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  ‘I was with the vicar,’ I tell him.

  DAY 133

  WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2001

  9.50 am

  Leon is sitting in the waiting room at SMU ready for his HDC ajudication with Mr Berlyn (deputy governor) and Mr Simpson (resident probation officer).

  Leon called his fiancée again last night. The three suitors have arrived from India, and once Sunita has made her choice (and if she doesn’t, her parents will decide for her) she will then be flown back to India to meet the man’s parents. The couple will then return to England to prepare for a wedding on 6 December, the day before Leon will be released.

  Sunita’s plan is to take only hand luggage on the flight, so that when she returns, she will walk straight through customs while her parents wait to pick up their luggage from the baggage hall. Leon’s brother will be waiting in the arrivals hall and drive her straight to Birmingham, where she and Leon will be married later that day.

  If the board grants Leon his tagging, he will leave NSC at eight o’clock on the Saturday, and drive straight to Birmingham, and they will be man and wife before the family can work out where she’s disappeared. Everything is riding on the result of Leon’s interview with the board in a few minutes’ time. Mr Berlyn calls for Leon at ten-eleven and I escort him up to the interview room.

  Carl and I run around the kitchen pretending to be busy. SMU is on full alert because Martin Narey, the director-general, arrived a few minutes ago.

  10.32 am

  Leon appears, almost in tears. The board have turned down his application. I fear he may abscond tonight and take the law into his own hands.

  11.30 am

  The Rev Derek Johnson drops in to tell us that he’s met with the governor, who does not have the authority to sanction a wedding in the chapel. A prisoner must have at least nine months to serve before he can apply for such a privilege. He adds that no one has ever come across such an unusual set of circumstances.

  Leon now can’t do anything until seven o’clock this evening when he’s arranged to phone his fiancée on her mobile. Before he leaves us, he adds two more pieces of information. First, his father, an extremely wealthy man, has offered a dowry of £500,000 to Sunita’s family. Leon’s mother is a Brahmini, but because his father is Irish, their son is unacceptable. One can only wonder how much the three suitors from India are offering as a dowry for this girl they have yet to meet. Second, Sunita’s sister was subjected to the same drama two years ago, and is now going through a messy divorce. Carl and I agree to meet in Leon’s room at 7.30 pm and plan his next move.

  11.45 am

  I leave for lunch a few minutes before the director-general is due to arrive at SMU. By the time I’ve finished my cauliflower cheese and gone back to the south block to make a couple of phone calls, Mr Narey has moved on to visit the lifers’ quarters. I return to work at one o’clock.

  5.00 pm

  I drop in to see Doug, who confirms that Exotic Foods have agreed to interview him on Friday morning, and he is hoping to begin work with them on Monday week, so I could become hospital orderly in two weeks’ time.

  7.30 pm

  Leon opens the door of his room to greet us with a warm smile. Sunita has escaped from Sheffield and has driven down to Portsmouth to stay with his brother and sister-in-law. She has purchased a new phone, as she is worried that her parents will hire a detective to trace her through the mobile Leon bought for her.

  Leon removes a thick bundle of letters from his shelf.

  ‘She writes twice a day,’ he says.

  I am delighted by the news, but suggest to Carl after we’ve left that it won’t take a particularly bright private detective to work out Sunita might be staying with Leon’s brother.

  I have a feeling this saga is not yet over.

  DAY 134

  THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2001

  I have mentioned the worthwhile role played by the Samaritans who train selected prisoners as Listeners. At NSC they have taken this trust one stage further and set aside a room where a pre-programmed mobile phone has been provided for inmates who need to call the Samaritans.

  This service has become very popular, as more and more prisoners claim to be in need of succour from the Samaritans; so much so that Mr New recently became suspicious. After one particularly long call, which was interspersed with laughter, he confiscated the phone and quickly discovered what the inmates had been up to. They had been removing the Sim card from inside the phone and replacing it with one of their own that had been smuggled in.

  As of today, there will no longer be a dedicated room for the Samaritans, or a mobile phone.

  11.00 am

  This will be my last labour board if I am to join Doug in the hospital next week. I therefore suggest to Carl that he should take charge as if I wasn’t there. During the rest of the morning, whenever a prisoner calls in with some problem, Carl handles it. My only worry is that as Carl has another fifteen months to serve before he’ll be eligible for a tag, he may become bored long before his sentence is up.

  2.30 pm

  Mr New calls Spring Hill to ask Mr Payne why my transfer is taking so long. He’s told that Spring Hill is about to face a public enquiry as a consequence of something that happened before he became governor. Mr Payne fears that the press will be swarming all over the place and although he is quite willing to have me, he can’t let me know his decision for at least another couple of weeks. I press Mr New for the details of what could possibly cause so much public interest but he refuses to discuss it. I wonder if it’s simply a ploy to keep me from being transferred.12

  7.00 pm

  I visit Leon in the north block. He has just come off the phone to his fiancée, still safely ensconced in Portsmouth with Leon’s brother. Sunita’s three Indian suitors have returned home accompanied by her mother, leaving her father in Bradford. Sunita has rung her father who has agreed to meet Leon. But he still doesn’t know that Leon is in jail and won’t be released for another three weeks.

  DAY 135

  FRIDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2001

  9.30 am

  The best laid plans of mice and convicts.

  I am making tea for Mr Simpson at SMU when the duty officer asks me to report to the hospital for a suicide watch. Doug has gone to Boston for his Exotic Foods interview, so they are short of an orderly.

  Suicide watch is quite common in prison, and this is the second I’ve covered in three weeks. Linda and Gail have to judge whether the prisoner is genuinely considering taking his own life, or simply looking for tea and sympathy and a chance to sit and watch television.

  I turn up at the hospital a few minutes later to find my charge is a man of about forty-five, squat, thick set, covered in tattoos, with several teeth missing. David is serving a six-year sentence for GBH. What puzzles me is that he is due to be released on 14 January, so he only has a few more weeks of his sentence to complete. All I’m expected to do is to keep an eye on him while Gail gets on with her other duties, which today include taking care of a prisoner who was injured after being thrown through a window at his previous jail.

  David’s first request is for a glass of water, which is no problem. He then disappears into the lavatory, and doesn’t reappear again for some time, when he requests another glass of water. No sooner has he gulped that down than the vicar arrives. He sits down next to David and asks if he can help. I ask David if he wants me to leave.

  ‘No,’ he says, but he would like another glass of water.

  He then tells the vicar about the demons that visit him during the night, insisting that he must commit more crimes, and as he wants to go straight, he doesn’t know what to do.

  ‘Are you a practising member of any faith?’ asks the Reverend.

  ‘Yeah,’ replies David, ‘I believe in God and life after death, but I’ve never been sure which religion would be best for me.’

  A long and thoughtful discussion follows after which David decides he’s Church of England. The only thing of interes