraid, Ant, that it’s also common assault. But don’t worry. It’s not a particularly serious charge. And we have a very strong case that there are good mitigating circumstances. You were trying to stop the trouble, not start it. And someone with your military service?’

‘I put my hand up for it, too,’ I said, nodding. ‘That’s got to count for something.’ I sat forward, suddenly rallying. ‘You know what? We should hit that policeman with abuse of authority charges. In his statement he claimed he’d grabbed hold of me because he was fearing for his safety. But I know from my time at Hendon that if you fear for your safety, you’re taught never to grab hold of someone. You’re supposed to step back and put your arm up. If you’re really in fear, you put your cosh out, extend it and use it in a defensive position. You don’t start jabbing someone in the chest. So let’s go after him.’

The solicitor sighed. ‘That’s going to cost a bit of money. And tactically, it might not be the wisest move.’

I glanced out of the window again. Along the other side of the street I saw a guy I used to know from the gym. He was walking his wife’s miniature pug. He was wearing pink trainers and had his hair tied up in a bun. What was this world I’d come back to?

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Most likely outcome? You’re looking at a couple of years suspended.’

It would be nine months before my final reckoning. During that time the charge of ABH had been elevated to GBH because the police officer claimed he’d suffered permanent damage to his eye. It sounded bad, but my solicitor felt sure that the significant mitigating circumstances, combined with my military record, meant the most likely outcome would be me getting off with a suspended sentence.

When the day came, we all took our places in the miserable brick fortress that is Chelmsford Crown Court. With Emilie and her dad watching on, my barrister argued that the incident amounted to nothing more than ‘a mild altercation that turned into a fight between two men’.

But the prosecution pushed back. ‘There was no fight,’ they said. ‘The only fight that night was coming from Mr Middleton.’

Then they played the CCTV footage. The judge leaned forward, squinting at the screen, watching the build-up on the street outside the nightclub. ‘Who is that peacekeeper in the middle, there?’ he asked. ‘The one splitting the groups up?’

My barrister pumped up his chest and announced with booming gravitas, ‘That, your honour, is my client, Anthony Middleton.’

It was a fantastic moment. It could only mean good news. As the proceedings wound on, I began slowly allowing myself to relax. Eventually, it was time for the judge’s summing up. The moment he fixed me with his bird-of-prey eyes I knew things had somehow taken a terrible turn.

‘You are a highly trained and experienced former Special Forces operator,’ he said. ‘You should have known better.’

He handed me down a sentence of twenty-six months in prison, with six months taken off for pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity and another six due to my character references. That left fourteen months inside. Across the courtroom, Emilie was sitting in the gallery with her dad. Both of them looked pale and shocked.

‘I love you too,’ she said, visibly gathering herself together. ‘We’ve got this.’

That was all I needed to hear. The moment I broke eye contact with her I was in the zone. There was no anger anymore. No shock. No self-pity. No negativity. This was prison. There was nothing I could do about it but dive in head first. I was led out of the court by two members of the prison staff and put into the back of a transport van. They locked me into a tiny cubicle and I was driven to Chelmsford Prison. I didn’t look out of the window. That world, out there, of shops and music and sunlight was nothing to do with me anymore. As we drove, for a horrible moment I almost felt I might drown in the shame I was feeling at what I’d done to my family. I squeezed my eyes and clenched my fists. I had to get hold of myself. There was no other choice.

As we made halting progress through the Chelmsford traffic I tried to marshal my thoughts. My overwhelming concern was that I’d end up fighting. There was no way I could let people walk over me in there. There was no question that I had to defend myself. But what would happen if and when there was physical violence? If I flipped out, I knew I’d probably cause some serious damage. My goal was obviously to be let out early for good behaviour, but that kind of trouble could see me being kept inside for years. Not for the first time, I realised that this was going to be more of a mental game than a physical one. My most dangerous enemy would be myself. This war would be fought inside my head.

When the wagon pulled up I was led, along with a young lad of around eighteen, into a reception building. Our personal possessions were confiscated and sealed up in plastic bags, then I was taken into a side room, stripped and made to squat, so they could check I wasn’t smuggling anything inside me. If they thought they were going to humiliate me or make me feel in any way ashamed by making me do this, they didn’t know me very well. I stood up, my mind a machine, and collected my allotted prison gear: two plain T-shirts, two grey tracksuit bottoms, two grey jumpers, plimsolls and bed sheets.

