The World Out There - 31. Thirty-One

The letter from Mrs Stewart-Graham had arrived on the ward a week and a day before her visit. It was waiting for him when he’d returned from the Education Centre. It had been opened and read before it reached him, but all their letters were - the few letters most people on the ward seemed to receive.

The letter was brief, printed on stiff, thick paper, not the cheap printer paper they used in the Education Centre, but heavy paper that cried out that it was expensive. At the top of the page, in an elaborate font and coloured dark red, was Mrs Stewart-Graham’s name, address and email. Underneath, in a simple font and black letters, was her message to him. She would be visiting him on the following Saturday, the 10th of January.

He placed the letter, neatly folded, back into its three folds at the back of the table in his room. It was the first letter he had received there. There wasn’t anyone out there who would write to him but he hadn’t thought anything about it before. He hadn’t received any letters before then and he hadn’t missed receiving any of them: if he hadn’t experienced it, then he didn’t miss it. Receiving Mrs Stewart-Graham’s letter had surprised him. It was only brief and very matter of fact, and yet, it had felt so special to receive it. Was this why Chrissy got so excited whenever her sister wrote her a letter, which wasn’t very often?

He didn’t count the days until her visit, but the thought was there at the back of his mind. Someone as important as Mrs Stewart-Graham was going to come and see him here, but he didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t tell Chrissy or TJ, and not Aiden either. This was his special treat, just for him.

On Saturday morning he got up as usual, showered and then dressed in his best jeans, one of his new t-shirts and his hoody. He joined Chrissy and TJ for breakfast, listening to Chrissy chatting away about the reality show they had watched on TJ’s TV the evening before. He just listened to her as TJ poked fun at what she said. He had something to look forward to today, and that felt quietly good.

After lunch he went back to his room, changed out of his hoody, putting on his new jumper - the beautiful one Mark had bought him - and sat down at his table to wait. He hadn’t wanted to put on his new jumper earlier in case it got dirty or damaged.

He didn’t have to wait long. Cindi knocked on his door and pushed it open.

“You’re here?” she said, looking at him.

“Yes,” he quietly replied.

“You’ve got a visitor.”

“Great.” Again he kept his voice quiet as he stood up from the table.

“I’ve come to take you to the Visitors Room.”

“Thanks.”

He followed her out of the ward.

Mrs Stewart-Graham was sitting at one of the tables in the Visitors Room. Unlike Mark, she had chosen a table near to the room’s entrance and the table where the two nurses sat - today it was Cindi and a male nurse he’d never seen before - but his attention was on Mrs Stewart-Graham.

She looked so different and yet it was so obviously her. Her hair was not arranged in a tight, but neat, twist sitting on the back of her head. Her hair was still held back from her face, but in a long and loose braid hanging down her back. It seemed so long in that braid, yet she managed to squeeze it into that tight twist normally. The features of her face seemed softer, not as sharply defined. Her lips were now a pale pink in colour, not the bright red he remembered them being. Was that because she wasn’t wearing make-up, or was she wearing softer make-up?

Her clothes were different too: she wasn’t wearing one of the dark power suits she had always worn in court. Now she was dressed in jeans and a white cotton shirt under a dark green knitted woollen jacket. Her clothes were casual but sharply ironed and still expensive-looking. Her jeans and shirt were sharp and stylish; her jacket was knitted wool, but was styled as if it were tailored, and smart. Her clothes, though casual, still had the same elegant quality to them. Was that quality from her clothes or the woman under them?

Just sat there at that table, Mrs Stewart-Graham was still a commanding presence: she still pulled all the attention towards her, like that first time he’d met her back in Rokeby House. That was a reassuring thought and he liked it.

“Liam - my God, you’ve grown!” Mrs Stewart-Graham exclaimed.

“You look the same,” he replied.

“I try my best.”

Once he was settled down and sitting at the table, she told him, “You do look good and well.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m so sorry you ended up here. You shouldn’t have been sent here,” she told him, her voice dropping in volume, but losing none of that rich quality it had. “I pulled every string and favour I had to keep you out of a young offender’s unit. I wanted you sent home with a treatment order to get you help. But they wouldn’t agree to that. They would only agree to you being sent here. I am so sorry. I failed you.” Her voice fell silent as she took a deep breath that seemed to pull back on her shoulders as she did.

“But I like it here,” he replied.

“What?” her face stared back at him, her clear blue eyes wide with surprise.

“I like it here.”

“But why?”

“The nurses are really nice here and there’s an Education Centre which is run by Mrs Williams, and she’s great. She told me I’m clever and she really likes my essays and writing.”

“But you are clever. We all saw that.”

“My old school said I was stupid, and they weren’t interested in me. I didn’t have any friends there, I was so lonely, but I’ve got friends here. Chrissy and TJ are my friends here and I like having friends.”

