this man, this Governor. His familiarity, his smile, his help. His…his eyes.
‘My new counsel,’ I manage to say to him. ‘What am I to do next?’
‘I’ll get a legal officer to look into it for you. Are you okay? You seem a little unsteady.’
‘Balthus,’ Dr Andersson says, ‘I don’t think—’
‘Lauren,’ he says, spinning round to her. ‘Drop it.’
We walk to the door in silence. I can smell him, the Governor, the burnt-wood trail of his cologne, the subtle scent of his sweat.
I turn to him. ‘Balthazar…your name. It means “God protect the King”. Balthazar was one of the kings who visited Jesus.’
He nods, slowly, his eyes drawing invisible trails on my face. An image of my father see-saws in front of me. Hot, cold. One man’s face into the other’s. I cannot look away. Dr Andersson clears her throat.
‘Okay, Martinez,’ the guard says, ‘time to go.’
Kurt sits very still and studies his notes.
The room feels hot again. I sip some water, fan my face, try to circulate some air, some breeze. It does not work. Replacing the glass, I scan the room. Everything is the same. Solid, real. The walls are there, the mirror, table, clock, carpet. It all exists just as it did before. All present, tangible.
But when my eyes reach Kurt, I hold my breath. He has moved, I swear he has moved. Instead of holding his notes, his palm now rests on the arm of the chair, and his eyes are directed at me. I stay very still, scared to stir, to draw attention to it. I do not know why, but my pulse is rising. I can sense it. The blood pumping in my neck.
Kurt’s mobile shrills. My lungs start to work again.
‘Excuse me,’ he says, and picks up his phone, puts it to his ear. He glances to me. ‘I have to take this outside. Please remain where you are.’
As he stands and exits the room, I tap my finger. Therapy is confusing. When to speak, when to be silent. Kurt’s control of the situation is so exact that I sometimes find myself wanting to slap his face to see if he will react, to see if he will hurt me, shout at me, to see if he can comprehend who I am or figure out if he can even tolerate me and my ways at all.
Drained, I reach for some more water then stop. My eyes flutter. One blink, two, clearing, focusing. There is something there, by the ceiling, something that wasn’t there before, I am certain. Slowly, I stand, squinting for a better view. There is an object, tiny, in the far corner of the room, by the cornicing. An object that, two minutes ago, did not exist. I close my eyes then open them again, wondering if I had imagined it, wondering if I really am, as I have been told, going mad. Yet, even when I do this, even when I shake my head, there it is.
A cobweb.
A single cobweb.
‘Martinez,’ shouts a guard, ‘your new cellmate’s here.’
I have been sitting on my bed furiously writing in my notebook, fevered, obsessive. Two hours and forty-three minutes have passed, inscribing, shutting myself off from the world, from prison. It is my way of attempting to cope, adjust, to hide. My notebook is already dense with scratches and scrawls of numbers, of pictures, diagrams, outlines of floor plans I have recalled, phrases, messages that have floated like disembodied skulls in my head. My hand aches, my brain buzzes. None of it, when I look at it, when I read it back, makes sense, but I do not care. It is now all there, pressed into the page. The recording of it seems to spurt out in stages—codes, patterns, cryptic information, unusual encoded configurations. It all exists. Counted, documented. Yet, when I review it, when I scan all the detail, one thought scares me above everything else: I don’t ever recall having learnt any of it.
I set down the notepad, glance up and see her: the inmate with the studs on her tongue and the tattoo on her stomach. My body goes rigid, an alarm shrilling in my head, the urge to flee coursing through me.
‘This is Michaela Croft,’ the guard says, stepping inside. Michaela grins; I do not. Instead, I swallow, try to keep my hands from flapping.
The guard raises an eyebrow. ‘Well,’ she says before backing out, ‘I’ll leave you two to get …acquainted.’
I glance to my bed, panic. My notebook. Where did I place my notebook?
Michaela pushes past me. ‘I’m taking a leak.’
My pillow. There. My notebook peeks from under it. I allow myself to exhale then slip it out of sight, fast, silent.
A flush sounds. ‘Well,’ says Michaela, zipping her fly with one hand and wiping her nose with the other, ‘ain’t this nice?’
She flops to her bed. ‘You do him then, the priest?’
The trouble is, while she asks me this, while I am a little frightened of her, all I can think is that she hasn’t washed her hands. ‘There is soap,’ I say. I can’t help it.
‘Huh?’
‘After using the toilet,’ I continue, ‘a hand can contain over two hundred million bacteria per square inch. You did not wash your hands. There is soap.’
She stares at me, blinking, fists clenched, and I know I am in trouble. I sit, a coiled spring, waiting for her to hit me, claw me, but then, just like that, she shakes her head, says, ‘Jesus fuck,’ and lies down on her bed.
I watch her. The piercings on her ears have gone. Six puncture marks remain.
She yawns, wide, cavernous, the mouth of a lion. ‘All over the papers you was,’ she says. ‘Doctor Death, they called you, that right? You killed a priest! Ha! You hard fucker.’ She slips her palms behind her head. ‘I don’t bloody know why. I mean look at you…You’d hardly scare a kitten, never mind a sodding priest. You’re like some little pixie.’
The ceiling light flickers, making me jump. ‘I have never scared a kitten.’
‘You what?’
I stand, pace, lift my palms to my skull and knead my forehead. She is too noisy. Too noisy. ‘I do not belong here,’ I say, because I do not. I do not know where I belong any more.
‘What? You’re innocent?’ She laughs, a cackle, a lash of a whip. ‘That’s what they all say. Everyone’s innocent, la, la, la.’ She swings her legs over her bed, stands and prowls over to me. ‘Sit.’
I do not move.
‘I said sit.’ She pushes me to the bed and slides beside me. Anxious now, I flap my hand. The edge of my fingers hit her thigh.
‘Hey! What the fuck?’ She grabs my fingers, squeezing them. I feel a sudden, confusing urge to whip my hand out, jab her clean in the neck.
‘You have to understand something,’ she says to my face, her spit and hot breath on my skin, ‘they all say they’re innocent, and they’re all shooting for another taste of freedom;
