I wake up with a start, filled with a sense of urgency that at first I cannot place. Then, as I become aware of the sound of rain drumming on the apartment skylight and the dimly lit room comes slowly into focus, the memory of last night’s phone call from Naomi comes crashing down on me.
Even as I recall the terrible news about her father and her heartbreaking sobs, I shiver at the memory of my hasty promise to visit her today… by myself. That means getting past the guards at the door and walking down that interminable corridor at the prison entrance all on my own, this time unshielded by Marion in all her bulk and fearlessness, like a lilac-clad Sherman tank. She has visited the prisons so many times already that if she felt any nerves when we visited Naomi last week, she certainly didn’t show it. Likewise all the other inmates must be so used to her that, as we trod the gauntlet of the prison entrance past all the other women, I noticed something similar to grudging respect in their expressions as they watched her. Not all of them were lucky enough to be visited regularly by a charity volunteer, but Marion and her flowing purple cardigans and staunch determination had become a regular fixture on Saturday mornings inside the prison.
What will happen to me, without her? I could get lynched, or taken hostage, or forced to carry out illegal substances and be arrested at the gates…
Even as my fears start to spiral, Naomi’s desperate voice fills my head and halts them. She needs me to do this. Marion is in the USA. Gabriela could give birth any day now. Liza has already made it clear she will never enter the prison. Naomi is going through something terrible, all on her own. There simply is no one else.
I consciously wrestle with my fears, replacing them with grim determination and a surge of unexpected bravery. I can do this. And what’s more… I realise I actually want to. Despite what feels like a significant likelihood of getting stabbed. I want to be strong for Naomi.
Plus, if I get up now, I can even make some good progress on the translation of her sentence before visiting hours start, and take it to show her for encouragement.
Feeling inspired by the knowledge I can actually do something positive in this situation, I jump out of bed, only then noticing Harry behind the breakfast bar, fussing about in the kitchen.
‘Morning, you – I got up early to make us breakfast!’ He holds an egg-covered spatula aloft as evidence. ‘There’s another one of those rainstorms going on – looks like the middle of the night outside. Isn’t it cosy?’
I’m already scrabbling for the laptop and barely hear him.
‘What are you doing?’
I look up and realise the easy smile is already fading from Harry’s face as he takes in the pile of papers, now permanently stacked up on my bedside table, and the laptop already whirring to life at the foot of the bed.
‘Visiting hours don’t start until nine – I’ve got an hour or so to make progress on the translations, before I go to see Naomi later.’ I briefly explain to Harry about Naomi’s call last night and my promise to visit, already half expecting another lecture about choosing to spend my time helping a load of dead-end criminals. In so many words, that’s what he said before I went on the first visit with Marion last week. But, to my surprise, Harry doesn’t say a word, and when I look up he’s focused very intently on measuring water into the coffee machine.
I turn back to the laptop, and have been typing away furiously for several minutes when he finally breaks the silence.
‘Liza got pretty intense last night, didn’t she?’
I frown up at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘All that praying stuff. Thanking Lord Jesus for everything and everyone. I didn’t think she was like that.’
I stare at him. ‘Like what?’
‘You know, one of those religious people who carries on believing, and going on about it, even though they’ve been through terrible tragedies. They lost a daughter, and still manage to believe in God!’ He barks out a cynical laugh.
Irritation surges within me and I feel my cheeks getting redder.
‘I don’t agree,’ I hear myself saying. ‘Can’t you see, it’s what has stopped them from getting bitter? It’s kept them going.’
Harry is frowning at me now. ‘And since when have you been such a devout believer?’
I rub my eyes and force myself to meet his accusatory gaze head-on.
‘I’m not, Harry, and that’s my whole point. I admire their faith. If they can keep hold of it, despite what they’ve been through, and in doing so still find it in themselves to love others and host dinner parties and take in random travellers for practically no rent…’ I wave emphatically at the space around us. ‘Then that makes their faith a good example for me, even though I don’t share it. It’s something to learn from.’
‘Oh, okay, okay, no need to get cross with me over it,’ says Harry with a chuckle. ‘I suppose I see what you mean.’
As I turn back to the computer screen and determinedly keep typing, I decide that he really does not.
