by Beth O'Leary
“Thanks, Mo,” I say into the phone. “See you Sunday for coffee.” I hang up, already looking around for a pen.
Hey,
OK, sorry for snooping under (y)our bed. I get that that’s definitely unacceptable. But these scarfs are INCREDIBLE. As in, designer incredible. And I know we’ve never talked about this or anything but I’m guessing that if you’re letting a random stranger (me) sleep in your bed then you’re doing it because you’re short of cash, not because you’re a really nice man who feels bad about how hard it is to get a cheap flat in London.
So while I am ALL FOR giving old clothes to charity shops (after all, I buy most of my possessions from charity shops—people like me need people like you), I think you should consider selling these scarfs. You’d probably get around £200 a pop.
If you feel like giving one 90% off to your lovely flatmate, I won’t object.
Tiffy x
PS, where did you get them all from, by the way? If you don’t mind me asking.
14
LEON
Arms out wide, legs akimbo. A stern-looking prison guard frisks me very enthusiastically. Suspect I fit her profile of person who may bring drugs or weapons into visiting hall. Imagine her flicking through her mental checklist. Gender: male. Race: indeterminate, but a bit browner than would be preferable. Age: young enough not to know better. Appearance: scruffy.
Try to smile in a nonthreatening, good-citizen sort of way. Probably comes across as cocky, on reflection. Begin to feel slightly queasy, the reality of this place seeping in despite the efforts I have made to pointedly ignore rolls of barbed wire on top of thick steel fences, windowless buildings, aggressive signs about consequences of smuggling drugs into prisons. Despite having done this at least once a month since November.
The walk from security to the visiting hall is perhaps the worst part. It involves a maze of concrete and barbed wire, and all the way you are ferried by different prison guards, taking their key chains from their hips for gates and doors that need locking behind you before you can even take a step toward the next one. It’s a beautiful spring day; the sky is just visible above the wires, tauntingly blue.
Visiting hall is better. Kids toddle between tables, or get lifted overhead, squealing, by muscly dads. Prisoners wear bright-colored bibs to differentiate them from the rest of us. Men in high-viz orange inch closer to visiting girlfriends than they’re strictly allowed to be, fingers wound tight. There’s more emotion here than at an airport arrivals lounge. Love Actually was missing a trick.
Sit at assigned table. Wait. When they bring Richie in, my stomach does a peculiar lurch, like it’s trying to turn inside out. He looks tired and unwashed, cheeks hollow, head hastily shaved. He’s in his only pair of jeans—won’t have wanted me to see him in the prison-issued joggers—but they’re too loose around the waist now. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
I get up and smile, stretching my arms out for a hug. Wait for him to come to me; can’t leave allocated area. Prison guards line the walls, watching closely, expressionless.
Richie, slapping me on the back: All right, brother, you’re looking good!
Me: You, too.
Richie: Liar. I look like shit warmed up. Water’s been knocked out after some scene on E Wing—no idea when it’ll come back on, but until then, I wouldn’t recommend trying to use the toilets.
Me: Noted. How’re you doing?
Richie: Peachy. Have you heard anything from Sal?
Thought I could avoid that topic for at least one minute.
Me: Yeah. He’s sorry about those papers holding up the appeal, Richie. He’s working on it.
Richie’s face closes up.
Richie: I can’t keep waiting, Lee.
Me: You want me to try and find someone new, I’ll do it.
Glum silence. Richie knows as well as I do that this’ll probably slow things down even further.
Richie: Did he get the footage from the Aldi camera?
Did he even request the footage from the Aldi camera is the question. Am starting to doubt it, even though he told me he did. Rub back of neck, look down at shoes, wish harder than ever that Richie and I were anywhere but here.
Me: Not yet.
Richie: That’s the key, man, I’m telling you. That camera in Aldi will show them. They’ll see it’s not me.
Wish this were true. How high-res is this footage, though? How likely is it that it’ll be clear enough to counteract the witness identification?
We talk about the appeal case for almost the full hour. Just can’t get him off the topic. Forensics, overlooked evidence, always the CCTV. Hope, hope, hope.
Leave with shaking knees, take a cab to the station. Need sugar. Have some rocky road Tiffy made in bag; eat about three thousand calories of it as the train rolls through the countryside, flat field after flat field, taking me away from my brother and back to the place where everyone’s forgotten him.
* * *
Find bin-bag of scarfs in center of bedroom when I get home, with Tiffy’s note pasted on its side.
Mr. Prior makes two-hundred-pound scarfs? Doesn’t even take him very long! Ahhh. Think of all the times I turned down his offer of new scarf, hat, glove, or tea-cozy. Could have been a billionaire by now.
* * *
On bedroom door:
Hi Tiffy,
THANK YOU for telling me about the scarfs. Yes, need the money. Will sell—can you recommend where/how?
Gentleman at work knits them. He’s basically giving them away to anyone/everyone who will take them (or else I’d feel bad taking the money…)
Leon
Hey,
Oh, definitely—you should sell these through Etsy or Preloved. They’ll have tons of customers who would love these scarves.
Umm. Odd question, but might this gentleman at your work be interested in crocheting for commission?
