She opened all the windowed envelopes as she waited for the water. The low rumble of the kettle mercifully rose to mask the sound of her mother dripping milk back into the bowl from her spoon.
She left the brown envelope unopened, staring down at it as if she could divine its message through some psychic gift.
SL. Steven Lamb.
Secrets. Codes. Intrigue.
Something meant only for Steven’s eyes and not for hers.
To Lettie, there was no such thing as a good secret. If something was good, you didn’t keep it a secret—you told everyone and bought Mr. Kipling French Fancies for tea.
She frowned at the envelope and stacked it onto the pile of bills, then poured the water onto the bags and went to the fridge.
“Did you use all the milk?”
Nan spooned sodden cereal into her mouth. “Milkman will be here soon.”
Lettie thumped the fridge door shut and poured the tea into the sink, bags and all—banging the mugs down on the draining board.
Nan shrugged. “These Weetabix suck it up like sponges.”
It was too much.
Lettie grabbed up the brown envelope and ripped it open. Nan eyed her carefully.
“Is that a bill too, then?”
Lettie scanned the page. A meaningless number at the top; not the date. The same as the other two letters. And a brief message.
Good news for whom? Her? Unlikely. Steven? Just as unlikely.
If this was from that girl. If that girl was pregnant. If the baby was due … Only a stupid slag in expectation of a council house could possibly think
Lettie almost squealed with the unfairness of it all. Just as things were looking up! Why could nothing go right and
She almost called Steven downstairs, but the thought of confronting him about something like this while he stood all tousled and sleepy eyed in his little-boy pajamas was more than she could bear.
After a few seconds of brooding, Lettie lit the gas ring and—ignoring her mother’s tutting—burned the letter.
Arnold Avery’s trinket box was full to overflowing. In a few short weeks he had stuffed it with careful observations of casual slips, sneaky shortcuts, skirted regulations, and the failing fabric of the very walls around him. He was almost spoiled for choice.
The keys were the most attractive option—stolen from Ryan Finlay or pressed furtively into his disgusting soap, he could make a mold. Into that mold he would pour wood filler of the type used to repair nicks and chips in old furniture; there was some in the workshop. A coat of varnish to seal and strengthen and he would have the means to stroll from his cell, from his block, from … who knew where? He had narrowed it down to two keys—one opened both the double doors onto the block, the other unlocked one of the four gates in the chain-link which lined the prison wall. Two keys might be enough. One on one side of the soap, one the other. Avery spent long hours practicing little other than the sleight of hand he might need to complete the task—pressing his toothbrush into the bar, gauging the exact degree of push that would yield a workable mold, and rewarding himself with glimpses of the boy reflected in the wing mirror. He rarely allowed himself more—even when he got two perfect impressions in under five seconds. Time—of which he’d once had so much—now seemed precious and fleeting, and Avery kept himself from SL’s photograph as much as possible. He knew that whole days might be lost in the fantasies he wove around the picture. Whole days that it was now vital to spend getting out of prison and replacing the fantasy with the real thing.
He continued to work on the bars of his window at night—his oh-so-versatile toothbrush exposing ever-increasing inches of bar, but with no end in sight either literally or figuratively. Avery didn’t care. His prison-nurtured patience was refined and he continued to work on the window because every grain of grey mortar dust that coated his fingers symbolized potential progress to a goal so desirable that he finally understood what the hell Buddhism was all about.
Avery made a couple more forays into engaging other cons in conversation. Careful ventures which nonetheless earned him one swift “Fuck off, nonce,” and one kick so close to his balls as made no difference, in that it left him curled on the lino, hoarse with fear and hatred—before Andy Ralph stepped between him and his assailant.
So he returned to Ellis, but found there had been a change in the big man’s demeanor. From calm to twitchy; from open to brooding and irritable by turn.
Something had happened.
He had no time to waste waiting for Ellis’s fugue to be over, so he inquired and Ellis told him. Simple as that.