In yet another small room we were processed by a ‘trusted’ inmate, a scrawny-looking guy with a wispy blond beard hanging off his chin who handed us both what looked like credit cards.

‘These are your telephone cards,’ he said. ‘Guard them with your life.’ Then came a small pile of papers. ‘These are your canteen sheets. I’ll show you how to fill them out in a bit. On this sheet you’ll find all your timings – that’s when you eat, when you get locked in your cell, when all your roll call times are.’

‘You have to make sure you’re stood by your door at eight in the morning,’ he continued. ‘Breakfast is at eight thirty. You’ve got half an hour to eat, then you’re back to your cell to get banged up again. They let you out for lunch at half twelve, then you get banged up again at one.’

‘Are you all right?’ He gave me an insincere nod. ‘You’ll be fine,’ I reassured him, although the truth was I really wasn’t sure.

Wizard-chin led us down a wide corridor and into a holding area that had an old table and a couple of couches in it that smelled of bleach and sweat. More trusted inmates were hanging about in there, for no obvious reason, all dressed in their regulation light grey at-Her-Majesty’s-leisurewear. I was aware of them trying to subtly check us over with furtive glances, while not breaking their conversation. It wasn’t long before one of them slouched over and sat himself chummily on the arm of the couch.

‘All right, mate,’ he grinned, scratching his boney, yellowish arm. He looked over our piles of clothing. ‘You got everything you need?’

‘No, mate. I’m happy that I know how to use it,’ I said. ‘I’ve been told.’

‘I’m a trusted inmate, yeah?’ he said. ‘Give us it here. Come on. I want to show you something.’

I stared ahead. When he realised I wasn’t giving in, he stood and got in front of me. There was dried spittle on the edges of his lips and he had one of those mouths that show more gum than teeth. He had crust in the corners of his eyes and his skin had an almost greenish pallor.

‘Mate,’ he said, trying to act the tough guy. ‘I told you to give it here.’

I could destroy this prick in less than a second. I wouldn’t even have to get out of my seat.

‘And I told you,’ I said. ‘I’ve got my card. I know how to use it. Thank you very much, though. I appreciate the kind offer of help.’

From the other side of the room another inmate piped up. ‘You lot,’ he said. ‘Keep the fucking noise down, will you?’

‘Am I fucking talking too loud, mate?’ I said. ‘I’m fucking talking too loud, am I?’

‘Be careful who you talk to, because you don’t fucking know me and you don’t want to fucking know me.’ I turned to the other one. Before I had the chance to say any more, he’d shrunk back.

I returned to my place on the couch, waiting to be led to my cell. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Was it going to be like this every day? How was I going to keep a lid on it? How was I going to stop myself breaking someone’s jaw?

Finally, a prison officer arrived and we were led out into a huge indoor courtyard. Around us was a massive horseshoe of cells and windows, three storeys high. Voices echoed out above our heads – ‘Fresh meat!’ ‘Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!’ ‘I’m gonna fuck you up.’ The young lad beside me was pale and was clutching his gear to his chest. I looked up in the direction of the Fresh Meat cell, thinking, ‘I would so love to come to your cell right now and knock on the door.’ I was thankful to discover I’d been given a cell of my own. Once inside I took my shoes off, put them neatly by the door, and lay back on the mattress. It was so thin and ragged it immediately brought to mind my days as a craphat back in Aldershot.

The next morning all the inmates had to step outside their cells for roll call. I made sure I was present and correct at 8 o’clock as a prison officer checked us all off on his clipboard. I glanced to my left. Standing beside me was an obvious drug addict. He had no teeth, his clothes were stained with cum and tea, and he stank. I looked to my right. There was a man who was inside for burgling houses. The prison officer doing the roll call was viewing me as if I were no different from them. And I wasn’t. I was just a prisoner number too. If anything, I was worse. Most of these wretches had started out with nothing. But me? I’d had a beautiful wife and family, and a prestigious job that I loved. I’d had everything I ever wanted, and I’d lost it.

