by K. L. Slater
I sigh and move the scanner across the first one again.
‘There, see?’ I twist the monitor round to show her. ‘They were due back on the twenty-third, Miss Carter.’
Her mouth knits into a tight line and she stands a little straighter. ‘And what date is it today, may I ask?
‘It’s the…’ I glance at the bottom right corner of my monitor, ‘Oh!’
‘Quite.’ Miss Carter’s face lights up with the satisfaction of being proven correct. ‘It is the twenty-third, Rose.’
‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know how I—’ I feel my face burning as I blather. ‘I thought it was the twenty-fourth. I’m an idiot. So sorry, Miss Carter.’
‘Don’t mention it, Rose,’ she says piously. ‘We all make mistakes.’
Trust me to pick the righteous Miss Carter to make mine with.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter again, setting the books aside, hoping she’ll soon wander off to the women’s fiction shelves.
My mind returns to the thoughts that are crowding my head.
The post box I left the letter at last night has an early collection this morning: 9.30 a.m.
If the prison is efficient, Gareth Farnham could have the letter in his hands tomorrow. Is that possible, I wonder? I know the officers have to check the content of any communications but I only wrote a few lines, it’s hardly Tolstoy’s War and Peace they’ve got to wade through.
‘Rose!’
I look up quickly at the sharp tone to find Miss Carter is still standing there, now bending forward so her face is in front of mine.
‘S-sorry!’ I stammer. ‘I was just—’
‘You were in cloud cuckoo land is where you were.’ Miss Carter frowns. ‘I asked, how is Mr Turner?’
I stare at her.
‘Your neighbour?’
‘Oh! Yes, he’s very well, thank you. Home now and recovering nicely. His son’s going to be visiting soon from Australia.’
‘Eric? Well, I never. Let’s hope it’s not just to stake his claim on Ronnie’s assets; he’s never been much of a son and I think Ronnie can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen him in the last twelve years. But no doubt Ronnie will be pleased.’ She sighs. ‘I’ll have a word with Mrs Brewster and we’ll try to pop over and say hello to him later.’
‘He’s getting more mobile but spends much of the day in bed still,’ I say quickly.
‘That’s fine, we won’t stay long.’ She smiles tightly and finally moves away from the desk and heads off towards the fiction shelves.
An hour has barely passed when a tanned man dressed in jeans and a sports jacket enters the library and approaches the desk.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he says with a strange mixed accent, his eyes darting around the shelves of books behind me.
‘Eric! I wasn’t expecting you, Ronnie said you’d ring the library.’
I push away the forbidden thoughts, the secret that I shouldn’t be party to.
‘Trust Dad to get mixed up.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘I’m here now, and I wondered if you have the spare key for Dad’s, save him getting out of bed to let me in.’
‘Yes, course. One sec.’ I root in my handbag and pull out the key, handing it to Eric. ‘How are you?’
‘Good. Fine thanks, you?’ He has an unfortunate habit of not meeting my eyes when I speak to him. I remember noticing it about him when he still lived next door, too.
Maybe Eric always felt different but never knew why. Maybe his parents felt like strangers to him at times and he blamed himself. A secret he knew nothing about, yet the truth behind it was real and he felt it.
‘I’m well thanks,’ I say, although I feel rubbish.
There are a few moments of silence. We’d never really had anything to say to each other. He was three years older than me but to say we’d been neighbours, we never made an effort to get along.
Eric had been a mummy’s boy. ‘Always hanging on his mother’s apron strings,’ Mum used to complain. She said she could never have a good gossip with Sheila without Eric earwigging.
I remember he’d been a bit of a loner but Ronnie and Sheila treated him like a little prince. Some good that did them; he upped sticks with not much warning and hardly anyone saw him since.
Somehow, I can understand his decision more now.
‘Best be off and see the silly old bugger then,’ he says, smiling. ‘See you around.’
The days trundle on. Work, home, sleep – all peppered with checking the doors, checking the road outside, the yard at the back.
Checking on Ronnie two or three times a day.
The truth is, despite my best efforts, I can’t really think of much else apart from this: has Gareth Farnham read my letter?
He might not even have it yet. It’s so frustrating. I think about ringing the prison but I doubt they’ll tell me anything.
Yet again he is controlling me, only this time he probably doesn’t know it.
Five days after I sent the letter and after another unremarkable day at work, I fight the urge to call at the Co-op for comfort foods and walk briskly home in the drizzle.
I usually use the back door to enter and leave the house but today, because of the rain, I unlock the front door and step inside, into the miniscule hallway.
I shiver and peel off my anorak, turning to hang it on the coat hook by the door. I feel something under my foot and look down to see I’ve inadvertently stood on the mail.
Snapping on the light, I ignore the unsteady feeling in my legs and bend down to gather up what’s there. A pizza home delivery flyer, a generic house insurance communication marked simply ‘Property Owner’ and a white envelope with my name and address printed neatly on the front.
I allow the other mail to fall from my hands and I turn the envelope over in my hands. There is nothing on it that suggests it’s come from prison but, somehow, it looks different. It has a bar code sticker on and a couple of handwritten illegible marks as if it’s been through some kind of vetting process.
