CHAPTER 69 Simone
Simone
At four o’clock this morning, Simone wakes from a dream that it is Lucy in jail, instead, locked up away from Simone, inexplicably bound and gagged and mute.
Simone then does nothing for the following twelve hours – so jarring in the era of Netflix and Kindle and iPhones – until (absurdly) four o’clock in the afternoon, when dinner is served.
There is no lingering over mains late at night here. Tuesday is pizza day in jail, and the pizzas are loaded on to plastic plates in the canteen, their cheesy ends dipping like Salvador Dalí clocks.
If Simone were lying, she would say that the pizzas may be disgusting but the inmates are worse. But, actually, Simone finds nothing more offensive than soggy pizza dough and sprayed-on cheese, a fact she finds somewhat unedifying but is nevertheless true.
Pizza on plate, she squeezes past a couple of women standing together, talking behind their hands, and sits nearest to a guard. Probably wimp-like behaviour, but she doesn’t care.
She is alone at a bolted-down table. The floor is a bright yellow linoleum, the walls blue. A kind of overly compensated cheerful, the same found in children’s hospitals and contact centres back home.
Nearby, voices rise, over the last serving maybe.
Simone registers it dimly, keeps her head down, doing what she feels is most sensible in this situation: she eats the pizza, looks uninterested, makes her body smaller.
One woman pushes the other, and Simone doesn’t look at the guard or tell on anyone.
Instead, she acts as if it is not happening at all.
One slice of pizza is all she can manage, the cheese, tomato and bread flopping in her mouth like a second tongue.
This is her first Tuesday in here. She is on – what the UK would call – remand, awaiting a court hearing, and it is crazy, to Simone, to contemplate that this is the first Tuesday of an almost infinite number.
Thousands of them, surely, thousands of pizza days stacking up ahead of her.
One day, she wonders if she will stop counting, and just kind of sink into it with acceptance.
But only five days ago she was on a boat with her family, and now she is here.
Simone likes the canteen because it has windows, although they’re way up high, at the edges of a vaulted ceiling. Even so, they have bars on them, running vertically. She also likes it because, in the windows, she can see herself – there are no mirrors in county jail.
She stares upwards at her reflection. Her jumpsuit is black and white stripes, an awful, clown-like outfit that, perversely, means she is normal risk.
Green means increased. Simone avoids those inmates the most. Beat-up trainers, one size too big, from a jail locker.
Unbranded used-to-be-white socks. She keeps both on right until she goes to bed because her cell smells of urine and she can’t bear the thought of walking on old wee.
Texan skies are a burst of unreal blue beyond the windows, and it’s funny, she really does live here now, in Texas. This shitty canteen with its nailed-down furniture and plastic cutlery is her home.
After dinner, she lies on her bed in her cell that is always five degrees too hot, doing nothing, waiting for nothing.
No visiting hours until tomorrow. Lucy and Damien remain in America, for now, staying back in Terlingua, too far away for her liking, but what does it really matter?
She wonders if they’re looking at the big blue sky, too.
And she can’t help but think something that bothered her less on the outside. That, while she is in here, imprisoned, he is still out there. The anonymous kidnapper, the wrongdoer. Walking free.
‘Somebody here to see you, Simone,’ a guard says to her while she lies on her bed, making eggs Benedict in her mind.
‘Who?’ she asks immediately. ‘It isn’t visiting hours?’
‘Lawyer,’ he says.
‘I refused legal advice.’ Her statement is downbeat and factual, comes from a place of fear.
Only total compliance, in Simone’s mind, will keep Lucy free.
Simone’s arraignment is in three days’ time, when she has told the police she will plead guilty to all charges as part of the ongoing bargain to give Lucy total immunity.
They set it for then so that the judge can receive her plea and sentence her all in one.
She took the blame for everything she could.
Even the identities. It’s better for Lucy to have one parent free.
It’ll be life, she’s pretty sure.
She can’t get legal advice.
She sits up on the edge of her little bed now, mattress not hard but instead overly soft, so soft it sags into the springs of the bed frame which dig into her back in the night.
‘He’s in a meeting room,’ he says, and then he makes a gesture towards the heavy metal door with the hatch in it, for her to come.
‘Will anyone know about it?’
‘I do, but don’t worry about that,’ he tells her. Simone likes this guard. Straight-talking, knows her name. Seems to be a human being beyond a jailer, has tattoos of his kids’ names; she once overheard him say he was craving a Burger King.
