Mark calls me from work at 7:23 A.M. Something’s wrong. There’s panic in his voice. He’s stifling it, but I can hear it.
I sit up in my chair. I’ve never heard even an inkling of this tone in his voice before. I shudder slightly, even in the warmth of the room.
“Erin, listen, I’m in the loo. They’ve taken my BlackBerry and I’ve got to leave the building right now. They’ve got two security guards outside the bathroom waiting to escort me off the premises.” He’s breathy but he’s holding it together.
“What’s happening?” I ask, visions of terror attacks and shaky mobile-phone footage racing through my mind. But it’s not that. I know it’s not that. I recognize the bones of this story already. I’ve heard it from enough people by now. It’s eerie in its sterility. Mark’s been “let go.”
“Lawrence called me into his office at seven o’clock. He told me he’d heard through the grapevine that I’m looking elsewhere and he thinks it’s better for all concerned if I take leave from today. He’s happy to offer references but my desk has been emptied already and I’ll have to hand in my work phone before leaving the building.” The line goes silent for a second. “He didn’t mention who told him.”
Silence again.
“But it’s fine, Erin. I’m fine. You know they make you go straight into an HR meeting after they let you go. They lead you out of the room and straight into another one with an HR rep in it! They cover their fucking backs, by God. Such a load of bullshit! The rep asks, Was I happy here? And then I have to say, ‘Yes, it’s been fantastic and it’s all worked out for the best in the end. Lawrence has done me a favor. Freed me up for the next challenge, blah blah.’?” Mark’s ranting. He can sense my worry through the phone.
“It’s fine, though, Erin. It’s going to be fine. I promise you. Listen, I’ve got to go with these guys now but I’ll be home in an hour or so.”
I’m not at home, though.
I’m currently in Holloway Prison, about to do my first face-to-face interview. He can’t have forgotten, can he? I’m in a prison holding room. Shit! Please don’t need me there now, Mark. Please be okay.
But if he needs me, I’ll go.
Oh fucking hell. Those two constantly tugging needs: your own life and “being there.” Your relationship or your life. No matter how hard you try, you can’t have both.
“Should I come home?” I ask.
Silence.
“No, no, it’s fine,” he says finally. “I need to make a fuckload of calls and sort something out. I need to get in somewhere else before this gets too big. Rafie and Andrew were meant to get back to me yesterday—”
I hear banging on the door on his end.
“Fucking hell. Just a sec, mate! Christ. I’m taking a piss!” he shouts. “I gotta go, honey. Time’s up. Call me after the interview. Love you.”
“Love you.” I make a kiss noise but he’s already hung up.
Silence. I’m back in the hushed holding room again. The guard glances over and frowns, his dark eyes kind but firm.
“Didn’t want to mention it, but you can’t use that in here,” the guard mumbles, embarrassed to be playing the role of hall monitor. But it is his job; he’s doing his best.
I put the phone on airplane mode and set it on the table in front of me. More silence.
I stare at the empty chair on the other side of the table. The interviewee’s chair.
I feel a brief shiver of freedom. I’m not in that washroom with Mark. The whole world is still open and clear for me. It’s not my problem.
The guilt follows immediately. What an awful thing to think. Of course it’s my problem. It’s our problem. We’re getting married in a couple of months. But I can’t make that feeling stick. I don’t feel Mark’s problems like I feel my own. What does that mean? I don’t feel like something devastating has happened. I feel free and light.
He’ll be fine, I reassure myself. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel anything. Because it’ll all be fine by tomorrow. I’ll get home early tonight. I’ll make him dinner. I’ll open some wine. Wine and fine.
* * *
—
A sudden buzzer blast from the electric doors snaps me back to the present. It’s followed by the low clunk of sliding bolts. I straighten my notepad. Realign my pens. The guard catches my eye.
“Any point you feel uncomfortable, give me the nod and we’ll terminate,” he says. “I’ll be staying in the room, I’m sure they told you.”
“Yes. Thank you, Amal.” I flash him my most professional smile and press record on the camera, lens trained on the door.
Amal presses the door release. The buzz is deafening. Here we go. Interview one.
* * *
—
The door release thunders again and a short, fair-haired girl comes into view through the wire-meshed window of the door. A pair of eyes land on me, bore through me, before sliding off.
I’m standing before the impulse reaches any decision-making area of my brain. The buzzer blast thunders around the room. Then the clunk of bolts, the magnets releasing.
She steps into the room, interviewee number one, all five feet three inches of her. Holli Byford is twenty-three and painfully thin. Her long hair messily piled high on top of her head, her blue prison tracksuit loose and heavy on her tiny frame. Cheekbones sharp. She looks like a child. They say you know when you’re really getting old because everyone around you starts to look impossibly young. I’m only thirty. Holli Byford looks about sixteen to me.
The door buzzes shut behind her. Amal clears his throat. I’m glad Amal’s staying. The prison called yesterday; although Holli’s progressing they’re not entirely happy for her to be unsupervised just yet. Holli continues to stand there, unselfconsciously, halfway into the room. Her eyes play lazily across the furniture, the camera. They skip over me. She hasn’t acknowledged me yet. And then her eyes alight on my face. My body tenses. I brace myself. The gaze is hard. It hits me. It’s solid. It makes her seem far more substantial than her slight frame.
“You Erin then?” she asks.
I nod. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person, Holli,” I reply.
Over the past three months our telephone conversations have been brief. Mainly consisting of me talking, explaining the project, and silences occasionally peppered by her distracted “yeah’s” and “no’s.” But now that I can see her, I understand that those silences, which sounded empty over the phone, were actually very full. I just couldn’t see before what they were full of.
“Would you like to sit down?” I offer.
“Not really.” She holds her ground by the door.
A standoff.
“Sit down please, Holli, or we’ll take you back to your cell,” Amal fires into the heavy silence.
She drags the chair across from me slowly out from under the table and sits demurely, small hands in her lap. She looks up to the frosted window high on the holding room wall. I flick a look over to Amal. He gives me a reassuring nod. Go ahead.
“So, Holli. I’ll just dive in with the questions, just like we discussed over the phone. Don’t worry about the camera, just talk to me the way you normally would.”
She’s not looking at me at all, her eyes still lingering on the square of light above. I wonder if she’s thinking of the outside. The sky? The wind? I suddenly imagine Mark in a taxi on his way home, a file box of his belongings on his lap, trapped in his own mess. What is he thinking right now as he glides through the City with nowhere to go? Now I look up to the skylight too. Above us two gulls swoop in the open blue. I take a deep breath of bleached prison air and drop my gaze back down to my notes. I need to stay focused. I push Mark to the back of my mind and look up into Holli’s sharp face.
“Okay, Holli? Is that clear?”
She lets her eyes flop back down onto me.
“What?” She asks it as if I’d been talking gibberish.