‘How does it make you feel, seeing his face?’
The sound of his voice makes me jump a little. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean seeing Father O’Donnell.’
I sit back, press my palms into my lap. ‘He is the priest.’
The man tilts his head. ‘Did you think otherwise?’
‘No.’ I tuck a stray hair behind my ear. He is still looking at me. Stop looking at me.
I touch the back of my neck. Damp, clammy.
‘Now, I would like to start the interview, formally,’ he says, reaching for his Dictaphone. No time for me to object. ‘I need you to begin with telling me, out loud, please- in English-your full name, profession, age and place of birth. I also require you to state your original conviction.’
The red record light flashes. The colour causes me to blink, makes me want to squeeze my eyes shut and never open them again. I glance around the room, try to steady my brain with details. There are four Edwardian brick walls, two sash windows, one French-style, one door. I pause. One exit. Only one. The window does not count- we are three floors up. Central London. If I jump, at the speed and trajectory, the probability is that I will break one leg, both shoulder blades and an ankle. I look back to the man. I am tall, athletic. I can run. But, whoever he is, whoever this man claims to be, he may have answers. And I need answers. Because so much has happened to me. And it all needs to end.
I catch sight of my reflection in the window: short dark hair, long neck, brown eyes. A different person looks back at me, suddenly older, more lined, battered by her past. The curtain floats over the glass and the image, like a mirage in a desert, vanishes. I close my eyes for a moment then open them, a random shaft of sunlight from the window making me feel strangely lucid, ready. It is time to talk.
‘My name is Dr Maria Martinez Villanueva and I am- was-a Consultant Plastic Surgeon. I am thirty-three years old. Place of birth: Salamanca, Spain.’ I pause, gulp a little. ‘And I was convicted of the murder of a Catholic priest.’
A woman next to me tugs at my sleeve.
‘Oi,’ she says. ‘Did you hear me?’
I cannot reply. My head is whirling with shouts and smells and bright blue lights and rails upon rails of iron bars, and no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I tell myself to breathe, to count, focus, I cannot calm down, cannot shake off the seeping nightmare of confusion.
I arrived in a police van. Ten seats, two guards, three passengers. The entire journey I did not move, speak or barely breathe. Now I am here, I tell myself to calm down. My eyes scan the area, land on the tiles, each of them black like the doors, the walls a dirt grey. When I sniff, the air smells of urine and toilet cleaner. A guard stands one metre away from me and behind her lies the main quarter of Goldmouth Prison. My new home.
There is a renewed tugging at my sleeve. I look down. The woman now has hold of me, her fingers still pinching my jacket like a crab’s claw. Her nails are bitten, her skin is cracked like tree bark, and dirt lines track her thin veins.
‘Oi. You. I said, what’s your name?’ She eyes me. ‘You foreign or something?’
‘I am Spanish. My name is Dr Maria Martinez.’ She still pinches me. I don’t know what to do. Is she supposed to have hold of my jacket? In desperation, I search for the guard.
The woman lets out a laugh. ‘A doctor? Ha!’ She releases my sleeve and blows me a kiss. I wince; her breath smells of excrement. I pull back my arm and brush out the creases, brush her off me. Away from me. And just when I think she may have given up, she speaks again.
‘What the hell has a doctor done to get herself in this place then?’
I open my mouth to ask who she is-that is what I have heard people do-but a guard says move, so we do. There are so many questions in my head, but the new noises, shapes, colours, people-they are too much. For me, they are all too much.
‘My name’s Michaela,’ the woman says as we walk. She tries to look me in the eye. I turn away. ‘Michaela Croft,’ she continues, ‘Mickie to my mates.’ She hitches up her T-shirt.
