32. After

I let out a single ‘huh' and then it's done. The man with muscles like knotted rope and a bat tattoo behind his ear withdraws, zips up and walks down the corridor, never turning to look back at me.

It's incredible how quickly and quietly the act of love can be executed in times of necessity, and I can assure you that in prison the need is great.

I return to my cell after cleaning up. My cellmate Deandra smirks.

‘Someone I know?' she asks, rolling over and dropping her book to her pillow.

I smile. ‘Not as well as I do.'

She laughs. ‘When I grow up, I want to be you.'

The new place suits me rather well. The beds are softer, the food is more varied and the opportunities for sexual encounters are exponentially increased by the presence of so many angry young men, even if we only mix for an hour or so each day. Thank God for hippies. I can't know, but who else would come up with a co-ed prison?

Sex isn't love, but it'll do.

Have you ever been lonely? Have you ever ached inside for human connection so hard that it becomes the whole of you?

If your answer is no, feel free to stop reading because you're either a liar or an imbecile.

We're all alone.

From beginning to end.

It sits inside us all. When it rises to the surface, you realise it's been there all along, coiled and waiting.

In prison, there's no missing the great big billboard signs of loneliness. But outside, it can be subtle, insidious.

You're never more alone than when in the tight embrace of a rotten family, where those you trust put on great shows of love to distract from their neglect and manipulation.

Watching Jenna, all teary-eyed over a little bit of navel-gazing breakdown music, her loneliness drowning the whole room, I had a vision of the future. The Beaufort-Bradleys had made me bad and Jenna weak. Some day, the Beaufort-Bradleys were going to kill Jenna.

I became her perfect teacher. I would sit planning lessons for one student alone in my dad's new home, a one-bed bungalow at Oakridge Nursing Village, while he mumbled at the TV. His hawkish nose had grown longer. His fingers still tapped out the notes to whatever soundtrack was playing.

I remembered him begging for forgiveness when he was still lost in a fog the first time I saw him in hospital. I wondered if, now he was more lucid, he would ask for it again. But still he grew confused if we discussed anything beyond his career or theatre or what he wanted to eat that day.

One evening, he became upset that he was stuck in Oakridge when he should have been at Trevethan House, where we had lived, with my mother, and I snapped.

‘You never even loved her,' I said.

‘Your mother is the only woman I have ever loved,' he said, his gaze suddenly sharp.

Was that true? Had he believed it at the time or had he just discovered it himself? I asked, but he looked at me like I'd asked him to deliver Domino's to the moon.

If he'd been able to answer, would I have believed him? Sitting with our arms touching, I was as alone as I'd always been.

I got back to my planning, trying to remind myself of why I'd come to Port Emblyn: forgive my father; find closure.

With that in mind, I did something no teacher should ever do – but it's not like that has ever bothered me – and gave Jenna a C when she deserved an A.

‘You have such potential. The grade isn't your fault. We need to put our heads together and come up with a strategy. Shall we meet in the library?'

The shame on her face made my heart hurt. But in my experience, the ends always justify the means.

I was so nervous the morning before we met. I couldn't eat. I tried on three dresses before selecting a green jumpsuit.

Frances would find out and stop us from meeting. She would stride into the school and have me fired with one word to Neil. The delights between my thighs were no match for the Beaufort-Bradleys.

But Frances didn't come. Mina, Tristan, Lydia: they never even graced the school with their presence. Perhaps they were hoping that all was forgotten, that we could coexist peacefully, but the more I got to know Jenna, the more I saw it was impossible. They had to be stopped. Look what they were doing to this poor innocent.

There wasn't a single note in Jenna's records about her parents raising concerns about her. You only had to look at her to know something was wrong. Were they blind? And the teachers who'd tried to raise it themselves were only ever met with smiles – blissful oblivion – from Frances, who convinced them nothing was wrong, made them feel guilty, in fact, for judging Jenna by her appearance.

The first few times Jenna and I met, the winter gloom pressing against the windows, Jenna was so serious, focusing only on her work and refusing to be drawn on anything personal. I tried all the tricks of the trade.

‘I've been wondering how you're doing, Jenna. You seem a bit distracted.'

‘Why don't you stay back so we can discuss this further… and anything else that might be on your mind?'

‘Your portrayal of Ophelia was so moving – do you feel a personal connection with her?'

And then: ‘Have you ever been to Glastonbury?'

It was the last one that got her talking, tripping over herself she was so excited to talk about the years that have gone down in history and the bands she loved playing at the next one and the gigs she'd been to with Rose and how she'd felt watching Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall even though he was so past it and couldn't hit the notes and then she'd stopped short.

‘Jenna?' I leant towards her, reaching across the table so my hand sat just in front of hers.

She shook her head.

‘You don't have to tell me,' I said.

She shrugged it off. ‘It's nothing. I was just sad that Rose couldn't come. My uncle got given the tickets just randomly but Rose was on holiday and I went up to London with him and his assistant.' She squirmed and started picking bobbles off her tights.

‘Did something happen?'

She shook her head. ‘No, it was just… weird. I mean nice, but weird.'

‘Weird how?'

‘I don't know. It's like… I'm kind of the black sheep in my family. We all live on this farm and it's like the Beaufort-Bradleys are some kind of business or, I don't know, a battleship. We're all in it together, one glorious triumph after the other, all banging the same drum, except for me.

‘My cousins hate me. My grandparents, my mum and dad, they don't know I even exist. I'm like a ghost. And then every now and again I get these… interludes. With Uncle Tristan and Theo. And they're so fun. And they see me. And then we come home and it's like we all pretend nothing ever happened.'

‘Did something happen?'

She shook her head.

‘Jenna?'

‘No! The gig was great! Like, one of the best things I've ever done. But isn't it weird that you're the only person who has ever asked? I was, like, fourteen or whatever, and my mother was like, "Yeah, go to London. Have fun, Darling!" and then when I got home I had – there was – I don't know. I guess I wasn't very well. But no questions were asked. I don't think my mum even knows who I saw, even though she fucking loves Dylan – oh God, sorry.'

I took a second to realise she was apologising for swearing and I laughed. ‘Did you know that, on average, people who swear are more intelligent than people who don't?'

She laughed. ‘Try telling that to my grandfather.'

She started to open up after that, though she tended to talk obliquely, and I knew there were things she was keeping from me. All the same, I got a fair glimpse of her life, her real life: the bullying at school, the neglect of her parents, how her uncle was her only ally in her family.

Tristan and Theo were the only reasons she was surviving her adolescence. They helped her see that everything would be okay, out on the other side.

And then the fear, the crushing confusion, of what it was like to be sixteen and drawing the greedy eyes of boys and men, and to maybe be falling in love with someone you shouldn't.