by Ruth Dugdall
Norwich Prison is ugly.
A Victorian building, surviving sibling of the workhouse and asylum. Tall walls made from brick the colour of burning coal, an outsize doorway wedged into a daunting portcullis. How many people have walked through here, abandoning faith or hope? I ring the bell and a small door opens within the massive one, like the entry to some hellish wonderland. Only there’s no white rabbit behind it, but a burly man with a shaved head, wearing a white shirt with service epaulettes.
‘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.’
Do you remember, Mum, how you nagged him to give up smoking after he had the stroke, but it was the consultant who really put the wind up him, telling him he’d be dead in a year unless he did. If he’d been right, you wouldn’t have been shot.
He keeps his bad hand close to his body and nods to the officer. One thing about Dad, he’s a survivor.
The purple-haired officer returns with another escort, smirking at the visits officer as though she’s won a prize. The woman beside her wears a painted smile, her blouse is silky and scarlet, she gives her name in a small voice. The visits officer is charmed, winks at his colleague, not even bothering to hide it from the woman, whom he directs to the table next to ours. As she sits, I breathe in her heady floral perfume. My father leans in, and I think, Finally, he will explain.
‘You came, at least. I wasn’t sure you would.’
‘I didn’t want to.’
The woman is removing something – a bit of fluff ? – from her cleavage. The visits officer behind the desk has noticed too. I lean forward, and look Dad in the eye. Those same eyes – all my life I’ve been able to read them. And I can’t see any malice there, nothing different that tells me this man shot my mother.
‘Is it really true, Dad?’
He stares back at me with his flat grey eyes. ‘Why would I lie? You think I want to be here?’
‘Is it true that you were asleep?’ I can’t believe he shot you, but I find it even harder to believe he did it in his sleep.
There’s a pained silence. The woman and the officer have heard my question, but I don’t care. I just need an answer. His face slackens, and I see weakness for the first time. He didn’t have to confess – doing so cost him his freedom. Since that morning, I’ve been the only one to say that you didn’t shoot yourself, and no one believed me. Only Holly, everyone else told me I was in shock, that I was wrong, that I was crazy: Clive, Daniel, even the police. And Dad let this happen, only confessing when his beloved Ash, and Janet, came under scrutiny.
‘Are you really doing all this to protect them?’
He reacts to that: colour comes to his cheeks.
He breathes deeply, then says, ‘Sleepwalkers aren’t responsible for what they do, Cass. Don’t you remember one Boxin’ Day, I went out with the hunt? That night I dreamed I were still ridin’ a horse over a very high hedge? I jumped out of the window, fell straight down, almost killed meself.’
I do remember – more than once he was found wandering around the farmland, unsure of how he got there. ‘But that was years ago, Dad.’
‘It was a few times, I fell from the window. ’Sides, that don’t matters how rare it happen, do it? Fact is, you can’t blame someone for what they do – they’re not responsible if they’re asleep.’
‘How fucking convenient,’ I hiss, and he catches his breath. I can see he’s about to swear or say something vicious, and then he stops himself. If we were at the farm, he’d be storming off towards the barns to vent his frustration on the chickens. Then he reaches for my hand, grabs it. He’s squeezing, stopping the blood flow, his eyes boring into the very heart of me.
‘I love your mother and I love you. And I’m sorry this has happened, but I can’t go turnin’ back the clock. So let me fix it, okay?’
I pull my hand free. It’s not us he was thinking about when he confessed, it was Ash and Janet, I’m sure of it. ‘If it’s true, what you say, why didn’t you tell the police that morning? Why now?’
An inmate arrives, dazed, like he’s woken from a long sleep. Even without the burgundy T-shirt and poorly fitting jeans, he has the defeated gait of a prisoner. His shoulders are hunched and his eyes rove in their sockets. He shuffles towards us, sniffing the air as if pulled onward by the woman’s perfume. He stumbles as he passes my father, and I’m surprised to hear him mumble, ‘Hector, my man.’
‘Toby.’ My father nods in recognition as Toby lowers himself to the chair, seemingly surprised to find his weight supported. He’s impervious to the lipstick kisses of his visitor – on his cheek, not his lips. They resemble each other: brother and sister.
‘Place is full of lunatics,’ my father says, not quietly.
‘Aren’t you one, then? Shooting Mum in your sleep sounds pretty crazy to me.’
I can’t sensor myself, I’m so fucking angry. This is what’s crazy: to be told you’re delusional, then to discover that the people closest to you lied. My dad in prison, my mum in a coma. I don’t know who to turn to. Even Daniel’s treating me like I’m unwell. Only Holly listened.
‘You can call it crazy if you like. But what it ain’t is cruel.’ I think for a moment he might cry.
Beside us, Toby places his hands on the desk and his sister cups them, steadies them, and in that moment our eyes meet. She smiles sadly, reaching out for a female connection in this dreadful place. To feel less alone. She’s a healthy, fleshier version of her brother – how he might be if he weren’t here, drug-addled and criminally inclined. They have similar mouths. Hers is smiling at me and I want to smile back, but my face muscles ignore me. Her eyes go cold and she turns back to her brother.
Dad taps my wrist with his cupped right hand and I flinch. ‘You met my solicitor then?’
‘I spoke with him on the phone. It was him who made me come.’
‘I reckon if Rupert Jackson can’t get me out of here, no one can. ’Course, you pay extra for the plummy voice, but that’s what these judges respect. Daniel found him.’
The sister has started to cry, mascara running down her cheeks. Her brother is slumped into his seat, oblivious. ‘You need help!’ Her voice is shockingly loud after all the whispering.
