‘Well, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ Jake smiled wryly through the grille at her, ‘I’ve got all the time in the world. I’m kind of what you might call a captive audience.’
Then he shoved his fair hair out of his face, folded his arms and sat back prepared to listen, taking her in from head to toe. A real hard nut, was his first outside guess about her. He could tell by the way she sat ramrod straight in front of him, like she was about to chair a meeting any second. Jake tended to classify people as either being tough or soft, and they certainly didn’t look any tougher than this one.
Then he noticed her thin, bony fingers drumming off the narrow ledge in front of her and thought no, hard is the wrong word, she just has something on her mind, that’s all: she’s here on a clear mission. So he decided to make it easy for her.
‘Look,’ he told her, more gently, ‘I’ve no idea who you are, but if you’re from Legal Aid, then you’ve had a wasted journey. I’m up for parole in a few weeks …’
‘I’m not a lawyer. My name’s Eloise Elliot,’ she explained crisply and for some reason the name rang a bell with Jake.
‘Eloise Elliot,’ he repeated, racking his brains to remember where he had heard it before.
‘Senior Editor at the Daily Post.’
And then it all slotted together in his head. Of course, he read the online edition every day in the prison library; he must have seen that name a thousand times on the editorial page. Okay, so now it was suddenly easier for him to get a proper handle on her. Someone married to her job, he guessed, one of those workaholics who was chained to her desk, a woman who didn’t just live for work, but who ate, drank and slept it too.
‘Anyway, here’s the thing,’ Eloise Elliot went on, in the brisk, business like way she had. ‘I’m about to commission a series of stories on former inmates and how they readjust to life on the outside, as soon as they’re released. And what I’m here to ask you, is whether you might have any interest in taking part? It would of course mean monitoring how you readjust to life outside over the next few months, how you coped, how things work out for you, that kind of thing. All done anonymously, of course, your name wouldn’t appear in the paper or anything like that. You’d just be there for deep background info to the, emm … series, nothing more than that. So, what do you think?’
Jake said nothing at first, just sat back, taking her in. Had to give the girl this much, he thought, most people on their first visit here seemed shaken to hell at the conditions around them. Particularly the women, who’d barely be able to make eye contact with you, just wanted to say their piece and get the hell out of there.
But not Miss Eloise Elliot. Instead she sat opposite him waiting on his answer, cool and composed, not seeming in the least bit fazed by where she was, or the fact that she was talking to a convict. Clearly this woman wasn’t just made of strong stuff, but had nerve endings lined with lead titanium.
For some reason, that impressed Jake.
But her coming to see him was still a mystery. What in the name of God could the editor of a huge paper like the Post possibly want with him? That was what he couldn’t figure; made no sense to him on any level.
‘Okay if I call you Eloise?’ Jake eventually said, looking keenly at her.
‘Of course.’
‘You mean you don’t insist on ‘Madame Editor,’ like on your letters page?’ he threw in, grinning.
‘Eloise is fine,’ she said, looking impressed that not only did he read the national paper of record, but the letters page to boot.
‘In that case Eloise, I have to tell you that what you just said sounds like the single greatest load of horse manure this side of the Grand National.’
‘Excuse me?’
Right then, he thought. Here’s a woman unused to being spoken to like that. But on the other hand, she’d got him all the way out here, and it sure as hell was an improvement on hanging around in his overcrowded cell. Might as well have a bit of fun while he was here, he figured.
‘Well, for starters,’ he said, lazily stretching his long legs out in front of him, like a man with all the time in the world.
‘Why in the name of God would the Post have the slightest interest in writing about someone like me? I read your paper day in and day out and even I’m able to tell you this much. Your readers are predominantly ABC1, am I right?’
She nodded.
‘Now if you were the editor of say, the Chronicle or the Evening Tatler, I might at least be able to understand where you were coming from, but your lot are about as far removed from tabloid readers as you could possibly get.’
‘Well, yes … but, I don’t understand what you’re driving at.’
‘Eloise, it makes damn-all sense to me why you think your average Post reader would possibly be interested in the likes of me. Never mind what’ll become of me on the outside. With the exception of my mother, my own family barely even care. So who do you possibly think would ever give a shite about an ex-con, back on the outside?’
‘Well for starters, I would,’ she told him firmly, returning his gaze full on. Almost, the thought hit him from out of nowhere, like she’d rehearsed her speech on the way over.
‘And you can be sure that if I would, then plenty of other people would too. Jake, it’s precisely because this is not the kind of series that’s ever been commissioned before that I want to do it. And you’re absolutely perfect for us. I called the governor to ask if he could recommend someone who I might be able to talk to and he said you were far and away the best candidate. A model prisoner, in fact, is how he described you.’
Next thing, she was whipping a notepad out of her bag and referring to some neat notes she’d made earlier.
‘Ah Jesus,’ Jake groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you’re starting now?’