I won’t know until I open it.
I lock and bolt the door, kick my shoes where I’m standing and drop my handbag. Then I sit down in the chair and, finding a small unsealed piece of the flap, I inch my index finger along and pull out the single piece of folded paper in there.
I open it and smooth it out on my knee. My shoulders slump as I realise it isn’t a letter from Gareth Farnham but then I read the first printed line and my hands start to tremble.
Forcing myself to read the short paragraph that is there, I clamp my elbows into my sides and swallow hard as I stare at the bold heading on the sheet.
VISITING ORDER
Prisoner 364599 Gareth Benjamin Farnham has granted you permission to visit.
Please select 3 possible dates and times for your visit below.
You will receive a confirmation email within three working days.
I brush the paper from my knee and shuffle my feet away from it.
My chest feels tight and sore as I grapple with the implications. Why couldn’t he just have written to me? I never considered this…
How is it still possible that he can knock me off my feet? I feel like the prisoner here.
I leave the discarded paper on the floor, stand up and walk upstairs for a lie down. A single thought is throbbing repeatedly in my head.
I can’t see him.
I just can’t.
61
ROSE
PRESENT DAY
A week later, I join the M1 and drive all the way up from Junction 27 to Junction 40.
It sounds straightforward but I talk to myself all the way to calm my pumping heart and cool my burning face. It’s not just a reaction to the fact I haven’t driven on the motorway in years but also what waits for me at the end of the journey.
I don’t even want to think about the stress and strain I’ve put myself through since I received the visiting order in the post. I’d lay upstairs staring unseeingly at the ceiling for hours. When I came back downstairs I che
cked Ronnie was OK and then I sat down and wrote another letter to Gareth Farnham. It was identical to the first one, except I added:
It is not possible for me to visit the prison. Please communicate by letter.
Three days later I’d received another visiting order in the post.
I felt furious enough to ignore him and desperate enough to make the journey to speak to him. After several sleepless nights and a day off sick from work, desperation won through in the end.
At Woodall services, between junctions 29 and 30, I park up, and, despite the drizzle, lower the windows to get some air into my ten-year-old Ford Fiesta. I’ve parked by a bank of stringy-looking trees but I know there’s a blackbird in there somewhere. I can hear it singing, a throaty warble so clear it feels like it’s sitting on my shoulder.
I wish my head felt clearer. Am I doing the right thing? I draw in a long breath through my bared teeth and then release it.
I’m honestly not sure there is a right thing to do.
I lean my elbow on the rim of the open window and allow my forearm to drape outside, a thin breeze trickling through my fingers.
If I hadn’t been with Billy that day at the abbey, it might have been possible for me to come up with a logical reason for Ronnie having his blanket and ultimately push it from my mind.
It wouldn’t have stayed pushed away though, how could it?
Besides, I was there that day; I do know that Billy had his blanket with him at the Abbey.
Everybody loves Ronnie, and if I’d ever been in any doubt, then the outpouring of affection and concern after his short illness proved the point.
He’d helped so many people over the years, I’d look like the wicked witch of the west if I dared to suggest otherwise.
I’m shaken out of my thoughts by a family – parents and two small children – piling into the car parked next to me. The boy and girl are chattering excitedly and, although the parents look weary, there’s a comfortable and relaxed manner between the two of them that I find myself envying.
One adult either side of the car, they get the kids strapped into the back seats and the father grins and shakes his head at the parcel shelf, stacked to the brim with clothes, toys and carrier bags.
Mum and Dad always made sure we had a family holiday once a year. Usually it was a week at the coast; quite often Whitby or Morecambe. But the year we stayed in a small cottage in St Ives sticks in my mind.
The glorious light, the azure sea and sky, the sound of seagulls when we woke in the morning and when we returned from each scorching day at the beach.
Every day, we’d start with a hearty cooked breakfast, one of Dad’s specials usually reserved for a Sunday morning at home. Mum would pack up a picnic each day that we’d eat against the backdrop of the waves and the sun beating down on our shoulders.
On top of all this were ice creams and cream teas and, most days, fish and chips eaten out of trays at the harbour.
We’d gotten friendly with the family next door. There had been a girl, Bethany, who was just a year younger than me. We’d often pop to the corner shop together, our respective families needing bread or milk or some other essential item we’d run out of.
The shop owner, whose name I can’t recall, had taken a shine to us, and given us tips about the best places for teenagers, and we’d occasionally help bring in the sandwich board outside, a job that needed doing before the shop closed at 6 p.m.
Then one day, just before we were due to go home, the police had called at our cottage. The shop owner had informed them he’d suspected that Bethany and I had stolen a cloth bag containing cheques and around a hundred pounds in cash from under the counter.
It’d been awful. Our mums had been crying, the dads looking at each other suspiciously, as though they’d suspected the other one’s daughter. The next day we’d heard a local boy had been apprehended for the theft; he’d done the same thing in shops dotted along the coast.
