The World Out There - 44. Forty-Four

Mark stood up from the table he was sat at and waved across the room at Liam. Mark was wearing the green shirt he’d so often worn before, though he seemed to have had his hair cut since Liam last saw him. His curly hair wasn’t as thick as last time he was there - it lay over his head only one curl deep.

Liam walked between the tables in the Visitors Room, heading towards Mark. The place was surprisingly full - more than half the tables were occupied. Usually, only a handful of them were occupied.

With everything that had happened that week, he nearly forgot that today, Saturday, Mark was due to visit him. He’d been sitting opposite Ed that morning as they ate their breakfasts when Ed said, “Isn’t your mate coming to see you today?”

“Yes, Mark is,” he quickly said. He had almost forgotten. Everything with his mother had pushed Mark’s visit out of his mind. How could he have forgotten Mark? Mark’s visits were still so important. Why had he let his mother, who was only on a television screen, do that?

“How are you?” Mark asked him after Liam sat down at his table.

Liam smiled back at him, a small and probably awkward smile. Mark must know about his mother. Mark knew about so much that was happening outside Nurton Cross.

“Have you been watching that TV show Celebrity Love on the Beach?” he asked Mark.

“Not at first, but Joyce, my office manager, put me onto it. She loves those reality shows. I watched it on catch-up.”

“You saw my mum on it?”

“Jesus Christ, yes! I couldn’t not see her. That’s why Joyce wanted me to watch it.”

“She was so badly behaved. It was an embarrassment.”

“It’s the way she’s always behaved,” Mark said.

“How do you know?” Liam asked. When had Mark met his mother? She was never someone they talked about.

“She was always there during your trial, throwing her rants and getting under my feet.”

“I never saw her in the courtroom.”

“She never went in. She paraded herself in front of the press, before the court was called to session, and then she pissed off when the press disappeared. I repeatedly asked her to come into the courtroom, to show you some support, but she wasn’t interested in that.”

“I know. I read two of the interviews she did after I was sent here.”

“They let you read them?”

“No. There was a girl patient here a while ago. She printed off those interviews, from the internet and gave them to me because she thought it gave her power over me.”

“What happened?” Mark lent forward slightly as he spoke.

“I told the nurses about it. They got angry at the girl. There was this big meeting, and it was decided this wasn’t the right place for her and she was sent back to prison.”

“Good thing too,” Mark lent back in his chair.

“In those interviews my mother gave, she said I terrorised her.”

“She lied. She does that.”

“I know, but how did she get to be on TV from there?”

“Do you want to really know?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she did a lot of interviews after you came here, all saying what a ‘victim’ she was and spouting all her right-wing views. And all the right-wing newspapers lapped it up. Soon she was giving her opinions on all kinds of things. Then, she started being interviewed on those awful talk radio stations. They loved her on them. She was as right-wing as them, but she’s from a North London council estate. Most right-wing women rent-a-gobs are middle-class and posh. There’s your mother, with her North London accent, saying all the same right-wing crap, and they loved her. She appears as a right-wing rent-a-gob all over the place.”

“But she’s got a newspaper column.”

“Ha!” Mark gave out a sharp and short laugh. “That’s a joke.”

“Why?”

“She never wrote a word of it.”

“How?” Liam stared back at him. Mark wasn’t making sense.

“She was offered this newspaper column well over a year ago now, but she lasted a little over a month. She didn’t write the column - she’d dictate it into her phone and recorded it. Well, she’d record her rant for that week. She’d send that to the newspaper. It would be typed-up and edited and then published. Her column was published in the Thursday edition of the newspaper, so she was supposed to get her recorded rant to them for Tuesday morning, but it mostly didn’t arrive until Wednesday morning. They hated her over that. Then, in one of her columns, she called immigrants cockroaches. It was the day after nearly twenty immigrants were found dead in the back of a refrigerated lorry. There was a huge public outcry, and the newspaper quickly dropped her column.”

“How do you know all that?”

“The outcry about her cockroach comment was very loud and all over the media. Politicians, from all parties, were lining up to condemn her. You couldn’t miss it, if you were on the outside, I mean. I knew about what happened at the newspaper because I get a weekly email called Popbitch. It’s this weekly gossip email all about celebrities - not just famous people - but politicians, sports people, and z-list celebrities like your mother.”

“Oh!” Mark got a weekly gossip email. He’d love to read that.

“I always wondered if the newspaper allowed your mother’s comment about cockroaches to be published deliberately,” Mark said.

“Why?”

“Well, your mother’s columns were always edited. They could easily have edited it out. I think they left it in, knowing it would cause an outcry so they could get rid of her. The Popbitch email did list how much extra work your mother caused them by always being late with her column and how much work the newspaper had to put into it to get it to a place where it could be published. Seems your mother wasn’t popular with them.”

“She wasn’t popular in that villa on that program.”

“People don’t like being treated the way she treats people.”

“But she behaved the same way when I was a child. It’s like she’s never changed.”

“And she thinks the way she behaves is right. I remember all the times she shouted at me, during your trial, because I wouldn’t do what she said I had to do.”

“Aiden says she a narcissist.”

“He should know - he’s a Mental Health Nurse.”

“Do you think she is?”

“God, yes!” Mark said. “She always behaved as if she’s the most important person in the room.”

“I bet she’s really pissed they throw her off that program.”

“She wants to sue them.”

“How do you know?”

“She rang my office, wanting me to be her solicitor so she can sue the television production company. She actually wants to sue them for discrimination. The cheek of it.”

“Are you going to be her solicitor?” Liam asked.