‘Just look at this,’ she went on, ignoring him, and sounding far more animated. ‘The governor also mentioned that you came top of your class when you took your TEFL qualification. Jake, that’s amazing! And not only that, but apparently you’re studying for your Open University exams too. He says your chances of making parole are excellent and that you’re unlikely to re-offend …’
He sighed deeply while she talked on. Okay, so she knew all there was to know about him, presumably including what he was in for; she’d obviously done all her homework, and had somehow decided that he wasn’t a threat. But that wasn’t what bothered him – in here, the first thing you surrendered at the door was any right to privacy – he’d long since taken that for granted. But there was something else about Ms. Eloise Elliot, something a bit disconcerting. (Definitely a Ms., he decided the second he locked eyes on her. No way would this one going by the prefix Miss; he’d stake his parole on it.) Not so much what she was saying, but the utterly focused, intent way she was studying him while she said it. Like she was reading each and every one of his features, scanning his face, almost as though she recognised someone else in it.
And she wasn’t aware of it, but she had a slight tell whenever she spoke about this so-called series she was commissioning, like she wasn’t being entirely truthful. Every time she mentioned it, she’d colour a bit and glance shiftily to her left. It was tiny, she probably wasn’t even aware she was doing it and it wouldn’t have taken that much blinking to miss it, but Jake caught it alright. Two long years in here had left him expert when it came to reading ‘tells’; he played a lot of poker with his cellmates and it got so you could read people as easily as one of his books.
But why would she come out all this way just to lie to him? Made no sense on any level, no matter what way he looked at it.
‘So Jake, what do you think?’
I’ll tell you exactly what I think, Ms. Eloise Elliot, he thought to himself. I think that there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. And that you’re possibly the worst person at covering up a lie that I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a few.
But then he caught the desperate, almost pleading look in her black eyes and softened. She’d come all th
is way. She’d gone to so much bother to find out about him. Go easy, he thought.
‘Tell you what, can I sleep on it?’ he said and she smiled, looking relieved that at least he hadn’t turned her down flat.
‘Of course, Jake. But before I go, would it be OK if I ask you just one or two more things? Just for, emm … deep background?’
‘Fire away,’ he said easily, thinking, ‘deep background’ my arse.
‘Do you have family?’
‘Are you kidding me? Yeah, too many.’
‘How many of you are there?’
‘Do you mean who are still speaking to me? That’d be just the one.’
‘Are your parents alive?’
‘Yeah, but my dad left when I was a baby so now there’s just my mother. Who, just in case you want to write it down in your notebook, is the one person in my family still talking to me.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said, looking as if she was trying her level best not to ask why the others now had nothing to do with him.
‘And where do you live?’
‘When I get out? As they’d say in your paper, I’m currently of ‘no fixed abode’. My mam’s sofa, if I’m lucky.’
‘What about grandparents? Any still living?’
He saw her suddenly bite her tongue, as if she knew she’d gone too far and was beginning to sound nosey.
‘You really need to go into that much detail for your series?’ Jake grinned cheekily across at her.
‘Sorry, no of course not. But if you didn’t mind, would you be able to tell me a little bit about yourself? You know, like how you pass the time in here? I know you study, so you must read a lot, but I wondered if you’d any other interest or hobbies, like sports? Maybe even … playing a musical instrument?’
And so he went along with it and humoured her, even though she kept using the word ‘why’ so much that it gave him a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, not unlike when he was being interrogated by police. A memory he’d actively been trying to tune out for a long time.
‘Oh and another thing, why do you keep changing your name?’ she threw in suddenly. Like this was a particular niggle that really tried her patience.
‘You know about that?’
‘Well, yeah … From the governor.’
He nodded, not really believing her. That slight tell she had of looking to the left, again giving her away.
‘Okay, then let me put it to you this way. If you ever had the kind of characters coming after you that I’ve had to put up with over the past few years, believe me, you’d start calling yourself Mary Smith and you’d emigrate to New Zealand on a one-way ticket, leaving a cloud of dust behind you.’
She gave a broad grin at that, which softened her whole face and knocked years off her, he thought distractedly.
‘And I’m sorry, but I have to ask you this. Why William Goldsmith?’
‘Easy. She Stoops to Conquer is one of my favourite plays,’ he shrugged back at her. ‘And when I saw the statue of Oliver Goldsmith outside Trinity College, I though it’d be a good idea to take Goldsmith as my surname and William after William Blake, another writer I love.’
She nodded, again looking impressed by the fact that he’d actually read the classics.
‘But then what about Bill O’Casey? Where did that one come from?’
‘Kind of people I used to hang round with would never call me William, it was always either Bill or Billy and O’ Casey was after Sean O’Casey. I’d been reading Shadow of a Gunman at the time and loved it.’
Another half-smile.
‘But then … James Archer?’
‘Ah, now you mightn’t like this one, but I was reading a fair bit of Jeffrey Archer at the time. A writer who gets slagged off mercilessly, but you can’t deny he writes a great page-turner.’
‘Okay, but what about Oscar Butler then? Hang on, let me hazard a wild guess; you’d been reading Oscar Wilde at the time,’ she said dryly, but he noticed her mouth twisted down into a smile again.
He shrugged and nodded.
‘So basically, every false identity you’ve ever had has been in homage to a writer, either living or dead?’
