by Rachel Dann
Everyone mutters ‘Amen’ and I find my voice joining theirs. As we all sit back down, I think of Liza and Roberto’s daughter, Abigail, and feel suddenly humbled that they are still able to feel such gratitude about anything, let alone all the things happening in other people’s lives around them.
As everyone is leaving, I go over to help Dad and Dorice into their coats.
‘See you tomorrow then? For a tour of the old town in the afternoon?’ I smile warmly at them, already filled with what feels like childish hope and excitement at the thought of showing Dad around this city that has become home for me over the last few weeks.
Dorice nods and graciously leans up to kiss me on the cheek. But as she disappears in front of him down the stairs, Dad turns to me, his brow knitted together crossly.
‘Thanks for stitching me up with that “marriage” stunt,’ he blurts out. ‘I suppose that was your and Harry’s idea of a joke?’ He looks genuinely cross, and I’m so shocked I feel incapable of forming a reply, so just stare at him, mouth half-open.
‘Anyway, see you tomorrow,’ he mutters, looking down, then heads off down the stairs after Dorice, one arm still hanging out of his jacket.
I’m so taken aback that I don’t know what to do with myself for a few moments and just stand there, holding on to the open door, tears of disappointment prickling behind my eyes. He’s only been here a matter of hours, and already my grand reconciliation is hardly going to plan. Until now it had seemed, however briefly, to be getting off to a good start. He had looked genuinely moved by what Liza said about me earlier. And something about seeing him hauling Dorice’s ridiculous luggage around, and his fumbled attempts to speak Spanish with Liza and Roberto, had already softened me towards him. I suppose I had dared hope, just for a moment, that he had been feeling the same towards me.
I blink back my tears and close the door, firmly telling myself not to give up at the first hurdle – we have all day together tomorrow, and I’m determined to make that more of a success.
‘Kristieeee!’ Liza’s voice is calling from the kitchen. It still takes me several seconds to realise she is addressing me with that name. ‘PLEASE CAN YOU GET THAT?’ Snapping out of my reverie about Dad, I notice the telephone, right next to me on the hallway table, is ringing.
‘Er, Liza and Roberto’s house?’ I say in Spanish, feeling childish.
‘Is Liza there?’ a woman’s voice shouts, sounding muffled. ‘Please, can I talk to Liza?’
‘Oh, yes, sure, hang on, just let me…’
‘Wait! Kirsty?’ I hear in English. I realise the voice is thick with tears, and a split second later, I recognise that it belongs to Naomi.
‘Oh, Kirsty, please will you come to see me? Marion’s away in the US visiting her son… the embassy man has already been twice this month, I can’t keep asking him… I’m just so alone. It’s my dad…’ She lets out a gasping, desperate sob. ‘I got a phone call this morning…’
As I listen grimly to the rest, Liza comes and stands before me in the hallway, holding a tea towel and looking worried. After another few moments, I replace the receiver and turn to her.
‘It’s Naomi. Her father was moved to a hospice this morning – they think he hasn’t got much longer. I’ve agreed to go and visit her tomorrow.’
Chapter Thirteen
I wake up with a start, filled with a sense of urgency that at first I cannot place. Then, as I become aware of the sound of rain drumming on the apartment skylight and the dimly lit room comes slowly into focus, the memory of last night’s phone call from Naomi comes crashing down on me.
Even as I recall the terrible news about her father and her heartbreaking sobs, I shiver at the memory of my hasty promise to visit her today… by myself. That means getting past the guards at the door and walking down that interminable corridor at the prison entrance all on my own, this time unshielded by Marion in all her bulk and fearlessness, like a lilac-clad Sherman tank. She has visited the prisons so many times already that if she felt any nerves when we visited Naomi last week, she certainly didn’t show it. Likewise all the other inmates must be so used to her that, as we trod the gauntlet of the prison entrance past all the other women, I noticed something similar to grudging respect in their expressions as they watched her. Not all of them were lucky enough to be visited regularly by a charity volunteer, but Marion and her flowing purple cardigans and staunch determination had become a regular fixture on Saturday mornings inside the prison.