Tiffy x
No idea what that means. Btw, take your fave scarf—will put rest on interweb tonight.
Leon
* * *
Fallen on floor by bedroom door (quite hard to track down):
Morning,
As in, I’m working on a book called Crochet Your Way (I know—it’s one of my best titles, I have to say) and we need someone to make us four scarfs and eight hats very, very fast so we can photograph them to include in the book. He’d have to follow my author’s brief (on color and stitch, etc.). I can pay him, but not a lot. Can you give me his contact details? I’m really desperate and he’s obviously crazily talented.
Oh my god, I’m going to be wearing this scarf all the time (I don’t care if it’s technically springtime). I love it. Thank you!
Tiffy x
* * *
Back to bedroom door again:
Eh. Can’t see why this wouldn’t work, though might need to run it by Matron, who heads up nursing team. Write me a letter and will give it to her, then to gentleman knitter if she gives the OK.
If you’re wearing that scarf all the time, can you dispose of the five hundred scarfs currently occupying your side of wardrobe?
Other news: first scarf just sold for £235! Mad. It’s not even nice!
Leon
* * *
On kitchen breakfast bar, beside unsealed envelope:
Hey,
My side is the key part of that sentence, Leon. My side, and I want to fill it with scarfs.
The letter is here—let me know if you think it needs changing at all. At some point we may need to do a bit of a tidy of our notes to one another, by the way. The flat is starting to look like a scene from A Beautiful Mind.
Tiffy x
* * *
I pass Tiffy’s letter to Matron, who gives me the all clear to offer Mr. Prior the opportunity to knit for Tiffy’s book. Or crochet. Am extremely unclear on the difference. No doubt Tiffy will write me a long note at some point with detailed explanation, unprompted. She loves a lengthy explanation. Why use one clause when you could use five? Strange, ridiculous, hila
rious woman.
One night later and Mr. Prior’s got two hats done already—they look hat-like and woolly, so I’m assuming all is as it should be.
Only downside to this arrangement is now Mr. Prior is fascinated with Tiffy.
Mr. Prior: So she’s a book editor.
Me: Yes.
Mr. Prior: What an interesting profession.
A pause.
Mr. Prior: And she lives with you?
Me: Mm.
Mr. Prior: How interesting.
Look at him sideways while writing his notes. He blinks back at me, beady-eyed and innocent.
Mr. Prior: I just didn’t imagine you’d like living with another person. You like your independence so much. Isn’t that why you didn’t want to move in with Kay?
Must stop talking to patients about personal life.
Me: It’s different. I don’t have to see Tiffy. We just leave each other notes, really.
Mr. Prior nods thoughtfully.
Mr. Prior: The art of letter-writing. A profoundly … intimate thing, a letter, isn’t it?
I stare at him suspiciously. Not sure what he’s getting at here.
Me: It’s Post-its on the fridge, Mr. Prior, not hand-delivered letters on scented paper.
Mr. Prior: Oh, yes, I’m sure you’re right. Absolutely. Post-its. No art in that, I’m sure.
Next night, and even Holly has heard about Tiffy. Amazing how uninteresting news travels so fast between wards when significant proportion of people in building are bedbound.
Holly: Is she pretty?
Me: I don’t know, Holly. Does it matter?
Holly pauses. Thoughtful.
Holly: Is she nice?
Me, after a moment’s thought: Yes, she’s nice. Bit nosy and strange, but nice.
Holly: What does it mean, that she’s your “flatmate”?
Me: Flatmate means she shares my flat. We live there together.
Holly, eyes widened: Like boyfriend and girlfriend?
Me: No, no. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a friend.
Holly: So you sleep in different rooms?
Get bleeped before I have to answer that one, thankfully.
MAY
15
TIFFY
As I peel the Post-its and taped scraps of paper off cupboard doors, tables, walls, and (in one case) the bin lid, I find myself grinning. It was a weird way to get to know Leon, writing all these notes over the last few months, and it sort of happened without me noticing—one minute I was scribbling him a quick note about leftovers, the next I was in a full-on, day-to-day correspondence.
Though, as I follow the trail of heart-to-hearts along the back of the sofa, I can’t help noticing that I generally write about five times as many words as Leon does. And that my Post-its are a lot more personal and revealing than his. It’s kind of strange reading it all back—you can see how dodgy my memory is, for starters. Like in one of the notes, I mentioned how super awkward it was that I’d forgotten to pass on Rachel’s birthday-party invite to Justin last year, but I remember now—I did invite him. We ended up having a huge fight about whether I could go. Justin always said my memory was terrible; it’s very annoying to find written evidence that he’s right.
It’s half five now. I finished work early because everyone’s out of the office for a goodbye party that I can’t afford to go to, so I made an executive decision to go home in the absence of any actual executives to make the decision for me. I’m sure it’s what they would have wanted.
I thought I might actually catch Leon tonight, as I got back at around five p.m. It felt a bit strange. I’m not really allowed to come home early and bump into him, according to the official terms of our agreement. I knew when I signed up for this that we wouldn’t be in the flat at the same time—that was why it was such a good idea. But I didn’t realize that we would literally never meet. Like, ever, at all, for four whole months.
