For the first time, it irritates me. He was the same in visiting hours. The glances up beyond me. It was a very specific emotion that flitted across his face. It was shame, but by proxy. Shame for me. Whatever that is. Embarrassment? I saw it all the time; as he brought my clothes in to me in a bag that had to be scanned. As he saw me interact with other prisoners who had become my friends.
And the rest. The stuff a past me would have avoided thinking about. That, sometimes, I was actually happy, in there; that you have to be. You can’t stay miserable for two years, not really. Not all the time. And Reuben saw that, and he wondered about me. I know he did. I need to ask him about it. Soon. There’s lots I need to ask him, but I consider what the counsellor said: that I cared so much about other people’s opinions that they came to construct me. And, when I removed them all – at my sentencing hearing, when I was metaphorically stripped down – there was nothing left. We found my sense of self together, me and Alan, in that prison.
There was a lot of truth in what he said. And so I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly as Reuben takes the roundabout. Second gear, to third, signals left to leave the roundabout. I will talk to him soon.
I get the Post-it note out of the pocket of my jogging bottoms and open it. On it are three numbers, collected over the last few months as the girls left before me. I key them into the phone, laboriously. It takes ages.
Reuben’s eyes land on my hands a few times but he says nothing.
I text the first number, Elle’s. Almost immediately, I am added to their WhatsApp group. It’s called ‘Outsiders’. I’m the last one out.
I tap out a reply. When I look up, I realize Reuben has been watching, but he turns his head away as if he hasn’t.
The plants have gone. That’s the first thing I notice. The flat looks smaller and shabbier than I remember, which doesn’t make any sense, because surely everything is salubrious compared to Her Majesty’s pleasure.
I look around. There’s the living room. The lights are off, of course, but I can still just about make out the glossy wooden floor, the neutral-coloured rug.
‘Alright?’ Reuben says, smiling politely like he’s a bellboy showing me to my room.
I nod quickly. My phone is vibrating nearly constantly in my pocket. I wish I had a room to escape to, to look at it in private.
We descend the steps and, as we do so, a neighbour pops out. I’m delighted to see it is Edith. I had thought of her, randomly, about a month into my sentence, considering that I would likely never see her again. But here she is, one hundred and four years old. She waves, as if nothing has happened.
Reuben looks at me. ‘The dogs died,’ he says, and I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
The flat is immaculate. That’s the first thing I notice. I wonder how he’s been affording the rent by himself. I don’t know, of course. This kind of intimacy, this everyday mundanity, is impossible in prison.
The sofa is different. Black leather. I don’t like leather sofas; I find it sticks to my skin, cold in winter and slimy in summer. He didn’t tell me about it. Why not? It looks masculine, oppressive in the living room.
‘Oh,’ I say, speaking before taking it properly in.
On the side of the cupboard is our blackboard. We were halfway through the list of films. They’re still there, all listed. I reach over and touch the chalk with my fingertip. He’s gone over the titles; their edges are blurred in places, as though I have double vision. They must have faded repeatedly, and he’s re-traced them.
‘Wow.’
Reuben nods. ‘I thought you’d want to resume. I’ve not watched any of them,’ he says.
I turn and look at him. I haven’t been able to see him properly in the visitors’ centre. The fluorescent lights made everybody look weird, their eye sockets in shadow. He didn’t look like himself, anyway. He dressed more smartly than usual, and his body language was directed even more inwards, like a turtle. I wonder what he’s been doing. He hasn’t really said, except ‘the usual’, with a wave of his hand. He hasn’t wanted, I suppose, to eclipse my problems with his. Typical. Has he been seeing friends? Has he been lonely?
It’s as good a time as any to try to open the conversation up. The counsellor said to do it as soon as possible.
‘So this is your life. This has been your life,’ I say, turning away from the board where I’ve accidentally rubbed away the stem of the f on The Godfather.
‘Yes,’ Reuben says, flapping his arms at his sides, slightly self-consciously.
‘Hard to just – fit back in,’ I say, with a small laugh. I look at the cupboards. I open the mugs cupboard and find plates inside. I can’t see the kettle. It’s not out on the work surface. The kitchen is fastidiously neat, more so than when we lived together. Not a thing out. Scrubbed clean.
‘Where’s the kettle?’ I say, without thinking.
‘Oh,’ Reuben says, and then, to my astonishment, he pulls it down from a cupboard. ‘I got a wireless one. Less clutter,’ he says, filling it at the sink and flicking it on.
‘Doesn’t it wreck the cupboard when you put it away?’ I say, instead of saying the things I want to say.
Reuben stops, then looks at me. ‘It’s fine,’ he says stiffly, like he is my landlord and I am his lodger.
I scrutinize the cupboard. Bloody hell. Imagine putting it away every time. This is what happens when a neat freak lives on their own for two years.
‘We’re not seriously going to just resume the greatest movies of all time, are we?’ I say.
He turns to me in surprise. Perhaps my tone – it’s more direct, these days – sounds too harsh. ‘Why not?’ he asks.
And I think of what Alan says: Is Reuben really always right? Is anyone? He sounds like he can be a little immature to me; he sees things in black and white, maybe? And Laura, too?
I walk out of the living room and into our bedroom. The bed’s the same. The duvet has the same blue and white checks that I chose once in Next.
The bedroom has been kept clean. So clean that as I look out on to the shabby garden above, running my finger along the window ledge, it doesn’t catch any dust. It’s pristine as I withdraw it. Already, I can feel the adjustment. I should be pleased I have a bedroom, privacy, freedom, a smartphone in my hand again, a clean, private shower in the room next door but one. The ability to do whatever I like. The pub or the cinema or anything, really. But I don’t. I feel sad for the lack of my cell, even though I had to use a chair to climb up on to my bunk. I am uneasy, a small ball of snakes in my stomach, not doing anything, but just wanting me to know that they’re there. And I feel curious. No, more than curious. Suspicious. Of myself.
Finally, the nightmare is over. As over as it ever will be, anyway. It’ll always be on some record, somewhere. It may be considered spent one day, but it is too violent for me never to disclose. And yet. I’m not relaxed, happy. I’m … what? Homesick? Could it be? Maybe I will be better when I am no longer out on licence.
‘It’s Friday,’ Reuben says, walking into the bedroom. ‘Friday night tonight.’
Friday night was always film and takeaway night. But Fridays in HMP Bronzefield were the only day on which we weren’t allowed visitors. Ninety-three Fridays later and I hate them. I shudder.
‘Is it?’ I say, hoping I sound convincing.
It’s impossible to mark time without the beat of the Monday to Friday, without the seasons. We were allowed in the yard for an hour a day but it was impossible to really feel the weather without the punctuation of daily life. What is a blue sky, or rain, or high or low temperatures without the other things from those seasons? A first barbecue, or an office disgruntled by snow at the end of March, or the light traffic during the school holidays, or an ice lolly on my lunch hour? They were context-less, my seasons.
Reuben leaves me to it and I get out my phone and see he has organized it so that my contacts are already in there. I find Wilf’s name and press dial.
He answers on the first ring, and I smile. It wasn’t always this way, after all. Some good things have happened.
‘Why, is that Joanna Oliva – a free woman?’ he says.