‘Something like that,’ he told her, armed folded, sitting well back, ostensibly taking her in, but his mind was miles away. What was it to her? Why did she even care? And what was really going on here?
On and on she went with all her questions, almost as though she was carrying some kind of image in her head of what he should be like, how he should behave, and was trying to make him fit that same identikit picture. And it certainly sounded like she’d already done her homework. Because this one was thorough. Seemed to know as much about him as his own mother did.
He was wrong there though, because just as she was wrapping up to leave, it looked like there was still one question she was burning up to ask him.
‘So, emm,’ she began, picking her words carefully. ‘One last thing, if that’s okay?
‘Fire ahead.’
‘Well … Can I ask you what your plans are once you get back outside? Do you plan to finish the degree course you started, maybe even get a decent job out of it?’
The implication was there, hanging in the air between them. Jake had got very good at reading the unspoken.
Did he intend going straight after he got out?
But he couldn’t give her a straight answer to that one.
Because at this particular point in time, it was a question there was just no answer to.
Chapter Six
One month later and to Jake’s utter astonishment, Ms. Eloise Elliot had been as good as her word. Surprising absolutely no one but himself, he sailed through his parole hearing and following one kick-up-the-arse pep talk from his parole officer along the lines of I’ll-be-watching-you-and-don’t-think-I-won’t, he found himself a free man for the first time in two long, long years.
He had nowhere to stay of course, only his mam’s, but he didn’t want to go there. At least not yet. It would be too easy for them to find him, too easy to get sucked back in. And if there was one thing he was certain of, it was this; there was no going back for him. Not now, not after everything he’d been through. And he knew of old that it could all happen so frighteningly easily, a phone call here, a recalled favour there and next thing he knew he’d end up right back where he’d started.
Not long before his release date, Eloise called to visit a second time, to ask him a few more questions, again under the pretext of commissioning a feature for her paper.
She couldn’t stay for long she said, as she had to get back to work, even though it was a Sunday and he figured she’d take a day off, like anyone else. No, she told him, no such thing as a day off in her gig, the news didn’t stop and so therefore neither could she. It struck him as funny that even though it was ostensibly the weekend (ostensibly was his new word for that day, he loved the sound of it, loved the way it rolled off his tongue), here was Eloise still dressed head to toe in black, in one of those interchangeable power suits she seemed so fond of. Neat, structured, minimalist cut, no frills or ornamentation of any kind; almost a bit like how a bloke would dress.
The apparel oft proclaimeth the man, Jake thought, looking through the grille at her. (He’d been reading Hamlet for his course at the time, and some of the quotes just stubbornly got into his head and stuck there.) She was still white as a sheet, still utterly exhausted looking; yet another mystery to Jake. What in the name of God did this woman do in her spare time anyway? Did she have any kind of private life, or even family? Or did she really just work, sleep and visit ex-cons whenever she could? Was her life really that empty, almost as empty as his own? Didn’t make sense, but then none of this did. Why would someone this smart, successful and together be bothered with the likes of him?
‘Guess what?’ Eloise told him excitedly. ‘I’ve got news. Well, more like an offer. That is, if you’re interested.’
‘Tell me more,’ he said, smiling even as she uttered the words, if he w
as interested. Without even hearing what it was, he was just about ready to jump down her throat at whatever it might be and say yes. When did anyone ever offer him anything, bar trouble? And what other offers were there for him on the table at this point in time, only dangerous crap that would surely be a shortcut to him landing back inside in no time?
‘Well,’ she began, ‘I’ve got a sister Helen, who rented out her flat in Dublin a few years ago when she moved down to Cork.’
‘OK …’
Now, I won’t bore you with the details,’ she explained in that enunciated, school ma’am way she had, ‘but basically now my sister’s staying somewhere else in Dublin. Emm … staying indefinitely. Anyway, her tenant moved out months ago and for the life of her, she can’t get anyone else to take the place. You know what it’s like renting in this market.’
Jake didn’t, but nodded politely.
‘Anyway, now Helen desperately needs someone to house-sit for her. She was about to put an ad in the paper, and then I thought of you. So basically, there’s an empty flat that you’re welcome to stay in until she’s able to rent it out again properly. I thought that it might just suit you for a few weeks, at least until you find a proper place of your own. Plus it’s on the other side of town, so at least you’d be out of harm’s way there, none of your, well, let’s just say no one from your past could possibly ever find you. You’d be doing her a favour too and all she asks is that you look after the place. It’s been empty for seven months now, and needs someone to live in it.’
He sat back, digesting this.
‘So … What do you think?’
‘It’s incredibly generous of you and your sister, but Eloise …’
Shit. It was no use. He couldn’t contain himself any longer.
‘I have to ask you something.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Why are you doing this? I mean, why me? You’re a busy lady, you hardly have time for this. What are you anyway, like one of those Victorian philanthropists who spent their time visiting the prisons and helping the less fortunate? Like some kind of angel in disguise? Don’t get me wrong, I’m hugely grateful to you for the offer, but none of this makes the slightest bit of sense to me.’
A Very Accidental Love Story Page 13