‘… and “what if” are the most fascinating, inspirational and exciting words in the English language. What if, tonight, you could hear what was being said in the cell next door? What if you could witness the home lives of the officers? What if, you woke up tomorrow and you were a cockroach – that’s where all literature, all stories, begin to smoulder …’
‘I’d love to hear what was going on in Miss Harris’s room, Rufus!’
‘I’m sure you would, Swifty! Wahey!’
‘OK, OK, settle down …’
As she scans the room, she becomes slowly aware that she is, herself, being surveyed. She feels the strange prickling hotness of being the subject of somebody else’s attention, as if in the glare of a hot bulb.
Slowly, she turns herself into the full glare of the gaze. It’s Griffin Cox. He’s looking at her. Looking past Orton and considering her as if she were a painting on the wall of a gallery. He keeps turning his head this way and that, trying out different angles, staring into her as if trying to see every individual brushstroke and whorl.
Annabeth looks away, instinctively. She can hold the gaze of any prisoner on the main wings but she feels like a timid little girl when confronted with the very worst of the VPs. She sees so little of what they portray to the world: sees only the fibrous, worm-eaten thing that lives inside their flesh. She never wants to work on the nonce wing. Doesn’t trust herself around people like Cox, even while she tells herself that she must be professional and that no one abuser can serve as a proxy for any other. He is not the man who did those things to her. None of them are. That man is gone, just like the one who tried to take her child. She had to lie to even secure her place on the training course. Had to tell them she’d never been in trouble with the police or been the victim of any acts of criminality that could have provided an ulterior motive for her application. She guards her confidences fiercely. Cocoons her past. And yet the way Cox looks at her, it is as if her every sin and secret was carved into her flesh.
‘… the book that’s out at the moment, RedGreen, is essentially about a feeling of intense, concentrated empathy: a character who feels in several dimensions all at once, who hears in colours – who looks at a sharp object and can feel it manifesting physically in needlepoints down the backs of her legs …’
Annabeth gives Rufus her attention again; turning her back on the blowtorch attentions of Cox’s dark, staring eyes. Facing away from him, his glare becomes a feeling on the back of her neck: the slow, stalking footfalls of an ice-cold spider. She feels the hairs stand up on her arms. Feels suddenly cold, uncomfortable, as if her hair is being pulled at the roots; as if there is something grating, inexorably, into the soft parts of herself. She tells herself to ignore him. That she’s an adult, a mother; a prison officer tipped for a bright career. She’s dealt with him, and his type, before. But the fear is real. He doesn’t look at the person she portrays at work. It is as if he is looking at the person she was, years ago, when those things were done to her, and she had to fight back. She has the sudden and absolute feeling that he knows. That he has seen what she has endured. Seen what she has done.
‘… of course, character is everything. There seem to be authors today for whom the notion of somebody’s character is their hairstyle and the model of their car. I, for one, would hate to be reduced down to something so fleeting and incidental. Character is so much more than that. Look at Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Sensitive, intuitive, appalled by the ugliness of the world, and yet his manner is jaded. Cynical, even. That is a human being, not a character in a book. We are all inconsistencies and doubts, poor decisions and temper tantrums; moments of kindness, moments of weakness, peculiar, trivial, selfish …’
Annabeth wants to listen. Wants to lose herself in his enthusiasm for his subject. Cox is spoiling things for her. Baiting her. Goading her, without saying a word. She wants to yell something at him. To tell him to pay attention, or to stop bloody staring, but she doesn’t want to interrupt Orton while he’s in full flow. The rest of the class seem to be going with him, appreciating his passion for the subject even if not fully understanding what he’s talking about. She takes the opportunity to throw a savage glare at Cox. He’s not even looking. He’s eyeing Rufus, with the rest of them, doodling something on his paper without a care in the world.
‘… we’re talking a conflation of the senses – so the things you see are felt on your skin. Imagine that. Just imagine what Julietta experiences every single day. If she sees another person’s injuries, or sees them caressed, or touched, she feels that on her own skin. Every single day, she sees something that triggers waves of pain, making it very hard for her to participate in what we think of as reality. She can’t watch violence, for example. To see torture is to experience torture. And yet when she watches something positive – she’ll watch ballet, and feel as if she is pirouetting. It’s uncontrollable. It’s called “mirror touch synaesthesia”. And in essence, the whole book came about because I thought “what if?” …’
He stops for a moment. Becomes aware of himself. Gives a
