39

It was lunchtime in the exotic dining hall of the prison, with its plastic-topped tables, plastic stackable chairs, plastic cutlery and plastic trays with indentations for food, plastic mugs and plastic condiment containers. Not that I have anything against plastic, you understand, but perhaps it’s not such an exotic dining room after all.

The queue was long and winding and I was slipping down it as prisoners made way for me in the mysterious way they did for those that they’d decided warranted some form of respect. I reached the serving area with my plastic tray thingy just as Dad arrived, so I helped him and we walked together to our normal seating area. It was odd really; the tables were supposed to be filled from the front right-hand side of the room and some people did that and they normally came in as groups. If there were not enough of them to fill a table of six the empty seats were not filled. The screws sometimes tried to make that happen (well, new screws did) only to end up with a mess of food down the backs of their uniforms, so they learned to let the prisoners sort out their own seating arrangements and in general, to stay out of the way of flying gravy-soaked mash or curry sauce or some other easy-to-flick and sticky missile. At least plastic cutlery was useful for something.

Minutes later, Arty joined us. Dad and Arty were very quiet. I knew Dad had been for an assessment for some pains a few weeks before and had been to see the specialist yesterday. Arty had been allowed to go with him so we knew it was serious. I wondered what the results had been. They were both picking at their food.

‘Are you going to tell me?’ I asked. Arty just got up and left. He was upset.

‘We need your help, Jake,’ said Dad.

‘To do what?’

‘Tell us what to do.’

‘About what?’

‘I have cancer and the doc says I have anything from six weeks to a year, depending on how it develops.’

‘He told you about treatment?’

‘Well, sort of, and no.’

‘Go on.’ Boy, Flash and Sergeant were trying to look as if they weren’t listening. What Dad had said so far was hurting them; they loved the old man. That was not the sort of thing we, us hard men, us outcasts from society, could admit to.

‘Well, I could have had this chemotherapy thing but I’m too old and the dicky ticker wouldn’t take it and anyways, it’s probably too late for that. If they’d found it earlier they might have been able to cut it out, but the scan thingy says it’s now invasive, whatever that is, so it’s up to drugs now, pain killers, and the doc said I will have to take more and more to kill the pain and well, that’s it really.’

I could ask what sort of cancer but I couldn’t see how me knowing that would help. ‘You might request compassionate release.’

‘How would I do that?’

‘I don’t know, but Mo could find out.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘I do. I’ll ask him.’

‘I’m not going if Arty can’t come with me.’

‘I’ll ask Mo.’

I looked around and could see Mo with a group of people racially similar to him. He was finishing up so I wandered towards the door and reached it as he did.

‘Hi, Jake,’ he said. ‘My plan’s working well.’

‘That’s good, Mo. Can I ask your advice?’

‘Anything, Jake. Just anything.’

I explained Dad’s problem but that he wouldn’t go without Arty. He asked me some questions and said he would do some digging and then talk to Dad. That was that then.