So this chap, Khalil – Abdul, I think his first name is – he’s carrying on nice an’ quiet, lifting his weights, but ye could cut the tension w’ a knife. He an’ I both knew those guys had come in here fer violence, a ‘lesson’ it’s called in here, ’cos there’s no cameras in the gym. All the cuttin’ and punchin’ in Whitemoor happens in the gym.
‘Brother Khalil,’ one of ’em said to him. Another of them pulled a blade. They held his arms behind his back and cut his throat. Then they walked out.
I was still runnin’ on the treadmill – can ye believe that? – an’ ma first thought was: There’ll be a lock-down now on the wing. Ah need te get ma stuff ’cos they’ll be turnin’ all the cells after this. That’s what this place turned me into. That’s how much o’ my humanity’s been sucked from me in here. An’ maybe there’s folk’d say I didnae have any humanity to start with, but I had some. Anyways, I remembered maself at that moment, an’ I raised the alarm, an’ I tried to stop him bleeding to death until the medic got tae us. He’s a person. An’ I’m a person, ye ken?
Prisoner’s sentence review unfrozen and all privileges restored, says Wright’s file, in the light of this statement and supporting statement from Prisoner 678 (A-G Khalil).
Manon looks up, dazed. Tony Wright saved Abdul-Ghani Khalil’s life.
Tuesday
Manon
‘That you, Manon?’
Her breath catches in her throat to hear that voice. Can it possibly be? Why now? Perhaps she has a sixth sense for Manon’s heartbreak. She did when they were little.
‘Hello.’
‘I’m … I’m sorry to ring out of the blue like this.’
‘No, no.’
‘Is it a bad time?’
‘Um, well, I’m at work, in the toilets, actually. You might hear the echo.’
She pulls at some of the rough oblong towels, jabs at the tears at the rim of her eye and a corner of the towel pokes her eyeball. She bends over double, blinking and rubbing. The phone is heating up her ear as if it’s radioactive.
It wasn’t just that Ellie’s truce with Una had been a treachery too far; their rift was the calcification of years of rivalry, layers of it hardening into silence over time. Small injuries, gathering; some success Ellie had at work, which Manon couldn’t swallow; or a fabulous boyfriend; or even just a nice holiday she didn’t want to hear about. They stopped calling and then, much sooner than Manon expected, it became too hard to call. Their mother would have banged their heads together: ‘I don’t care about any awkwardness’ and ‘Get over yourselves, for God’s sake’, which would only have made it worse. But their mother is dead, their father all the way in Scotland, which might as well be Canada, Una having subsumed him like some mollusc who crept over the top of him until he disappeared.
‘How’ve you been?’ says Ellie.
‘Oh, you know …’
‘No. I don’t. It’s been three years.’
‘And that’s my fault, is it?’
Ellie sighs. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m ringing to tell you something important. I’ve had a baby. A boy. He’s three months now. Solomon. Well, we call him Solly.’
‘A baby? You’ve had a baby?’ The blood drains from Manon’s head. She nods distractedly at Kim, who is edging into a toilet cubicle. ‘Are you … Where are you living?’
‘In London. Kilburn.’
‘Wow. That’s … terrific news.’
‘Yes. I wanted you to know, Manon. In case you … Well, perhaps you’ll come up some time. Meet your nephew.’
She pictures herself the prickly pear, lonely visitor to the pink paradise of family life in Kilburn. The park and the swings and Sunday roasts so newly lost to her. Wrinkled aunt.
‘Well, it’s quite busy in MIT right now.’
‘Yes, of course. Must be. You must be a DCI by now.’
‘Not quite.’
‘I better go. Solly’s waking up. We’ve got Baby Bounce at the library this afternoon.’
Manon is so jealous she cannot speak. Envy is physical, the sensation of it: difficulty swallowing, a pain around the temples, panic, and wanting to flee the source.
‘OK, well, nice to talk to you,’ she says. ‘Bye.’
She takes more towels from the dispenser, knowing the tears will come again. Oh, but she loves Ellie, loves her so deeply, and now they have come to this – the slights embedding themselves into wounds and no one to knock their heads together except their better selves, which seem always to be in abeyance, held hostage by meaner feelings. On top of her jealousy, in a nauseous wave, comes guilt. My sister with a baby and no mother to help. My sister who I love, my love killed by jealousy. My sister who I hate for having everything I haven’t got. It is impossible to be Manon Bradshaw.