spoken to Leanne, in fact. After all, she should wait till it was properly confirmed, shouldn’t she? By the blood test she was going to get down the doctors this coming week. Though, in reality, she knew she was simply looking for reasons to put it off, because it was such a momentous thing she had to do. She rehearsed it constantly in her head – how she’d broach it, the way she’d look, the exact words she’d say to him. But every time, she stalled at the next bit of the conversation, because she simply had no idea how he’d react. Having a child together wasn’t something they’d discussed, ever. Not even in jest. Not like Lucy had with Jimmy, who apparently talked about such things all the time. Well, so Lucy said. She only had her word for it.
But her and Paddy, never. So it was uncharted territory. He might be in raptures or he might go apoplectic – even if (and she told herself this constantly, to reassure herself) he would, without question, come round in the end.
And strangely, so strangely, the one other person she had told had reacted in a totally unexpected way. She’d expected Lucy (who she’d rushed to tell, feeling guilty she’d told Leanne first) to rail at her, fume at her, drag all sorts of Paddy-avoidance promises from her. Yet she hadn’t. She’d gone misty-eyed. Lucy! It had been surreal. Her friend had even cried with her, seemingly overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. It was like being braced for a whack by her mam and not getting it – all her emotional muscles had been stiff with disbelief.
‘Of course you must keep it,’ Lucy had told her. ‘It’s your child. Doesn’t matter that it’s his’ – this word being hissed, so no change of heart there – ‘it’s your child. How could you possibly even consider getting rid of it? Be rid of him, yes, but, never, never, your baby. How’d you know this isn’t your one shot at being a mum? How could you know?’
And when Vicky had pointed out that she’d never once considered getting rid of it, even if her mam kicked her out on the street, that had been when Lucy had spilled all those tears. ‘And I’ll support you, you know that, don’t you?’ she’d promised. ‘Sod your mam – I’ll support you. Money. Time. Anything you need. Blood sisters, remember? I’ll help you look after it. Her … him.’ She’d wiped her tears away then. ‘I wonder what you’ll be having?’ her eyes all shiny.
And they’d hugged and they’d hugged and it had all been so lovely (not to mention reassuring) but still all so weird.
Vicky gazed out of the bus window now, trying to breathe through the constant waves of nausea, seeing the leaves turning on the trees and the fields and hedgerows slowly greying – almost as if to match the city looming darkly ahead. And she was struck by the thought that by the time Paddy was returned to her, the winter would have come and gone and it would once again be spring. And she’d have had her baby. There was absolutely no doubt about that now. There couldn’t be. Nine months minimum, the solicitor had said. And the baby due in about seven. The baby Paddy didn’t even know existed.
She’d written daily. Long letters. Since the day he’d been taken. Long chatty letters, full of day-to-day minutiae and, because she was mindful that her letters would be read by other people, only very lightly sprinkled with coy references to sex. In return, despite him having all the time in the world, she was in possession of just the one reply. Which had at first upset her, it being full of self-pity and recriminations, and the sort of ‘me, me, me, me’ stuff Lucy was constantly pointing out to her. And very little, bar a crude ‘I hope you’re keeping it warm for me’, in the way of wondering how she was getting on.
But when Vicky read to the end she understood things a little better. Paper and stamps both cost money (a prison reality she’d never thought about) and why would he need to be the one writing the letters to her anyway? He was stuck in a prison, with nothing to tell her, so why waste money on paper when he could at least buy a few cigs – anything to help him get through the endless grey days. And Paddy’d never been much of a one for wearing his heart on his sleeve. Why would that suddenly change? And would she want it to? She’d never been one for wet lads, after all.
No, her letters to him were the things that most mattered. And now, in a matter of less than half an hour, she’d be seeing him in the flesh, the thought of which gave her butterflies. And made her heart leap, as if anxious to get there quicker.
HMP Armley looked like a castle, Vicky thought. Not a fairy-tale castle – it could never be that – but with its towering stone walls, its giant doors and its turrets, the sort of castle you’d see in a film about the olden days – you could almost imagine it being stormed by knights on horseback.
As it was, it was being stormed – albeit quietly and politely – by a small army of visitors, mainly women and children, some with babies hooked around their hips, many done up to the nines for their men. (Keeping it warm? The phrase couldn’t help but return to her.) But most of them wore the same sombre, almost defeated expressions of people who had to be somewhere they didn’t want to be.
Joining the queue for entry, and clutching her vital piece of paper, Vicky wondered at the way the next few months were going to go. The curious business of her being ordered here once a fortnight (it was a visiting ‘order’ after all) in much the same way that Leanne had told her she’d be summoned to the baby clinic to check on her and the baby’s progress.
‘First time?’
Having been silent for so long now, and still trying to take everything in, Vicky started at being spoken to. It was by an older woman – in her thirties, perhaps, and accompanied by two whey-faced children – who was behind her in the signing-in queue. The woman smiled. One of her front teeth was missing, and Vicky found herself wondering if the man she had come to visit had been the one to knock it out. She’d been studying everyone with the same ghoulish fascination, wondering what the men they were visiting were in for. Whose partner was a murderer? Whose son was a burglar? Whose brother was convicted of rape or assault?
‘Thought so,’ the woman said, seemingly pleased at her deduction. ‘You got that look about you. Don’t worry though. The natives are friendly. Well, mostly!’ She nudged Vicky’s arm and laughed. ‘My Don has his moments,’ she added brightly.
The woman’s words struck a chord, and Vicky found herself looking into a future that she did not want to see. How often did these children get to see their father? Once a fortnight, for an hour? And for how long had that been? And for how long would it be? Half their childhoods? If she resolved anything – which was hard, because Paddy did what Paddy wanted – it was that she would do anything she could to ensure he was never locked up again.
Still, the woman, for all that her life seemed to be the one Vicky least wanted, was helpful and cheerful and reassuring in the face of all the strangeness. She explained that after signing in, being patted down and surrendering her handbag to a locker, she’d be given a number and shown into a waiting room. There, amid a batch – there were various concurrent visiting sessions – she’d hear her number called and a guard would take her in.
‘They let you keep your purse, love,’ the woman explained. ‘You’ve brought some money with you, have you? There’s vending machines, see. So you can have a cuppa together. They like to be a bit spoilt on a visit, of course.’ She smiled. ‘And there’s usually home-made cakes and stuff, and all.’
As if it was a school fete, or something. As if all of this was normal.
The vending machine was the first thing Vicky did see – standing like a sentinel at the back of a room full of tables, at which of each sat a prisoner. The tables were set in rows, like exam desks laid out in a school gymnasium, except here, in place of invigilators in suits, who smelled of chalk, there were prison guards, unmoving, like stone pillars.
Her batch of visitors began to stream out around her. And soon the silence was replaced by a hubbub of noise. Chairs being scraped back. Throats being cleared. Greetings, exchanges of kisses, the whoops of excitable children. The sharp shushings of mothers and soft cooings of fathers. It was almost like Vicky imagined a reunion after a war.
She felt nervous and exposed, anxious to pick Paddy out in the sea of blue prison garb,