For the first time in years I was glad my dad wasn’t around. I thought of him often, as the days in prison turned to weeks. Looking back upon my life up to now, I realised that the military had, in many ways, taken over my dad’s role. It had given me structure, it had taught me how to behave, it had given me a goal to reach for and rules to kick against, to find out who I was. Now I’d left all that behind me, and what had happened? I’d crumbled. After everything I’d achieved and lived through, was I still not man enough to be out there, in the world, alone? Could I not control myself? Could I not fight that war in my head and win?

As the weeks ground on I managed to get into a routine. I’d spend my time keeping my cell immaculate, sweeping it out twice a day and making my bed properly. But, just like when I was in Afghanistan, I made a conscious decision not to make my personal space homely. Some inmates had nice rugs in their spaces and candles and pictures of the family. Mine was just an empty cell with a bed and toilet. I wasn’t going to try and kid myself that this was anywhere I could feel comfortable. This was prison. It was a negative place. I didn’t belong here. Full stop.

But I also knew that if I was to avoid flipping out and hurting someone, I’d have to find a way of not getting sucked into that negativity. I tried to focus my mind on all the things I wanted to do after my release. I worked out in the gym and took on as many jobs as they’d let me do. I served food. I was a cleaner, mopping floors while everyone else was asleep. Soon I was also given permission to leave my cell between seven and eight at night, and teach inmates to read and write. I was shocked to discover how many of them couldn’t even do the basics. It brought it home that, at heart, a lot of these guys weren’t bad people; they just hadn’t been given the tools to properly survive in the world.

I also had another advantage. There were a few people inside that I either already knew personally or had direct connections with from pals in Essex. I know what it sounds like, but there’s no other way of really putting it: some of my friends are gangsters. I’m not talking about petty crime gangs, either. These are top boys from top firms, the kind of men whose names get whispered around the bazaars. I started hanging around with one in particular, who was a former member of the Royal Green Jackets, an infantry regiment of the British Army. He did a lot of heavy work – collection, intimidation – for a top East End gang but had got caught with a commercial quantity of drugs on him. We swapped war stories. He told me about the drugs deals he’d been on, the money he’d had to recover. He got a buzz out of it, and plenty of cash. ‘There are so many opportunities out there,’ he told me. ‘We should do something when we get out.’

I lay in my cell for days, turning over the offer in my head. I was skint and had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. A lot of former Special Forces operatives go that way, and I couldn’t blame them. With my training, I could easily and quickly become a very handy and respected asset within the top gangs in London. Whether it was surveillance, tracking people down, putting pressure on people, recovering debt or overseeing a job, it would be no problem. I was capable. I was aggressive. I could work with violence. The respect would automatically be there, there was plenty of money and it would come easy. The more I thought about it, the more it all added up. I could do it for a year, get some cash behind me and then move on. Why not?

After two months in Chelmsford I was transferred to Standford Hill prison on the Isle of Sheppey. It was an improvement, but I still didn’t know when I’d be getting out. Of course, I hoped that I’d be released early for good behaviour, but there was no guarantee of that. And the pressure ratcheted up dramatically one day when I had a difficult call with Emilie. The moment she picked up the phone I could tell there was something wrong.

‘I’m really sorry, Ant, I’ve been trying my best. It’s getting tricky. I’ve been doing the sums. If we don’t start getting an income soon we’re going to have to declare bankruptcy.’

‘Sorry, love. I’ve been looking for work that I can do in the evening when the kids …’

‘I’ve got a parole interview this afternoon,’ I told her. ‘I can’t promise anything. I’ll do my best.’

I walked back to my cell ringing with shock and failure. I lay in bed for the next three hours, thinking, ‘What an embarrassment. How shameful.’ This was, without doubt, the worst thing about being inside. I’d become a burden on Emilie and my children. She’d even had to lie to the kids about me, telling them I was away with the military. I didn’t belong in this place and I could never risk a return visit under any circumstances. And that meant resisting the gang life. It meant fighting that war of temptation in my head, and it meant fighting that instinct for violence that had been trained into me. I wasn’t prepared to accept the excuses I heard again and again from former servicemen: ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine’ or ‘I’m a soldier. I’ve been trained this way and you can’t change me.’ That was all rubbish. If I could train myself to be one of the most elite soldiers in the world, I could train myself to be one of the best civilians.

