Grey walls, a most uninviting grey. A grey, metal door, with a small grille set into it for communicating and passing food through. A metal framed bed attached to the wall, a thin, hard mattress on top covered by a coarse grey blanket, no pillow. This was my cell.

I picked at the blanket, pulling off loose bobbles of fibre, balling them together. I studied the wall, following the lines of painted brickwork, staring intensely at any crack or frozen line of dripped paint. I paced the floor, kicking at each wall as I reached the end of my very short route.

I imagined Em explaining to Mum what had happened. She cried. She wasn’t angry, in my mind, but terribly sad.

‘Why would he do this?’ she would ask and Em would explain the plan to get Dad back. Mum would cry even more. She’d forbid it too, I was sure of that.

‘My boys.’

She’d lost us once before.

I thought about Bigger, from Africa, who’d lost everything. I thought about trying to be happy. I thought about a blurred face, like an older version of my brother rearing up at me. I felt strong arms go around me. I heard my father’s laughter.

‘Clunk, clunk.’ Something metal rapped at the door and brought me quickly out of my daydream. The grate slid open with a squeak. A rectangular portion of face could be seen, eyes, nose and the top lip – features that belonged to the police officer who had shown me to the cell.

‘Come on then,’ he called through the slit. ‘Get your stuff.’

I looked around. I had no ‘stuff’. I stood up, shrugging my jacket back on. The keys rasped in the lock as I clomped across the floor. Then the metal door swung open.

‘You’re lucky, son,’ the police officer said. ‘You’d be staying at least a night, if we didn’t need this cell.’

I just stared at him. Lucky, was I? I couldn’t remember a time when I’d really been lucky.

He led me down the corridor. As we passed several more cell doors he explained that I’d have to appear in court, that I would receive a summons, a letter asking you to come to court, but that I’d probably get away with community service.

There were lots of forms to fill out before I could leave. I waited in an office, as the policeman scribbled furiously. Being a policeman, it seemed, was not like it looked on TV.

I had assumed Em would be waiting for me. This is what I thought about as I watched the form being filled in: his scowl, his disappointed look as he walked away, leaving me to follow. I didn’t think my mum would be there, despite the scene I’d played out in my head earlier. Neither of them, though, were in the lobby when I finally emerged. But there was somebody waiting.

I had my head down as the officer led me out, through a heavy door. I heard someone rise from one of seats round the edge of the lobby, but all I saw was a pair of familiar, shiny, man-sized shoes.

‘What have you been up to, Prince?’ Jubrel asked.