40

It was the night before Ahmad’s trial was due to start, and he lay on his bed gazing up at the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw Aisha’s face staring at him accusingly. He had failed her, and in the worst way possible. He had brought her thousands of miles to a new life and now their family faced disgrace and disaster.

He sat up in the semi-darkness and began to leaf through the newspaper the prison officer had left in his cell. Most of it was depressing news; another London stabbing (a boy of fifteen), a cyclist under a lorry (a thirty-six-year-old mother of three), more homeless on the streets, London on the highest level of security alert, the impossibility of buying a first home, the uncertainty of post-Brexit Britain. And then he saw it. ‘Syrian cleaner on trial; is this the face of a callous murderer?’

He had skipped over it deliberately first time around, as Constance had entreated him to do. Now, alone and distracted, he indulged himself by devouring the article, lashing himself with each word. At first, he was so preoccupied by his reading that he failed to notice the cold stealing up on him; it was licking his calves before he realised it was back. Of course, he possessed the tools to defeat it, to fight back. He simply had to focus on the face of the ones he loved and slow his breathing down but, on this occasion, Aisha’s face did not appear warm and welcoming; it was instead harsh and judgemental.

And now he discovered something interesting about his own psyche. If he immersed himself totally in the newspaper, the cold would leap upwards unchecked. And those words he was reading – ‘plunge’, ‘catastrophic’, ‘calculating’, ‘ingrate’, ‘loner’, ‘defenceless’ – each one invigorated his attacker, fuelling its spread through his body, freezing his organs in its wake.

By the time he had the wisdom to fling the newspaper to the floor and fight back, the biting frostiness had gripped him by the throat, threatening to shut down his airways and relaxation was the antithesis of his instinct, which was to battle hard. He collapsed on his bed, his body convulsing.

Through a fog of pounding in his head, Ahmad heard the noise of bolts being drawn back and heavy footsteps. The prison guard entered the cell and flooded it with light. Within seconds he had rung the emergency bell and had wrapped his arms around the stricken man, bringing him to a sitting position.

‘So cold,’ Ahmad mumbled.

‘You don’t feel cold,’ the guard replied. ‘You’re sweating like a pig.’ He took Ahmad’s pulse. ‘You need to slow down, mate.’

He grabbed the newspaper off the floor, drew the four corners of one sheet together and held it up against Ahmad’s lips.

‘I want you to breathe really slowly into this. Watch it inflate. Nice and slow.’

Ahmad’s heart was racing but his breathing was shallow, almost non-existent.

‘Come on. You’re not trying,’ the guard roared. ‘I want to see the bag inflate. Here. You feel cold? I’ve put the blanket around you. Now breathe.’

Ahmad tried really hard. The contact from the guard seemed to fend off the choking hold on his windpipe and, for the first time since the guard had entered, he filled his lungs with air.

‘Good. Now do it again.’

Ahmad breathed a second time and then a third, his heart finally starting to reduce its breakneck speed. The guard took a step away from Ahmad and watched his back heave up and down.

When Ahmad felt warm again and his breathing had returned to normal, he murmured ‘so tired’ before closing his eyes, lying down on the narrow bed and finally going off to sleep.

The guard stood outside Ahmad’s cell with the senior prison warder.

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know. I just checked on him. He was lying on the bed, shaking all over. He said he felt cold but he was boiling hot. Should we call a doctor? He wasn’t good.’

The senior warder drew back the shutter and viewed Ahmad. He was now lying peacefully on his side, his body rising and falling rhythmically. Then he thought about the poor woman they said he had murdered, with the splintered head, and how his own mother would be seventy-one next month.

‘He’ll be all right now,’ he replied. ‘And he needs the sleep so he can be bright tomorrow morning. No point getting someone in to prod him around. I don’t think anyone else needs to know about this. We wouldn’t want them accusing us of not looking after the star of the show, would we?’

The guard shrugged in capitulation, but every hour through the night he checked on Ahmad until he went off duty and, on two occasions, he crept into the room. The first time he had the excuse of removing the newspaper, the second he entered blatantly, just to ensure that Ahmad was still alive.