lockdown for one and all, no lights-out at a time when you could still hear small kids out playing on the still sunlit streets, no handcuffs, no iron security gates to pass through every five metres, no clinking of keys … There was just him and him alone and there were times he thought he was drunk on the sheer high of it.
He felt like a proper adult, with a normal life all ahead of him, something he’d scarcely dreamt of only a few weeks back.
And all he had to do was not f**k it up.
Eloise continued to astonish him with her random acts of kindness, all done in her usual brusque, businesslike manner. He’d actually never expected to see her again. As soon as he’d moved into the flat and given her a month’s rent plus a deposit upfront for her sister, that technically should have heralded the end of all her dealings with him. And yet still she kept coming back. Just for friendly chats, just to see how he was doing. Lately she’d taken to dropping in on him at the oddest times, like very late at night when she’d just have finished up work for the day, or early on weekend mornings, when again, she was only about to start her day’s work.
Initially, she never stayed for more than half an hour at a time, just long enough for her to check what work he’d done on his CVand which language schools he was applying off to. Like a teacher looking for progress reports, he thought. As if she hadn’t done enough for him, she’d even helped him out there too. She’d glossed up his resumé for him and had added on loads of embellishments he’d never even thought of. All the skills that he’d learned in Wheatfield, she’d pounced on, made an asset of.
And so now, under ‘outside interests and hobbies’, he had listed a not-unimpressive array of accomplishments, from carpentry to cooking. She’d even thrown in metalwork. Fleshes it all out a bit, she’d told him, makes you sound more interesting, more three-dimensional. Spoken with all the authority of a woman who’d not only scanned through thousands of CVs in her time, but who could also freely quote – in some cases dating from years back – examples from the ones that had impressed her and horror stories from the ones that arrived on her desk stained with coffee mug rings all around them.
‘Photographic memory?’ he’d asked her at the time, wryly grinning at her from the corner of his mouth.
‘Comes in very handy in my gig, believe me,’ she grinned back and as ever, it astonished him how approximately ten years fell off her face when she allowed herself to crack even the tiniest smile.
Not only that, but she’d encouraged him to open up a library account too, so he could borrow all the English and psychology books he needed to study for his Open University exams, which were only round the corner. She’d even earmarked a couple of language schools in town that she’d heard on the grapevine were stuffed to the gills with students and suggested he apply off to those first. Chances were they could do with having a few substitute teachers on their roster.
Jake gladly took her advice and was astonished to find that in no time at all, his days had become far fuller and busier than he ever could have anticipated. He would get up early each morning, cook a proper breakfast (cooking came easily after a spell inside; everyone was required to spend at least three months of the year working in the prison kitchens and what you’d learned stayed with you), then start into the books, which he loved far more than he could ever hope to put into words.
For hour after hour, he’d sit at the tiny desk in the one-roomed studio flat and pore over his course texts, cup of coffee beside him, feeling like a real, proper student. Feeling so very deeply privileged; as though all the chances he’d never had as a kid, or as a teenager, all the opportunities that he’d missed out on, had by some boomerang of a miracle, come back to him.
As it happened, he was studying Pygmalion by one of his favourite writers, George Bernard Shaw, for his English exam. And he found it ironic and funny at the same time, that a guy like him, an ex-con, a criminal with a past who’d been in and out of correctional facilities all his youth, could relate so easily to a character like Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl with a rough background whose main problem in life was that she said ‘cuppa tae’ instead of cup of tea and yelled obscenities at racehorses on Ascot opening day.
And yet in spite of everything, he could all too easily identify with this character. He’d even written a bit about the subject in one of the essays he’d had to hand in to his course tutor. He and Eliza Dolittle both despised where they’d come from and didn’t want to get sucked back. They both wanted more out of life, without being dragged back into the past any more. The past was another country, Jake had learned, one he never, ever intended revisiting.
Enter Eloise Elliot, like a female Henry Higgins in a black power suit and high heels, who was good enough to provide a halfway house for him, all the time encouraging him onwards and upwards. And education, she impressed on him time and again, was the key to the unlocked low door in the wall, the one that led to a better life.
His mam laughed at him when he took two buses on the long trek out to Darndale to see her one Sunday afternoon, as did his nana. ‘You always had notions about yourself,’ she’d said, though he liked to kid himself that he caught a flash of pride in her eyes as she said it. ‘Always too good for the likes of us, always wanting better for yourself. With your fancy books by writers none of us ever heard of by Russian writers that aren’t even alive any more, sure what’s the point in that?’
Jake smiled to himself at this, knowing his mother would think that reading anything more challenging than OK! magazine was akin to reading a treatise on sewage management in the fourteenth century.
‘Sure I remember you as a teenager,’ his nana reminded him, through her whistling teeth that she then whipped out and stuck on the dinner table in full view, like she always did whenever they were at her. ‘You were always writing out fancy to-do lists for yourself: must learn to speak better, must try to dress better, must study harder. How you didn’t get the shit kicked out of you more often round here was a minor miracle,’ she cackled at him toothlessly, the breath whistling out of her.
‘I remember,’ he smiled his warm, slow smile at her. ‘I was reading The Great Gatsby and I wanted to be just like Jay.’ But his nana just looked blankly back at him, the reference utterly lost on her, then grinned gummily and told him she really believed he’d do well no matter what. ‘I wouldn’t worry a bit about anything love,’ she’d told him kindly. ‘Sure look at you, you’ve the same hands as me. Intelligent hands. You’ll do well for yourself, you’ll be OK. Just don’t forget us when you land some big fancy job in town for yourself. And no running off with any tarty little gold-diggers when you’re rich and successful either, do you hear me?’
She was gently teasing him and all his notions of getting on in the world, but deep down Jake knew that of all people in his family, Nana probably understood best.
Understood that he’d had enough of the life he’d been born into. That he wanted to kill it as fast as possible and start over. Quickly, before they got to him and dragged him back in, like they always seemed to, just when he’d stumbled on a chance of getting up and on and out. And the invisible noose they had around his neck was already beginning to tighten, he knew only too well. Already, his ma said a few of the old gang had phoned the house, faux-casually asking where he was staying since he got out. He could trust his ma not to give him away though. ‘In town, that’s as much as I know’ she’d told them firmly, and that seemed to suffice.
At least, for the moment.
In his coursework, he was reading about the Sword of Damocles and in his darker moments, that was exactly how he felt these days. Like he was enjoying a rare and spectacular piece of undeserved good fortune right now, but the sky was surely about to fall in on his head.
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