Dear Elliot,

I’m sorry there was no other way. Lord knows I’ve tried to live a different life, but this is the one I’m fated. I hope Mrs. Hughes gives you this, and even if she doesn’t, I know there will come a day when you’ll sit down and read it, and all the other letters I shall write you. I intend to send you a letter every week I’m in prison. I want to continue your education. It’s essential, and even though I know you’re angry with me for leaving you, there will come a time when you will turn to my words for guidance, so it is important I set them down. One day you will understand and remember me fondly.

These letters are almost as important for me as they are for you. I have eleven long years stretching ahead of me, time that will pass slowly and painfully without a useful outlet. My words are essential for both of us. Remember that.

I spent two weeks in Stafford Prison after the trial, before being transferred to Long Lartin. It is a bleak place in the middle of green fields of nowhere. They say it is the second most secure prison in Britain, after Belmarsh. There are patrol dogs and high wire fences everywhere, and I am incarcerated with rapists and murderers. I’m afraid of what my future holds here. I know there is cruelty and suffering in store, but I mustn’t dwell on that. I know I will get through it, and while eleven years might seem an eternity, all things pass. All pain fades and sadness wanes. Brighter days will come. I cling to the notion that one day we will see each other again.

And then there’s her.

She came to visit me on my first day. She still doesn’t believe it, but we are connected. A prison officer, a young woman called Anya, took me to the visitor’s room, which is in a satellite building off the main administration block, and I found her waiting for me. Despite everything that’s happened, I still love her, and I hope one day the love I knew she had for me will be rekindled. I long for her to look at me the way she did when we first met, I long for another kiss, but for now she greets me with the suspicion one would reserve for a murderer. There wasn’t any small talk.

“Don’t you think it’s time you started telling me the truth?” she asked.

I smiled, which only annoyed her.

“Something funny?”

“I’ve only ever told you the truth,” I replied.

She shook her head in disbelief. “Why did you confess? You could have put up a defense.”

“Who would have believed me?” I replied. “Besides, I had my reasons.”

“The secret?”

“The secret,” I conceded. “You won’t find out today, but in time you’ll know what it is and why it must be kept.”

“In time?” she replied. “There is no more time. I get to move on. You’re going to be trapped in here for at least eleven years.”

“I don’t want us to fight.”

“We’re not a couple,” she snapped. “Just tell me one thing. Is he your son?”

I hope it’s not a question that ever troubles you, my dearest Elliot, and I shall tell you what I told her.

“Why is the world so sordid? We never see beyond our own limited perspectives. We can never look at the world through other people’s eyes.”

I knew exactly what she was suggesting: that I’d had an affair with your mother, that your father had found out and killed her, been overcome with remorse, and taken his own life. The tawdry imaginings of people who don’t understand what we’ve been through.

“The uniform suits you,” I said.

She was in her full dress uniform. Perhaps in an attempt to intimidate me or to show me how much she’d moved on.

“The day after your sentencing, someone sent me a video I’d spent months looking for. The footage exonerated me. I got my job back.”

“I’m happy for you,” I told her honestly.

“But you don’t know anything about it?”

“Why would I?”

“Don’t you think the timing is strange?” she remarked.

“Perhaps, but there are such things as coincidences.”

“Like us meeting?” she asked. “Months before I started investigating you for murder.”

“That was no coincidence,” I replied. “That was love.”

“It was an illusion built on lies,” she snapped back.

“It was real,” I assured her. “One day you’ll understand.”

She shook her head and sighed. “No one’s interested in your cryptic little games anymore. You’ve lost.”

“In that case, if you feel anything for me, anything at all, even the tiniest fragment of pity, please don’t come here again,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“It’s too painful. I’ve got a long time ahead of me. I need to forget what lies outside these walls,” I told her. “We’ll meet again, Harri.”

I didn’t wait for her to respond. I got to my feet and asked Anya to take me back to C-Block.

I glanced over my shoulder as we left and saw Harriet Kealty, in her beautifully pressed police uniform, rising from the table, totally perplexed.

I knew it was the last I’d see of her for a very, very long time.

I don’t think she is likely to contact you, but if she does, remember what binds us. The secret once broken can never be remade. It is ours and ours alone, and I hope that no matter what happens, you will honor that. I know you will.

I discovered the therapeutic power of poetry as a child. It helps me make sense of the senseless and brings the magic of chaos to order. The mystery of interpretation, someone once told me, is that we can project ourselves into the spaces between the words and find room to imprint our own meaning. Our souls flourish in those spaces.

Someone wrote a poem for me once, and I’d like to share it with you.

Life’s color dancing on fragile wings

Flower to flower

Beautifully elusive

Clearly seen, floating on

But closer gazed

Gone

Those ethereal wings

Churn a storm

Of winter wind and hail

That chips and flakes

The stone king’s face

And all he thinks and knows

And on the heather

Royal purple blooms

Inviting you to come again

If we list the biological characteristics of a flower, do we diminish its beauty? I think the same is true of poetry. If we tear the verse apart, all we’re left with are words, but sometimes one can’t help but analyze. This work has played on my mind for years. Am I the stone king? Is it about humility? Or love? Or truth? Sometimes I think it was just meant to torment me, to give me something to do, like a Sudoku puzzle, infuriating yet strangely addictive. I shall devote at least some of the years ahead to try to understand its meaning. If you have any insight, do please write me. About this or anything else. I would very much like to hear from you.

With love,

Ben