The red bricks of the prison always make Toby Bowman think of a 1980s office block. He parks a few streets away and approaches it through a light drizzle, the January weather doing nothing to dispel the month’s miserable reputation.
The reception area is always uncomfortably hot and, knowing this from experience, Toby removes his jacket to sit and wait in shirtsleeves with a stack of the files he invariably brings to read, using the time he will sit in this room waiting for Laurel as usefully as he can.
On New Year’s Day the wait is unusually quick. Normally Toby wouldn’t be given permission to visit on a public holiday but he has been granted special dispensation due to his client’s upcoming court hearing. The air is stultified, thick with resentment, but the waiting area is unnaturally calm. Usually the room is packed with scowling inhabitants, slumping in their chairs, bulging plastic bags at their feet. Today, though, the grinding of the vending machine’s organs slams loudly into the quiet, normally filled with the low hum of chatter, of noses being blown, of children whingeing that they are bored.
Toby tries to concentrate on the papers he has received from Laurel Bowman’s barrister concerning her recent challenge to the parole board. He reads rapidly, the papers resting on his – as he would admit – rounded stomach. He has dark half-moons of sweat under his armpits and his pate is shiny with moisture. His stomach rumbles but he refuses to buy a chocolate bar, forcing his brain to focus on the legal arguments in front of him, knowing that he has to lose two stone before his prostate can be operated on. So successful is his mindfulness that the guard has to call his name twice before he lifts his head.
Quickly he gathers his papers, stuffing them into his satchel, and moves to the other side of the room where the security barrier stands like castle gates. He leaves his bag and jacket in a locker, placing his watch in a plastic tray, walking through the scanner without issue. The guard is sour-faced, ushering him through without recognition, despite the fact that Toby has come here pretty much every month for the last ten years. Then again, once people know he represents Laurel, he is generally given a cold shoulder, if not outright abuse. Toby proceeds through three sets of doors and into a musty white corridor, which seems to stretch to eternity. Halfway down is a framed poster of a sunset over water with the words Believe you can and you’re halfway there. Every time he visits, Toby wonders why the powers that be believe a motivational quote from Theodore Roosevelt will have any influence on the prisoners. He doubts they have ever heard of him and, even if they have, the fatuousness of the statement always drains a little more hope from Toby’s well.
He waits for a buzzer to sound before the gunmetal-coloured door in front of him clicks open. He walks into a long narrow room filled with lines of small tables, a single chair to either side. Laurel is already at a table, waiting with her legs apart, her tattooed arms folded across her chest. As he walks over to her, a smile fixed on his face, he wonders, once again, whether she has the strength to survive what she is about to go through with this application.
Laurel looks ghostly, dark shadows under her chocolate-brown eyes. Her blonde hair is scraped back into a tight knot on the top of her head. There are nicotine stains on her fingers, her eyes like a rifle trained on her lawyer.
‘All right, Toby?’ she says, leaning back in her chair, a grim smile on her face. She plays with an unlit cigarette in her fingers. Smoking is only allowed in the cells and the exercise yards. ‘Shit, isn’t it?’ Laurel says, looking down at the fag. ‘This is just when I want one the most. When I’m talking to you. Could pretend we were in a pub or something then,’ she snorts. ‘’Bout as close as I’ll ever get to one, of course.’
Toby nods, settling himself into his seat. He doesn’t mention that smoking was outlawed in pubs ten years into Laurel’s sentence. ‘Happy New Year. How are you, L?’
‘Yeah, Happy New Year. Good one.’ She looks up at him from underneath her eyebrows. ‘I’m all right. Missing my four-poster bed as always.’
‘I came last month, did they tell you? For Christmas. But you were denied privileges, they said. What happened?’
Laurel shrugs. ‘New girl on the block racked me up so they put me on basic.’
‘But they told me you were segregated?’ Toby says. ‘Not just confined to your cell.’
Laurel looks down at the cigarette and twirls it between her third and fourth fingers. She is thin – too thin – Toby thinks, and he has a dull sensation that he knows what she is not telling him. He bites his lip and leans forward.
‘L, look,’ he says. But she doesn’t, her gaze is fixed downwards. ‘You’ve got to start helping yourself. If you keep getting into fights, it gets harder and harder for me to help you. Every time we make representations to the parole board, they just point to a long list of infractions and tell me that you’re still violent, you’re aggressive, you remain a risk.’
‘Well, maybe I am,’ Laurel says, her mouth a stubborn line.
‘You’re not,’ Toby sighs. ‘And it’s no use to anyone if you act like a sulky child. Is it, Lulu?’
Laurel’s lips twitch at that.
‘You’re a bright young girl with a great deal to give,’ he says. ‘And I want to help you. It’s not right that you’re here. Stuck in this place.’ He scratches the back of his neck, aware of his body odour, his hunger and increasing frustration. God, he hates prison. ‘Have you started up the GCSE course again?’
Laurel nods. ‘I’m a couple of weeks out because of . . . you know, the basic. But I’ll make it up. I’m sorry, Uncle Toby.’ She looks at him and her eyes soften, losing the brittle glare that normally shields her from friendship, from any attempt to bring her on side.
‘I want the world to see what I see, Lulu,’ Toby says. ‘I really do. We are appealing the parole board’s decision, as you know. And I think, this time, we’ve got good grounds for gaining permission for judicial review. It’s not just a shot in the dark. But a lot of people are still angry about the past.’ He shakes his head. ‘You should have heard Debbie Swann’s sister – that Joanna Denton from Bang to Rights – on the radio this morning. The woman is sadly deranged . . . But, look. You’ve got to work with me. Everything we’re trying to do will mean nothing if you’re acting up the whole time.
‘We’ve got to think about the next few weeks. The application for review. If the court grants us permission, we’ll have an oral hearing. We can bring in evidence then that proves you’re not such a risk as everyone keeps making out. You want that, don’t you?’
Laurel sighs, putting the unlit cigarette in her mouth. ‘What’s the point? No one’s going to believe me anyway. They want me in here forever.’
‘I could lie. I could say no, but you know the truth as well as I do.’ He leans back. ‘But it’s worth the fight, isn’t it, L? Worth fighting for your freedom?’
Laurel looks at him for a long moment. ‘Depends whether you think I deserve it or not, doesn’t it?’