LITMIR.BIZ

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they’d made clear.

      ‘We didn’t bring you up like that, Adele,’ Mum had warned me.

      At 16 I was never going to be allowed into the prison on my own, I had to be with someone over 18, and Mum and Dad weren’t going to take me, so Anthony arranged that his dad and stepmum would give me a lift.

      Two weeks later I found myself squashed into the back of their black Lexus car, alongside the new baby, as we made polite conversation. I’d bought a new outfit especially, some new jeans and a pretty top. I’d spent longer than usual doing my make-up, but when I arrived at those imposing red brick prison gates, I suddenly felt so out of place, so overdressed, so intimidated.

      ‘Just follow us,’ Anthony’s dad said casually.

      The huge gates opened and we were shepherded inside. I looked around at the other people who were waiting, their scruffy clothes, their tattoos, and I wished that I’d worn a little less lip gloss, that the top I was wearing covered me up a little more. They looked me up and down in a way that told me they knew it was my first time, and I shifted uncomfortably inside my jacket. I felt Anthony’s dad’s hand on my shoulder.

      ‘He’s going to be so thrilled to see you,’ he said.

      I managed a smile in return, telling myself as I looked round at the hard black metal of the guns that the prison officers were carrying, at the cold expression that matched each of their faces as they checked one after the other of us off a list, that this was all for Anthony. I scanned the rest of the visitors we were waiting with, my eyes falling on one woman in particular. Unlike me she hadn’t dressed up especially: from the looks of things she hadn’t even put a comb through her hair; she bounced a screaming toddler on her hip, sighing each time we were ushered into a different room as if she were doing nothing more unusual than waiting in line in a supermarket for a particularly slow cashier. I doubted that this would ever become so normalised for me. At least I only had seven months to wait – these women looked like they’d been waiting a lifetime.

      We stepped up to a desk and were ticked off a sheet and in exchange for our names we were given a number and herded through the prison gates into a separate room where we handed over our identification and the door was locked behind us. The echo of it rattled around the room, and I tried to still my racing heart, without luck. We were then led into a pen, before the door behind us was locked and then another room unlocked, and then – Anthony’s dad told me – we were finally inside the prison. There we were searched by sniffer dogs, and we walked through an electrical security arch, much like those you see in airports. Once through that we were searched again, the prison officer asking me to slip off my jacket, and standing there, the thin straps of my top exposing my shoulders to the cold, I just wanted to close my eyes and pretend I was anywhere else but there. But then again, I told myself again, this experience, this humiliation, it was all for Anthony.

      We went up to another desk and told the officer there who we were seeing. We were given a number for the table we were to sit at and slowly I made my way across the room, my eyes catching sight of the prisoners in their orange and yellow hi-vis bibs already sat with their loved ones, and the guards dotted around the room, one hand on the guns that hung across their chests. And then I heard one of the officers call out Anthony’s name, and before I knew it he was walking over to our table, not in the frightened way I had shuffled in, but striding towards us confidently, like this was home, a smile plastered wide across his face.

      ‘All right, son,’ his dad said, getting up and giving him a brief pat on his back.

      Anthony looked at me. ‘Well, aren’t you going to give me a hug, baby?’

      I glanced around at the prison officers.

      ‘It’s OK,’ Anthony laughed. ‘I won’t bite!’

      And he and his dad laughed. ‘She’s had that same look on her since we got here,’ his dad told him. I shuffled in my seat, realising that the fear I felt inside must have found its way onto my face that whole time.

      ‘That’s OK, baby,’ Anthony said. ‘Nice girl like you doesn’t belong somewhere like here.’

      I felt my chest swell then because Anthony understood me; he knew what I was thinking all along. I got up and put my arms around him, keeping my eye on the guards the whole time.

      I was excited to see Anthony. I’d missed the feel of him so much, but not like this. While Anthony chatted to his dad, I looked around the room, spotting the woman and the toddler I’d seen earlier. She was arguing with the man I presumed was her husband while their little boy played at their feet.

      After about 20 minutes, Anthony’s dad left. I got up to go with him, but he signalled for me to stay.

      ‘I’ll get off, leave you two lovebirds in peace.’

      ‘All right Dad, see ya,’ Anthony said, as his dad explained where he’d be waiting for me outside.

      I nodded, and once he’d gone, when it was just me and Anthony for the first time, and it was only his eyes I had to focus on, I felt myself relax just a little.

      ‘You look gorgeous, babe,’ he said.

      I looked around the room and felt myself blush.

      ‘Hey, don’t worry about them, look at me,’ Anthony said.

      And finally sitting there, just inches away from my man, holding hands across the table and within our grasp everything that was precious about our relationship, I tried so hard to forget everything else around me. This may not have been how I had imagined the beginning of our relationship, but something inside told me – just like the woman and the screaming toddler – that it was something I was just going to have to get used to.

      If I was honest, I never enjoyed those visits. I knew every time I went that my mum was right, I wasn’t brought up to be visiting a boyfriend in prison. But I did it for Anthony, just like I made sure I was home after college by 8 pm so that he could call me, just like I stopped going out because I couldn’t bear the endless questions the next day, or upsetting him and causing him to be in a mood if I did.

      My seventeenth birthday came and went with a card from Anthony from prison – not exactly how I’d been planning on spending it, but over the last couple of months I’d learnt to rely on phone calls in place of hugs, and letters in place of meals out with my boyfriend.

      Despite the distance, we got to know each other better with every phone call. There were still arguments, just like with any relationship, if I was at one of the girls’ houses when he called, instead of being at home like I said I would be, or if I had a rare night out because it was someone’s birthday. But the most important thing was we got over them, that I understood because of Anthony’s past why he was the way he was, that he was insecure, that he thought just like everyone else that I wouldn’t stick around for him. But I was proving to Anthony every single day that I meant what I said on New Year’s Eve, and it was paying off.

      He’d been in prison for three months when we were chatting one evening after lights out.

      ‘I really love you, Adele,’ he said suddenly.

      ‘What?’

      ‘I love you. No one else would have waited for me like you have.’

      ‘Of course I’m waiting, Anthony. I said I would.’

      ‘And that’s why I love you.’

      I put the phone down and was feeling all fuzzy inside, safer somehow as I wrapped my duvet up around me and drifted off to sleep, because that was the first time Anthony had said he loved me, and I realised then that I loved him too.

      After that, though, time seemed to pass differently, somehow faster and slower at the same time. The letters that Anthony sent me kept me going as tiny new green leaves slowly unfurled themselves on branches that had been stripped bare by the cold, dark months, as the light started to bleed into every afternoon, and winter finally turned to spring …

      I’m in a mess babe, I need you, I wouldn’t know what

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