But I don’t have time to worry about that now, as I want to print out the first ten pages of Naomi’s sentence, now successfully translated, then get ready and leave with plenty of time to arrive for the start of visiting hours. Not only do I want to see Naomi as soon as possible, but I don’t want to be late for Dad afterwards… I’ve agreed to be at his hotel for late morning, and after last night I feel anxious not to let him down.
Today has to go well.
I pull out the USB stick from the laptop and run to the door.
‘I’m just going downstairs to use their printer,’ I call to Harry, who has spent the last ten minutes arranging and rearranging his hair in the hallway mirror, a tub of gel on the worktop beside him. I fleetingly think this is rather unlike Harry, who usually just rolls out of bed to begin every day, but I don’t allow myself time to dwell on that.
‘Right, babe – I’m leaving in a minute,’ he replies. ‘But I’ll call you to meet somewhere as soon as my classes finish, okay?’
I give him a hasty kiss before trotting down the stairs clutching my USB stick.
Liza is nowhere to be seen, and Roberto is at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. He smiles and waves me through to the computer room without looking up from his crossword.
I load up the document and hit ‘print’, then lean back in the chair and wait as Liza and Roberto’s prehistoric bubble-jet printer painfully rasps its way across each page, line by line. I force my eyes to focus on its laborious progress as each page is slowly disgorged on to the tray, anything but turn around and see the picture again… the picture of the smiling, pretty girl I now know to be Liza and Roberto’s beloved, lost daughter.
But a familiar zooming, whooshing sound coming from the computer’s ancient speakers distracts me. A window has opened up automatically on the screen before me, a little egg timer spinning around briefly before the whole screen is filled with the Skype home page.
Liza and Roberto use Skype?
But the photo that has loaded up before me is not of Liza or Roberto. It is of Harry.
I stare in disbelief at my boyfriend, grinning back at me from the little profile picture next to the familiar blue Skype icon. It’s a photo I took of him years ago, on a rainy trip to Devon with his parents. He’s standing on a windswept hillside wearing that awful bright-red waterproof coat he had for years and years, hair blowing all over the place, smiling warmly back at the camera. At me. I feel suddenly dizzy with nostalgia and longing. That had to be at least two or three years ago, not long after university, before things between us got… however they are now.
Before I fully realise what I’m doing, I move the mouse to click on ‘call history’ at the top of the screen, my hand trembling slightly. As the egg timer goes round and round again, I realise what this means – Harry must have come down here, to Liza and Roberto’s flat, and asked to use the computer and made calls on Skype and not told me. I try to reason with myself that he was probably just calling his parents, or some other relative or friend back home… but if that were the case, why would he go to the trouble of coming down here, and – let’s face it – probably downloading Skype on to this computer, when we have a perfectly good laptop upstairs in the apartment?
A cold shiver of suspicion starts to snake its way down my back.
The call log is a long list of green icon after green icon – dialled calls, one after the other, all the same number.
Saturday, 12th November 09:05
Saturday, 12th November, 09:12
Saturday, 12th November, 11:41
Saturday, 12th November, 11:55
Why does that date ring a bell in my mind? Yes! It was the day I went to the prison with Marion. Hadn’t Harry had to give a class that morning? I can’t remember whether he had been working or not… but either way, it would seem he spent most of the morning sitting here, making calls that were repeatedly left unanswered. My confusion deepens as I keep scrolling down the call list.
Friday, 18th November, 09:22
Friday, 18th November, 09:35
Friday, 18th November, 10:08
The day I went to the embassy. Sebastian had asked me to go on a Friday, when they were closed to the public. The list stretches on to over fifteen attempted calls, all in the three-hour space of time I was out of the house, traversing Quito to reach the British Embassy.
I reach the very last calls in the list.
Thursday, 24th November, 19:26
Thursday, 24th November, 19:30
Thursday, 24th November, 19:32
The night before Dad arrived. Just two days ago. He’d gone downstairs to borrow a corkscrew from Liza. We had a bottle of wine, which I didn’t enjoy because of Harry’s comments about me doing the translations. He’d taken ages down there, then told me Liza wouldn’t stop chatting.
I realise I’m shivering.
All the calls are to an Ecuadorian mobile number, I recognise the country code and ‘99’ prefix meaning it is unmistakably a mobile. None of them lasted more than a few seconds…either they were picked up briefly or cancelled upon answer. Whomever Harry keeps trying to get hold of, they don’t seem to want to talk to him.