I’ve never forgotten that feeling though, of being accused, of being desperate to prove your innocence but finding it impossible to do so and actually realising that the angrier you get, the more guilty you look.
I wondered for years after that if Mum and Dad would’ve doubted me, if we hadn’t heard the police had found the culprit.
I don’t want to be responsible for making Ronnie feel like that if he’s an innocent man. I think too much of him.
I pop inside the services to use the loo and a grab a latte on the way out. I have to sit and drink the coffee before I set off because my old car doesn’t have the luxury of a coffee holder. I keep meaning to get one of those plastic ring contraptions that clips on to the air vent but it’s rare I use the car these days.
It’s an expense I often wonder about having but it gives me comfort to know it’s there, outside the house. In case I need to get away fast.
And it’s been very useful to have on hand today. Because after churning the possibilities over yet again in my mind, I feel renewed vigour to get to Wakefield to see Gareth Farnham.
I need to stay strong, stay focused and find the truth. After all, he’s the one in prison.
I’m not a naïve, young college girl any more… what can he do to hurt me now?
62
HMP WAKEFIELD
PRESENT DAY
Rose was forced to drive around the prison car park twice before she eventually found a space.
Under different circumstances, she could’ve almost tricked herself into believing she was parking up, about to go shopping… until she got out of the car and looked across to her right. A stark biscuit-coloured building with a flat, dark-green roof and long, high wall crouched there, as if daring her to approach.
She locked the car and, slinging her handbag over her shoulder, she made her way over to the pedestrian path and walked towards the prison. Rose was aware she was walking too slow, dragging her feet and choosing to walk the long way around, instead of cutting through the parked cars.
But she gave herself a break. As long as she got there, it didn’t really matter how long it took. After all, she’d waited sixteen years.
The grey sky offered no contrast to the gloomy colours that surrounded her. Heavy, rain-filled clouds hung over the trees at the back of the prison, threatening to pour at any moment.
As she approached the building, electronic doors whooshed open and an older couple emerged. The man slid his arm around the woman’s shoulders as tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks.
She tried not to stare but it was hard to ignore. As she approached the reception area, her heartbeat sped up a notch.
‘Rose Tinsley,’ she said at the desk. ‘I’m here to visit Gareth Farnham.’
The middle-aged woman behind the desk checked her paperwork and asked her to sign the visitors’ book and then directed her to the visitor’s centre.
‘Straight down the corridor and turn right at the bottom. There’ll be a few security checks and then you’ll be able to begin your visit.’ She smiled as if she’d assumed it was something Rose had been looking forward to.
The level of noise that assailed her ears as she entered the visiting area took her by surprise.
Rose stood for a moment or two, frozen in the doorway, her eyes scanning the crowded space. Men, women, children, clustered together in small groups, dotted around the room like buzzing insects.
She hadn’t really known what to expect but had naively visualised a quiet, calm area where there would be a prison guard standing quite close to the table where she would meet with Gareth Farnham.
There were several officers, dotted here and there around the periphery of the room but – she couldn’t help thinking – not close enough to stop a prisoner punching someone in the face, or worse, if they were compelled to do so.
Rose swallowed hard and looked around her at the sea of heads.
The room was organised simply in rows of low, white tables, each served by four hard, black, plastic chairs.
The tables were set surprisi
ngly close together, wobbling and rocking as small children dashed between them, clutching toys to take to their oblivious parents who all seemed either in deep conversation or staring at each other accusingly, with seemingly little to say.
‘Excuse me,’ someone said in an annoyed tone behind her.
‘Sorry.’ She hurriedly stepped out of the doorway she was currently blocking and into the main room. Still, she found she couldn’t quite bring herself to walk towards the visiting tables.
‘You OK there?’ a stocky female officer with cropped brown hair and a friendly smile asked her. ‘First time here?’
Rose nodded, grateful someone was taking the time to check on her. ‘Yes, I’ve come to see—’ she scanned the room again to see if he had appeared before looking back at the officer ‘—Gareth Farnham.’
‘Right.’ She felt sure the officer’s eyes seemed to widen slightly as she stared closer at her and then turned to view the room. ‘Doesn’t look like he’s out yet but you can wait for him at that free table over in the corner. He doesn’t have many visitors.’
There were only a handful of tables not occupied and so Rose moved over to the one the officer had indicated.
She realised she’d been holding her breath and now, as she moved towards the vacant seat, she made an effort to release the tension that cramped at her chest.
She pulled out a chair, wincing as it scraped the tiled floor, although everyone else appeared oblivious to the grating noise, amid their conversational din.
Rose placed her handbag on the chair next to her and looked up, gratified to see a uniformed officer standing with his back to the wall and quite close to where she sat.
Consciously making an effort to do her ‘calm’ breathing – that was, in through the nose for three counts and out through the mouth for six – she laced her hands in front of her on the table and stared at them.
She didn’t want to look around her at the prisoners and their families. They talked, laughed and, as she’d walked across the room, she’d even seen some crying, totally oblivious to their surroundings. Most of them appeared to be perfectly comfortable in a situation that had obviously become normal to them.