At 3.30 p.m. I turned up at the parole office, spick and span – and nervous. This would be the most important meeting of my life.

I wanted to take a chair and launch it through the window. Instead, I made my way slowly back to the cells, breathing deeply, trying to hold it together. I was in prison for violence. One hint of aggression and any chance I had of parole would be blown.

As I turned the corner a young Scouser lad with a bowl haircut was coming the other way. He leaned in towards me as he passed, a hair’s breadth from barging my shoulder.

‘Sorry, mate, I’ve just been told my parole interview’s gone back a week,’ I said. ‘I just want to get out of here.’

‘Fuckin’ hell, sort yerself out, la. Can’t you even handle a little bit of bird? I’ve done more time inside than you’ve done on the shitter. You need to fuckin’ man up, la, or you’re going to get what’s coming to ya.’

I could see the button in front of me. I could push it. I wanted so badly to push it. I just wanted to wipe the floor with him, smear him into the concrete, to belittle him, to let him know that he was nothing, that he was just a little gobshite.

I took a step back and watched him go on his way, with his cocky, bow-legged, shit-in-pants walk. If I’d had a couple more months to serve I’d have followed him into his cell and given him a shoeing. But I couldn’t. The war wasn’t with him, it was with myself. The effort it took not to knock him out was so immense I thought I might be having a stroke.

When my parole interview finally came it was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences I’d had. Behind the table, with their folders and pens, the parole officer, the prison chief and a social worker studied me with bored contempt.

‘You’re serving a term for a violent offence,’ said the parole officer. ‘What exactly have you changed about yourself?’

‘I’m just keeping my positivity,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot of pressure to push back in here, but I’ve been a model prisoner. The reason I’ve managed to do it is my family. They’re waiting for me. I made a silly mistake due to alcohol. It was an error of judgement that ended up with me in this situation. I will never make that error again.’

‘Right, Mr Middleton,’ said the prison chief. ‘Take a seat in the waiting area for ten minutes. We’ll call you in when we’re ready.’

Sitting in that room, with my right foot twitching, I counted every single movement of the clock’s second hand. Finally, I was asked to come in and take my seat.

‘On this occasion,’ said the parole officer, unsmilingly, ‘we have decided to allow you to serve the rest of your sentence at home, on a tag.’

For the next two days I hid in my cell. On my final morning I gave away everything I had, apart from the clothes I was wearing, to the other inmates – brand new trainers, brand new clothes, my radio, my books. I was determined that nothing to do with prison would contaminate my home life. I was escorted outside the gates to a guard room, where I was processed. The form-filling was endless. Then they had to go through the process of removing me from all their databases – getting signatures from the gym to take me off that database, then signatures from the health centre to take me off that database. It almost felt like a final test, just to see if I would snap.

After more than two hours I gave them my final signature. I had money left over from my canteen funds and they handed me £28.50 in a little money bag, as if I were a child. The prison officer arrived, shook my hand and wished me good luck. Then he opened a door and I simply walked out into the street. It was an ordinary day in the ordinary world and, just like that, I was in it.

Someone in a vehicle sounded their horn. On the other side of the road there was a small parking zone. Sitting in the family car was Emilie. I waited for a gap in the traffic and then ran across. I jumped into the passenger seat and she flung her arms around me.

‘Don’t ever do anything like that again,’ she said. ‘Promise me. No more fighting. I need you, Ant. We need you.’

‘In your arms is my safe place,’ she whispered, close to tears. ‘It feels like home.’

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

The war is always in your head. You can’t trust your body. It tells you it’s got nothing left when it’s still a hundred miles from breaking. And when it does actually break, it heals. The only true war you’ll ever fight is with your own mind.

Be aware that situations can completely transform in an instant. On that night in Chelmsford I thought I was being the good guy, helping prevent a silly situation turning ugly. I was so caught up in my role as the hero, it simply hadn’t occurred to me that I would end up being the villain. That transformation took seconds.

If it feels like ‘temptation’, it’s a bad decision. It’s easy to spot when a negative has presented itself to you – because you find yourself using the ‘T’ word. If you’re tempted, as I was in prison, resist. You will rarely regret it.

Don’t knock police officers out. Obviously.

THE WAR IS ALWAYS IN YOUR HEAD