I press my fists into my eyes and lose myself in the oblivion of the dark, swirling shapes. None of it makes sense – why would Harry keep calling someone, when they never answer or just cut him off? Why would he secretly use Liza and Roberto’s computer, always waiting until I’m out of the house, or unsuspectingly, naively waiting for him upstairs?
What if these calls are related to Harry’s shouty phone call from our first day here, the one he told me was a travel company? Some deep, sinister instinct tells me there has to be a link between the two.
Harry’s smiling, windswept photo grins out at me from the computer screen and I stare back at it, as voices swirl and clamour through my mind – Marion, driving back from the prison, telling me Naomi wanted to change her mind, but they don’t let you… then Harry himself, shouting down the phone in Spanish, You don’t understand! A sense of foreboding and horror swelling inside me, I stare at the photo and silently ask, Oh Harry, just what is it you are up to here in Ecuador?
***
The prison looks particularly dismal today, in the overcast residues of the downpour. I stand outside and gaze up at it for a moment, the big ugly white building with stained walls and coils of barbed wire crowning its perimeter. I experience an involuntary shiver of fear at the thought of stepping over that threshold on my own. It had taken all my mental strength and determination to get myself ready and out of the apartment, then on to the right bus to bring me here to the most rundown part of the city, despite my discovery of Harry’s illicit phone calls. Frustratingly, he had already left when I went back upstairs to get changed, so I was left with no choice but to press forward with my journey to the prison, except now with a vortex of uncomfortable, unanswered questions churning in my mind.
Now, at the prison gates, I forcibly push all that to the back of my mind for now and focus on Naomi, and the reasons I am doing this. I like her, I want to help her. Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted to do with my life – help people who are less fortunate than me? I think of Joel, and the courage it must take to stand up in court and defend people like him with all the odds against them. If I am ever going to practise law myself I will have to do the same – and worse. Not all cases are won, as Joel’s was. But I will have to dust myself off and fight again, and again, after each one… regardless of whatever turmoil my own life may be in at the time.
Standing on the threshold of the prison, feeling alone and exposed, I realise that, if I go in now, things will never be the same for me. This is not just a routine visit, alongside Marion, and I am no longer just another volunteer passing through. My involvement now goes beyond that… I am visiting Naomi as a friend, out of my own personal determination to help her. Even as I realise this, I think back to my last day at Home from Home before leaving for Ecuador. I would never have imagined that within a few short weeks I would be stepping inside a prison, on my own, to help someone. And once I’ve done this, will I ever be able to go back? Will I be able to press on in my admin job – because, let’s face it, it is an admin job – and settle for leafing through the case folders at the end of the day, only dreaming about being involved directly? Will I have the courage to finally strive for more?
I take a deep breath, step forward and knock on the big iron door before me.
The shutter halfway up the door slides back, a pair of eyes blinks at me, then it slides shut again and the door swings open. A miserable-looking guard wearing a big green raincoat over his uniform nods when I say Naomi’s name and lets me in, glancing at my passport and giving a cursory rummage through my backpack, which is stuffed with chocolate bars and apples and teabags. As I cross the threshold, the step down takes me by surprise and I land heavily in a huge puddle, splashing muddy water up the front of my jeans. My heart hammering in my chest, I slowly pick my way across the courtyard dotted with more puddles reflecting the grey sky and looming dirty prison walls.
‘Kirsty! Over here!’ I look up, clutching my bag protectively to my chest, and it takes me a few moments to recognise the owner of the voice. A tall, elegant girl is leaning against a wall in front of me, flanked by a few other, more ordinary-looking women, all smoking. She’s wearing skin-tight leather trousers showing off very long, slim legs, and a turquoise leopard-print top with long sleeves, also clinging to her enviable figure. It’s Naomi, but she couldn’t look more different to the scruffily dressed, almost childlike girl I met last week.
‘Come over, then!’ she calls, grinning and making an impatient flapping gesture with the hand not holding the cigarette. I resist the urge to run flat out towards her and fall gratefully into her arms. Play it cool, I tell myself, walking as calmly as possible across the courtyard towards her and her group, feeling the eyes of the other women following my every step. I can’t help feeling as nervous as if I were in the school playground and the cool girls had just called me over to hang out with them. Not that I would even know what that felt like.
Naomi teeters forward in her stiletto heels to meet me halfway and wrap me in an enormous hug.
