My Husband's Wife(12)

He shrugs, looking out of the window towards the exercise yard. ‘I didn’t know them, did I? So how can I say I like them? But I can guess how they felt.’

‘How?’

His face swivels back to mine. ‘You haven’t done your homework very well, have you, Miss Hall?’

I freeze. Didn’t he hear me when I introduced myself as Lily Macdonald? And how does he know that Hall is my maiden name? I have a flash of Ed’s warm hand holding mine at the altar. This meeting had been arranged before my marriage, so maybe Joe Thomas had been given my previous name. Maybe he wasn’t listening properly when I introduced myself. A niggling instinct tells me that it would be safer not to correct him at this stage. A correction might not get us off to the right start.

Besides, I’m more concerned with the reference to the homework. What did I miss? A lawyer can’t afford to be wrong, my boss tells us all, again and again. So far, I’ve been all right. Not like one of the newly qualified lawyers who was taken on in the same month as me and sacked for failing to lodge an appeal within the given time.

‘It won’t be in your notes,’ he adds, observing me glance down. ‘But I’d hoped that your lot would have done more digging. Think about it. War poets. What did they go through? What behaviour did they display when they came home?’

I feel like a struggling student on University Challenge. ‘Shock,’ I say. ‘Many refused to talk because of post-traumatic stress.’

He nods. ‘Go on.’

Desperately, I try to dredge up my A-level memories. ‘Some of them were violent.’

Joe Thomas sits back, arms folded. A satisfied smile on his face. ‘Exactly.’

This isn’t making sense. ‘But you weren’t in the army.’

‘No.’

‘So why did you kill your girlfriend?’

‘Nice try. I pleaded innocent. Remember? The jury made a mistake. That’s why I’m appealing.’ He jabs at my notes with a long artistic finger that doesn’t match his substantial frame. ‘It’s all there. Apart from this extra clue, that is. Now it’s over to you.’

There’s a scraping of the chair on the floor as Joe Thomas stands up unexpectedly. For a moment, the room spins and my mouth goes dry. What is happening? All I know is that those very dark, almost black, eyes appear to be looking right through me. They know what’s inside me. They see things that Ed doesn’t.

And most important of all, they don’t condemn.

He leans towards me. I catch the smell of him. I can’t put my finger on it. Not a pine or lemon cologne smell like my husband’s. More like a raw, wet, earthy animal smell. I feel a strange shortness of breath.

BANG!

I jump. So does he. Stunned, we both look at the window where the noise has come from. A large grey pigeon appears to be frozen in the air, just outside. A white feather blows gently in the breeze: the bird must have flown into the glass. Miraculously, it is now flying away.

‘It’s alive,’ says Joe Thomas flatly. ‘The last one died. You’d think they’d be put off by the bars, wouldn’t you? But it’s as if they know better. Maybe they do. After all, birds reach heights that we know nothing about.’

Criminals, my boss warned me, can be remarkably soft in certain areas. Don’t let it fool you.

‘I want you to go away and come back next week.’ The instructions clip out of Joe Thomas’s mouth as if this scene hasn’t taken place. ‘By then, you need to have worked out the connection between the war poets and me. And that will give you the basis of my appeal.’

Enough is enough. ‘This isn’t a game,’ I say shortly to hide the inexplicable mixture of fear and excitement beating against my ribcage. ‘You know as well as I do that legal visits take time to organize. I might not be able to come back so soon. You have to make the most of this one.’

He shrugs. ‘If you say so.’ Then he glances at my still-tanned wrists with my silver bracelet and then down to the shiny gold wedding ring, heavy with newness. ‘By the way, I got it wrong just now, didn’t I? It’s Mrs Macdonald, isn’t it? I trust you had a good honeymoon.’

I’m still shaking when the taxi driver drops me off at the station. How did Joe Thomas know that I’d been on honeymoon? Was it possible that my boss had told someone when organizing the visit paperwork while I was away? If so, it was in direct contradiction to another piece of advice he’d given me: ‘Make sure you don’t give any personal details away. It’s vital to keep boundaries between you and the client.’

The advice, rather like the warning about ‘conditioning’ from the officer, had seemed so obvious as to be unnecessary. Like most people (I would imagine), I’d been shocked by the odd news story about prison visitors or officers having affairs with prisoners. Never once had I read about a solicitor doing the same. As for those strange thoughts in my head just now, it was nerves. That was all. Along with my disappointment over Italy.

As for Joe’s ‘mistake’ over my name, I can’t help wondering if it was on purpose. To wrongfoot me perhaps? But why?

‘Five pounds thirty, miss.’

The taxi driver’s voice cuts into my head. Grateful for the diversion, I fumble in my purse for change.

‘That’s a euro.’ His voice is suspicious, as though I’d intentionally tried to put one over on him.