FIFTY-EIGHT

It wasn’t like too many people arrived at these places full of the joys of spring, Linda thought, but the whole process seemed designed to make a bad mood a damn sight worse. The queuing to get through that first reception area for a start; dumped on a chair and stared at, nobody in any real hurry to help, however polite you were being. Not a lot of people skills, the officers, especially the women. By the time you’d filled in the umpteenth form and had your picture taken you’d already lost the will to live, and that was before the metal detectors and these unsmiling arseholes going through your stuff and taking everything off you. Like your mobile might explode at any minute and your fags were laced with heroin or something.

Wasn’t it getting out that was supposed to be impossible?

Linda understood why it was necessary, she wasn’t stupid, but something about the way it was all done made her feel grimy and unwelcome. Like the very act of coming to see a prisoner made you one notch above a scumbag yourself. She tried telling herself that she needed to toughen up and get used to it. It was the way she’d been made to feel ever since that first knock on the door and maybe she’d been naïve thinking it wouldn’t be the same coming here.

They knew who she was, didn’t they?

The visiting area was smaller than she’d expected. A rubberised floor and four or five tables and chairs. Maybe there was somewhere else for the general prison population, those who weren’t on remand, the ones who weren’t vulnerable. A vending machine stood in one corner, a prison officer sitting alongside with a magazine. There were more officers around than prisoners, only two when Linda sat down to wait. A man in his early twenties opposite a woman who was probably his mother and one who was much older, maybe seventy. Linda knew that there were all sorts in a vulnerable prisoners’ unit, not just sex offenders. Ex-coppers, lawyers, whatever, but looking at the two already sitting there, it was impossible not to wonder.

Was the old man a judge or a kiddie-fiddler? Maybe both. The way she saw it, there were far too many child abusers getting sent down for less time than somebody who’d nicked a shirt during a riot.

When Steve was led in, she felt her heart start to race.

A thrill, for those first few seconds, same as that first time she’d seen him. Her and a girlfriend on the piss in that pub in Dorden, him and his mate buying them drinks all night, giving it all the chat. He was funny and full of himself, his shirt was open a long way down, and he was just what she needed.

Today, he was wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt with a bib over it. Red for the vulnerable prisoners. He looked even thinner than he had done in court, and paler. His hair was all over the shop.

He sat down and smiled and said, ‘Hello, gorgeous.’

When she’d had that conversation with Helen about what it would be like, this was the moment that Linda had been imagining. Hands reaching across the table, squeezing and stroking.

It was lucky for him that the rules prevented it. She could have happily reached across and taken one of his eyes out.

‘How are the kids?’ he said.

‘They’re OK.’

He nodded. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about the other day, I don’t know what I was thinking. They told me you came down to the hospital.’

Linda noticed the frayed edge of the bandage poking from the sleeve of his sweatshirt. ‘You must have been feeling awful,’ she said.

‘I was all over the place,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like in here.’

‘Bad, is it?’

‘Worse than I imagined. Worst bit is missing you and the kids, you know?’

‘I know.’

He sat back. ‘Sorry, love. You didn’t come here to listen to me moaning.’ He smiled; same smile as that night at the pub in Dorden. They reckon when a woman goes for a night out she’s usually got a friend who’s not quite as attractive as she is. But it’s obviously rubbish, because me and my mate have been staring at you two all night and we can’t decide which one of you is the tastiest. ‘Glad you did come though. Couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about it.’

‘Tell me about the girl,’ Linda said.

It was hard to read his expression. Shock, anger, and, by the time he finally spoke, something that looked like genuine disappointment. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, I thought at least you’d believe I didn’t do anything. How could you think I’d done those things? You know me better than anyone.’

‘I don’t mean the girl they think you killed. I mean the girl I know you’ve been shagging. The sixteen-year-old girl?’ She watched his face change again, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, and wondered where his chat was now. He blinked quickly and she could almost hear his mind working as he struggled to find whatever words might help him. ‘It’s why you couldn’t look at me in court, isn’t it? If that’s what guilty looks like, you’d better try and avoid it next time you’re standing in the dock.’

‘I met her a few times,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’ She leaned forward, just enough to remind him what she was capable of, ‘no touching’ rule or not. ‘Don’t even try to lie to me.’

‘I swear.’

‘So, what exactly was it you were thinking, those times you were “meeting” her brains out?’

‘Please, love—’

‘Same thing you were thinking the last time, or the time before that? Not that they were quite as young as this one, were they? Not still doing homework, as far as I can remember. Were you thinking: Look at me, I’ve still got it? Sad old twat who normally has to sit and toss himself off in front of the computer and look what I can still pull? Were you thinking how great you were, was it making you feel like you were twenty-one again? Looking up at some kid bouncing up and down on top of you and thinking, how great is that arse and look at those tits and thinking how much nicer they were than what you had at home? What you were stuck with?’ She shook her head and stared for a few moments, enjoying it. ‘No, definitely not that. Because the only thing I’m certain about is that you were not thinking about me. While you were lying and sneaking off and shagging that little slag, you did not spend one second thinking about me or about my kids.’

She leaned back again, looked around. The prison officer by the vending machine dropped his eyes quickly back to his magazine. The woman visiting the younger of the other prisoners turned back to him.

‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Steve said.

Linda was thinking much the same thing. She could, for example, tell her husband that the young girl they had been discussing was determined to give him an alibi. She could mention that a pair of high-ranking police officers from London believed he was innocent, that they and a forensic expert were working hard to prove it.

For the time being though, she decided to keep those things to herself.