‘You look… amazing!’ I exclaim, unable to hide my surprise. I had been dreading seeing what state she’d be in after the news of her dad, and certainly hadn’t expected this. ‘How are you… how do you feel?’
‘Oh, I’m great,’ Naomi says with a dismissive wave, sending her cigarette flying disdainfully across the courtyard. ‘No point moping about, is there?’ She grabs my hand. ‘Come on, let me introduce you to the girls.’ Then she stops, turns and looks at me again, frowns, and says ‘Wait, Kirsty, are you okay?’ She is peering closely into my face now, so close that I can see the electric blue mascara painstakingly deployed on every lash. ‘You look a bit… rough. No, I’m just going to come out and say it – you look awful.’
Taken completely aback, I look down at my mud-soaked jeans and baggy hoodie, and raise my hands to touch my make-upless face and tied-back hair.
‘Well, it was raining all morning, and I had to travel halfway across Quito…’ I begin defensively. Naomi is holding on to both my hands now.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she says, more gently. ‘I meant you just look… so… stressed. Different to last time. Has something happened?’
Already feeling myself relax in Naomi’s company I am almost overwhelmed with the desire to open up, to tell her how confused and worried I feel about my discovery on the computer this morning. Not only that… but also the underlying sense of loneliness that, if I’m honest with myself, has lingered with me ever since we got here… living side by side with Harry yet feeling further away from him than ever. I really had thought getting out of our daily routine and exploring a new culture together was exactly what our relationship needed. But ever since we arrived in Ecuador the differences between Harry and me have only become more pronounced. More… painful.
To my utter horror and mortification, I realise tears are dribbling unbidden down my cheeks.
‘Right, you’re coming with me,’ Naomi says, sounding appallingly like my mother and tugging on my arm for me to follow her.
Instead of taking me to her room, Naomi continues dragging me by the arm further down her corridor to a small kitchen area at the end. The tiny space is almost entirely taken up with a folding metal table, at which is sat a middle-aged woman in a dressing gown, staring morosely at an unopened Pot Noodle in front of her. A saucepan of water has just started to boil on the little gas stove, the only other item of furniture in the draughty, cramped room.
‘Buenos días, Paula,’ Naomi says briskly, pushing past. ‘We’re just going up to the…’ She flicks her gaze upwards. ‘You know what to do if anyone asks.’
Paula doesn’t look up, even when my bum grazes the back of her head as I squeeze through the gap between her and the wall. ‘Um, sorry, perdóname,’ I mutter as she makes no effort to slide her chair in and let me past.
‘Paula’s a crackhead,’ Naomi tells me matter-of-factly as she indicates for me to follow her. ‘But she won’t say anything about where we’re going.’ She opens a door at the back of the kitchen and we step out on to a flimsy metal fire escape.
‘Where are we going?’ I peer nervously down at the prison courtyard several floors below us, especially the two guards standing directly beneath our feet.
‘The roof.’ Naomi grins wickedly. ‘So you can’t have a full-on crying meltdown yet. You’ve got to pull yourself up.’
Without waiting for a response she whips round, steps up on to a wooden crate I suspect has been left here for this very purpose, reaches above her head and grabs hold of a ledge just above us. She makes a grunting sound and for a moment her stiletto-clad feet flail in the air, level with my face, then her voice is above me, laughing, and she’s lying on her stomach, extending a hand over the edge to me.
‘Come on then!’
I take her hands and do my best to launch myself off from the crate. For a few dizzying seconds I feel nothing below me and only Naomi’s skinny hands gripping my wrists. Then I’m landing on my stomach next to her and rolling over to see the cloudy, grey sky above us, and hear my own laughter joining Naomi’s.
‘Oh, wow, this is actually the prison roof,’ I say stupidly as we haul ourselves to our feet.
‘Yep. Well, the roof of wing B, anyway.’ Naomi releases my hands and brushes the dust off her front. ‘And it’s only accessible from the kitchen on our corridor. I don’t think it’s possible in the other wing – I’ve never seen anyone else up here.’
I follow Naomi’s gaze to the identical roof of wing A running parallel to ours. Our vantage point is just a small rectangle of asphalt with a scattering of gravel, cigarette butts and the odd crisp packet, but it allows a perfect panoramic view of the prison grounds, Quito, and beyond. Lifting my gaze higher than the grey prison courtyard and its smell of cooking wafting up from below us, I drink in the view of the city stretching out beyond it, sunlight just peeking through the clouds after the rain to glint off car windscreens and shop fronts, and the expanse of dark-green mountains rising up behind it all.
