‘Charlie’s getting out Saturday,’ Harry explained.

Anita nodded. ‘Your girlfriend, the mad bomber!’

He didn’t like the mad bomber comment, but he preferred Anita’s bluntness to people who gossip behind your back.

‘Not my girlfriend,’ Harry said firmly.

‘Could have fooled me, Haribo,’ Anita teased. ‘You’re always talking about her, or calling her, or taking the three-hour bus ride to White Boulder.’

Harry liked Anita’s jealousy, but this didn’t sustain him for the walk across the parking lot to his Mini. He hoped Charlie was going to become his girlfriend, but had no clue if her feelings went beyond friendship.

15 BEEF AND COKE

Charlie wasn’t much taller than when she’d arrived at White Boulder, but she’d filled out and the T-shirt and denim shorts she’d put into storage the day she’d arrived now looked like doll’s clothes.

Her fake Ray Bans and a Raiders cap she’d stolen from JJ still did their job, but the cell with the cracked screen was flat and she had no idea if the battery would revive after more than two years. Besides the clothes, Charlie’s mesh storage box contained two keys for a trailer where someone else now lived, an expired Rock Spring Middle School ID, a five-dollar bill and three more in change.

Since her clothes were too small, the officer handling Charlie’s release let her keep the prison issue sneakers, tracksuit bottoms and undershirt she stood up in, plus one spare set of underwear. She also got a sixty-dollar release grant and a care package, containing anti-viral hand gel, a pack of condoms and leaflets on sexually transmitted diseases and dealing with depression.

After twenty-seven months on a fifty-acre prison lot, it seemed weird to be on the move. Charlie stared out the bus at new shops and ads for movies she’d never heard of. Cars were mostly electric and every inch of roof packed solar panels.

There were SNor warnings, and shopfront posters advertising virus-destroying UV lamps: $299 FINALLY BACK IN STOCK. About one person in four wore an anti-virus mask. These looked sturdier than the ones issued to White Boulder inmates, which split, crumbled and never got replaced.

The Barack Obama Independent Living Unit was in North Vegas, less than three blocks from open desert. There was a 7-Eleven next door and suburban houses sprawled in every direction. The building had been open less than two years, and made Charlie think of an alpine lodge, with exposed timber joists and black-framed windows.

Her whole life fitted in three trash sacks, which she unloaded from a cage in the rear of the prison bus, while its driver charged inside to piss. The guy behind reception showed no desire to help as Charlie dragged her stuff through an automatic door and into a double-height lobby area.