Shutdown was announced by yet another buzzer – the last of the day – followed by darkness. Well, not true darkness; even in the middle of the night there was some illumination. It seeped in from the corridor, and from the irritating blink-blink of the smoke alarm. There was always some light being shed on them. You can’t keep an eye on people in the dark. But at least the shift from bright, harsh light to the monochrome of night was a relief. There was nothing worth seeing inside a prison; nothing beautiful, nothing nice, nothing green, nothing but concrete and metal and wipe-clean surfaces.
Harry sat on his bed listening to himself breathe, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, holding the toothbrush in his hand. Only when his heartbeat had slowed, and the noises on the corridor quietened, did he allow himself to think about Jess.
They had never spent a whole night together. They’d planned to – one weekend when Dom was due to be away on business, and Martha was supposed to be on a school trip. They’d been looking forward to it for weeks, but Martha had got tonsillitis, so that had buggered everything up. There’d been some afternoons, though, when they’d had time to go to sleep afterwards, or at least lie close to each other, talking. That’s what he conjured up, when the lights went out and he was finally alone. The memory of his hand stroking the dip above her hip, or scratching her back. Her pale skin, its texture so different from his own. Her smallness, and yet her strength. Her Jess-ness. The seductive, reassuring cocoon of being together.
It had always been Jess who got up first, wriggling out of his grasp, shielding her body with her hands. She would scoop up her clothes and go into the en-suite to shower and Harry would lie under the duvet, wishing her back into bed, and at the same time feeling slightly offended by her urgent need to wash him off. But when she came out, her T-shirt mottled in dark patches where her skin wasn’t quite dry, smelling of lemon shower gel, he’d been turned on all over again by the way she smelt – clean, fresh, edible – and he’d be aware that he was lucky to have even a fraction of her.
The third time they’d slept together, Jess came out of the bathroom rubbing her gums with her finger. The smell of mint had filled the bedroom. It’s what they used to do as kids when they were camping – they’d pass Fran’s family-sized toothpaste between them, fill their mouths with nose-fizzing toothpaste, then use their fingers to ‘clean’ their teeth. He had laughed. ‘Use mine.’
She shook her head and continued to rub at her teeth. ‘No. It’s okay.’
He sat up. ‘So you’ll share bodily fluids with me, but you can’t face using my toothbrush?’
She licked her finger. ‘Using someone else’s toothbrush goes against everything I hold sacred. Plus, it’s gross.’
He remembered how she’d knelt on the bed, stretched across and kissed him, her lips and teeth fresh with mint.
A few days later he’d slipped the present into her bag. She found it when she was digging around, trying to find her purse at the end of the day. Her saw her do a double-take, but with the buses after college, if you weren’t quick you got trampled, so Jess prioritised her pass. They all piled on, scanned their passes and headed up to the top deck. There weren’t enough seats for them to sit together, so Jess and Shamika went and sat near the back, and he and Navin had to grab a couple of individual spare seats.
He’d watched as Jess took out the parcel and turned it over in her hands a few times, talking to Shamika. Then she started pulling at the Sellotape. He had bound it quite tight – gift-wrapping was not one of his strengths. The only person he ever bought presents for was Martha, and even she had got to the age where he could just bung some money in a card. The Sellotape wasn’t budging. Jess put the present to her lips and used her teeth. At last she got an end free and proceeded to unwind the tape. Halfway down, it dawned on her what it was. She looked at him and grinned. A purple toothbrush – her favourite colour – with glitter embedded in the plastic handle. It had cost him all of £1.89 in Superdrug. One thing he had learnt from Jess was that small things mattered.
The bristles on the toothbrush were now splayed and ragged from use. He walked over to the tiny sink in the corner and ran the water. The smell of mint filled his cell. He closed his eyes and began to brush his teeth.
Chapter 58
IT WAS the fact that she couldn’t text Harry that upset Martha the most, almost as much as him not being around. It had been a part of her existence: sending him daft messages and GIFs and, even better, him sometimes messaging her back. The banter had been their way of saying, ‘I’m here, if you need me.’ Well, she needed him now, but he wasn’t there. It was just her and her dad, and it felt less than that.
Dom’s approach to Harry’s absence seemed to consist of not talking about any of it, unless forced to. That and being falsely cheerful – all the time. It was business as usual, as far as he was concerned – namely, fake it to make it. The pressure to ‘be okay’ added to the stress for Martha. The scheduled landline calls to the prison were perhaps the worst. Harry and her dad literally seemed to be unable to talk to each other. It fell to her to chat and laugh and ask questions, like it was perfectly normal to only be able to speak to your big brother once a week, at a set time, presumably with people listening in whenever they wanted to. She had pinned all her hopes on a visit to see Harry, but when Dom returned from his first trip up to Darlington, that hope had taken a battering.
‘Well? How is he?’ Martha needed Dom to tell her everything.
‘He’s doing okay.’ She waited. ‘He looked fine. He’s lost a bit of weight. His face is thinner. Like he said on the phone, the food is garbage. But he’s been going to the gym, so he’s keeping fit. They have a decent one apparently, and they can access it most evenings.’
Martha’s frustration fizzed. She should have known that her dad would default to hard facts in a bid to avoid uncomfortable emotions. ‘But how is he really? How is he coping with being locked up?’
Dom rubbed his stubble. ‘Fine, I think.’
‘You think? Didn’t you ask him?’
‘Well, not in so many words. I asked how he was, and Harry said “okay”. He said it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he’d been expecting.’ Dom’s tone was defensive.
‘What about the other prisoners?’
‘I only saw the ones who had visitors as well today. It was hard to tell anything from that, really. They were what you’d expect. There were a lot of shaved heads and tattoos, but there were plenty who looked normal. A mix of ages. Quite a few older blokes. Some had kids.’
Martha saw her opening and went for it. ‘So it would be okay for me to come with you next time?’
Dom bought a few seconds by repositioning a pen pot on his desk. It was a penguin one that Martha had made when she was in primary school.
‘Dad?’
‘I said it went “okay”. But it isn’t a nice experience, Martha. You sit around waiting, for ages. They search everyone. And I mean everyone. A full-body search. You have to be buzzed through all these security doors to get through to the visiting hall. And the other visitors…well, you can imagine. It’s really loud.’