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ Naomi says quietly, coming to stand beside me. ‘From up here, I feel like I’m actually in Ecuador… experiencing it properly. Seeing the country’s beautiful side.’ She turns and spins on the spot, taking in the whole view – the tall spires of the cathedral outlined on the horizon in the south, the flashing billboards of cinemas and shopping centres in the north, and all around us the mountains. ‘Up here is the closest I ever feel to being free.’
Naomi stops spinning and laughs. ‘God, that was cheesy, wasn’t it?’ She nods at my bulging hoodie pocket. ‘Are you going to get that chocolate out then?’
I dig out a chocolate bar and throw it to her.
‘Ohhhhh…. Twix,’ Naomi murmurs, flopping down on the floor and ripping open the packet. ‘How I’ve missed Twixes.’
I can’t help but laugh. She looks totally ridiculous, taking great ravenous bites out of the chocolate bar, her mouth chewing exaggeratedly half-open like a cow’s and her face radiating bliss.
‘I’m sorry about just now, downstairs,’ I mutter, sitting down beside her. ‘I certainly didn’t mean to come here and pour out my problems to you.’
Naomi smiles. ‘Don’t worry. You’re far away from home, your family, friends… I know how hard that is, trust me. You don’t have to be in prison to feel lonely, and need someone to confide in.’ She pauses to take another big bite of chocolate. ‘I’ve bawled my eyes out to Marion and Gabi so many times over the years. Even that poor bloke from the embassy has had me snivel and sob all over him before.’
‘Sebastian?’
Even through my anguish, I feel a strange jolt of something when saying his name out loud.
‘That’s the one – poor bastard. It was awful.’ She puts her hands over her face in exaggerated shame. ‘The day he came to tell me about Maya being in hospital, with her appendix, I just couldn’t get a grip on myself. Got big black mascara tears and snot all down his shirt – he just sat and hugged me. And I don’t think they’re supposed to do that.’
For a moment I leave aside my own pain to imagine Sebastian crouched alongside Naomi in the tiny floor space of her cell, holding her as she cried for her daughter.
Naomi fumbles in a back pocket for something.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Um, no, course not. It’s your… roof.’
She lights the cigarette and closes her eyes in bliss, exhaling a plume of smoke. Then her eyes flick open again and she puts her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry! How rude of me. D’ya want one?’
I haven’t smoked a cigarette since I was fifteen and my friend Chantal and I used to hide in the public toilets by the beach after school, huddled over our illicit purchases, trying to light them against the evening sea breeze that came in through the broken window. It had lasted about two weeks, then someone walked in on us and I jumped so quickly into one of the cubicles that I dropped the cigarette and burnt a hole in the sleeve of my school jumper. Later that evening my mum saw it, and that was the end of that.
Oh, to hell with it.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Right, I’m going to light this for you and then you can tell me what’s happened… if you want.’
I lean forward and let Naomi light it for me, then take a clumsy drag. It tastes just as disgusting as I expect it to, but the dizzy feeling spreads pleasantly from behind my eyes down into my toes. I watch the smoke float away on the breeze. I think of Harry’s strange behaviour since we arrived in Ecuador, the phone calls, the secrecy, and decide to spare Naomi the details. After all, I’m supposed to be here to comfort her, not the other way around. Nevertheless, the desire to open up to her is almost overwhelming. I realise how much I’ve missed having someone to talk to – my friends, Chloe, even my mum. I look over at Naomi, sitting cross-legged on the prison roof, waiting patiently for me to talk. I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to talk to her a bit….
‘I just thought it would be different,’ I say eventually, choosing my words carefully. ‘You know, coming here with Harry. I thought it would do our relationship good, but actually it’s like he’s become a different person out here.’ I take another drag of the cigarette to hide the wobble in my voice. ‘And now, today, I’ve become sure he’s hiding something from me.’ Saying the words out loud makes them more real, cementing the terrible fact in my mind. I swipe my sleeve across my face to hide the tears that are now spilling over. ‘I don’t know what yet, and I’m going to have to confront him…’
‘He’s not into drugs, is he?’ Naomi chuckles, leaning over to punch me playfully on the leg.