What will happen to me, without her? I could get lynched, or taken hostage, or forced to carry out illegal substances and be arrested at the gates…
Even as my fears start to spiral, Naomi’s desperate voice fills my head and halts them. She needs me to do this. Marion is in the USA. Gabriela could give birth any day now. Liza has already made it clear she will never enter the prison. Naomi is going through something terrible, all on her own. There simply is no one else.
I consciously wrestle with my fears, replacing them with grim determination and a surge of unexpected bravery. I can do this. And what’s more… I realise I actually want to. Despite what feels like a significant likelihood of getting stabbed. I want to be strong for Naomi.
Plus, if I get up now, I can even make some good progress on the translation of her sentence before visiting hours start, and take it to show her for encouragement.
Feeling inspired by the knowledge I can actually do something positive in this situation, I jump out of bed, only then noticing Harry behind the breakfast bar, fussing about in the kitchen.
‘Morning, you – I got up early to make us breakfast!’ He holds an egg-covered spatula aloft as evidence. ‘There’s another one of those rainstorms going on – looks like the middle of the night outside. Isn’t it cosy?’
I’m already scrabbling for the laptop and barely hear him.
‘What are you doing?’
I look up and realise the easy smile is already fading from Harry’s face as he takes in the pile of papers, now permanently stacked up on my bedside table, and the laptop already whirring to life at the foot of the bed.
‘Visiting hours don’t start until nine – I’ve got an hour or so to make progress on the translations, before I go to see Naomi later.’ I briefly explain to Harry about Naomi’s call last night and my promise to visit, already half expecting another lecture about choosing to spend my time helping a load of dead-end criminals. In so many words, that’s what he said before I went on the first visit with Marion last week. But, to my surprise, Harry doesn’t say a word, and when I look up he’s focused very intently on measuring water into the coffee machine.
I turn back to the laptop, and have been typing away furiously for several minutes when he finally breaks the silence.
‘Liza got pretty intense last night, didn’t she?’
I frown up at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘All that praying stuff. Thanking Lord Jesus for everything and everyone. I didn’t think she was like that.’
I stare at him. ‘Like what?’
‘You know, one of those religious people who carries on believing, and going on about it, even though they’ve been through terrible tragedies. They lost a daughter, and still manage to believe in God!’ He barks out a cynical laugh.
Irritation surges within me and I feel my cheeks getting redder.
‘I don’t agree,’ I hear myself saying. ‘Can’t you see, it’s what has stopped them from getting bitter? It’s kept them going.’
Harry is frowning at me now. ‘And since when have you been such a devout believer?’
I rub my eyes and force myself to meet his accusatory gaze head-on.
‘I’m not, Harry, and that’s my whole point. I admire their faith. If they can keep hold of it, despite what they’ve been through, and in doing so still find it in themselves to love others and host dinner parties and take in random travellers for practically no rent…’ I wave emphatically at the space around us. ‘Then t
hat makes their faith a good example for me, even though I don’t share it. It’s something to learn from.’
‘Oh, okay, okay, no need to get cross with me over it,’ says Harry with a chuckle. ‘I suppose I see what you mean.’
As I turn back to the computer screen and determinedly keep typing, I decide that he really does not.
But I don’t have time to worry about that now, as I want to print out the first ten pages of Naomi’s sentence, now successfully translated, then get ready and leave with plenty of time to arrive for the start of visiting hours. Not only do I want to see Naomi as soon as possible, but I don’t want to be late for Dad afterwards… I’ve agreed to be at his hotel for late morning, and after last night I feel anxious not to let him down.
Today has to go well.
I pull out the USB stick from the laptop and run to the door.
