Page 3 of By His Side
“Difficult.” Katherine sounded guilty, as well as she might.
I picked up a pen and doodled on one of the post its, my brain deciding to draw prison bars. “What do you mean by difficult?”
“Moody.”
“He’s in prison. He’s hardly going to be full of the joys of spring.”
“More moody than most, then. Until a year or two ago, he was still shouting his innocence from the rooftops to anyone who cared to listen.”
“What happened a year or two ago?”
“Do you want the official version or the unofficial version?”
“Both.”
Katherine let out a little sigh. “Official version is that he realized the error of his ways and accepted his role in what happened, attended all the group sessions, and showed remorse.”
“And the unofficial version?”
“That he did what he needed to do to get parole, said what he needed to say.”
I grimaced. He wouldn’t be the first, but it was never what you wanted to hear as a probation officer. Katherine made a shushingsound, which I assumed was for baby Oliver rather than me. “I’m going to have to go, Darien. Oliver’s nappy needs changing. Which is Sod’s Law when I’ve just got him to doze. Now, I’m going to have to wake him up to change his nappy.”
“The joys of motherhood,” I teased.
“Yeah.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m not complaining, really.”
“You are, but that’s fine. A parent’s allowed to. It doesn’t mean you love him any less.”
“See,” she said, “it’s advice like that, which makes you such a fantastic probation officer.”
I rolled my eyes at the praise. “Yeah, yeah. I do my best.”
“You do better than your best. One more thing before you go.” She sounded serious.
“What?”
“Don’t fall for him.”
For a moment, I was stunned into silence. “Fall for who? Felix Church?”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
I laughed at the absurdity of the idea. “You don’t need to tell me that.”
“Good! I just felt like it needed saying.”
I was still shaking my head at the strange comment by the time we said our farewells and hung up. It seemed Katherine was already going a bit doolally from lack of sleep. Fall for one of my clients. As if.
Chapter Two
Darien
Tension had me gripping the steering wheel too tightly as Wormwood Scrubs, or The Scrubs, as it was often nicknamed, came into view. I visited a lot of prisons in London, but this was one of the more distinctive ones, with its twin turrets of red and white brick. It was an understandably slow process to gain admittance to the prison even if you visited regularly and staff recognized your face, a plethora of security checks needing to be carried out, including being patted down by a burly prison officer and having a sniffer dog dig its nose into your crotch, neither of those activities half as fun as they sounded. I understood its necessity, though. Even the most straitlaced of government employees had the potential to be corrupted if the circumstances were right and the stakes high enough.
Once in the building, a prison officer led me through a series of locked gates and then to a small seated area to await Felix Church being escorted to the room where we’d meet. Left to my own devices,I squeezed my fingers inside my collar to cool down, regretting the tie. Why had I worn one when I didn’t most of the time? What was I trying to prove? That I was super professional? That there was a huge divide between myself and someone like Felix?
If so, that deserved some contemplation when my approach was usually the opposite, my ethos to be friendly and put them at ease. But then I’d never had a client so notorious before. Giving up on the tie, whatever its purpose might be, I unfastened it and shoved it in my pocket before undoing my top button. I immediately felt more like myself rather than someone playing dress-up.