I know she’s only kidding. I know she’s just trying to cheer me up. But even so, I can’t quite bring myself to laugh back. Three weeks ago, I would have laughed out loud at the very idea. But then, three weeks ago, Harry and I were still safely coexisting in Fenbridge. Since arriving in Ecuador, I’ve begun to realise anything can happen.
‘Anyway, sorry, Naomi.’ I straighten up, deciding it’s definitely time to change the subject. ‘I came here to cheer you up. Not pour out my woes.’
‘But you have cheered me up!’ Naomi’s face lights up. ‘You brought me Twix bars, for fuck’s sake! And… it’s been really nice to just, like… hang out.’ She shrugs at the space around us. ‘With someone who’s not, you know, from here. It’s like a bubble in this place, the same faces every bloody day. And there are only so many conversations you can have about who has to wash the dishes, who blocked the toilet, whose turn it is to send out for cigarettes… without going totally mad.’
I feel disproportionately happy to hear this. We smile at each other, and suddenly I am filled with something more than just the pity and admiration I felt towards Naomi on my first visit here. I look at her with a new trust, and the face smiling back at me is suddenly no longer that of a prisoner, a person from a different world… it is the face of a friend, a contemporary, someone I could be having a drink with at the pub. Someone also here in Ecuador, far away from home, facing a situation so far out of her own control and understanding.
‘So… how is your dad doing?’ I finally brave the question. ‘Is there any… news?’
Naomi’s smile fades and something about her face visibly hardens. Looking down and realising the chocolate wrapper in her hands is now empty, she drops it and fumbles for another cigarette.
She takes a long drag, staring fixedly at mountains on the horizon, her hazel-brown eyes suddenly cold.
‘They’ve said he’ll probably only last another week or so,’ she says finally, still staring into the distance. ‘It’s reached what they call the “end stage” faster than expected.’
‘God… I’m so sorry,’ I whisper uselessly.
‘His organs are starting to fail,’ she continues matter-of-factly. ‘So it’s just a case of “keeping him comfortable” now, that’s what Mum says.’
Abruptly she yanks something else from her back pocket and shoves it into my hands.
‘Look, this is us in Great Yarmouth, years ago. I was still living with them then, just before I met my ex and got pregnant with Dario. My sister took the picture. That’s the last holiday we went on as a family.’
I look down at the photo, remembering it from my visit last week, when it had been stuck up on the wall beside the bunk beds. In it, Naomi is wearing a bright-purple hoodie and beaming back at the camera, with none of the hardness in her face that I now see. Standing between her parents she has one arm around each of their shoulders. Both shorter than her, and smiling awkwardly at the camera in that way only older people can, they look like anyone’s parents – normal, kind, safe.
I hand the photo back to her. ‘You know, you can talk to me whenever you want. I can come and visit again.’ Said out loud the words sound empty, but I mean them from the depths of my heart.
‘Thanks.’ She stares down at the photo for a few more seconds, then slides it back into her pocket. ‘I know it’s silly to carry it around with me all the time, especially in a place like this. But it helps me feel closer to them somehow.’ We sit in silence for several more minutes, watching the traffic lights change colour in the town centre below us and the line of cars snake its way out of town towards the mountainside in the distance.
‘Hey, I’m sorry about that phone call last night.’ Naomi finally breaks the silence. ‘I was just having a low moment.’ She pulls herself into a crouching position and starts gathering up the chocolate wrappers from the floor. ‘I really love my dad. He was always the one I was closest to, more than my mum, you know?’
I really don’t, I think wistfully.
‘But you can’t let yourself mope. If I’d carried on today the way I was yesterday… fuck. That’s why I tarted myself up this morning.’ She stands up and makes an exaggerated pirouette, laughing. ‘In this place, once you sink into a depression you just don’t get out of it again. I’ve seen it happen.’
Fleetingly I think of Paula, probably still in the kitchen below us with her Pot Noodle. ‘You’re incredibly strong.’
She chuckles again. ‘You want to see strong? Come on, let’s go and introduce you to some of the girls. You haven’t got much longer, it’s nearly lunchtime and they’ll come round kicking out the visitors soon.’
We scramble back down on to the fire escape, past Paula, and back into the maze of corridors towards the main prison courtyard. As we head along the outdoor corridor containing the handicraft workshops I notice heads turn to stare at us, probably wondering whether I’m the latest arrival and what I’m in for. I stick close behind Naomi, although the feeling of nerves and vulnerability I experienced on the first visit with Marion has receded; already I feel more at ease here. Naomi seems to know everyone, waving and stopping to greet people with cheek-kisses and fist bumps.