I did think about spending this hour at the coffee place around the corner, but then I thought … it is starting to get a bit weird, being friends but not having actually met. And it does feel like that, like we’re friends—I don’t think it could be otherwise, the way we’re in each other’s space all the time. I know exactly how he likes his eggs fried, though I’ve never actually seen him eat one (there’s always tons of runny yolk left over on the plate). I could describe his dress sense pretty accurately, even though I’ve never seen him in any of the clothes drying on the clothes horse in the living room. And, weirdest of all, I know what he smells like.
I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t meet—it wouldn’t change the terms of how we live here. It would just mean I would actually recognize my flatmate if I saw him walking down the street.
The phone rings, which is odd, because I wasn’t aware we had a phone. At first I go for my mobile, but my ringtone is a jingly happy tune from right down the list of those available from Samsung, not the retro ring ring that’s currently singing out from somewhere invisible in the living room.
I eventually track down a landline on the kitchen counter, under one of Mr. Prior’s scarfs and a string of notes about whether or not Leon used up all the butter (he totally did).
A landline! Who knew! I thought landlines were just relics you paid for in order to get broadband.
“Hello?” I try tentatively.
“Oh, hey,” says the guy at the other end. He sounds surprised (presumably I am more female than he had expected) and has a weird accent—kind of half Irish, half Londoner.
“It’s Tiffy,” I offer. “Leon’s flatmate.”
“Ey! Hi!” He seems to have been greatly cheered by this fact. “And don’t you mean bedmate?”
“We prefer flatmate,” I say, wincing.
“Fair play,” he says, and somehow I can sort of hear that he’s grinning. “Well, nice to meet you, Tiffy. I’m Richie. Leon’s brother.”
“Pleased to meet you, too, Richie.” I didn’t know Leon had a brother. But then I suppose there are probably an enormous number of things I don’t know about Leon, even if I do know what he’s reading before bed at the moment (The Bell Jar, very slowly). “You just missed Leon, I guess. I got in half an hour ago and he was already gone.”
“The man works too hard,” Richie says. “I didn’t realize it was half five already. What’s your tap-in-tap-out time?”
“Six, usually, but I got out of work early,” I say. “You could try him on his mobile?”
“Ah, now you see, Tiffy, I can’t do that,” Richie says.
I frown. “You can’t call his mobile?”
“To be honest with you, it’s a bit of a long story.” Richie pauses. “Short version is, I’m in a high-security prison, and the only phone number I’ve managed to get set up for me to call is Leon’s home line. Mobiles cost twice as much to call, too, and I earn about fourteen pounds a week in my job cleaning the wing, which, by the way, I had to pay someone to get me … so that doesn’t get me very far.”
I feel a little shell-shocked. “Shit!” I say. “That’s awful. Are you all right?”
It just comes out. It’s almost certainly not the right thing to say in the circumstance, but there we are—that’s what I’m thinking, and that’s what comes out of my mouth.
To my surprise—and maybe to his, too—Richie starts laughing.
“I’m all right,” he says, after a moment. “Cheers, though. It’s been seven months now. I guess I’m … what is it Leon calls it? Acclimatizing. Learning how to live as well as to just get through each minute.”
I nod. “Well, that’s something, at least. How is it? On the scale of, you know, Alcatraz to the Hilton?”
He laughs again. “Definitely somewhere on that scale, yeah. Whereabouts depends on how I’m feeling day to day. But I’m pretty lucky compared to lots of people, let me tell you that. I have my own cell now, and I can see visitors twice a month.”
It doesn’t seem like he’s lucky from where I’m standing. “I don’t want to keep you on th
e phone if it’s costing you. Did you have a message for Leon?”
There’s a rattling sort of silence at the other end, just the sound of echoing background noise.
“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m in for, Tiffy?”
“No,” I say, taken aback. “Do you want to tell me?”
“Yeah, a bit. But normally people ask.”
I shrug. “It’s not my place to judge—you’re Leon’s brother, and you rang to talk to him. And anyway, we were talking about how horrible prison is, and that’s true regardless of what you did. Everyone knows prison doesn’t work. Right?”
“Right—I mean, do they?”
“Oh, sure.”
More silence.
“I’m in for armed robbery. But I didn’t do it.”
“God. I’m sorry. This is really shit, then.”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Richie says. He waits. And then he asks, “Do you believe me?”
“I don’t even know you. Why does it matter?”
“I don’t know. It just … does.”
“Well, I need some of the facts before I say I believe you. It wouldn’t mean much otherwise, would it?”
“That’s my message for Leon, then. Tell him I’d like him to give you the facts, so you can tell me if you believe me.”
“Hang on.” I reach for a pad of Post-its and a pen. “Hi Leon,” I say, reading as I write. “This is a message from Richie. He says…”
“I’d like Tiffy to know what happened to me. I want her to believe I didn’t do it. She seems like a very nice lady, and I bet she’s pretty to boot, you can just tell, man, she’s got that kind of voice—deep and sexy, you know the—”
I’m laughing. “I’m not writing that!”