‘Excellent, thank you, Mr Suggs,’ says Miss Harris, taking control. She pushes herself away from the desk and walks to the front of the classroom, where the writer is standing, tight-lipped, a little embarrassed smile on his face.
Cox considers him. Knows him. Knows him all the way through. Posh boy. Sensitive. Wordy but useless. Hopeless romantic and a true mishmash of arrogance and self-doubt. Cox has to stop himself from smiling. Congratulates himself, silently, instead. He’s chosen right. Rufus Orton couldn’t be more perfect if Cox had written him himself.
Miss Harris flashes a smile at the writer. Cox sees something in the glance. Something that makes his pulse quicken.
‘So, this is Mr Orton …’
‘I’m fine with Rufus, actually,’ says Orton, pulling a face. ‘Mr Orton is my father.’
‘And Mr Orton, or Rufus, is going to be helping you learn how to write creatively. We are very lucky to have him here. He’s won lots of awards for writing and is one of my own particular favourites. So, give him your attention, listen to what he says, and please don’t dick about.’
Orton stands up, smiling widely, as if he’s just been welcomed on stage at a literature festival. Pulls a hardback book from the satchel at his feet.
‘Well,’ he says, brightly. ‘Where do I begin …?’
Miss Harris takes her place by the door. Stares at him in fascination. Devours him.
Oh yes, thinks Cox, settling back. This is going to be so much fun …
TEN
It doesn’t take Rufus long to find his stride. He stumbles a little while introducing himself, as if he isn’t quite sure which level to pitch his message at, but Annabeth enjoys watching him expertly tune himself in to the correct frequency. She fancies there’s a little battle taking place inside him about which level to pitch at. Whether to impress these new associates; to come across as humble, blokey; one of the guys. But as soon as he begins to talk about books and the art of storytelling, his enthusiasm is infectious. His hand gestures become more animated, his voice full of passion and positivity. It’s like watching an evangelist. She can imagine a gospel choir arising behind him, silky robes and big hair, as he somersaults and backflips his way through a rousing, triumphant codetta.
‘I hear people tell me they don’t have the time to write – then they tell me what they love to read. So, there’s the decision first off. Do you want to continue adoring other people’s work, or is the need to create your own more pressing? Do you just love stories, or do you need to tell your own? That’s the first question. Because if you have time to read, you have time to write. If you have time to watch TV, or play some game on your phone, or hit the gym or play five-a-side with your chums, then you have the time to write. But if you don’t have an absolute and all-consuming desire to do so, then don’t do so.’
Clayton Mings, a shoplifter from Newquay who stole a doctor’s briefcase while off his head on spice, tentatively raises a hand. He’s a scabby specimen; flaky skin and misspelled tattoos, but he’d been one of the first to put his name down when Annabeth first posted the notice on the library wall. He wants to write children’s books, so he says.
‘Yes, mate,’ says Orton, making guns with his hands. He’s bringing a lot of energy today. Annabeth wonders if he will sustain it, or drop before lunch.
‘What if you really want to write but you can’t work out which of your ideas you should be working on? Like, I’ve got this one story …’
‘Aw here we go,’ grumbles the man to his right. Ibrahim Curtis, a drug courier from Malton in North Yorkshire, is Mings’s cellmate.
‘Don’t start,’ mutters Mings.
‘He’ll get to it. You’ve always got to make it about you …’
Annabeth lets them grumble. They bicker like a married couple but it never goes further than that. She catches Orton’s eye and is delighted to receive a fleeting wink. He’s enjoying himself.
‘… every bloody night he’s whispering to himself like he’s praying, but nobody prays about dragons and goblins, do they? I mean, that’s not what you want to hear when you’re on the bottom bunk and your new padmate’s talking about exploding planets and upside-down volcanoes and shit …’
She tunes them out. Uses the opportunity to scan the room. They’re listening, there’s no doubt about that. That, in itself, is a victory. Everybody is staring at Orton and a couple of the inmates are even suppressing the urge to raise their hands or shout out. They remind her of children, in many ways: over eager and desperate to get it right, but afraid of their own baser natures. She wishes she had been in the job years back, when prisoners were given access to endless courses and educational facilities aimed at helping them use their time inside wisely. There’s no funding for that now. When she proposed bringing Orton in as a visiting creative writing tutor, she’d had to make a pitch outlining the investment-to-outcome ratio of the sessions, and even then, she’d known herself to be fighting an uphill battle. The accountants in the education department had told her the whole thing was a non-starter. She had to go above their heads to make it happen, applying to a charity on the outside for the funding to host the sessions, and promising to promote their involvement in an article with the local newspaper and the prison magazine. Even with the funding in place she had to get tough with a few people to make sure there were enough attendees to not look stupid. She’d all but bullied one or two into attending, convincing them
