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me?’
Right then, he thought. Here’s a woman unused to being spoken to like that. But on the other hand, she’d got him all the way out here, and it sure as hell was an improvement on hanging around in his overcrowded cell. Might as well have a bit of fun while he was here, he figured.
‘Well, for starters,’ he said, lazily stretching his long legs out in front of him, like a man with all the time in the world.
‘Why in the name of God would the Post have the slightest interest in writing about someone like me? I read your paper day in and day out and even I’m able to tell you this much. Your readers are predominantly ABC1, am I right?’
She nodded.
‘Now if you were the editor of say, the Chronicle or the Evening Tatler, I might at least be able to understand where you were coming from, but your lot are about as far removed from tabloid readers as you could possibly get.’
‘Well, yes … but, I don’t understand what you’re driving at.’
‘Eloise, it makes damn-all sense to me why you think your average Post reader would possibly be interested in the likes of me. Never mind what’ll become of me on the outside. With the exception of my mother, my own family barely even care. So who do you possibly think would ever give a shite about an ex-con, back on the outside?’
‘Well for starters, I would,’ she told him firmly, returning his gaze full on. Almost, the thought hit him from out of nowhere, like she’d rehearsed her speech on the way over.
‘And you can be sure that if I would, then plenty of other people would too. Jake, it’s precisely because this is not the kind of series that’s ever been commissioned before that I want to do it. And you’re absolutely perfect for us. I called the governor to ask if he could recommend someone who I might be able to talk to and he said you were far and away the best candidate. A model prisoner, in fact, is how he described you.’
Next thing, she was whipping a notepad out of her bag and referring to some neat notes she’d made earlier.
‘Ah Jesus,’ Jake groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you’re starting now?’
‘Just look at this,’ she went on, ignoring him, and sounding far more animated. ‘The governor also mentioned that you came top of your class when you took your TEFL qualification. Jake, that’s amazing! And not only that, but apparently you’re studying for your Open University exams too. He says your chances of making parole are excellent and that you’re unlikely to re-offend …’
He sighed deeply while she talked on. Okay, so she knew all there was to know about him, presumably including what he was in for; she’d obviously done all her homework, and had somehow decided that he wasn’t a threat. But that wasn’t what bothered him – in here, the first thing you surrendered at the door was any right to privacy – he’d long since taken that for granted. But there was something else about Ms. Eloise Elliot, something a bit disconcerting. (Definitely a Ms., he decided the second he locked eyes on her. No way would this one going by the prefix Miss; he’d stake his parole on it.) Not so much what she was saying, but the utterly focused, intent way she was studying him while she said it. Like she was reading each and every one of his features, scanning his face, almost as though she recognised someone else in it.
And she wasn’t aware of it, but she had a slight tell whenever she spoke about this so-called series she was commissioning, like she wasn’t being entirely truthful. Every time she mentioned it, she’d colour a bit and glance shiftily to her left. It was tiny, she probably wasn’t even aware she was doing it and it wouldn’t have taken that much blinking to miss it, but Jake caught it alright. Two long years in here had left him expert when it came to reading ‘tells’; he played a lot of poker with his cellmates and it got so you could read people as easily as one of his books.
But why would she come out all this way just to lie to him? Made no sense on any level, no matter what way he looked at it.
‘So Jake, what do you think?’
I’ll tell you exactly what I think, Ms. Eloise Elliot, he thought to himself. I think that there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. And that you’re possibly the worst person at covering up a lie that I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a few.
But then he caught the desperate, almost pleading look in her black eyes and softened. She’d come all this way. She’d gone to so much bother to find out about him. Go easy, he thought.
‘Tell you what, can I sleep on it?’ he said and she smiled, looking relieved that at least he hadn’t turned her down flat.
‘Of course, Jake. But before I go, would it be OK if I ask you just one or two more things? Just for, emm … deep background?’
‘Fire away,’ he said easily, thinking, ‘deep background’ my arse.
‘Do you have family?’
‘Are you kidding me? Yeah, too many.’
‘How many of you are there?’
‘Do you mean who are still speaking to me? That’d be just the one.’
‘Are your parents alive?’
‘Yeah, but my dad left when I was a baby so now there’s just my mother. Who, just in case you want to write it down in your notebook, is the one person in my family still talking to me.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said, looking as if she was trying her level best not to ask why the others now had nothing to do with him.
‘And where do you live?’
‘When I get out? As they’d say in your paper, I’m currently of ‘no fixed abode’. My mam’s sofa, if I’m lucky.’
‘What about grandparents? Any still living?’
He saw her suddenly bite her tongue, as if she knew she’d gone too far and was beginning to sound nosey.
‘You really need to go into that much detail for your series?’ Jake grinned cheekily across at her.
‘Sorry, no of course not. But if you didn’t mind, would you be able to tell me a little bit about yourself? You know, like how you pass the time in here? I know you study, so you must read a lot, but I wondered if you’d any other interest or hobbies, like sports? Maybe even … playing a musical instrument?’
And so he went along with it and humoured her, even though she kept using the word ‘why’ so much that it gave him a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, not unlike when he was being interrogated by police. A memory he’d actively been trying to tune out for a long time.
‘Oh and another thing, why do you keep changing your name?’ she threw in suddenly. Like this was a particular niggle that really tried her patience.
‘You know about that?’
‘Well, yeah … From the governor.’
He nodded, not really believing her. That slight tell she had of looking to the left, again giving her away.
‘Okay, then let me put it to you this way. If you ever had the kind of characters coming after you that I’ve had to put up with over the past few years, believe me, you’d start calling yourself Mary Smith and you’d emigrate to New Zealand on a one-way ticket, leaving a cloud of dust behind you.’
She gave a broad grin at that, which softened her whole face and knocked years off her, he thought distractedly.
‘And I’m sorry, but I have to ask you this. Why William Goldsmith?’
‘Easy. She Stoops to Conquer is one of my favourite plays,’ he shrugged back at her. ‘And when I saw the statue of Oliver Goldsmith outside Trinity College, I though it’d be a good idea to take Goldsmith as my surname and William after William Blake, another writer I love.’
She nodded, again looking