‘I’m just going downstairs to use their printer,’ I call to Harry, who has spent the last ten minutes arranging and rearranging his hair in the hallway mirror, a tub of gel on the worktop beside him. I fleetingly think this is rather unlike Harry, who usually just rolls out of bed to begin every day, but I don’t allow myself time to dwell on that.
‘Right, babe – I’m leaving in a minute,’ he replies. ‘But I’ll call you to meet somewhere as soon as my classes finish, okay?’
I give him a hasty kiss before trotting down the stairs clutching my USB stick.
Liza is nowhere to be seen, and Roberto is at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. He smiles and waves me through to the computer room without looking up from his crossword.
I load up the document and hit ‘print’, then lean back in the chair and wait as Liza and Roberto’s prehistoric bubble-jet printer painfully rasps its way across each page, line by line. I force my eyes to focus on its laborious progress as each page is slowly disgorged on to the tray, anything but turn around and see the picture again… the picture of the smiling, pretty girl I now know to be Liza and Roberto’s beloved, lost daughter.
But a familiar zooming, whooshing sound coming from the computer’s ancient speakers distracts me. A window has opened up automatically on the screen before me, a little egg timer spinning around briefly before the whole screen is filled with the Skype home page.
Liza and Roberto use Skype?
But the photo that has loaded up before me is not of Liza or Roberto. It is of Harry.
I stare in disbelief at my boyfriend, grinning back at me from the little profile picture next to the familiar blue Skype icon. It’s a photo I took of him years ago, on a rainy trip to Devon with his parents. He’s standing on a windswept hillside wearing that awful bright-red waterproof coat he had for years and years, hair blowing all over the place, smiling warmly back at the camera. At me. I feel suddenly dizzy with nostalgia and longing. That had to be at least two or three years ago, not long after university, before things between us got… however they are now.
Before I fully realise what I’m doing, I move the mouse to click on ‘call history’ at the top of the screen, my hand trembling slightly. As the egg timer goes round and round again, I realise what this means – Harry must have come down here, to Liza and Roberto’s flat, and asked to use the computer and made calls on Skype and not told me. I try to reason with myself that he was probably just calling his parents, or some other relative or friend back home… but if that were the case, why would he go to the trouble of coming down here, and – let’s face it – probably downloading Skype on to this computer, when we have a perfectly good laptop upstairs in the apartment?
A cold shiver of suspicion starts to snake its way down my back.
The call log is a long list of green icon after green icon – dialled calls, one after the other, all the same number.
Saturday, 12th November 09:05
Saturday, 12th November, 09:12
Saturday, 12th November, 11:41
Saturday, 12th November, 11:55
Why does that date ring a bell in my mind? Yes! It was the day I went to the prison with Marion. Hadn’t Harry had to give a class that morning? I can’t remember whether he had been working or not… but either way, it would seem he spent most of the morning sitting here, making calls that were repeatedly left unanswered. My confusion deepens as I keep scrolling down the call list.
Friday, 18th November, 09:22
Friday, 18th November, 09:35
Friday, 18th November, 10:08
The day I went to the embassy. Sebastian had asked me to go on a Friday, when they were closed to the public. The list stretches on to over fifteen attempted calls, all in the three-hour space of time I was out of the house, traversing Quito to reach the British Embassy.
I reach the very last calls in the list.
Thursday, 24th November, 19:26
Thursday, 24th November, 19:30
Thursday, 24th November, 19:32
The night before Dad arrived. Just two days ago. He’d gone downstairs to borrow a corkscrew from Liza. We had a bottle of wine, which I didn’t enjoy because of Harry’s comments about me doing the translations. He’d taken ages down there, then told me Liza wouldn’t stop chatting.
I realise I’m shivering.
All the calls are to an Ecuadorian mobile number, I recognise the country code and ‘99’ prefix meaning it is unmistakably a mobile. None of them lasted more than a few seconds…either they were picked up briefly or cancelled upon answer. Whomever Harry keeps trying to get hold of, they don’t seem to want to talk to him.
