Chapter Three

Felix

“Forty-eight,” I counted as I heaved myself up to complete another sit-up, sweat glistening on my bare chest from my exertions. Being upright allowed me a view of Pete, my cellmate. He was sitting on the bottom bunk, chuckling at something he’d just read in his comic. Yeah, that was the level of intellect I got from him. The man was on the wrong side of fifty and still found The Beano as hilarious as he presumably had when he was fourteen. Despite what I’d told my new PO, he couldn’t have been less interested in what I was doing, and there was definitely nothing sexual between us. Pete’s wife and three kids would no doubt thank us for that.

I sank back down to the floor before heaving myself up once more. “Forty-nine.”

“How many yer doing?”

It seemed Pete had at least a passing interest in what I was doing. “Sixty. ”

“Jesus, Church. You should chill out a bit. You’re getting out soon.”

“Fifty.” I fixed him with a glare while I was up there. “You should learn to mind your own fucking business.”

Pete shrugged. “Only asked, didn’t I?”

“Well, you got your answer.”

He let out a sigh as he clambered to his feet, tucking his comic under the mattress before wandering out into the corridor. No doubt he was off for a game of pool while it was rec time. Rather him than me. It was a rare inmate in this place that didn’t cheat, and it was for that reason that more fights broke out over the pool table than anywhere else. I did the last ten sit-ups before collapsing back on the cold, stone floor, the events of this afternoon running back through my head, where I’d started with one probation officer and ended with another.

I’d liked Katherine, something about the older woman making me feel like I was in safe hands, which was a rarity for me. It didn’t mean I hadn’t given her shit. I had. Seven years in this place was enough to give anyone a hide like a rhinoceros. If you wanted to survive, you didn’t show weakness. You strutted. You worked out like crazy so you could make an imposing figure. You mouthed off and acted like a crazy bastard, so people would think twice before messing with you.

I’d done it all to the best of my ability, and become so expert at projecting an image of myself that made people give me a wide berth that I barely remembered the Felix Church who’d existed before my life went to shit—before Julian.

The thought of Julian had me surging to my feet and going over to the tiny metal sink to splash cold water on my face. Julian, the man who’d been so achingly sweet when I’d first met him, showering me with compliments and gifts. I knew that for what it was now. Love bombing, the experts called it. He’d kept it up for a year, long after I’d moved in with him. The mask had eventually slipped, though. That’s when I’d met the real Julian Blackwell. And he’d been both manipulative and abusive in equal measure. And for reasons I still couldn’t understand years later, I’d put up with it, believing him when he insisted it wouldn’t happen again. I’d even left him a few times, but like the stupid, na?ve fool I was, I’d always gone back—Julian too persuasive and persistent for me not to.

And then he’d murdered someone and life had never been the same again.

A dizzy spell hit, forcing me to brace myself against the wall as snippets of that period of my life came back to haunt me. If you’ve done nothing wrong, Mr. Church, you don’t need to worry. Justice will prevail. Well, justice hadn’t fucking prevailed, had it? Justice had bent me over and fucked me up the arse without the courtesy of foreplay or lube. And justice didn’t even know what a prostate was, never mind where to find it.

Unfortunately, Julian is saying that you murdered the girl, and that you forced him to help cover it up. That he feared what you might do if he didn’t go along with it. I’d pointed out that Julian was an abusive fucker who lied, and who had always lied, until I was blue in the face, but it had fallen on deaf ears.

I knew what they’d seen when they looked at us. That I was bigger than Julian. They hadn’t been able to picture a scenario where I would have stood for it without fighting back. In retrospect I wish to God I had. But I hadn’t. I’d taken it, and I’d been too ashamed to admit what was happening. Without medical records or any friends or family to back me up, it had been my word against his, and Julian had always been an expert at bullshitting his way through any situation.

The thought of family had me sighing and pulling on a T-shirt. I had a phone call to make, and it wouldn’t be a pleasant one. I was running out of time, though, so it was now or never. As always when I left my cell during recreation, I was vigilant. A moment of inattention was all it took for someone to decide you’d looked at them wrong. I refused to walk with my head bowed as I made my way to the payphones at the end of the corridor, projecting an air of you’ll be sorry if you fuck with me instead. There was a queue for the phones—when was there ever not?—and I joined the back silently, my mind straying back to the events of this afternoon while I waited.

