‘Hi Mum,’ I say, as the guard sets me down in the chair opposite her and takes a couple of paces away before standing rigidly nearby to keep a close eye on me.
Mum looks up with those tired eyes of hers and offers me a weak smile while doing her best not to notice my prison uniform and how much more intimidating it makes me look. I got a shock the first time I caught a glimpse of my reflection in one of the prison windows on the way to this room a while ago. I looked like a character in a movie with my hands bound, my hair all unkempt and my clothes signifying that I was a danger to society.
It might have been cool if it hadn’t been so real.
‘How have you been?’ I ask her, instinctively moving my handcuffed hands across the table to be closer to hers until the prison guard clears his throat to let me know that I’m not to get any closer.
‘Are you okay?’ Mum replies, obviously more worried about finding out about me rather than telling me what she has been up to.
‘I’m fine,’ I reply, shrugging my skinny shoulders.
I’ve lost a fair amount of weight since I have been in custody. I never thought I’d regret something like that, but I know I’m bordering on unhealthy now because I feel exhausted just walking here and back every two weeks.
Mum nods, though she doesn’t look convinced. I don’t blame her. I look like hell.
‘Are you ready to talk about what happened in Newcastle yet?’ she then asks, which possibly hints at the main reason she has come to visit me today.
‘Not this again,’ I reply, shaking my head. ‘Is that the only reason you keep coming here?’
‘No, of course not. I want to see you, and I’ll always keep coming here as long as they let me. But that doesn’t change the fact that a young man is still missing, and a family don’t have any answers.’
‘Mum, how many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t kill that guy in Newcastle.’
‘You told me you didn’t kill Rupert either, and look how that turned out.’
I sigh. Mum is always going to use that against me. I lied about Rupert, so she thinks I’m lying about everything else. But I didn’t treat her this way. She lied to me about what happened to Tim for years. I haven’t held that against her, so why is she holding this against me?
‘Just give the family closure so they can grieve and move on like Rupert’s family have,’ Mum tells me. ‘What have you got to lose at this point?’
‘Besides another twenty years of my life, maybe?’
‘You’ll feel better for doing the right thing.’
‘I am doing the right thing.’
I wish I could make Mum see things from my point of view, but it’s no good. As similar as we are in so many ways, we still have our differences, and this is just one of them.
‘Have you come here to talk about anything else, or shall we call it a day?’ I ask after we have wasted a couple of moments of this thirty-minute visit in silence.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Mum admits, lowering her eyes back to the table between us.
‘Tell me about what you’re going to do when you leave here,’ I reply.
‘What do you mean? I’m going to go home and hide from all the journalists and busybodies who are trying to get a photo of me.’
‘No. I don’t mean that. I mean tell me what you’re going to eat. What you’re going to drink. What you’ll watch on TV.’
That’s one thing about being in prison. You stop worrying about the big stuff. While Mum is on the outside preoccupied with thoughts of what the newspapers are saying and if anybody in town even likes her anymore, all I can think about is making myself a sandwich or pouring myself a glass of something refreshing. I’ve lost all my freedoms, and while Mum’s life might seem like a nightmare to her, it still seems like heaven to me.
But Mum doesn’t get it, and she won’t play my game. Instead, we waste even more time, and the prison guard is beside me again before I know it, pulling me up from my seat and leading me back towards the door I came in here through.
I look back over my shoulder at Mum as I go, hoping to get a smile from her that will give me the strength to keep going in here for another two weeks until she visits again. But there is none.
She isn’t even looking at me.
45
HEATHER
I should get out of bed.
The clock on the table beside me tells me that it’s almost noon and I have an interview for a job at the local library at two. But I can’t summon up the strength to get going. It’s as if all motivation to live has been drained out of me, and maybe it has. Maybe I should just stay lying here until I wither away and somebody eventually comes to find me, before taking a photo and putting it in the newspaper, like they did with all the other images of me. That would give them something else to talk about for a while, at least until the next person in this town makes a mistake and they have their lives plastered all over the pages for the public to read about.
But then my stomach rumbles, a reminder that I haven’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, and there must be a part of me that still wants to live because I put my feet over the side of the bed and force myself to get up to go in search of food.
Wearily putting on a dressing gown and padding down the stairs, I make it into the kitchen and find