I press my fists into my eyes and lose myself in the oblivion of the dark, swirling shapes. None of it makes sense – why would Harry keep calling someone, when they never answer or just cut him off? Why would he secretly use Liza and Roberto’s computer, always waiting until I’m out of the house, or unsuspectingly, naively waiting for him upstairs?
What if these calls are related to Harry’s shouty phone call from our first day here, the one he told me was a travel company? Some deep, sinister instinct tells me there has to be a link between the two.
Harry’s smiling, windswept photo grins out at me from the computer screen and I stare back at it, as voices swirl and clamour through my mind – Marion, driving back from the prison, telling me Naomi wanted to change her mind, but they don’t let you… then Harry himself, shouting down the phone in Spanish, You don’t understand! A sense of foreboding and horror swelling inside me, I stare at the photo and silently ask, Oh Harry, just what is it you are up to here in Ecuador?
***
The prison looks particularly dismal today, in the overcast residues of the downpour. I stand outside and gaze up at it for a moment, the big ugly white building with stained walls and coils of barbed wire crowning its perimeter. I experience an involuntary shiver of fear at the thought of stepping over that threshold on my own. It had taken all my mental strength and determination to get myself ready and out of the apartment, then on to the right bus to bring me here to the most rundown part of the city, despite my discovery of Harry’s illicit phone calls. Frustratingly, he had already left when I went back upstairs to get changed, so I was left with no choice but to press forward with my journey to the prison, except now with a vortex of uncomfortable, unanswered questions churning in my mind.
Now, at the prison gates, I forcibly push all that to the back of my mind for now and focus on Naomi, and the reasons I am doing this. I like her, I want to help her. Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted to do with my life – help people who are less fortunate than me? I think of Joel, and the courage it must take to stand up in court and defend people like him with all the odds against them. If I am ever going to practise law myself I will have to do the same – and worse. Not all cases are won, as Joel’s was. But I will have to dust myself off and fight again, and again, after each one… regardless of whatever turmoil my own life may be in at the time.
Standing on the threshold of the prison, feeling alone and exposed, I realise that, if I go in
now, things will never be the same for me. This is not just a routine visit, alongside Marion, and I am no longer just another volunteer passing through. My involvement now goes beyond that… I am visiting Naomi as a friend, out of my own personal determination to help her. Even as I realise this, I think back to my last day at Home from Home before leaving for Ecuador. I would never have imagined that within a few short weeks I would be stepping inside a prison, on my own, to help someone. And once I’ve done this, will I ever be able to go back? Will I be able to press on in my admin job – because, let’s face it, it is an admin job – and settle for leafing through the case folders at the end of the day, only dreaming about being involved directly? Will I have the courage to finally strive for more?
I take a deep breath, step forward and knock on the big iron door before me.
The shutter halfway up the door slides back, a pair of eyes blinks at me, then it slides shut again and the door swings open. A miserable-looking guard wearing a big green raincoat over his uniform nods when I say Naomi’s name and lets me in, glancing at my passport and giving a cursory rummage through my backpack, which is stuffed with chocolate bars and apples and teabags. As I cross the threshold, the step down takes me by surprise and I land heavily in a huge puddle, splashing muddy water up the front of my jeans. My heart hammering in my chest, I slowly pick my way across the courtyard dotted with more puddles reflecting the grey sky and looming dirty prison walls.
‘Kirsty! Over here!’ I look up, clutching my bag protectively to my chest, and it takes me a few moments to recognise the owner of the voice. A tall, elegant girl is leaning against a wall in front of me, flanked by a few other, more ordinary-looking women, all smoking. She’s wearing skin-tight leather trousers showing off very long, slim legs, and a turquoise leopard-print top with long sleeves, also clinging to her enviable figure. It’s Naomi, but she couldn’t look more different to the scruffily dressed, almost childlike girl I met last week.
