‘You stink,’ Catherine says, wrinkling her nose as he walks into the visitors’ lounge.
She’s in a bad mood – again. That’s the fourth day in a row now, Graeme notes. Maybe she’s going through the change. Although to be fair she’d always been moody. Just his luck, to have spent most of his miserable life in love with a moody cow.
He didn’t usually think like this, but he was tired and stressed, and worried by the way she constantly badgered him.
‘Been working on the van,’ Graeme says. ‘It broke down yesterday, and I couldn’t afford to take it to the garage. Had to mend it, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to come in today.’
He pauses, waiting for Catherine to ask, but she doesn’t.
‘I fixed it! Myself. Just with a YouTube video. You can look up how to do anything on there, it’s wicked.’
‘It’s wicked’, mimics Catherine. ‘What are you, twelve?’
Graeme drops his head. Sometimes Catherine’s so mean that he wonders why he bothers. He could just walk out of here and never come back, but the thought of that fills him with such panic that he feels his legs begin to jiggle and his hands tremble.
Catherine is all he has. Catherine is family, friends, partner, wife (maybe, one day, when they’re both free). Catherine is his world, and there is just no point to anything without her.
Graeme remembers the first incredible months when fate shoved them onto the same path, when they both arrived at Rampton around the same time. Decades ago, back when they were both young and Catherine had been beautiful. Before the weight had piled on them both, the gradual build-up of excess institutional carbs and the refined sugar that were one of the few pleasures in that place. At least Graeme had managed to convert his into muscle now he was out. But he had never managed to convert his love for her into anything else, a fact about which he often felt depressed.
Cheap chocolate and mutual masturbation were all they’d managed. Graeme recalled the sour but thrilling taste of Catherine’s tongue in his mouth, the feel of it on his cock. There had been one bush in the grounds that all the security cameras’ angles just missed, and that had been where they had rendezvoused every day, meeting behind it, next to the fence, when they were supposed to be doing their sports sessions. That was many years ago, but you didn’t forget your first sexual experience. He helps keep the memories alive when he’s alone on his single mattress with its yellow-grey sheet.
Clean, ironed, fresh sheets. That’s what they’d have on all the beds in their cottage.
‘It wasn’t that easy,’ he says with eyes downcast, picking at his oil-grimed fingernails. ‘The alternator had gone. I had to reconnect the—’
‘Yeah, yeah, aren’t you clever? Anyway, more to the point…’ Catherine glances towards the guard, but he’s talking to another inmate, so she continues. ‘How’s the plan coming along? Did you get what I told you to get?’
This is the question Graeme has been dreading and one he’s amazed Catherine hasn’t asked sooner. He replies in a low gabble. ‘I’m working on it, babe. I spoke to a bloke down the gym who says he can get one, but that was a month ago, and I ain’t seen him since. You can’t rush these things, he warned me it would be difficult.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Graeme, it’s been months since we first discussed it! I’m going insane in here! Being this good isn’t frickin’ easy.’
‘You’ve been dead good. Ground leave every week for, what, two years now?’
‘No need to patronise me.’
Graeme wasn’t. He was genuinely pleased that Catherine’s behaviour had stabilised enough for her to finally have been moved to the medium-security Ashworth. He secretly hoped it was because Catherine was getting better, rather than the true reason – that it was a means to an end.
Catherine had a plan. She’d had the same plan ever since they’d first met. And every time the plan met a setback – another sentence for another crime committed to add to her now very long list of ABH, GBH, attempted murder – she never, ever associated her own actions with the consequences. Instead, the long, bony finger of her blame stayed pointing at the one oblivious person whose fault she believed it was. All of it.
Sometimes Graeme thought that if someone told Catherine this individual was responsible for world poverty and global warming Catherine would readily believe it … He almost felt sorry for them. Catherine had always made it sound like they were a mixture of Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot and Hitler, all rolled into one.
Although he’d never dare suggest that to Catherine. She’d never speak to him again.
‘So,’ Catherine said impatiently, dropping her voice, ‘let’s have a recap of where we are. Once you’ve got it, we’ll keep the shooter for the final showdown – if you ever finally get your bloody act together and sort it. In the meantime, you’re still doing what I told you to?’
More a statement than a question. He hesitated, and she jumped down his throat: ‘What’s wrong with you! Why aren’t you?’
‘I am! I am, Cath, honest.’ He told her what he’d managed to do just the other day, and was rewarded with a faint smile that lifted the corners of her mouth.
Graeme, however, had been stalling. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get Catherine out of there – far from it – but there was always the risk that it would all go badly wrong, and instead of getting her out, he would end up back inside himself – for good this time. They wouldn’t let him anywhere near Catherine. Neither of them would ever get the cottage, the dream life.
Graeme took a deep breath. ‘Cath … are you sure it’s worth it? I mean, darlin’, if you keep your head down they might review your case and you can get out legitimately.’
Catherine’s face darkened and her eyes narrowed, reminding Graeme of a glowering cartoon villain. ‘You chickening out on me?’ she demanded. Her voice compressed to a terrifying hiss. ‘Because if you’re not with me … you’re against me.’
She didn’t need to say any more.
‘I’m with you, babe, all the way, I swear. I love you,’ said Graeme, the words falling over themselves as they tumbled out of him. ‘You know I’d do anything for you. Anything!’
‘I know,’ Catherine said, smugly.