It had been two weeks since the weed visited Heath in prison. Since then, Heath had felt jubilant and powerful. As he lay in his bunk listening to the night noises of the hall, he smiled. He’d come in handy all right, the poofter. That’s what he and Cynth used to call him (although sometimes she became a bit defensive – ‘He’s not gay, Heath! Don’t be so judgemental!’). If he wasn’t gay, then what was he? He was pathetically small. Around five-nine, five-ten at the most. And what were those shoulders all about? They’d work for a girl, maybe, but not a grown man. Jesus, why did she ever bother with the guy, dare or no dare?
‘Well, if it isn’t Mrs Marion!’ Heath had said when he arrived on her doorstep. She looked about as freshly married as a widow of eighty-five. ‘May I come in?’
And so Cynthia let him in. Let him take her in his car and in his flat. Told him all about her twice-a-week sex life with Will Marion.
‘He tells me he loves me constantly!’ she told Heath, and he laughed. ‘He tells me I have a beautiful flat stomach! He goes on and on, for an hour sometimes.’
Sounded to Heath like better sex could be had in the prison showers than in their marital bedroom. The guy seemed like a pathetically grateful teenager, without the physique to match.
God knows how the three years happened. Cynthia went on some nutcase mission to be normal – bonking Heath non-stop in the meantime, of course – and he sat by and waited till she was finished, distracting himself with a few bimbos along the way.
And now he was back. The little poofter. Back for more.
Oh, he’d get more all right.
*
Heath pointed his torch at the photograph of Cynthia that he’d pinned to the underside of the top bunk. He knew why Cynthia had left eleven months earlier. He’d promised her he’d get out back then and he was sure he would – if it wasn’t for that fucking yap-yap social worker, the greasy little prick. He understood that she didn’t want the days to drag like they did for him. But he never doubted she’d be there for him when he got out. She knew better than to cross him like that.