Harry smiled. ‘I love you, too.’ He put his mug in the sink. Walked over to her. Hugged her as if he was trying to break her ribs, then said, ‘Tell Dad I’ll see him in the car.’
Harry sat in the front and Martha in the back. She had insisted on coming to the hearing, despite Dom trying to dissuade her. That had necessitated an excruciating phone call to her school to inform them that she would be absent for the day. They hadn’t needed to ask the reason; they already knew. The secretary had the cheek to inform Dom that it would have to go down as an ‘unauthorised absence’. Dom had almost laughed. Almost, but not quite. There was nothing funny about the situation they found themselves in.
They were meeting Ross and his team in the lobby at the courthouse. Dom had phoned the solicitor one last time before setting off. To his credit, Ross himself had taken the call. But there was nothing he could do at this late stage, other than reiterate to Dom that everything was in order and that, from the indications he’d been getting – he didn’t clarify from whom – leniency was going to be shown.
As Dom drove, he didn’t speak. He and Harry had gone too many rounds over his decision to plead guilty to have anything left to say, but that didn’t mean Dom had let it go. Today could have been the start of Harry’s defence, the fight to exonerate him. Instead it was going to be a public sanctioning of his guilt, and a meting-out of his punishment. A done deal. No opportunity for a different result. They would never know what the alternative could have been, because Harry had refused to roll the dice. He’d caved. That display of weakness or fear – whatever it was – was eating away at Dom. It ran contrary to every instinct within him, to let other people decide your fate. His son had obviously inherited very little from him. It was as if Harry wanted the humiliation and the punishment. He really didn’t seem to care about what his guilty plea meant for himself, or for anyone else. Dom couldn’t even blame Adele – and, sitting on his own with a whisky many a night, he had tried.
They drove down the ramp into the underground car park, trading bright sunshine for grey gloom. It seemed an appropriate transition.
Chapter 48
IT WAS what Harry expected, but the speed with which he was sentenced and removed from the court was a shock.
In the weeks leading up to the hearing, his legal team had talked him through what would happen. They had prepared him for a number of different outcomes – a suspended sentence, a driving ban, community service, reparations to the families of the victims, a custodial sentence – with ‘optimistic’ minimums and ‘worst-case scenario’ maximums. They had also explained that, because he had turned eighteen, any custodial sentence (should one be handed down) would have to be served in a prison, rather than a young offenders’ institution.
Well, a custodial sentence was no longer ‘a possibility’.
It was a fact.
He’d been sentenced to four years. Six months had been taken off his term, because of his cooperation with the police investigation and his guilty plea. With good behaviour, it would be less. Ross had said they normally halved the tariff. So that would make it, optimistically, a two-year sentence. It was doable. It was going to have to be.
Was it appropriate? Was it fair? Or was it a travesty, given the damage he had caused? Harry didn’t know. But as they led him out of the court room, away from the blur of faces and the raised voices, his overwhelming emotion had been shame. Fran had been shouting; his sister crying; Dom already raising objections. There was such a confusion of reactions that no one seemed to pay much attention to him being ‘taken down’.
They put him in a holding cell somewhere in the rabbit warren basement of the building. Harry sat on the bench and waited. He was going to prison. Now. This very afternoon. This cell was his first taste of what his life was going to be like for the foreseeable future. Harry knew that if he thought about it too much, he would panic, so he chose not to. He counted the whitewashed bricks instead. They brought him a ham sandwich, a bag of crisps and a bottle of water. He ate his lunch without tasting it. He’d heard that prison food was bad. This thought, popping into his head, made him snort out loud. His capacity to still bother about irrelevant, selfish things, at the same time as his life imploded, really was quite staggering. The quality of the food inside was going to be the least of his worries.
As the afternoon wore on, he heard others being brought down. With each set of footsteps, his anxiety increased. When one of the sets of footsteps ended outside his cell, his mouth went dry, but when the door swung open, it was his dad standing in the doorway. The officer accompanying him nodded and walked away.
Seeing his father step into the cell was a surreal experience. The officer left the door open. Harry must not have been considered a flight risk. Dom’s eyes swung round the tiny space. The only place to sit was on the ledge next to Harry. Dom picked up the sandwich wrapper and the empty crisp packet and sat down. There was no bin. He cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything. For the first time in his life Harry realised that his dad was at a loss. There was nothing Dom could do: no calls he could make, no one he could bawl out, no higher authority he could appeal to – that would make the slightest bit of difference to what was about to happen. He eventually summoned up a question. ‘How are you holding up?’ His voice was loud, ill-suited to such a confined space. Harry worried that the other prisoners might hear. Privacy, that was another thing he had sacrificed.
‘Not bad.’ Harry said, putting on a brave face. It was the only way to go – the only way he was going to get through the next couple of years.
‘They said it was okay for me to come in to have a word with you, just for a few minutes. It’s not normally allowed.’ His dad, swinging his dick – old habits died hard.
‘Yeah. So I see.’ Harry, being a dick back to his dad – another old habit.
Dom didn’t bite. He compressed the rubbish in his hands. ‘Bit of a shock, the sentence. Especially after everything Ross said.’ It hadn’t been a shock to Harry. ‘The judge obviously decided to make an example of you.’
‘I was expecting it.’
Dom chose to ignore Harry’s comment. ‘Ross has reassured me that they’ll reduce it. He said they want people like you out pretty quickly. If you keep your nose clean and your head down.’
‘People like me?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Do you know what, Dad – I’m not sure I do.’
‘Please. Harry. Not now. They’ll be taking you away soon. I don’t want our last conversation to be an argument.’
‘You still don’t get it, do you? Prison is for people like me. What were you expecting? A slap on the wrist? A fine? This isn’t something you can tidy away.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘Which I caused.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Dom got up, but there was no space to pace. ‘Stop! Just stop with the martyrdom, will you? This whole time – this hair-shirt routine. It’s so sodding self-indulgent. While you’ve been wallowing, it’s been me who’s been fighting on your behalf. Me who’s been spending time and energy, and a considerable amount of money, trying to keep you out of prison.’