‘I’ve brought you books.’ She reaches down towards her bag but the guard has simultaneously taken two strides to intercept her contraband. ‘I’ll need to take those,’ he says.
She hands him the stack. Looks at her son who will not meet her gaze.
‘How’s the food?’ she asks.
He shrugs. ‘Lot of chips.’
‘I can imagine – every cloud, eh? Are you sleeping OK?’
‘Not really. How is Solly?’
‘Oh, you know. Unreasonable. I made him toast this morning but before thinking, I cut it in half so he went ballistic.’
‘How could you?’ Fly says and she sees his first smile. ‘Did he shout, mend the toast?’
Nodding, she says, ‘I deserved everything I got. That toast was unacceptable.’
‘I miss him,’ Fly says.
‘I miss you. Anything for you to do in here?’
‘Not much.’
After what she deems to be a decent pause, she launches into the thing that’s troubling her: ‘I need to ask you something. I know you travelled to London on the train when you were supposed to be at school. The day you bunked off.’
He shifts with palpable irritation.
‘I just want to know what you were doing,’ she says.
‘You think that means I stabbed him?’
‘It means you’ve been keeping things from me. What else don’t I know?’
Silence.
‘What else, Fly?’
‘You want to know? You really want to know?’
‘I really want to know.’
‘I missed my home. My flat, where I lived with Taylor and Mum. I missed the guys in Momtaz, the broken biscuits from Buy Best. You took me away from everything – all my friends at school.’
‘They weren’t a good influence—’
‘At least I wasn’t the only black kid in that school. At least I wasn’t treated like some kind of danger, like a bomb – don’t go too near, y’know? You ripped me out of that place to this …’ He sweeps his arm to show her. ‘This dump, so I can watch you have a baby. Your own flesh and blood when my flesh and blood are dead.’
‘A clean break. I thought a clean break would—’
‘Who the fuck is a clean break clean for?’
She knows better than to pull him up on his language, though it is an affront. Has he learned it in here? She’s never heard him speak like that.
‘Did that make you—?’
‘I did nothing. Nothing, you hear? Just cos you think somefin’s good for me, doesn’t mean it is.’
She nods. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. She is finding it hard not to cry.
‘Too late,’ he says.
In the sweep of his arm about the room, showing her the dump she has put him in, his sweatshirt sleeve has ridden up. She looks now at his forearm and the cross-hatching there made by a razor blade.
‘What’s that?’ she says, grabbing his wrist before he can remove it. She lifts the sleeve higher, holding him tight. ‘What are these?’
The scratches, red lines over red lines, beaded with dried blood, go on right to the crook of his arm.
He pulls his arm away. ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’ He tugs his sleeve downwards and has got up off his chair, nodding at the guard to let him out of the room.
‘Fly! We can talk about it.’
But he is gone and the sound of repeated unlocking and locking goes with him.
Neil is sitting at his desk, combat trousers tight as ever. Neil holds all the keys.
‘How can I help you?’ he says, wearily swivelling on his swivel chair – the puffed-up wheels of little Napoleons everywhere.
Neil has the look of a man who knows he must be seen to have an open door but hates every millimetre of it.
‘He’s been cut,’ she says.
‘Have a seat,’ says Neil.
‘I don’t want a seat. Fly has been cut. He’s not safe here.’
‘It’s unfortunately not uncommon for new students to harm themselves in response to their situation.’
‘He’s not a fucking student and he didn’t harm himself. He’s been cut. You’re not protecting him from the others.’
She wishes her voice would stop wobbling into the upper octaves. She doesn’t know he’s been cut by others – of course she doesn’t know that. But the thought of him doing it to himself brings with it more guilt than she can cope with.
‘I know this is hard for you,’ says Neil. ‘Particularly given …’ He looks at her bump.
‘No. No, it’s not. It’s hard for you because I’m going to have to launch an investigation now into duty of care at Arlidge House.’
‘What evidence do you have that he didn’t do this to himself?’
‘He didn’t have any razor blades when he came in here. So how did he get one? Who from?’
She looks away from him. On the floor is a collapsed Tesco bag containing a ready meal and tomatoes. Neil’s damp towel is draped over the radiator. This is just a job for you.
She shifts her handbag over to the opposite shoulder and registers the sudden, violent urge to pee.
‘Excuse me,’ she says, pelting from the room.
When she returns, Neil is no more helpful than before, though he does pass on her request to see Fly again.
Fly says no.
Beyond the dogged push of her wipers is a great thumb smudge of cloud and the slate-like lowering light, cold and wet. The droplets across the windscreen cast a haze around the red brake lights of the cars in front, and the red orb of a distant traffic light. Yellow junction box lines on the tarmac, seen not through tears but through eyes dry with fury. Her foot pressing on the accelerator, held at bay by the clutch. Hand to the horn. At the first movement of the car in front, she cuts it up, swerving recklessly to the right towards Huntingdon station car park. By the time she parks, at a wilfully obstructive angle, it is fully dark.
She hurries towards the ticket barrier, shoving her police badge into the face of a sleepy member of staff and barging through the turnstile when he waves her through. Fuck the barrier, fuck the baby. She is scanning the ceiling, the corners of the walls. Before her is the entrance to the station ‘buffet’ – a grimy room, high-ceilinged and smelling of churned milk. Above the counter, its oversized clock appears to have ticked its last sometime around 1953. Scanning and scanning: pale mint walls, a yellowing picture rail hung with framed prints of ancient locomotives. Dusty pot plants. Manon scans wooden racks filled with the usual magazines (breasts, teeth, more breasts); greetings cards (puppies, cats, flowers, Birthday Girl, Goodbye and Good Luck!).
A blast of noise and air blindsides the room, lifting papers and making the smattering of customers flinch – the fast train from Cambridge to London blowing through the station. Behind the counter, the serving woman’s movements are unruffled – she has been blasted by that horn so many times, she barely registers it. Behind the woman, Manon searches shelves of spirits, an industrial fan, a whiteboard saying Bar Tariffs, too faded to be legible. Mini Cheddars, Hula Hoops, Werther’s Original, a fridge full of Lucozade and then – hallelujah – there it is: a little yellowing camera, once white, the size and shape of a spotlight, trained on the counter.
‘Hi there,’ Manon says to the woman, holding up her badge.
The woman shifts uneasily.
‘Your camera work?’ asks Manon, pointing at it.