I see, I am thinking. This is why you didn’t visit much. I had thought our friendship was merely on hold; nothing worse. But I see now.
I swallow hard, not looking at her. It will be natural, Alan told me, for people to have moved on. I look at Laura, and try to be compassionate. I couldn’t be a friend to her, not while I was inside. And so she’s found another. Someone else she will text all day long, like she used to do with me, even though I am back. I close my eyes and turn my face to the sun, trying to enjoy the feel of it, of the London air around me. I’m no longer in my own dead suburbia at Bronzefield, and I should appreciate that.
‘What does she teach, anyway?’
‘Tab?’
‘Yes.’
‘Law,’ Laura says quietly.
My head snaps up and I see it now. Her avoidant gaze. The wrinkled brow. She is embarrassed for me, and ashamed of me, all at once.
I go and sit down in a shadowy corner of the boat, behind a stack of three unmarked boxes, and think. I’m responsible for my friend giving up her art and joining the rat race. I’m responsible for my friend finding a new friend. A replacement. I look up at the wooden ceiling of the boat, smelling the matches and the tea and the wood, and wonder if the effects of my mistake will ever wear off. They might never stop spreading, like a drop of contaminated water that poisons people for miles around.
I deactivated my Facebook account in the run-up to the trial. I didn’t want the press looking at it, going through my photos, my updates. The privacy settings were a quagmire, too confusing to navigate, and so it went. Giving up Facebook would have been a real punishment, at one point in my life, but it was just collateral damage at that time.
I log on again, now, and reactivate it. Facebook lets me straight away. It seems it lives forever, waiting for you to log back in like a faithful guard dog.
I’ve not had access for two years, and have forgotten how to use it. Either that, or it has changed. My wall has gone, replaced by a strange timeline. I try to locate the things I want to look at. My relationship status. Married to Reuben Oliva, who still looks like a greyed-out ghost. I hide a smile. Some things don’t change.
I look for Laura’s profile, and see she’s changed it from the intermittent photos of her art, her projects, funny, arty, angular shots of her and Jonty, or a zoomed-in photograph of her blunt fringe, to something more benign, more corporate. Just her, standing on her own at – a wedding, perhaps? I dig deeper into the photographs. Yes. It was a friend’s wedding. She’d been terminally single at university, always clinging too tightly to boyfriends, forever having a ‘life-changing weekend’ with a new man who never stuck around. And now, here she is, on my Facebook newsfeed looking stunning and grown-up, with a jowly, handsome man at her side.
Facebook is no longer just my friends’ updates. People now seem to like loads of brands, which in turn post witty updates. It’s different to how it was. It’s in one of these updates that I see a pub in Dalston is doing a tarot night. It is exactly up Laura’s street, and so I tag her, in the way I have seen people starting to do. I can see she’s online – a little green blob next to her name – but she doesn’t reply. After a few minutes, she logs off.
Just as I’m about to log off and close the laptop, I see my own relationship change. In one blink, it goes from married to Reuben Oliva to married. Confused, I click Reuben’s name. He’s still there. I don’t understand this new Facebook. I will have to ask him later.
I close the laptop. It’s too much. Like I have missed the middle three series of Lost, or something. Only it’s not Lost. It’s my life.
I go and find the white T-shirt, taking it out of the washing basket. Already it smells musty and damp, but I can still smell the prison smell on it. I breathe deeply, trying to ignore myself, my thoughts. The realization that – maybe just a little bit – I miss it.
‘I haven’t told anybody this,’ Wilf says, speaking quietly.
We’re in a Bill’s, off Covent Garden. He’s fiddling with the cap of his beer. We’ve just ordered burgers. Minnie is joining us for afters. Maybe pudding, she texted Wilf. It’ll be strange to meet her, finally.
‘What?’ I say.
The restaurant is bizarre. It’s so loud. So jovial. I was overwhelmed by the menu, that I could order anything I liked whatsoever, and so Wilf helped me choose. My phone has been beeping constantly, with updates from my friends from Bronzefield. Wilf’s eyebrows rise in curiosity until I turn it on to its front.
‘No … let me see,’ he says.
I extend my hand towards him, embarrassed, passing him the phone. It’s lit up with about forty messages.
‘Rose, Fi, Yosh and me,’ I say.
‘Yosh?’ Wilf says, and he laughs.
I like that sound. He looks at me. His eyes look bulbous. They always did. I used to call him Goggle-eyes. He’d laugh, and call me Jojo.
He’s still staring at me, and I say, ‘You want to know what they did, don’t you?’
His face creases into a smile. ‘Yes,’ he says.
I show him the group. Fi is talking about recruitment consultants needing paperwork she doesn’t have. Yosh has told her to ask her probation officer. I see Wilf trying to hide his surprise that I’m now part of this world.
I shrug. ‘They were nice to me,’ I say.
‘I see.’
‘It was a category A, so brace yourself.’
‘I know,’ Wilf says. ‘I had to take my shoes off in case I was carrying anything in for you. So what did they do?’
‘Fi killed her boyfriend. In a road traffic accident. First offence. She was – only just – over the limit. He died, she survived, she got done for dangerous driving. Two years. She’s totally and utterly fucked up by it.’
‘Two years. Jesus,’ Wilf says.
I’m surprised by his surprise.
‘What use is that?’ he says.
‘She’ll never do it again. That’s for sure. Whether or not she went to prison,’ I say.
‘How far over the limit?’
‘She’d had two glasses of wine. She’s – she’s small. And she just …’ I stop before I say it, then say it anyway. ‘She’s just not a very good driver. That’s the heart of it. It was raining. Bloody rain,’ I add with a faint smile, ‘and she just lost control. So. There you are.’
‘Jesus,’ Wilf says again.
He’s waiting for the others. I can see it. I don’t begrudge him. It’s normal. Everyone does it. They might ask you about your day, what your weekend plans are, but as soon as they know you’ve been in prison, it’s all they want to know. You are reduced to a crime. In my case, a most violent one.
‘Rose glassed someone – another woman. Yosh – she’s Japanese – stole money from HSBC, in her job. Her husband had been made redundant, so she hacked in …’
Wilf blinks. He’s wearing a green T-shirt that makes his eyes look browner. As he reaches to sip his beer the sleeves ride up his biceps and I see a faint tan.
My phone lights up on the table again. It will get better, Yosh says, then sends a row of kisses. Wilf’s eyes stray to the message, then back to mine again. These are my new friends. They are more like me now – on the inside – than Laura and Jonty. Perhaps they’re more like me than Laura and Jonty ever were.
We lapse into silence. Our burgers arrive. I think of Imran, as I do often. I wonder what he’s doing. I remember the carers and the memory loss and the personality changes. I shouldn’t be here, sitting in Bill’s, feeling fine, I think. I raise my drink to my lips, but on the way, I say a toast to him. To Imran. I’m sorry.
It’s a few minutes before Wilf speaks.