The Things You Didn't See(54)

‘Yes?’

‘I’m here to visit Hector Hawke.’

He turns back in to the prison, closing the door on me without a word. I’m not sure what to do and begin to walk away, when it reopens and he calls, ‘Wrong side, love. You want the hospital wing, over there.’

I follow where his thick finger points, across the car park.

This part of the prison is newer. It’s a lower-roofed building with a fence topped by barbed wire. This time, there’s no massive door, but instead a Portakabin office. Inside, it’s cramped, and behind a glass screen two uniformed guards are chatting over a copy of the Sun. I spy a wall of keys on hooks, rows of black key fobs, each with a number. I speak through a grille, and one of them turns; he’s young, barely twenty, still spotty.

‘I’m here to visit my father, Hector Hawke.’

He comes to the window. ‘Got your VO?’

I shake my head in confusion. ‘What’s that?’

‘Visiting Order, love.’ He shouldn’t call me love, not at his age, but he’s enjoying his power here. ‘You got one?’

‘No. My dad’s solicitor called me. He asked me to come.’

He pulls a clipboard from its hook, and I see it’s a list. He runs his index finger down it. ‘Name?’

‘Er, Jackson. Rupert Jackson.’

The guard looks irritated, but really, he’s showing off to his colleague who’s stopped looking at the paper to watch. ‘Your name.’

‘Cassandra Hawke.’

His finger stops. ‘Got some ID, have you?’

The guard reluctantly stamps the clipboard, his moment over. He releases the first door so I can walk through and, like a rat being forced into a maze, I’m buzzed through a series of locked doors, taken down one way, then another, at each corner a camera eyeing my progress. Finally, a female prison officer with spiky purple hair waits to usher me under a detecting arch like they have in airports, and I’m stroked with a probe, which beeps and flashes red.

She asks dully, ‘Got any money, keys, a phone?’

I have – all three – and she sighs wearily as she takes them from me and puts them into a metal locker, handing me the key. I imagine all visitors disappoint her like this. She leads me across a square of grass and into the squat hospital unit. It’s like a game, where each stage takes you to another level, but you’re not quite sure what the rules are. She doesn’t say a word as she unlocks doors by a key attached by a chain to her belt. I walk past, then she locks it behind us. I understand that I’m barely visible to her, like a car being directed around a car park by a bored attendant.

Finally, we’re in the hospital wing. The name is a lie: hospitals have white walls, plastic floors, clean antiseptic smells. Here, the entrance is a barred gate, opening onto a dark corridor, leading to another gate. Along the corridor, two inmate-patients in poorly fitting denim jeans and dark-red T-shirts – they must be freezing – are half-heartedly sweeping with brooms. The younger one, who looks about eighteen and has arms like pipe cleaners, scans me up and down and whistles, and finally the officer becomes human. ‘Quit it, Smith,’ she says. Smith clamps his mouth shut, but his eyes still appraise me.

The next room is for visits. It’s a large, cold room with bars at the window. Several tables are set in lines. Fixed plastic chairs in dull green and grey face each other across the desks – in a nicer setting, they could be picnic tables. On a platform is another desk where an officer sits, making notes in a ledger. As I walk towards it, my shoes stick to the filthy floor, making a peeling noise. The officer looks up, barely sees me, looks down at his list. He has a shaved head, developed biceps and a bored expression. ‘Who are you visiting, love?’

‘Hector Hawke.’

He points with his bitten pen to a table in the middle of the hall and a grey plastic chair. ‘That seat there. He’ll be brought down.’

The purple-haired officer who escorted me shares a joke with her colleague – I think it’s about Smith and me, but I could be wrong – then she disappears without a word. Job done. The chair is fixed too low and moulded for a larger body than mine. I scan the room, but there’s nothing to look at but tables, chairs and the bored officer. Nothing to do but wait.

‘Did you bring the suit?’

Dad has the words out before he’s even taken his seat. I look him square in the face and wonder how he can be so unchanged. I’d expected him to look like a monster, at least have thought his first word would be sorry. But he’s the same, just Dad. I can’t believe he shot you, no matter how angry he was about the farm. He loves you – I’ve never doubted that.

‘Cass, you listenin’? Where’s me suit?’

‘I didn’t bring it.’ I’ve driven for over an hour, been searched and escorted through this maze like a convict, and all he wants to know is if I ran his errand. As if his confession hasn’t rocked my world on its axis.

The officer on the raised platform glances over, lifts his pen and notes something down, then folds his arms and settles his face to a blank, his eyes fixed on the far wall. This must be how the officers cope with being paid to sit, watch and listen, trying not to look too interested. Perhaps if he pulled up a chair and sat beside us, it would make the meeting between Dad and me easier.

‘I hope you at least brought some cash – I’m all out of smokes.’ He glances up at me. ‘Don’t say it, girl! You’d smoke too, in here.’