Something in the Water(11)

“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.