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The Last Hope of Girls extract
Once she'd visited Matt in prison, with her mother, where
he seemed estranged even from himself. He'd grown a bushy
moustache. HIs hands were twitchy, and his head made spiky, frail,
jolting movements now and then, darting behind or straining forward
suddenly, like a man in dread of being followed. He wore baggy royal
blue tracksuit trousers that were loose and saggy in the bottom
and grey supermarket running shoes, he who used to boast such a
sense of style. Against the livid yellow lights and the harsh din
of scraping chairs and officers' reprimands and jokes and
shouts and babies' wailing and the continual heavy, echoey
thud of the tinned-drinks machine, Matt bragged about his new friends
and the extremely violent crimes they'd committed, the people
they'd murdered, hacked up, even, at dawn. He made a circle
with thumb and forefinger to indicate the size of the pieces. He
was grinning, his ghostly skin streaked with large violet shadows.
He'd made friends. He was a success. He was the prison table
tennis champion. 'The King of Ping?' Martha offered.
He'd nodded enthusiastically. His eyes looked like they were
half on fire and half, well, dead.
Suddenly, out of nowhere a burly officer appeared, hauling Matt
out of his chair without a word and escorting him speedily out of
the visiting room. Martha and her mother were appalled.
'What's going on, Mum?'
'I don't know, darling.'
The two women sat in the enormous echoey pale yellow hall that
was so hot it was almost tropical. Martha shuffled in her chair,
arranging her knees neatly under the strange shiny yellow wooden
table that had a clear plastic partition separating inmate from
visitor built into it, dividing the table top into two, brief, uncomfortable
shelf-like ledges. It was an odd piece of furniture, severe and
a bit kinky. Martha imagined a company that produced such specialist
pieces, and wondered about their other lines: confessional boxes,
isolation booths for quiz programmes, strange one-sided cabinets
for peep shows. She looked around. It was nearly the end of the
visit and everywhere couples were embracing hungrily over the plastic
partitions.
'He's putting on a brave face for us,' Martha's
mother said. 'He's very thoughtful.'
After more than five minutes, Matt traipsed back and took up his
seat at the table again. 'They thought one of you might have
slipped me something.'
'Finish off now, please,' a guard boomed at them.
As he said this, a man three tables away was taken off by the same
officer, while his wife, cradling a small child, sat nervously staring
damp eyed in the opposite direction, chewing her lip.
Matt was murmuring something. 'That's a real shame.
He was expecting something today.'
When it was over they drank tea and ate vast amounts of biscuits
in the visitors' centre. Martha's mother lit a cigarette,
her first in years, her fingers stumbling blindly over the match
and the matchbox, the introduction of flame to cigarette tip taking
almost half a minute to get right. 'Well, I'm very
impressed. He's managing to stay cheerful. He made an effort
for us. I know they've got a very good drugs unit here, it's
one of the best in the country, so, you know, with a bit of luck...'
Martha stuffed a custard cream into her mouth to prevent herself
speaking. But what she felt was: 'If he's off drugs, I really
am a Chinaman.'
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