‘Look,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m sorry. It must be a difficult time at the minute.’
Hannah could have fainted with shock. ‘And for you. Waiting for your results…’
‘Oh, sod the A levels.’ She paused. ‘I’m working this afternoon but I’ll be home by six. You can take me to the Grey Horse. Buy me a pint.’
Hannah bit back a lecture. She was always telling Rosie she drank too much. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Why not? That would be great.’
When she replaced the phone Marty was standing looking at her, a mug in each hand.
‘Trouble?’ he asked, in an offhand sort of way to show that he wasn’t prying.
‘No. Not really. You know what kids are like.’
‘I know what I was like when I was a kid.’
‘Trouble?’
‘All the time.’ They smiled. He went back to sorting newspapers.
Dave the prison officer attached to the library came in, jangling his keys, demanding tea. Hannah opened her letter. Inside there was a printed invitation and a handwritten note. She read the note first. The handwriting was scrawled but familiar. She recognized it from way back. It had been dashed off in a hurry and there was a stain which could have been coffee on the back.
Hannah
Hope this reaches you in time.
You can always stay with me.
Do try and make it this year.
She didn’t need to look at the signature. It was from Sally. At school Sally had been her best friend. She hadn’t seen her for years but they kept in touch, spoke occasionally, sent Christmas cards. The card was an invitation to a school reunion. Cranford Grammar. Sally tried the same tactic every time something similar was arranged. Recently the invitations were always sent to the prison. Perhaps she thought it was Jonathan who prevented Hannah’s attending.
Hannah threw the card on to the desk where she sat to stamp the books, then picked it up again to look at the date of the party. It was only a couple of days away, one of her late shifts. She thought it was typical of Sally to allow her so little time to come to a decision and arrange her affairs. For the first time she was tempted to go to the reunion, to see Sally and her other friends again. It was only pride which had kept her away. She propped the card between her mug and a box of library cards.
Hannah was never sure how the argument started. Perhaps she’d done something to provoke it, but she didn’t think so. Rosie’s phone call had made her more mellow. Later she remembered the conversation she’d heard on her way in about a disturbance on the wing. Apparently there’d been rumours of an early lock-up because of a Prison Officers’ Association meeting and the whole place was still tense. There’d been no sense of that though when she’d let the men in.
In the first group there was a lad she didn’t recognize as one of her regulars. He was young, squat, muscular. A tattoo of a snake twisted from his wrist to his shoulder. His hair was cropped so short that pink skin showed through the stubble. He mooched around the shelves for a bit, but Hannah didn’t have the impression that he was looking seriously for anything. She noticed that Marty was keeping an eye on him too. She wondered if he was new, though he hadn’t been at the last reception talk she’d given.
She came out from behind the desk. Dave was in her office with the door shut. She’d heard that he was moonlighting in one of the clubs in town. Certainly he liked to catch up on his sleep in the mornings. She approached the lad with the tattoo, thinking she could be making up a ticket while he was choosing. ‘Can I help you with anything?’
He turned to face her squarely. He was slightly shorter than she was.
‘Not doing you any harm, am I?’
‘Of course not. I’ll leave you to it.’ She was thinking she’d had enough of oversensitive adolescents. Perhaps something of the weariness showed in her face, but she wasn’t aware of it.
Suddenly he banged his hand on the edge of a metal shelf then lifted it towards her, a gesture of warning. She could see the red mark from the shelf on his palm.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘I’m sorry. Like what?’ Out of the corner of her eye Hannah saw Marty standing behind the man, his knees slightly bent, watching. She willed him to keep out of it.
‘Like I was a piece of shite. Like I was something on the bottom of your shoe.’
‘I think you’d better leave,’ she said, much as she’d said to the drunken kids lounging around her kitchen the night before. ‘Come back when you know how to behave properly in a library.’
‘Don’t worry I’m going.’ He pushed out and sent one of the shelves flying. On the top was a plant – one of her attempts to cheer up the room. The pot shattered. The books were covered in dry compost. ‘Do you think I want to stay here and look at an ugly cow like you?’ He spoke quietly, with intense contempt, looked around the room and swaggered out.
It was the sort of incident that happened every day in the prison. There was no physical violence against her. No threat of it even. She’d handled worse in her time there. Much worse. But Hannah went to pieces. She started to shake and then to cry.
Dave the library officer emerged from her office, yawning, wanting to know what the noise was about. He was embarrassed, desperate to play the incident down so he’d not get into trouble. Hannah got rid of the other prisoners then sent him away.
Marty pulled the shelf upright and replaced the books, shaking out the compost, checking the spines so they were in order. Then he put on the kettle and made more tea.
‘You need a break,’ he said. ‘A holiday.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We have to stay in this place. You can escape whenever you like.’
‘Perhaps.’ She sipped the tea. He’d used powdered milk and the liquid was very hot. It burnt her mouth. ‘My husband left me three weeks ago. I’m not sure where I’d go on my own.’
She thought she shouldn’t have spoken to a prisoner like that. They’d been taught not to give personal details away.
‘What about a trip to the hills? You could look up your old friends.’
She was shocked. He must have read the card when he collected her mug. She wasn’t surprised that he’d read the invitation but that he’d commented on it. It wasn’t like him.
‘Sorry,’ he said, blushing slightly as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘None of my business.’
‘No.’ The temptation returned to run away. ‘No. It’s an idea.’
Arthur Lee was sitting in his office in the education block. His door was open. He saw Hannah walking down the corridor and waved her in.
‘Aren’t you busy?’ She had walked that way hoping to talk to him, but had to pretend she didn’t want to intrude.
‘Nah, it’s good to see a friendly face.’
Arthur was a Home Office imposition on the education department and they’d never liked him. He was too clever and reported straight to the Governor. A psychologist by training, he ran courses in anger management, victim awareness and special sessions for sex offenders. That was another reason for his unpopularity. Since Jonathan had left, Hannah had taken to dropping in on him more often, using him, she sometimes thought, as a personal therapist. He was in his early fifties, the age her father had been when he died. She’d have liked a father like Arthur, plump, comfortable, understanding. He’d been born in Liverpool and had never lost the accent. John Peel, she thought, without the beard.
‘I hear you’ve had a bit of bother.’
She should have known it would be impossible to keep the incident in the library quiet. She shrugged, explained what had happened. ‘Some lad kicking off. Marty thinks I should take a break.’
‘Marty?’