The World Out There - 8. Eight

Liam’s room felt so small: it hadn’t felt big when he first saw it with Donna leading him in there, but today this room in the B&B hotel felt so small. Liam pushed himself up and out of his old armchair. No, Leo Brown did and… Liam gave his mind a mental shake. He would always be Liam Andrews. He could tell himself his new name was Leo Brown over and over again, but underneath, he would always be Liam Andrews. The springs in the chair’s seat let out their usual metallic ‘boing’ noise as the seat rose back into its previous position. He turned towards the third and last pieces of furniture in the room - the table next to the armchair.

The top of the table had been painted black, while its legs were painted in a cream colour, but it was so old and stained that both colours were faded and dull. The top of it was also decorated with round and half-moon stains from mugs and bowls and whatever. Pushed back against the wall, sitting on top of a small brown wooden box was a single hotplate: it had been originally made from white enamelled metal, but it was so stained and damaged that he could barely see the original enamel. On it, he had learnt to cook all his meals. It was strange suddenly being given the freedom and responsibility to prepare and cook all his meals, not just to decide what he would eat but when he ate it.

Next to the hotplate, taking up the rest of the back space of the table, was an old toaster and an even older kettle. Both of them had originally been chromed but they were so stained and scorched and damaged that they just looked like dull old metal now.

He had planned a lunch of sausages and beans on toast for himself. He’d bought four pork sausages and another tin of baked beans from the supermarket that morning when he’d seen that newspaper headline, and the remains of his loaf of bread hadn’t yet gone off stale. His repertoire of meals was limited. At Nurton Cross, he’d concentrated on a more academic education - Mrs Williams had certainly encouraged him to - but at moments like now, he wished he’d learnt a few more cookery skills. That was all immaterial now because he had no appetite. He stared at the unopened packet of sausages and can of baked beans, but he had no desire to cook and eat them. He had no desire to eat.

A prison van had come for him the first day of his trial. He got up early that morning, having slept so little the night before. He lay awake, staring up at his room’s ceiling, as a whole army of different thoughts rushed through his mind. He’d killed Rhys Clarke: he’d done it, and everyone saw it, so he would go to prison. But he knew so little about prison. All he did know was from television, and that was scary enough. The bullying at school had been a nightmare, but at prison, from what he could see, it was a constant way of life. He would never survive that. There was no one he could ask about prison. The staff at Rokeby House seemed to treat him at arm’s length, all of them seeming to avoid him. Mark Hiller was always friendly towards him, but they only ever talked about his trial. And Mark Hiller always seemed so busy. He didn’t know how to ask Mark Hiller about it: he didn’t know how to say he knew nothing about prison and ask what would happen to him. Mark Hiller was always talking so positively about his trial, it felt like he’d disappoint Mark Hiller if he started asking about prison. Duncan Loughton had been so handsome and friendly that he’d felt intimidated in the man’s presence, and Duncan Loughton had asked all the questions. He’d kept quiet as his imagination ran with the little knowledge of prison he knew. That night all those thoughts flooded through his mind, robbing him of sleep. What was going to happen to him?

When dawn came, he’d been still wide awake. Though his body ached with tiredness, he'd got up, then showered and dressed in the new suit and tie Mark Hiller had brought for him. The suit felt stiff and uncomfortable, its thick material restrictive against his body, and the tie was tight at his throat. The suit was far more uncomfortable than he remembered his school uniform ever being.

He skipped breakfast, though his empty stomach felt like it was made from lead and the thought of food made him feel nauseated. Instead, he sat in the home’s hallway waiting for them to collect him. Shanice, one of the workers there, had told him to sit on the bench, opposite the office’s open doorway, and she had been almost constantly checking on him. When the prison van finally arrived, she’d walked him out to it, unlocking the home’s front door so they could.

The prison van was parked out on the gravel driveway of the home. It was one of the large, white prison vans, with long and narrow oblong windows along its side. A large man in a dark blue uniform climbed out of the back of it, opening the door at the back and climbing down the couple of steps there.

“Morning young man. Hold your hands out,” he addressed Liam.

“What are you doing?” Shanice demanded.