‘Anyone else?’
‘Nah. Privileged. You want to speak to him or not?’ he asks.
And, out of intrigue, out of loneliness, and out of having absolutely nothing fucking better to do, Simone follows him out.
And there, in a meeting room so different from her cell it feels like civilization, is Moody.
‘It’s you,’ she says to him. The meeting room is air conditioned, and it’s bliss.
The chilled, stale air on her wrists, the back of her neck.
She wishes she could sleep here, in the quiet and the cool, the exact opposite of the cells.
Blue carpet, dark-wood furniture, two telephones and everyday objects that are now contraband, notepads and pens, things Simone can’t resist running her fingers over.
He has nothing with him. No phone. No file. Nothing, just himself, too-big suit, long legs tucked back underneath his chair, floppy hair, glasses, eyes on hers.
Simone is surprised to find herself emotional. James Moody. A lawyer – of all things – who has likely betrayed her trust.
‘Why on earth are you pleading guilty?’ he says to her. No introduction, no response to it’s you. Just this.
‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ she tells him coldly.
‘Excuse me?’ he says, tone light.
‘No one knew we were in Terlingua except you. They searched your house.’
‘A drone discovered you heading there. The police searched every last place in Terlingua, including mine. I told them I’d checked my rental the hour before, that it was locked and empty. They believed me, so they didn’t come for you.’
‘Oh,’ Simone says, voice small.
‘You disappeared. When I started to ask around, I found out you’d bought identities off a honeytrapper, who waited for you to finish the transaction, then told the police when you’d boarded the boat.’
‘Oh,’ she says again. ‘It was the dark web guy.’
‘Yes.’
‘We had to go.’
‘I get that,’ he says. ‘But why are you pleading guilty?’
Simone hesitates, but she thinks he’s trustworthy.
The police did search his house, and they didn’t come back for them.
And the information he passed them about Max had been accurate.
‘The police said they wouldn’t prosecute Lucy if I did, for the shooting at the Buick. And you had come up with nothing …’
‘In only a few days! Law, when it works, is a long game.’
‘It’s all about Lucy.’
He pauses, evidently with lots to say, grabs a pencil from the pot on the next table and begins upending it, rubber then the tip, rubber then the tip.
Simone is distracted by the fact that, on the table, are two cups of tea. Polystyrene cups, but tea, nevertheless. Builder’s tea, the colour of brick dust. Simone can almost taste the tannin.
Moody catches her looking. ‘Brits really do love their tea, huh?’
‘Yes.’ She stops, thinking that it really wasn’t him. Why else would he be here, trying to help her? ‘The food in here is awful. Awful pizzas.’
‘I bet.’ A pause. ‘You weren’t lying when you said you didn’t like lawyers.’
‘I had a bad experience.’
He inclines his head, takes a sip of his tea, passing her hers. ‘Oh?’
‘Parents were crap parents,’ she says. ‘It got nasty with lawyers.’
‘Ah.’
As she sits down, the jumpsuit strains at her hips, even though she’s lost weight already through not eating floppy pizzas and bread so oily it leaves stains on her fingers.
‘They didn’t charge Damien, then?’
‘No. Minor dishonest offences, anyway,’ she tells him. ‘I took it all for the main ones. Same with Lucy.’
‘Well.’
‘Well, what?’
‘It isn’t too late,’ he says.
‘Yes it is,’ Simone says, nodding firmly. ‘I’ve done a deal. If I went back on it, went to trial, they would go after her, too.’
Moody makes a face, his lips moving downwards in a kind of grimace, then just looks at her, saying nothing for a while. He begins to upend the pencil again, evidently thinking. ‘You’re sure about that decision?’ he asks her. ‘That’s why I’m here: to make sure.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘It’s a hell of a decision.’
‘But the right one.’
‘What if you both went to trial and I got you both off?’ he says lightly.
‘I’m not willing to gamble that,’ Simone says, and, truly, would anybody be?
‘Do you know what you’re gambling here, Simone? What they will sentence you to, in just a few days’ time, if you go ahead?’
‘No. And I don’t want to know,’ she says quickly. And, to her surprise, he just tells her, against her will, straight up.
‘They have charged you with murder; you just escaped capital murder,’ he tells her, his gaze direct. ‘With everything, you’d be looking at twenty to forty years.’
Simone is too shocked to say anything except a sarcastic-sounding ‘That is a lot of Tuesday pizzas.’
