Chapter Five

      The thing that no one ever told you about life on the inside, Jake Keane often thought, was that it was the little things that got you through each and every day. Small victories were what made all the difference between surviving, versus a day where you’d gladly hang yourself off a light fitting just to escape the place, just to experience some sort of freedom, before you completely forgot what it ever tasted like in the first place.

      Yet just the tiniest little thing could help you sidetrack the black dog of depression that haunted everyone here and survive another interminable day, each one so long that sometimes even a single hour dragged by like a month. Jake had been reading a lot of Virginia Woolf lately, an author who really seemed to understand what incarceration felt like, and could fully understand what she meant when she wrote that lasting through a day was relatively easy: it was the hours in between that nearly killed you.

      There were times when he’d look at the clock at eight in the evening, then congratulate himself on having survived a whole entire hour since seven. And the next challenge to himself would then be to last all the way up until nine. That was how you got by, he now knew, lasting like that, from minute to minute, then from hour to hour. Till dark, till lockdown, till blessed silence and the deep joy of being able to say to yourself, that’s that then. Another day survived. Another one ticked off.

      But no doubt about it, little things helped. Like landing a window seat in the canteen at mealtimes. Like a meal that you could actually eat, one that didn’t look and taste like cat food and come swimming in congealed grease and fat. Getting a bit of sunshine during exercise breaks in the yard outside, the only time in the long, long day you ever got to breathe anything other then the foul, stale air inside that stank worse than twenty minging gym bags. Even on days when the heavens opened and it bucketed down, Jake still went out there for the single hour they were permitted, never caring that he was getting drenched through to the bone. Anything, just to taste proper clean air. Amazing himself at just how much he missed it, at how little he’d appreciated it back in the days when he was a free man.

      A good day could be one where he’d successfully cadge a fag, then trade it in for a decent book that might keep him going for days. Not one from the library, they were worse than useless. Some of the lads ripped pages out of them, sometimes to use for rolling joints, sometimes just out of pure badness, so you’d come to a critical plot point and ten pages would be missing. Books the screws smuggled in from outside were miles better. Cost you in the long run, but it was worth it. Jake had learned that one early on.

      And reading was getting him through this. Keeping his nose stuck in a book and well out of everyone else’s way. Because if there was a survival manual in here, it was this; head down, mouth shut, make neither friends nor enemies, be as neutral as Switzerland, blend in to the background like wallpaper. Strive to be someone people neither like nor dislike, then just forget about the minute you’re out of their sight. And the golden rule; above all, never get involved.

      His long-term survival mechanism was to keep quiet, keep to himself and at all costs, steer clear of all trouble. He got on reasonably well with the screws too, who from time to time would do him the odd favour. One even enrolled him on an Open University course, English and Psychology, which he loved and worked hard at. In his first year here, he’d done a TEFL course too and had surprised himself not only by thoroughly enjoying learning all the endless intricacies of the English language, but by getting a first class honour in it too, graduating top of his class.

      Studying was a wonderful and a welcome distraction, gave him that extra bit of privacy too. When the others were on at him to play soccer in the yard during exercise break, he’d roll his eyes and indicate the pile of books on his knee that he had to wade through. And they’d jokingly slag him off and call him the Professor and leave him alone, in peace. Which suited.

      You lived for visiting day, everyone did. Got you out of your routine, shook things up a bit. Every Wednesday, between two and four; trouble was though, you only got to see your family for about half an hour of that. The rest of the time, they’d be on the outside queuing to get in, doing security checks that would put the one at the airport to shame. Jake always felt sorriest for the wives and girlfriends traipsing in through all weathers, wheeling buggies and strollers, waiting outside in the freezing cold for hours just to get thirty lousy minutes with a loved one. And not even alone time; you were stuck in the visitors’ room with half the prison looking at you. But Christ, what that half hour meant to you, if you were on the inside.

      His main visitor these days was his mam, Imelda. Sixty-five years old and yet she’d still battle her way on two buses, plus the mile-long uphill road from bus stop to prison gates, not to mention the hour-long wait she’d then have to get through security. And all so she could just to get to see her youngest son for half an hour, one day a week. But she never once missed coming, not even when her arthritis was at her, not even last winter when she had the flu. It was heartbreaking. Always there with a weak smile for him, always putting on a brave face, never letting on how deeply ashamed she must be. Wearing her good coat and the special perfume she only ever wore either to weddings or funerals. She knew he had no one else to visit him, so she never once let him down.

      Tough love was his mam’s thing, though from where Jake was sitting on the far side of the grille from her, it often felt more like soft hate. Bloody holiday camp in here, she’d gripe at him, though Jake knew her well enough to know this was her reverse psychology way of trying to cheer him up. Sure, what have you to do only lie around reading all your books all day, she’d tease him, though they both knew that was about as far from the truth as you could get. And would you just look at this place, she’d gesture around her, it’s like a three-star hotel. You sleep in a room with its own telly, where the quilt covers match the curtains and you get three hot meals served up to you a day and what’s more, you even get paid an allowance by the gobshite government for doing the time in here.

      None of this was strictly true, but if it helped his mam get by imagining that he was living like a guest in the Holiday Inn, then it suited Jake to let her continue on in the fantasy.

      Then just as she was leaving at the end of each visit, she’d reluctantly pull her good coat and woolly hat back on, the ones she always saved for Sunday Mass. It was a small, insignificant thing, but one that always seemed to stab right at the bottom of Jake’s heart. That his mother alone, out of everyone he knew and had ever known, had put herself out so much, that she’d even got herself all dressed up just to spend thirty short minutes with him.

      Aside from her though, only solicitors had special visitors’ privileges. If you’d a trial or an appeal coming up, your solicitor could arrange to see you at any time and the wardens had no choice but to let them. Not that this had ever once happened to Jake. His trial was nearly two years ago and even then he’d been on the free legal aid, which meant he got a well-intentioned but utterly inexperienced law graduate who looked about fifteen and who almost gave himself an anxiety stroke at the very