“Putting the cuffs on him,” the man replied.

“He’s a minor. You don’t cuff him, idiot!” Shanice snapped.

“Just joking love,” the man said, an awkward smile suddenly appearing on his face.

The man escorted him into the back of the prison van. Liam had expected rows of other prisoners sitting there in handcuffs, on wooden benches on either side of the van, as he remembered seeing on television police shows. Instead, he was greeted with a narrow, white corridor, which seemed to have a large number of doors opening off it. The man ushered him towards a door, halfway down that narrow corridor. There the man opened the door, unlocking it with the keys attached to his belt by a metal chain.

“In you go, young man,” the man said.

Liam quietly stepped inside the tiny room behind that door. He was barely inside of it and the door was quickly locked behind him. The room was tiny, barely bigger that the metal seat that took up most of the space there. As he sat down on the seat, he found it was larger than it seemed. His body took up a little over half of the seat’s width. The only thing that broke up the white metal walls was a narrow, heavily tinted window. It was so heavily tinted black that he couldn’t see out of it. His body was bumped to one side when the van started to move.

As the van began to move, his smelt a sharp and acrid smell, not strong but very unpleasant when it hit his nostrils. He quickly saw where it was coming from. In the far corner of the tiny room, underneath the narrow window, was a tiny grill actually in the room’s floor. It was slightly proud of the corner there and was made up of four open slits in it, tiny patches of red rust clinging to two of the white edges of the gill. Why was there a grill there, right in the floor? What could need to be drained away? He looked at it for a long moment as the van began to move.

He sat on the seat, being bounced around by the vehicle’s sharp driving, not knowing where he was. Occasionally he’d see shapes through the window but nothing more. He certainly didn’t know the route from Rokeby House to the Crown Court - he didn’t even know where the Crown Court was.

He wasn’t afraid: he knew he’d killed Rhys Clarke; he was guilty, but there was a cold and hard dread, sitting in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know what was going to happen. All he knew about prison was what he’d seen on television and that scared him enough. His mind kept repeating the confusion that had kept him awake through the night, but still he couldn’t let go of it. He had killed Rhys Clarke, he was guilty, he was going to prison, but what was his life going to be in prison? Would he even survive it? He didn’t know and no one had talked to him about it. That unknowing kept pulling down at his mind during that journey, especially as he couldn’t see any of the route he was being driven along. He would stare out of that black tinted window but all he saw were occasional passing shapes, nothing more. Where was he? He was so lost: lost in where he was physically heading, lost in what was going to happened to him and what his future was going to be. There was nothing he could do. He had killed Rhys Clarke. It was his fault.

He was shaken out of the daze of worrying and self-pity he slipped into on the monotonous ride. The van slowed down and stopped, which wasn’t usual on its journey, but suddenly there were people banging on the outside of it, making him pull away from the noise, and he could hear voices shouting and screaming. As the van stopped as the banging and shouting grew louder. Liam pushed his body against the far wall of his tiny room. Could they get in? Were they after him? Was this usual? Did people hate those on trial so much?

Then he felt the vehicle move forward and the banging suddenly stopped, though the shouting didn’t. The next moment it stopped again, and the engine turned off. He guessed they must have finally reached the Crown Court, but he just sat there and waited for the next thing to happen. Only a handful of seconds later, the door to his room was unlocked. Then the door itself was opened and the man in the dark blue uniform was stood there.

“Come on kid, it’s showtime,” he told Liam.

He led Liam out of the back of the prison van and as Liam stepped through the open doorway, he found that it was parked inside a high walled courtyard, closed in with equally high metal gates. The moment he stepped out onto the tarmac, he heard them - the loud voices all shouting at once:

“That’s him!”

“The bastard!”

“Kill him!”

“Hang him!”

He turned his head and saw almost a wall of people pressed up against the metal gates, angry expressions on their faces, many of them shouting at him, many of them pointing or raising their fists. It was a wall of anger directed at him. Liam wanted to run back into the prison van and hide away from it, but the man had tight hold of his arm and was leading him into the building there.

“Looks like you’re already famous, son,” the man said.