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FORTY-EIGHT
I feel the receptionist watching me. Her eyes boring into the back of my neck as a corrections officer with a balding head and a spot of dried ketchup on his lapel leads me into an adjacent room. She’ll tell her friends about me later over G&Ts down the pub; all of them craning in, hanging on her words.
‘Not what I was expecting,’ she might say. Or, ‘She looked so normal. Hard to believe she was raised by him.’
Does she know Matty? I wonder. Has she ever spoken to him?
Stupid. Why would she? This isn’t exactly a holiday camp.
The CO waves a metal detector wand over me, asks me to load my handbag onto a grey tray, the sort you see at airport security. Runs it through an X-ray machine, pulls out a Tampax at the other end, examines it.
‘It’s not a bomb,’ I say, covering my embarrassment.
‘You’ll have to leave everything behind,’ he replies, face impassive. ‘Can’t take any personal belongings in with you.’
‘Not even my phone?’
‘No phones allowed.’
‘But what if. . .’
I tail off.
‘What if, what?’
I grind my thumb into the ball of my hand.
‘What if there’s a problem?’
‘You buzz for the guard.’
‘Buzz?’
‘This is a closed visit. You’ll be separated by glass, have to speak through a phone. He’ll be brought along once you arrive.’
I exhale deeply, drop my shoulders, pleased Matty won’t be sitting there watching me come in. That I’ll have a chance to arrange my face first.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Okay.’
He laughs, not entirely kindly.
‘I take it this is your first prison visit.’
I try to smile.
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘’Tis to me. And you’re starting off with Melgren. What are you, a writer or something?’
For a moment I’m surprised he doesn’t know, then I’m just relieved. It takes the pressure off, not being under a microscope. Matty’s been such a huge part of my life, it’s weird to think not everyone knows what we are to each other. What we were.
‘We had a bloke up here to see him a few months back; soft hands and shiny shoes. You know the type. Said he was writing Melgren’s biography.
‘I told him, men like Matty Melgren are better off without a soap box, but he wouldn’t listen. Reckoned the public’s insatiable when it comes to the Shadow, can’t get enough. They want to understand what drove him to do such terrible things, he said. Can’t fathom why a man with no history of childhood abuse or neglect would have done what he did.
‘Some people are just born bad, I told him. He said he didn’t believe that. Reckoned society creates its own monsters. No one’s evil when they come out the womb, those were his words. I watched him leave afterwards. Bloke looked like he’d shrunk three inches. Never came back as far as I heard.’
I don’t know what to say to this.
