‘Friday night. What’ll we do, Ambs? Fancy a few late cocktails down Soho?’
Stacey grins at me. She’s lying on her bunk, still fully clothed apart from her trainers. I smile back.
‘Sounds good. Then a club, what do you think? Dance ’til dawn?’ I say.
‘You’re on, mate. Just gotta choose something to wear. Grey trackies or this sexy little black number?’
She wiggles her hips suggestively, running her hands down the jersey fabric clinging tightly to her thighs, then snorts with laughter, and I can’t help laughing with her. In reality, this Friday evening has been spent like every other at Downhall: an early dinner, some TV time, and now locked down for the night in this eight-square-metre room. Sometimes we play cards, or read, but often I just want to sleep, permanently exhausted for no reason I can understand. I think it’s partly the sensory overload in this place; it overwhelms me at times, the constant nature of it. The noise. The smells.
The noise is bad. There’s no quiet time here, not even in the dead of night. Shouting, banging doors, screaming, particularly if someone hasn’t had their methadone or other medication. Sometimes I want to clamp my hands over my ears and scream too, but I’m scared that if I do that, I might never stop. And so I breathe instead. I take deep, calming breaths, trying to tune it all out, trying to go somewhere a long way inside myself, to a happy place, somewhere where the sun shines and a soft breeze blows and all I can hear is birds singing in a blue sky high above me. It works, briefly, but I can’t do the deep breathing for too long because of the smells. They’re almost worse than the noise. Food, cigarette smoke, sweat, industrial cleaning products, weed. It really surprised me, the weed. In a prison? And not just weed; other drugs too. And in astounding quantities, somehow skilfully smuggled in, passed around, sold. I wonder sometimes if the prison officers turn a blind eye to most of it because drugged-up prisoners are probably happier and easier to manage. Or maybe they’re not paid enough to try too hard to stop it. Maybe the job gets too much for them at times. I can understand that.
At least my job in the library gives me some small sense of normality. If you ignore the bars on the windows, it feels almost like a library in the real world. It’s a place of respite, a quiet oasis in a loud, panicky, stressful desert, and I’m not sure I’d be quite as sane as I currently am without it.
But now, suddenly, there’s Heather too, and her astonishing visit, and the incredible thing she’s offering to do for me. I still can’t quite believe it; I keep having to stop what I’m doing to inhale slowly, to focus my thoughts. Because if she can pull this off, I have a chance of returning to full sanity, full normality. Is that possible, really? I don’t know, but the process is about to begin. She called me tonight to tell me that she’s meeting up with him tomorrow evening. Heather and Jack, face to face again after all this time. She texted him last night after she had an online meeting with Nathan and his sister, Felicity, and he got back to her within an hour, she said. He was surprised to hear from her, a little reticent in his reply, but kept her waiting for an answer for just a further ten minutes when she asked him if he’d like to get together for a drink this weekend. She feels a little queasy, she said, at the prospect, but she’s doing it.
I cried on the phone then. I told her I’ll be grateful to her for the rest of my life for coming to see me, for coming back to me, after everything. She told me not to be so silly, her tone turning all business-like and efficient, as it always does when she’s feeling a little emotional, and that made me cry even more. But we have a plan now. Nathan and Felicity are going to help as much as they can from the outside, and I am too, if there’s anything I can do from here. It’s on. It’s happening. I put the phone down with a shiver of hope and excitement.
We had to have the conversation in a sort of code, of course. We worked it out in whispers on Wednesday when she visited, anxious not to be overheard by the guards, swiftly changing the subject to something innocuous each time one wandered past. Prison phone calls are all recorded and, I believe, listened to at random, or selected to be listened to if staff have any concerns, so we have to be careful, very careful. What Heather’s going to do may not be strictly legal, we think. Hence, tonight she told me everything she needed to tell me without sounding suspicious at all: just two old friends chatting about other friends and about starting things up again with an ex. Talking about it is the easy bit. It’s Heather who’s taking all the risks here, Heather who’s doing the unthinkable, and going back to… to that.
‘Game of Spades?’
I jump, lost in thought, and see Stacey leaning on one elbow over on her bunk, waving a pack of cards at me. Spades is an American card game, popular in US jails, one I’d never heard of until I came to Downhall. I don’t love cards, but I definitely need the distraction tonight.
‘Sure,’ I say, and she grins and sits up, patting the blanket beside her to indicate that I should come and sit next to her. I do, and she begins to shuffle the deck. I watch her, my mind drifting again to Heather, and to Jack, and I feel a tremor run through me, a little ripple of fear this time.
Good luck, my old friend.
Because, my God, you’re going to need it.