Gabriel had carefully studied the prison officers to see which ones he needed to be on guard with. The officer who had escorted him here, Hyde, seemed to be the most volatile of the bunch. His bloodshot eyes were disengaged, he always looked tired and was constantly rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands. How long before you got burnt out in a job like this? Gabriel wondered how many years he had worked here. He thought about all the men he must have seen come and go and then come back again. Who was really in prison here? Most of the prisoners here would do three years at most and then they got to go home, wherever that was, and forget. The unlucky ones like Gabriel would get moved to a different prison after sentencing. Not everyone came back, not everyone reoffended. Hyde, however, had been here longer than most of the other guards, he seemed to be the one that they turned to when things went south. He stared at these same walls as the prisoners every day, locked in the same buildings, leaving only to go home and sleep in his bed at night before returning again in the morning.
‘Come in,’ the nurse called from inside. Natalie Barnes was the mental health nurse provided to various facilities in the area. She visited this prison twice a week but this was Gabriel’s first visit with her; he was nervous, but looking forward to spending time with a female. The complete absence of women in the prison was something nobody had prepared him for and he hadn’t really considered it until he’d been faced with it.
Gabriel stood up and went in, sitting himself down in the chair next to her desk. She nodded to Hyde to leave them alone and he closed the door.
‘How are you doing, Gabriel? Just want to check and see how things are.’
‘OK.’
‘This is your first offence?’
‘It is.’
‘How do you think you’re adjusting to the routine?’
‘OK.’
‘Have you made any friends yet?’
‘Not really.’
‘Time goes a lot slower when you’re on your own, you know. It’s important you make a connection in here if you can. It can help with the day to day.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he said reluctantly, not comfortable with conversation yet.
‘What are you missing most about the outside world?’
‘Everything?’ He half-laughed at the stupidity of the question. Freedom, freedom is what he missed the most.
‘I mean one thing. What one thing do you miss the most? Your parents? Your girlfriend? Your dog?’
‘I don’t have a dog; my parents have washed their hands of me and I don’t think my girlfriend is my girlfriend anymore.’
‘There must be something.’
‘To be perfectly honest with you, I miss walking. Just going outside and walking wherever I want. It’s that simple. And music I guess, I miss listening to music. I’ve never really been one to watch TV.’
‘Did they not tell you that you can buy a radio through the canteen?’
‘No?’
‘It will only be a basic thing, but maybe that will help.’
‘Thank you.’ Gabriel was excited for the first time in a week; the concept of a radio giving him an unexpected burst of hope.
‘OK, well I’ll check on you again next week. Please – do think about what I’ve said and try to make some friends.’
Gabriel stood up and Hyde opened the door. Back to the cell. He was surprised at how quick the meeting had been. Was it because he had said all the right things? If he had said he needed help, would they have listened? The whole thing felt like an exercise in box ticking, no one really cared if he was coping or not.
Bang-up again, thirty minutes in the cell to think about his meeting with the nurse, to think about what she’d said and how he should be making friends. He was lonely, and left alone with his thoughts he knew it wouldn’t be long before he slipped into a rut of despair; he needed to trust someone, he needed to at least try.
Gabriel was working out in his cell at every opportunity he could get. The outside facility had been closed due to constant outbreaks among the inmates and the fact that on two occasions a drone had dropped suspect packages into the exercise yard. The prison was in the process of appealing for funds to stop this kind of thing. In the thirty minutes ‘bang-up’ time, Gabriel had worked his way to over a hundred press-ups in less than a week, marginal gains, adding an extra five onto every other set he did. When he’d arrived in jail, he’d barely been able to do a quarter of that without the asthma niggling at him. He figured his breathing was like any other muscle that needed to be stretched, and so he did ten rounds of twenty press-ups a day, pausing for breath in between.
He was just finishing up when the doors unlocked.
Roll call.
He noticed less and less people looking at him during roll call, which was a blessing. He was no longer the new guy, no longer unpredictable and unknown, he hadn’t done anything rash or exciting and so now he was no more interesting than anyone else. He sometimes wondered if they even knew he was there. Beside his brief interactions with Sol, everyone else stayed away from him. He would slip out and then back in without anyone so much as batting an eyelid. Just the way he wanted it. Roll call was over and he went back inside his cell.
‘Webb?’ Barratt said from the doorway.
Gabriel stood up immediately.
‘Yes?’
‘I believe you wanted one of these?’ Barratt held out a box with a brand-new radio in it. For the first time in a week, Gabriel smiled.
Adrian walked along his road, past Uncle Mac’s corner shop. The orange and grey tones of dusk were settling into daylight. He hadn’t been in the shop for a long time, not since they had connected it to a human-trafficking operation four months ago, an operation that was still under investigation. The place had been stripped and new management had taken over, but he still couldn’t bring himself to go inside. He thought about his old friend Eva, the girl who had worked in the shop, and wondered if he would ever see her again. The thought of it filled him with anxiety; seeing her again would force him to confront the guilt he felt. When he thought of all the time they spent talking, she could have told him what had happened to her, that she had been trafficked, that she was there against her will. He wanted to blame her for not saying anything but the truth was he should have known something was very wrong. These days, he walked to the nearest supermarket on the main road for his necessaries. He counted the extra fifteen-minute walk as part of his punishment, it did nothing to alleviate his conscience though.
Adrian’s phone beeped in his pocket, it was a text from Tom. Adrian had made Tom promise to check in every morning since the menacing visit a couple of months ago from Tom’s stepfather, Dominic. He asked Tom to come and live with him on a weekly basis but Tom insisted he needed to stay home and look after his mother, Adrian’s ex Andrea. The
