Trisha just came in there. She burst through the door and whispered that she’d heard me creeping about up here. This room’s too small for two people. It’s a closet really, and with the chair behind the door, there’s barely room for two sets of feet. She stood in the room, realized that her belly was inches away from my face, and stepped back out onto the shallow landing. Then she found that she was too far away to whisper properly. She moved forward, standing on the raised threshold, keeping her balance by holding on to the wall as I, lowering my voice so as not to waken Margie, asked her to get out, this was a private study, and anyway, what was she doing up at quarter to two in the morning? She said she might well ask me the same question. What was I doing and what was that on the computer screen? I kept my finger on the enter button so the text disappeared up and away. I said it was just some work, and listen, you, this is my house. I can do what I flipping well like. (Why can’t I remember to swear at people when I’m trying to be angry?)
Trisha asked what all the pictures on the walls were. What were the photos stuck to the skylight for? You’ll make the room dark, you’ll strain your eyes. I lied and said I only came up here at night anyway, and what was she doing up? Go and have a cup of tea if you can’t sleep. Fuck off downstairs, in other words.
She got embarrassed and looked at the floor, tottering on the step, staying far enough away from me to remain decent. “I do worry about you, Lachie,” she said, and for an awful moment I thought she was going to come on to me, rub her ghastly old body on me, touch me. “I’ve never liked you, I’ve made that plain in the past, but I can see that you are a very good father and I greatly appreciate you standing by Susan Louise.”
“Her name’s Susan,” I said, finding, to my surprise, that I was speaking quite loud. “Susan. Or Susie. That’s her name.” It was alarm, I think, at the mental image of Auntie Trisha pole-dancing in a thong and brogues.
“Well, she’ll always be Susan Louise to me,” she said, stepping away and nodding, pleased that she had said what she came to say. “I’ll leave you alone.” She shut the door and threw it open again immediately. “Unless you’d like a cup of tea?”
“No.”
Now I’m bristling with guilt and shame. I feel as if Trisha’s just peered into my brain. What I’m writing is private but it’s not shockingly private. I’m not looking at porno on the Internet or anything, though I might if I knew how. Had I been jerking off when she came in, I’d probably have felt less embarrassed. The bit of the page I was most worried she might see was the bit about Susie maybe having an affair with Gow. Is that what I’m most worried about? Being superfluous?
I feel odd writing now. I need more privacy if I’m to write in here. Susie had a padlock on the outside of the door, but I unscrewed the attachment from the wall because I didn’t have a key. I’ll put a Yale on the door, one that’ll lock automatically when I come in and go out. In the meantime I feel this room is very compromised. I don’t want Trisha coming in here, but I can’t watch her all the time. I’ll leave a bit of paper behind the door so I’ll know if someone’s been in during the day.
There was a line when I got to the prison door. I and the people off the Glasgow bus had to wait outside in the freezing gale, all shivering with sideways hair, stamping to keep warm while they processed the group already in the reception area. In front of me was a gang of three, obviously related, female troglodytes. They were wearing identical purple anoraks with the hoods up and smoking wee rollies, held between gnawed and nailless fingers, sucking the smoke through atavistic, stubby teeth.
Their chiefess looked up at me. “Ye right?”
I nodded and looked away.
“Yur gonnae freeze out there; mon intae the doorway.”
I would have looked like the world’s snootiest asshole if I’d turned down her offer of shelter. I had to squeeze in between the three of them and smile cheerfully while they made a series of almost incomprehensible, largely dirty jokes about me not telling their man about this or us being engaged now. At full height, not one of them reached my nipples.
Eventually our group was called into the reception area, and we had to tell them our names and who we were there to see. I was stumped for an answer when they asked me why I was there. The guard had to prompt me. “To see your wife…?” she suggested.
I had to hand over my mobile phone and sign for it (everyone was very impressed that I had one) and let them check any gifts I had brought in (took ages). Then I had to go and sit in a waiting room behind a glass wall. The heavy door shut behind the last person and locked with a definite “click.” There were gray plastic chairs clamped to the wall and ladies’ and gents’ toilets at one end of the room. The three women sat near me, as if we were there together. Around the room sat sad, damp visitors in ones and twos, some with small children, some barely adult themselves. Antidrug posters adorned the walls, along with bus timetables for Glasgow and Edinburgh and notices advertising support groups for the families of prisoners. A teenage boy with the most tenuous mustache I’ve ever seen kept getting up and going to the toilet. Every time he came out he was smiling sneakily. He was either wanking in there or drawing on the walls.
I allowed myself a bribe toffee. Eventually, twenty minutes before the visit was due to begin, an unsmiling guard came through and stood outside the glass wall. The locked door buzzed open, we were ushered into the corridor, and then a second door, leading into the prison proper, buzzed open. We all walked through, the guard made sure the door was shut behind us, and we followed her to the second waiting room. I had another toffee. I don’t know why they had to keep us there for so long, but it was another gray room with the same haranguing posters. The troglodyte family started laughing at something, hee-hawing through smoker’s phlegm, rocking back and forth in their chairs, elbowing each other. A guard came through the door and flicked a finger at me, motioning me to follow him. He took me into a side room off the main corridor. There was a narrow table, a white curtain, and a burly male guard standing next to a sharps bin, pulling on latex gloves. I stalled at the door.
“Mr. Harriot,” said the first man, “under the Prisoners and Young Offenders’ Institutions Scotland Rules 1994, we are authorized to search you prior to your visit with your wife.”
I looked back at the open door. They were going to search me, strip me and stick a finger up my arse in a room with an open door. I managed a strangled “No,” but it was so small I don’t think they heard it.
“We are authorized to ask you to take your jacket off.”
“My jacket?”
“Yes, sir, your jacket. Please, take it off. Do you have any sharp instruments on you? Any syringes or knives that we should know about?”
The guard took my jacket, stroking it carefully, while the other man patted me everywhere, my underarms, between my legs, the soles of my shoes. His fingers brushed the underside of my balls and made me wince. I know he noticed. He paused momentarily, cringing, I hope, and then looked in my mouth and got me to waggle my tongue around. They looked through the stuff Susie’d asked me to bring. The waiting room was chock full of suspicious and desperate characters. Why search me?
“Because, sir, you are a doctor and we have reason to believe that your wife is suicidal.”