“That is important.”

“I have my own nurse, Aiden, and he’s really good and he listens to me. And I don’t have to see my mum.”

“But she visits you here?”

“She came here twice and the second time she told me that she wasn’t coming back to see me again. She said I’d ruined her life.”

“That’s bollocks! ... I mean, that’s nonsense.”

“I missed her at first, but I didn’t miss her shouting at me and always telling me off. Nothing I ever did made her happy. She was always shouting that everything I did was wrong. She made me feel… well… really bad.”

“Liam, that’s not right. You’re not like that.”

“I know now because no one else says that. Only she was saying that. And now I don’t have her saying that to me … and that’s nice too.”

“I guess it is, especially knowing your mother.”

“You’ve met her?” Liam asked. Hadn’t Mark said that he kept Liam’s mother away from Mrs Stewart-Graham?

“Only the once, but I’ll never forget her.”

“When did you meet her?”

“It was after your trial. You’d only recently been sent here. I went to see her to get her to agree to me appealing your conviction. Two Bottles McCoy had so tied our hands with what defence we could run, at your trial, that I was certain that we had so many grounds to mount an appeal. But because you’re under-age, I had to have your mother’s agreement to do anything. So I went to see her to explain this.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“I hadn’t even started my explanation and she’s shouting at me. The language out of her was well, breath-taking. She had a deal with a tabloid newspaper for her life story - in six parts – and if your sentence was reversed, then she’d lose all that. She was so angry at me, and she actually threw me out of her flat.”

“Yes, that’s her.”

“I suppose not having her shouting at you is a good thing.”

“It’s great … it really is.”

“But you never get to leave here. You don’t have any freedom.”

“I didn’t go anywhere before I came here,” he said. “There was home and school, and once a week I went to the local library. Sometimes I went to the local shops when my mum ran out of something. That’s all. I don’t miss any of that. It’s much better here.”

“Are you sure?” her face still held that worried expression.

“Yes, honest! It’s great here!” She didn’t seem to not believe him: he remembered that clearly from his mother- she never seemed to believe anything he said to her, and there was no point in lying to her. But Mrs Stewart-Graham just seemed so worried and concerned. Why was she so worried? He hadn’t seen her in so long.

“Thank you for the books at Christmas. I love reading and I get so much to read here,” he added.

“Mark told me that you’d like the Philip Pullman books.”

“I’ve started reading Northern Lights. It’s so good and I’d love to have a demon of my own.”

“You need to talk to Gerry, my husband, about all that. I don’t know anything about fantasy novels.”

“Did he write The World Portal books you gave me?”

“Yes, there’s ten of them now, and he’s written lots of other books. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I don’t know how many books he’s written. He’s a full-time writer.”

“Does he just write all the time?” Would that be his dream job? It sounded good.

“He writes during the day, but he looks after our boys and does the housework and cooking. I’m lucky, I married a man who isn’t threatened by having a more successful wife.”

“Are many men threatened by successful women?”

“You won’t believe it. When I was a junior barrister, I thought I would either have to concentrate on my career or give it up and get married. Then I met Gerry and… Not all men are the same.”

“I haven’t started The Tomorrow Children yet, but I will after I’ve finished The Northern Lights.”

“The Tomorrow Children? Oh, the first book in Gerry’s The World Portal books. I lose track of his books - he’s written so many of them. That makes me such a bad wife.”

“Not really,” he smiled back at her.

“You’re sweet. If you enjoy Gerry’s book, I’ll happily send you more copies.”

“Thank you,” he smiled. More books, more to read.

“I can also send you some of his review books. They’re only filling up the cupboard under the stairs.”

“Review books?”

“Gerry also reviews books for different magazines. They send a new copy of the book to review and afterwards, he gets to keep it. He’s already read it. They’re not books I’m interested in, and our boys have read the ones they want to. I can easily send them to you. Well, the ones you’d want to read. Gerry also reviews adult novels and… I could send them to you when you’re older. If you don’t want them, you can give them away - we got them for free.”

“Thank you, that would be great. I can read here whenever I want to.”

“Liam, I know Mark visits you regularly.”

“Yes, and it’s great.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to visit you like that. I’m starting a trial up in Edinburgh on Tuesday and that could take weeks.”

“That’s all right.”

“But I will write to you. I’ve got those books to send you, and you’ve got my address so you can write back to me.”

“You know the nurses read my letters.” He didn’t tell her that hers was the first and only letter he’d received there.

“I know that, and I won’t put anything silly in it.” She smiled back at him.

He took a breath. There was one question he wanted to ask her that had been bubbling away at the back of his mind since Mark told him she wanted to visit him.

“Mrs Stewart-Graham,” he asked her, “why did you come and see me here?”

She took a deep breath now, pausing a moment before she spoke.

