His face and voice soften. ‘They’ll get over it in time. Actions speak louder than words, and action takes time to prove.’ He wipes his eyes with his frayed, yellowed cuffs, then squares his shoulders, checking himself. ‘Ah, would ye look at the cut of this little one?’ A marmalade tabby, tiny, is nuzzling into the palm of his hand. ‘I shouldn’t admit to favourites, but by God…’

For the first time since I arrived, I feel like I’m in the presence of someone like me. I’ve heard him speak in meetings about his flashes of temper, his extreme emotions, and this: his maudlin love for animals. This is real. I sit in silence and watch him stroke the tiny creatures between the eyes with his thick fingers. He kisses the kittens on the same spot on the tops of their tiny heads.

‘Do you treat them for fleas and worms?’ I ask.

‘Contraband,’ he says. ‘First thing on my list these days. Some of the lads say the worming tablets give them a great high. None of them want to try the fleas stuff. Side effects too serious. Like blindness.’

Laughter flies out of my mouth and it’s not caustic or judging, not a front for something else.

‘Can you get me something for the jangles, to help me sleep?’

‘No, I don’t mess with any of that stuff in here. The cold-turkey approach is best. These sisters know what they’re doing.’

There doesn’t seem to be a sniff of irony in how he delivers this. And yet, how many times has he been back in? The rumours go: dozens. He is the most common reoffender.

14

At the meeting that evening Linda surprises everyone, including herself, by speaking out. ‘I know he’s my heroin, but at least he doesn’t make all my teeth fall out.’ She laughs, over-bright and shrill. No one takes the bait. ‘I’m not me when he’s in my life, but I’m not me when he’s out of it either. Know what I mean?’

The rest of the room falls silent; a few of the men look shame-faced, knowing this is exactly the effect they have on their women. A few of them look angry. Why would you go throwing your love at idiots like that? She deserves what’s coming to her. The women look away. The silence is heavy and loaded, a latent violence clinging to its contours.

Another voice claims the space, making no allusion to Linda’s comment. The conversation is steered expertly back to comfortable territory: ‘It had me in its grip, every waking moment obsessed.’ This is Linda’s story too, only the ‘it’ in her case is a ‘he’. Her sunken cheeks are puffed up and purple-puce, like little plums.

I wait until the last speaker rounds off his familiar tale with ‘but God has me in his hands and in his sights now. God knows what’s good for me.’ There is a sanctimonious piety to this statement that infuriates me and prods my sleeping creatures. I can feel their wings beat against my ribcage, desperate to be let out. Disturb and disrupt.