1
Six years. Seventy-two months. 2190 days.
“That’s it, Pope. You’re done.”
Luis blinked. “That’s it?”
The guard with the kind face nodded. “Through that door and to the gate. Someone will let you out.”
Dazed, Luis took the envelope he was offered and followed the guard’s directions. The corridor was nondescript and smelt of bleach. It’s like a horror film. Someone’s gonna bust me at the other end. But there was no one waiting at the gate. In Luis’s dreams, he’d pictured this moment with a bunch of keys and a surly guard begrudgingly setting him free. In reality, the gate was remotely operated and swung open as he approached.
The dodgy corner of London he’d once called home sprawled out before him. Betting shops, green grocers, empty premises where the Jewish butcher had once been. So familiar, yet so alien that he stopped in his tracks, stone cold, feet rooted to the concrete.
He shoved the envelope in his pocket and took a shuddery breath. Car fumes and the stink of the bins from the fried chicken shop reached him. He closed his eyes, and a deeper breath brought him the scent of the pie shop, despite the fact it had closed down before his trial, and the chip shop that served the best saveloys in town. It smelt like the past, and the future.
Whether he wanted it to or not, it smelt like home.
Luis opened his eyes and swept his gaze from the cracked pavement to the sky. Moss Farm loomed over the streets. Tower blocks, grimy from the day they were built, stood tall in the city, covered in a thousand grubby fingerprints. They cast shadows in every direction, metaphorically, at least, and their ominous gloom caught Luis off guard. Somehow he’d remembered them as something they weren’t. Long, dark nights spent recalling the bright and colourful world he’d left behind. A world that didn’t exist and never had.
Idiot. How had he forgotten this shithole? Grey, dull, and, in this neighbourhood, full of dickheads who’d have his wallet from his pocket if he didn’t keep his head down. Two postcodes south, no fucker would meet his eye without respect. But respect came at a price, and Luis had the discharge grant in his pocket to prove it. Forty-six quid. He tried not to think about the piles of cash he’d left in his old flat. Dante would’ve had it away. Luis’s brother looked out for himself. Prick.
The gate behind Luis swung shut. Metal scraped concrete. He rubbed his left ear as the sound reverberated in his tired brain, merging with the last words the prison doctor had said to him a month before his release. “Don’t forget to register with a GP. They can help you find an otolaryngologist.”
Luis wondered if she realised she’d never told him what she meant, and even if he’d owned a phone, he couldn’t spell the longest word in the world to google it. Probably not. Their meeting had lasted six minutes. One for every year he’d spent behind bars. Six minutes for seventy-two months of incarceration. And you deserved every fucking day of it.
“Come on, Pope. Get moving or we’ll have you back in.”
Startled, Luis glanced over his shoulder. A cluster of screws were eyeballing him from the watch point, laughing, sneering, the things the old Luis—the one who’d roamed the streets, all temper and no common sense—would’ve vaulted the gate to destroy. Prison Luis had learned to rein it in, to play the grey man and hope that life moved on without him.
He turned back to the outside world and stepped forwards with no real idea of where he was going. A housing charity had secured him a bedsit away from his old haunts, but he’d forgotten how to get there. If he’d ever known. It had been a long time since he’d last caught a bus. Counting back the years occupied him as he drifted away from the prison and into town. Some said he’d been lucky to be locked up so close to home, but as he approached the high street, he didn’t feel lucky. Cursed, more like. Walking out to a place he’d never been would’ve meant a fresh start. A clean slate. And a reputation no fucker cared about. Here, every step felt like the life sentence he’d managed to avoid, and his legs felt like lead. The pavement turned to quicksand, dragging him down. Anxiety turned to panic, and the crisp winter air stung his throat.
Winter. Fuck. The last time he’d paid attention it had been high summer. The solitary tree in the exercise yard had been bright green and lush, the only slash of nature among men who’d forgotten how to live, and men who forgot that the seasons changed and in six long years hadn’t bothered to ask the prison for a coat.
Shivering, Luis shifted his bag on his back and wrapped his arms around himself. Maybe the bus would be warm, but first, a trip to the job centre beckoned, followed by a check-in with a probation officer paid too little to give a shit, as long as he kept his nose clean. The few friends he’d made on the inside had told him to give it a couple of days. To get settled, get wasted, and get laid. But what was the point? He hadn’t felt settled since the army men had come to the house on his fifth birthday, and the last person he’d fucked had been a road man, just like him.
He reached absently to the dog tags hanging around his neck, the sole personal possession the prison had handed back that morning. The warm metal against his cold hands grounded him, and he found the will to keep moving.
The job centre was on the high street. Inside, a security guard directed him to the waiting area. He said words, but Luis missed them. He took a seat, wishing he had a phone like everyone around him to pretend he had something to do. Time on his hands meant himself on his mind. Fuck that shit.
A man dropped into the seat beside him.
He smelt of weed and attitude. Luis studied the floor, but the sensation of being watched was hard to ignore. Don’t look. Perhaps if he had, he’d have found the dude minding his own business and not giving a single fuck about Luis’s paranoia. But he didn’t look. He counted breaths, heartbeats, and stains on the carpet until his blood roared in his ears.
Luis sprang to his feet.
He booked it out of the building and crossed the road. New bars and pubs had opened since he’d last been here. He took a step towards one. Stopped. Changed his mind. Bars were crowded with idiots who wanted to fight. Luis didn’t have the spoons for thug life anymore or the ears to cope with the noise.
Despair was like the flu. It crept up with mild symptoms, then impacted like a freight train. Luis’s bag contained nothing but a pair of old jeans, sweatpants, and two T-shirts. It had seemed featherlight when he’d slung it on his back. Suddenly, it weighed a ton, and the bustle of the street boomed in his good ear, rattling his brain.
They’d warned him about this, on the inside. How the world had grown since he’d left it, and it would take time to acclimatise, but as a bus roared past and the market traders shouted above it, Luis couldn’t see how he’d ever get used to this. Noise, colour, life. Inside, he’d craved it, but now he had it in abundance, it scared the shit out of him.
Calm your tits. He had two quid in his pocket, spare change he’d had when he’d been arrested. Back then, there’d been a cafe at the end of the road, hidden away behind the bank. Toni’s. The same family had owned it for a million years, and if he closed his eyes—in the middle of the street again like a total fucking moron—Luis could hear the booming voice of the Italian granddad who’d served bucket-sized mugs of tea and doorstep sandwiches.