“I always felt I failed you. You didn’t deserve what happened to you at your trial. You didn’t plan what happened. You don’t deserve to be incarcerated, even here. I should have fought harder. I shouldn’t have let Two Bottles McCoy get away with all the crap he forced on us. I should have made an unholy stink. I could have complained to the CPS, briefed the press, done something. I shouldn’t have let you end up even here.”

“But it’s great here: I’ve got friends; the school here is great and I’m doing well in it; and I get to read books whenever I want to. I don’t have to wait until my mum is at work or has gone out to read my book. I’m really happy here.”

“I’ve got two sons, Tristian and Sebastian, Tris and Seb. Seb is the same age as you and… I kept seeing him in you. He’s had all the advantages you didn’t and he… If you’d had his advantages and… I let you down so much.”

“But you fought for me. My mum never did. She won’t have anything to do with me. You’ve come to see me, and you’ve said you’re going to send me books. I love having books. My mum always said books were a waste of time and wouldn’t let me buy any of them.”

“That’s terrible,” she quietly said.

“You fought for me all through my trial. You were always having a go at that judge. He was always shouting at you for standing up for me. My mum didn’t come to even one day of my trial. You didn’t let me down.”

“But you ended up here.”

“Yes, and I’m really happy here. It’s safe here. I was never safe at school or at home.”

“Aren’t you angry that you have been locked up in here?”

“There’s no point in being angry - you can’t change what’s happened to you or what’s happening by just getting angry. I’ve known that for ages. Things aren’t always fair, but being angry at it all doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t change anything. I learnt that living with my mum.”

She smiled back at him. It wasn’t a broad and happy smile. It was a smile of recognition: she was finally understanding him; she was believing him. She’d listened to him.

“I see that,” she quietly told him.

There was something else he wanted to know, something else that had been there at the back of his mind. He’d never asked Mark simply because he kept forgetting it. Mark always seemed to make a conversation between them flow and he’d simply forget to ask him. Here was his chance.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked her.

“Certainly.”

“You and Mark called the judge at my trial ’Two Bottles McCoy.’ Why did you call him that?”

“Because he drinks two bottles of red wine every night, at least. The man is a functioning alcoholic, and everyone knows it. It’s this huge, unspoken secret.”

“What’s a functioning alcoholic?”

She leant back against her chair, “Far more common than we imagine it to be…”

<><><><>

Liam was so tired that night and went to bed early, even on a Saturday night.

Chrissy had been full of questions about who had visited him as this was something unusual and her curiosity was to the front. But he’d told her it was one of his old teachers from his old school. That seemed the simplest of lies and one Chrissy would easily believe. He didn’t want to have to explain who Mrs Stewart-Graham was: it would cause Chrissy to ask too many more questions and he certainly didn’t want to have to talk about his trial. It wasn’t as if he had been able to forget about any of his trial. Fortunately, there was a new reality TV show starting that night, and Chrissy loved reality TV more than she did gossip. Her attention was soon pulled over to it.

TJ just asked him if he’d enjoyed having a visitor and smiled back at him when he said ‘yes.’

No one seemed bothered when he said he was tired and was going to bed early. Bridget, one of the nurses on duty that evening, had simply said, “Sleep well.”

In his room, he’d undressed. He’d taken off his special jumper as soon as he’d returned to the ward, swapping it for his hoody. He took off his t-shirt and underpants, pushing them away in his laundry bag, and pulled on his pyjama bottoms. Then he sat down on the edge of his bed.

He had been feeling strange since he returned to the ward. What Mrs Stewart-Graham said hadn’t upset him, but it repeatedly prayed on his mind. She had felt so guilty because he was found guilty. He had killed Rhys Clarke - he was guilty. Why was she feeling guilty about that? Being here was the right place for him. He was away from everyone else, but that was right, wasn’t it? Why had she felt she failed him? He had killed Rhys Clarke - he couldn’t just be sent home after that?

He liked it here. Nurton Cross was far better than anywhere else he had lived before, though he’d only ever lived with his mother. Here was good and safe. Here he had friends and a school that cared about him and wanted to educate him. Here he could read books. Here… He liked it here.

Why was he feeling this? He needed… He knew what he needed.

He got up from his bed, went to his wardrobe and squatted down in front of it. It only took him a moment to find Mr Bear, hidden away at the back of his wardrobe, and lifted him out of there. This is what he needed.

He returned to his bed and sat on the edge of it and hugged Mr Bear to himself. The Teddy bear’s soft and warm fur felt comfortable and reassuring against his face and chest. He would lay in bed, reading his latest book, enjoying the strange and exciting world of The Northern Lights, with Mr Bear tucked inside the bed next to his stomach. In the meantime, he hugged the Teddy Bear close to him, enjoying the comfort that silent companion had always given him.