We stop outside one of the workshop doors and Naomi leans around it, yelling ‘Arianaaaaaaa!’
After a few moments a young woman comes out, scowling and dusting off her hands, which I notice in horror are covered in a thick white powder.
Surely it can’t be… cocaine?
‘Jesus, do you want to shout any louder, woman?’ she says to Naomi in thickly accented English, then the two women are hugging and clapping each other on the back.
‘Eeeeeek! You’re covering me in flour!’ Naomi shrieks, pulling away and frantically dusting herself off. Only then do I notice that the other woman is wearing a dark-blue apron and a hairnet over her long, dyed-red ponytail.
Flour. Of course. It’s only flour.
‘Kirsty, this is Ariana, she’s from Italy.’ We exchange a soggy, floury handshake. ‘She’s here for the same thing as me.’ Naomi answers my unspoken question.
‘Er, I do not think so!’ Ariana laughs. ‘I was carrying half the amount you were. And it was not inside my stomach.’
Naomi punches her playfully on the arm. ‘What, and strapping it to your bra is a much cleverer idea?’ She turns to me.
‘Ariana was a “newbie” like me,’ she explains, laughing cynically. ‘One offer from the wrong person, one very tempting offer, the chance to fix your financial problems and start again… that’s all it took for us stupid suckers. Sneaked around for months… lied to our families… got caught on the first run.’
Something about Naomi’s words sends a shiver through me. Lying, sneaking around… who has been doing that lately?
‘I did not just lie to my family,’ Ariana chips in and shakes her head, presumably at her own foolishness. ‘I created a whole pretend life for myself. Because it took so long to organise – the collection, the flight, the dates. I took the bus to Roma every weekend and told my parents I had started art school.’
There it is again, a cold slither of something down my spine. Suspicion, fear… Harry’s face swims before my eyes, my memory filled with the desperation in his voice as he begged me to agree to come on this trip. It would certainly explain the weird phone calls, his determination to come on this journey, his erratic behaviour before we left and secretive ways since… Even as my more rational side tells me to stop being silly, to get back into the real world, my fears only grow as I listen to the very real women before me telling me their indisputably true stories.
‘…Whereas there are people in here who got away with it loads of times,’ Naomi continues, oblivious to the inner torment and suspicion she has sparked off in me. ‘People who kept going back and forth – Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela. Made their money and paid off their mortgages. They still got caught though, in the end.’ She laughs bitterly. ‘Meanwhile others were involved right from the top – not mules like us, but the people running the mules. Years of surveillance and planning before they get caught and put in this place.’ She scowls, scuffing her foot against the concrete step in front of us. ‘Although, to be fair, most of them aren’t in this place – most of the bosses are in the men’s prison, just biding their time until they can get out and carry on.’ Naomi doesn’t try to hide the bitterness in her voice. She turns back to Ariana. ‘Is Marta in there with you? She wasn’t at singing this morning, and she never misses it. I’m worried about her.’
Ariana disappears back into the room, which, after peering my head around the door I realise to be a combined kitchen, bakery and storeroom. Sacks of flour and rice line the walls, and a group of women stand around a table in the middle, wearing the same blue aprons, rolling out and kneading dough. Others pass back and forth carrying pots of water, tubs of tomatoes, whole lettuces, and heavy-looking, sealed cardboard boxes. The overall atmosphere is one of focused, contented hard work. I get a sudden flashback to my brief stint in the kitchen at Burger King in my first year of university. I stuck it out as long as I could, but in the summer it got to over forty degrees out the back, and the sight and smell of the burgers plopping out of the never-ending rotation grill dripping grease and fat eventually became too much for me. I feel a flush of admiration for these women, barely chatting and all totally absorbed in their tasks, which I do not know whether they are even getting paid for. Watching them, I find it utterly impossible to imagine they are all drug traffickers, thieves, or worse…
Ariana reappears with a small, middle-aged woman beside her. Something about her immediately does not seem to fit in here. Her dark hair is highlighted gold and styled into gentle waves. Under her apron she’s wearing a dark-green polo neck, a little silver crucifix pendant visible at the front. As we exchange the customary cheek-kiss I notice she’s wearing a full face of make-up, including perfectly applied lip liner, which for some reason reminds me so poignantly of my mum that I have to swallow back a lump in my throat. I really must phone her.