The officer’s body engages faster than his eyes, and he pulls himself up. The woman shouts at him, ‘Do you hear that? Toby shouldn’t be in here! He should be in a hospital. A proper one. Anyone can see he’s sick.’
The guard, assessing the situation as safe, relaxes again. ‘Him and everyone else in here, love.’ He returns to reading the Daily Mail. He’s obviously heard it all before and it isn’t his problem.
‘So you gonna get me out of here then, girl?’ Dad’s voice is strung low, but his eyes fix me hard. The fingers of his left hand, thick and strong, cradle his weakened right arm. ‘I need to get my bail on Monday, but that rests with you. So you gonna be on my side?’
‘Is it true, Dad, you really shot her?’ I ask, but weakly now. My fire has gone. All that remains is sadness. ‘You tried to kill Mum?’
‘No, of course not! How can you even ask that? I love Maya! And you, Cass.’
I never heard him say that word before today and now he’s said it twice. He leans forward and says it again, as if it’s the only thing that makes sense.
‘I was asleep. Do you get that, girl? I love you.’
Once I’m out of the prison, I know I can’t go home. Not yet.
I’ve gone from confusion to anger to sadness and I feel dangerously vulnerable, emotions pulling me in different directions. When Dad said he loved me, it should have been a precious moment – it was something I never thought I’d hear – but instead it feels like a responsibility. Like he was trying to tell me something.
Because it’s where I always go when I’m hurt, like an animal retreating to its burrow, I drive to the farm. Even with the car windows up, I can smell the clay earth seeping in through the vents, the scenery is flat and the sky is huge and this is where I belong.
The farmhouse door is unlocked. Janet is here. I want to be alone, but she’s on her knees, scrubbing the wood at the bottom of the stairs, a bucket of soapy water next to her. My mind reels back to Friday, and I feel again the desolation of that day – how alone I felt, how you didn’t comfort me. I want all trace of that day removed.
‘What are you doing here, Janet?’
She yelps at my voice, twists to see who’s there, eyes wide with fear. ‘Oh, Cass! You gave me the fright of my life.’
‘Why did the police let you go?’ My voice is harsh and accusing, but I don’t care. And Janet has the decency to look ashamed.
‘’Cos of your dad’s confession and how I’m co-operatin’, they give me bail.’
I don’t respond, don’t know how to. Did Dad confess to protect Janet? The police have shifted their focus, of course, but I’m not sure that I have. Her blood was still on the gun – his confession came only when the police became interested in her.
‘I need to collect something for Dad.’
‘Oh, have you been up to the prison?’ She stops her work, and sits back on her heels. Her face is full of concern. ‘How is he?’
‘Coping. He wants a suit to wear at the bail hearing.’
‘Oh, well, Ash can take it to the courthouse first thing on Monday, that would be no bother. It’s important Hector is smart.’ Janet looks hopeful, as if this is just a mix-up that will be sorted out soon. ‘Then your dad’ll be back where he belongs, and so will your mum, and I’ll look after ’em both, just like I always have.’
Everyone is at pains to tell me how they’re trying to help, how their intentions come from a place of love.
So how did you end up being shot?
Upstairs, I run a hot shower and scrub the stench of the prison from my body, leaving my skin a satisfying red. Finally clean, I don’t want to put my clothes back on. They stink of incarceration.
In your bedroom, the bed has been made with fresh sheets, and the room smells of air freshener and Pledge. Your pale-blue quilted dressing gown is hanging behind the door and I put it on, buttoning it down the front as you used to. You’re slimmer than me and there’s a pull around my hips, small differences that went unnoticed, but now seem important.
I want to know everything, Mum – all our similarities, all our differences. I’m clinging to that, because everything is changing around me and I don’t know what the truth is. Was Dad really asleep when he shot you? If so, why not say that from that first moment when he awoke – why work so hard to conceal it?
I approach your dressing table. I remove, lift, examine. Learn about you as a woman, as a wife. I should have paid more attention. I discover you’re on HRT tablets and that you’re
the same bra size as me. I find a box of hair colour and realise it isn’t true that you don’t have any grey. I discover jewellery I’ve never seen you wear, and all the time I try to make sense of how Dad could have shot you in his sleep.
Finding no answers, I pad across to your study. I see that Janet has been busy here too, there’s no longer any sign of disturbance. It looks ready for you to walk in and start work; I half expect you to. This is where you spend most of your waking hours, running the farm like a general. I sit in your chair, gingerly – this would be forbidden if you were here. I open the drawer, a further transgression, the long one directly in front of me. It’s empty, but this only spurs me on. I begin to search all of the drawers, and then I move to the filing cabinet and begin again. I know the police have searched, I don’t know what I’m hoping to find.
There’s the box file entitled Samphire Health Spa.
It was your idea originally. You were so thankful that Daniel had healed you, the farmhouse would be your gift to him. I open the box, and there’s the planning permission that was granted. Beneath it, the folded design, drawn up on architect’s paper in thin black ink. I open it, and see the sketch of the front of the farmhouse, with a new glass extension to the side. Also on the drawing, where our barn stands, is a swimming pool complex with palms and sunbeds and a gym area. I’m holding an idea, a dream, one that united the three of us. We could all have been so happy, but no, you went and changed your mind.
I see the name and details of the architect and pick up the phone extension on the desk to dial the number. He deserves to know.
‘Ross King Designs.’ It’s a male voice, friendly.
‘Hi, I’m calling about the design that you drew up for Samphire Health Spa on the Innocence Farm estate in Kenley?’
‘Ah yes, I worked on that myself. This is Ross speaking. How can I help?’
‘I’m Cassandra Hawke. My partner is Daniel Salmon.’
‘Ah yes. Mr Salmon commissioned the plans, so I’m afraid I can only discuss the details with someone else if he gives me his permission.’