Moody gives her a grim laugh, but she isn’t listening, not really. Instead, she is thinking twenty to forty years. How dare he tell her? She didn’t want to know. And now she does, she can’t conceptualize it. It’s an unfathomable amount of time.
‘Twenty to forty,’ she repeats.
Twenty or forty multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five. The maths is stupid, dizzying, though easy for her from scaling up ingredients. Seven thousand to fourteen thousand days? And she’s done five days, all aching fucking five of them.
Perhaps as consolation, Moody pushes the tea again towards her.
She takes a sip and, oh, that is wonderful.
Proper tea, not the canteen stuff she has every morning, the colour of an ashtray and tasting about the same, made with UHT milk and careless brewing.
This is rich and full-bodied, malty, balanced on the tongue.
Hot but not scalding. Simone could write a tea guide like people do for wine, right at this moment.
‘That’s nice,’ she says feebly to Moody.
‘You like cooking?’ he asks. ‘You have a restaurant?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m partial to food myself.’
‘I could tell,’ she answers. ‘Nice spices, and nice knives, too, in your kitchen.’
‘I got them to use proper milk here … for the chef.’
‘Right.’ Simone pauses, then adds: ‘Lucy will be nearly forty to sixty years old.’
The unspoken passes between them: Simone herself might not make it out of here. She will be more like sixty to eighty. Eighty.
‘If you let me represent you, I could get it down,’ he tells her. ‘I could get you off.’
‘How? You can’t find any evidence of the kidnapper. Max was a red herring. Jon-Paul Delves is a cipher.’
‘Let me try harder.’
‘I said I’d cooperate with them.’ She gestures to him with the tea. ‘This isn’t that.’
‘Cooperation is not giving up every single one of your human rights. Sacrifice feels good until you have to live it.’
Simone winces at the truth of this statement. ‘But I can’t risk it,’ she says, her eyes wet, desperate and sad. ‘I can’t risk them going back on the deal. Nobody believes … nobody believes us. I can’t gamble that on a fucking jury. Twelve random people who might send Lucy down?’
Moody just looks at her, saying nothing, pencil still moving.
‘What would she get?’ Simone asks.
‘I’d argue that she was merely shooti–’
‘What would she get if they charged her right now and she was convicted?’
Moody answers sadly: ‘A decade.’
Her head sinks downwards. She looks at him. ‘You have kids?’
Moody silently holds up two fingers.
‘Girls or boys?’ she asks him.
‘Two girls.’ His voice as quiet as distant thunder.
‘Would you spin the roulette wheel, if this were you? The drugs drop, buying the gun, the shootings …’
After several seconds, Moody shakes his head, and really, that’s all he needs to say, but he adds, ‘I get your point.’
‘Hard to ever know if you’re doing the right thing, as a parent, isn’t it?’ she says.
‘Do Lucy and Damien need a place to stay?’
‘They’re in a motel, in Terlingua.’
‘They can have my place again. OK? Why don’t you tell me everything you know from that night, again.’
‘There’s nothing new.’
‘It might help to go over it.’ He holds his hands up. ‘Off record. Parent to parent, no lawyers in sight.’
So Simone tells him. The singing school – he wants her to linger over this.
The concertina door. The four o’clock wake.
The flip phone, the ransom, the border, the bag, the sirens, the missing kilogram.
And, as she speaks, details peppering the story like a seasoning, she suddenly thinks that nobody, nobody, could ever think that she was lying.
She doesn’t know what to do with this thought, so she simply puts it to one side.
Moody waits for a full ten seconds, once she has finished, evidently choosing his words carefully. ‘You did the right thing,’ he tells her. Then looks at her. ‘Every single step.’
‘Would you have done it, too?’
‘Yes. And you got your kid out alive.’
‘She deserves to stay free,’ Simone says. She’s still pleasantly cold in the meeting room, the tea lightly steaming the very tip of her nose like that first cup on an autumn morning.
‘At great cost to you.’
‘That’s parenthood.’
Moody doesn’t answer her for a little while.
Instead, he upends his pencil again and again, and they drink their tea, Simone thinking of twenty to forty years and Moody perhaps thinking of how to persuade her to take it all to trial, which is why it surprises her when he says: ‘I can’t think of a better mother than you, right now. ’
And, somehow, this near stranger has said exactly the right thing, the only thing that could make her feel even slightly better. Before he leaves, he gets her a second tea, has to argue with the guard to do it, and they sit in silence while she drinks it.