“God, no! I told her I was far too busy to work for her and suing television companies wasn’t my area of practice. I didn’t say that I didn’t want to work for her because I suspected she wouldn’t pay me, and I hate having to sue a client for payment. Also, she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. It’ll be laughed out of court if it every gets that far.”

“What do you think she’ll do next? You know, after being kicked off that TV program. Will she go back to being a TV talking head?”

“That may be difficult. She’s already been dropped by several programs. She used to be a guest on This Morning when they were talking about politics. As I said, her views are far right, but she comes from a North London council estate, so TV producers love her. Well, This Morning announced yesterday that they have dropped her. This morning, two other programs have announced she’ll no longer be a guest on them.”

“Will she be all right?”

“Your mother is a cockroach - she’ll always survive,” Mark said. The next moment, Mark’s face fell into an awkward expression. “I didn’t mean to be nasty about your mother … well, not too nasty.”

“It’s all right. I don’t think about her usually.”

“She still doesn’t visit you?”

“I haven’t seen her since she came here to tell me she wasn’t coming to see me.”

“Do you miss her?”

“No, not really. She was always… well, negative with me. Nothing I did was right, and everything was wrong. I couldn’t do anything right, she said, and she kept telling me I was stupid. Not having her saying those things is… well, good. I didn’t miss it and I started feeling better for not hearing it.”

“How was it watching her on television.”

“Strange.”

“How?

“She sort of looked the same, but she’s now blonde. But… well, she acted the same as when I lived with her. I’d thought she’d acted like that because I upset her, but watching her on TV, I saw that’s the way she behaves with everyone. Then I saw that she can’t see how she upsets people and how they hate her for doing so. It’s like she’s never learned that her behaviour upsets people.”

“Yes, but didn’t Aiden say she was a narcissist?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how narcissists behave. They don’t care about what others feel.”

“Yes,” Liam replied. For a moment he almost rolled the word around in his mouth. Both Aiden and Mark were saying the same thing about his mother, and he trusted them both.

“Let’s not talk about your mother,” Mark said. “Let’s talk about something better.”

“Is This Morning still on TV?”

“God, yes! Joyce, at work, actually watches the highlights from it each day when she gets home from work. I’d think that would be a very short program, though I don’t say so.”

“I thought it would end after Richard and Judy left it.”

“No, it seemed to go from strength to strength without them, though leaving it seemed to kill off Richard and Judy’s careers.”

Liam lent back in his chair as Mark regaled him with some of the celebrity gossip he knew, though Liam didn’t recognise half the names Mark mentioned. But Mark could tell a good story and Liam could just sit there and enjoy it.

<><><><>

It was a bright and sunny Sunday, the next day, and again he and Ed were allowed to walk in the hospital’s garden before lunch. Liam only bothered to put on his hoody, over his t-shirt. The warm sun felt good against his skin as he followed Ed around the garden’s twisting path. As usual, the garden was empty, so often it was only him and Ed out there, but he didn’t care. If others didn’t want to be there, then - so what? It left the garden free for him and Ed to enjoy.

When they reached ‘their bench,’ they both sat down there together, not needing to ask the other if they wanted to - it was what they always did. Liam liked that. They knew each other well enough to be able to do that.

He reached over to take hold of Ed’s hand, just as Ed was doing the same. Their fingers intertwined comfortably.

They sat there in a long moment of silence. Liam liked these silences: he could just relax and not think. He didn’t feel any pressure from Ed to fill those silences with words, not that he’d have known what to say. He never knew how to start a conversation, unless he had a question pressing on his mind. He wasn’t sure how to start a casual conversation. With Ed, he could just sit back, relax, and let Ed start their conversation.

“You all right?” Ed asked him, breaking the silence between them.

“Yes,” Liam replied. “Why?”

“You ain’t been yourself all week. Like you’re off or something.”

Liam took a deep breath. Ed knew him too well - could he hide anything from him?

“It was that TV show, that Celebrity Love on the Beach.”

“It was shit but why did it get to you?”

“That woman they threw off for being racist - that Emma Duffield - she’s my mother.”

“Fuck…” Ed quietly said, the word slipping out between his lips. “She was a real bitch.”

“I know. She was like that when I lived with her.”

“Was she on telly when you lived with her?”

“No. She… well, she… She sort of got famous when I was on trial. Since then, she’s made this career of being… well, she seems to hate everyone.”

“And she was like this when she was your mum?”

“Yes, but she mostly ranted at me.”

“What a bitch.”

“Yes, she was. She still is.”

“What was it like watching her on TV?”

Liam took another deep breath, drawing the air into his lungs in one long and flowing breath.

“Not good, at first, she used to rant at me like that. Then I realised that’s how she is with everyone. She rants at everyone - she’s a bitch to everyone - she’s nasty to everyone. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t my fault. She’s like that with everyone.”

“That’s good, realising that.”

“But she was the same as when I lived with her. She hasn’t changed one bit. She was behaving as she’s always done. She hasn’t learnt a thing.”

“People like that don’t,” Ed quietly said.

“That’s what Aiden said and my friend Mark. They’re really right. And you’re really right.”

Ed squeezed his hand for a moment, a quick but reassuring squeeze.

“I’m sorry your mum’s such a bitch. My mum was a bitch to me, but your mum seems much worse. She seems a nightmare.”

“Thanks, but I haven’t seen her since I came here. She refuses to visit me.”

“My mum too,” Ed said. “Aren’t we lucky, neither of our bitch mums want to see us.”

“Thanks,” he turned and faced Ed, smiling back at Ed, who was smiling warmly at him.

“I like it here. I’ve got you here and I don’t have to see my mum,” Ed said.

“Me too,” Liam agreed with him.

Ed had said it, but he agreed with him, he did.

Ed lent forward and kissed Liam gently on his lips.