So no Katherine anymore, the PO apparently staying home with her new baby. Instead, I had Darien Quinn. Fresh-faced, impossibly handsome Darien Quinn, with a smile that wouldn’t have been out of place on your typical boy next door. And he’d both annoyed me and intrigued me in equal measure. I’d exaggerated my attraction to him, but it was there, and I could tell it was mutual, which was interesting. Could I use that to my advantage? I could do worse than to have a PO in my pocket. What if I seduced him? Was he seduce-able?

I was still pondering whether a) it was possible and b) whether I could be that Machiavellian when I reached the front of the queue. The phone rang for what felt like an age before the woman on the other end finally answered. “Mum?” Silence. “It’s me, Felix.”

“I know who it is.”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t visited me while I’d been inside. She had. But it was as infrequently as she could get away with, and the visits themselves were always excruciatingly awkward, the two of us spending far more time in silence than a mother and son who hardly saw each other should. I’d often thought that if I wasn’t an only child, she would have stopped coming altogether. But with no brothers and sisters, I was it. The one and only. Her jailbird son. “I get out next week. Next Tuesday. ”

More silence. I shifted the phone receiver to my other hand, my palm sweaty. “I put your address down. I thought I could come home. I want to come home. But you have to okay it.” My heart was beating fit to burst in my chest. “I have a new probation officer. He met with me today ahead of my release and he said they haven’t had confirmation yet. I’m thinking the letter probably got lost in the post. Can you call them and tell them it’s okay? That you agree to it?”

“I didn’t fill the form in.”

“Why not?”

A sigh loud enough to be heard down the line. “Because I don’t know whether it’s a good idea.”

I closed my eyes against the sting of rejection. Even though I’d known that it was a distinct possibility that there hadn’t been a mistake, that didn’t stop it from hurting like hell. “If I can’t stay with you, I have to stay in a halfway house. They’re not great places, Mum. It’s like swapping one prison for another. I’ve done seven years. I want to be in a home again. Not somewhere I need to sign in twice a day and do weekly drugs tests even though I’ve never touched drugs.”

The silence this time cut like a knife. I turned my back to the prisoner on the next phone, in case he wasn’t engaged enough in his own conversation and fancied eavesdropping. I hugged the wall and lowered my voice. “Please, Mum. I’m begging you. Just do this one thing for me. I won’t be any trouble and I’ll get my own place as soon as I can so I’m out of your hair. Please.”

“I don’t know, Felix.”

“I’m your son!” Anger and hurt warred inside me, wrestling to see which emotion would get to come out on top. “Your only son.”

“I know that, and I want to help… I really do, but it’s not that simple. What will the neighbors say? ”

“Fuck the neighbors!” Fury coalesced in my chest, anger winning out like it always did these days. “This isn’t about the neighbors, really, is it? This is about you not believing me, even though I’ve told you time and time again that I did nothing. I didn’t murder anyone, and I didn’t help cover up a murder either.”

“The courts said—”

“The courts can go fuck themselves.”

The silence this time was deafening. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself. At least she hadn’t hung up; I could still hear her breathing on the other end of the phone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout at you. I’m just…” Scared was the word I wanted to use, but that would take an honesty I wasn’t capable of, and would leave me feeling vulnerable. “… concerned about what will happen next week.”

“I’m glad you’re getting out, Felix. I really am.”

“But not glad enough that you’re willing to offer me a place to stay. That’s my childhood home. The place where I lived until I was eighteen. Me, you and Dad lived there together, remember?”

“I remember.”

The sadness in her voice had me regretting bringing up my late father. He’d died of a heart attack two years before the court case. I often wondered whether he would have believed in my innocence or whether, like my mum, he would have had too much faith in the justice system to think they could be wrong.

Thoughts of my father had the anger seeping out of me to leave exhaustion in its place. “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for nothing.” I hung up before my mother could respond.

“You going to cry, Church?”

Tempting as it was to swing for the little fucker who’d made the jibe, I wasn’t about to do anything to jeopardize my parole. I might have nowhere to stay, but I was getting out on Tuesday. And nothing and no one was going to get in the way of that. Seven years in this place was seven years too long.