‘Marta…’ Naomi’s tone is much softer, none of the boisterous camaraderie she displayed with Ariana. She makes a small gesture to me and leads Marta by the arm to a space a few feet away, just out of earshot. I watch them talk, or rather, I watch Naomi talk, leaning down solicitously to her friend and speaking with wide eyes and emphatic gestures, seemingly giving some kind of pep talk. I remember the no-nonsense way she marched me through the prison earlier. Marta doesn’t seem to be replying much, but I see her nodding and occasionally reaching up to touch the little cross around her neck. I get the impression she is either about to burst into tears, or shout at Naomi to leave her alone.
Finally, Naomi seems to have finished and is rubbing Marta briskly on the arms while nodding her head insistently, their faces inches apart. She seems to be saying ‘Okay? OKAY?’ Marta is nodding furiously and dabbing at her eyes, then she reaches up and envelops Naomi in the longest hug I’ve ever seen. When Naomi finally disentangles herself and bounds back over to me, Marta turns and walks down the corridor away from us, without saying goodbye, her apron still on.
‘What was all that about?’ I’m relieved Naomi is back at my side, as Ariana went back to work several minutes ago and I was starting to feel the eyes of several of the women in the kitchen boring into me. Every time I looked up I would see them glance away, but not before I noticed a large woman with a tattoo of what looked like a killer whale on her arm mutter something to the girl next to her, then let out a throaty laugh. I realise my newfound bravado about being inside the prison definitely only applies when Naomi is within a three-foot radius of me.
‘That’s Marta,’ Naomi explains unnecessarily. ‘She’s going to be here until she’s past sixty.’
We stand and watch the small, neat woman walking slowly away from us.
‘What did she do?’
‘Do? Marta? She is one of the few people here who literally did nothing.’ Naomi starts to steer me away from the doorway and prying eyes, in the same motherly way she just handled Marta. ‘Come on, you need to get out of here soon before they start looking for you.’
As we cross the rest of the corridor towards the prison exit, Naomi tells me matter-of-factly that Marta used to live in Spain, and had been back in Quito visiting her adult children when some men broke into her house and held her whole family at gunpoint, insisting she carry a large quantity of cocaine back to Spain with her the following day.
‘What do you mean – some men? Who the hell were they? How did they know she lived in Spain? How could they get away with…’
Naomi is shrugging. ‘She never told us much more than that. There must have been a connection somewhere, somehow. But Marta only ever gave us her brief, dignified version of things. And she doesn’t seem the sort to lie, does she?’
‘No.’ I realise my legs are trembling.
‘Her family has done a lot. She’s seen a number of lawyers. But any advance in her case is going to take a long time. It seems like they were powerful people, the fuckers that got her in this situation. That changes everything.’
We’ve nearly reached the main exit now, and I see grumpy raincoat man look over at us, frown at his watch, then start to plod across the damp courtyard towards us.
I suddenly remember the printed-out translation I brought with me, now crumpled and slightly damp in the depths of my handbag. Even so, I take it out to show Naomi, feeling inexplicably shy.
‘Oh my God, you’re actually doing this for real, aren’t you?’ she cries, holding up the wodge of paper and spinning around on the spot. ‘I can’t tell you what this means to me.’
She stops to scowl at the guard, who has left his glum vigil at the prison door to step closer to us, sternly holding up a hand and indicating to Naomi not to go any further.
‘Yes, yes, keep your raincoat on, I’m not going to escape,’ Naomi taunts him in Spanish. ‘Looks like this is where our paths must divide,’ she says drily, then hugs me. ‘Thank you, Kirsty,’ she mutters into my hair. ‘Seriously. For coming today, for all you’re doing for me. Don’t let that stupid boyfriend get you down. And please come back to see me any time you need to talk.’ She pulls away and her bright-blue eyes flash into mine, suddenly appearing childlike again. ‘Or just come back and see me anyway.’
I promise I will, and to bring more chocolate as well. As I turn to leave, Naomi thrusts a crumpled envelope into my hands. ‘That’s for Gabi, give her my love – I hope she’ll send a photo once the baby’s born.’ I shove the letter into my pocket away from the guard’s invading eyes, then impulsively hug her again.
I step over the prison threshold into the rain-soaked streets to go and meet my father, and wish, for a strange, fleeting moment, I could stay inside.