Belinda Bauer - Blacklands

By nightfall he was aching and exhausted but there was a patch of newly turned, newly weeded black earth in the garden, seeded and marked in neat rows with string, and protected from cats and birds by a canopy of chicken wire.

As he drifted off to sleep, Steven thought that his spade had never felt so right in his hands as it had today, and that Arnold Avery and Uncle Billy and the Sheepsjaw Incident seemed like a bad dream he had once had as a very small and distant boy.

WHEN SEAN ELLIS’S HOT WIFE BURST INTO TEARS HE WAS shocked, then embarrassed by the outburst. He was not a man who liked to show emotion in public. Even when the judge had sentenced him to a minimum of sixteen years, he’d maintained his composure, and had turned to wink reassuringly at his wife as he was taken down to the cells.

Now, as she bawled, his first look was around at his fellow cons to gauge their reactions. When he saw only mild interest, he turned his attention back to his wife, whose name was Hilary.

“Hilly,” he said softly, “what’s up, baby?”

Hilary Ellis bawled harder into her clenched fists, her face becoming hot with emotion, her cheeks streaking with mascara.

“You don’t want me anymore.”

“What?”

“You don’t want me anymore!”

Sean Ellis was confused. He adored his wife. He missed his wife so badly sometimes it hurt. He wanted her—had always wanted her—and had never wanted anybody else since he met her. The torture of being in prison was not his confinement, but the fear that she would gradually drift away from him; that she would start to leave longer and longer gaps between visits; and that one day he would receive, not a visit from his hot wife, but divorce papers from a cold lawyer. The near expectation of those divorce papers had kept Sean Ellis awake at nights for two long years in a way that the faces of a couple of surprised bank tellers had never managed to do. The terror of losing her had even led him to turn in his drug-dealing cellmate—a betrayal that had earned him two years off his sentence, and a swift trip to the VPU where he might have a chance of completing his time in safety.

And here she was, crying that he did not want her!

Sean Ellis was as confused as it’s possible for a man to be—which is very.

“Sweetheart, how can you say that?” He grasped her hands and looked with love and amazement at her red, blotchy, black-streaked face. “I love you! I want you! Of course I do! Are you nuts? Who wouldn’t want you?”

“But the pictures!” she wailed. “You don’t like the pictures! You never say anything about them! You think I’m a whore!”

Conveniently within earshot, Officer Ryan Finlay twirled his keys nervously. Fuck .

Ellis pushed tear-dampened hair from his wife’s face and cupped her cheek. “What pictures, baby?”

He listened to her hitching, halting, hiccuping description of the photos she’d been sending him every week since his incarceration, and felt himself move grindingly from confusion to cold, cold fury.

WHEN ARNOLD AVERY’S LATEST LETTER WHISPERED SILENTLY onto the doormat, Steven was not there to pick it up.

Lettie said she’d make tea and slid quietly out of the warm bed.

She looked in on the boys as she passed the half-open bedroom door. In the flat grey of dawn, Davey was a crooked splay of arms and legs, while Steven was pressed against the wall, flat and out of the way in the too-small Spider-Man pajamas she’d bought him for last Christmas. They were halfway up his shins, and the top and bottoms no longer met, exposing a pale slice of skin and the vague knobs of the base of his spine. The sheet and duvet were in a haphazard bundle at Davey’s feet.

Only the kitchen clock kept company with the sound of the two boys’ quiet breathing and Lettie felt a small electric tingle pass through her like the ghost of love.

At the foot of the stairs she picked up the post, mentally sighing at all the little windows.

Nan was in the kitchen pouring the last of a pint of milk over two Weetabix.

“I didn’t hear you,” said Lettie, unreasonably put out that she was no longer alone.

“Couldn’t sleep,” said Nan.

Lettie put the kettle on and sifted through the bills. The only envelope without a window was a flimsy brown one addressed to SL, 111 Barnstaple Road, Shipcott, Exmoor, Somerset. Must be for Steven.

She felt her mood sour further and checked the postmark. Plymouth. She didn’t know anyone in Devon. They didn’t know anyone in Devon.

The slag.

“What you got there?”

“Only bills.”

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 that was good news.

Lettie almost squealed with the unfairness of it all. Just as things were looking up! Why could nothing go right and stay right for any of them?

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.