I sit alone in the prison canteen at lunchtime. The women in this prison are not too keen on Oxbridge-educated solicitors, and they seem to think the name Saffron is a laugh a minute. So I try to keep my head down. Fortunately, so far, I have been considered too green to have to put up with a cell-mate.

Loneliness is better than emotional cruelty or physical injury. So here I am, sitting solo at the edge of a table, picking at my food, ignoring everyone, eyes down. Pushing a hotdog, shiny with grease, to the side of my plate. I contemplate the vegetables. Frozen peas and broccoli, so overcooked they look like early-stage compost. Khaki, with a hint of brown. They smell of sulphur. A scent that floats on the edge of the wind if you live near a sewage works.

I look up. A prison officer is approaching me, face flushed with determination. A middle-aged woman with grey hair and large round glasses. Her hair falls around her face in grizzled curls. She leans towards me across the plastic dining table.

‘Are you Saffron Jackson?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Or at least I used to be, in another life.’

She pushes her face closer. ‘I need you to come with me. Do you want your food taken to your cell to finish later?’

I look down at the greasy sausage, that looks like a turd on my plate, and the vegetable compost. ‘I reckon I can manage without it.’

Eyes slide towards us as we leave the canteen. I tremble inside. What is coming now? Has my trial date been moved forwards? Are Ben and Harry OK? Does Miles want a divorce? Miles. He seems so distant at the moment. Hardly says anything when he visits.

I breathe deeply, in an attempt to calm myself, as the prison officer leads me, not towards a meeting room, but back towards my cell. Winding along white corridors, door after door locking behind us. No one else is moving about the prison right now. We arrive.

‘Get inside please.’

In my cell, the aroma of damp air cuts into my nose. What a hovel. A shower with no curtain that sprays water across the plastic flooring. A toilet and a hand basin. But better by far than the custody suite. At least I have soap, paper towels and toilet paper now. I stand by my plank of a bed. She steps inside and pulls the door behind her. But she doesn’t lock it.

She smiles. The lines around her eyes crinkle. ‘The charges against you have been dropped. You are free to go.’

The words hang in the air between us and don’t seem real. ‘What …? How …?’ I splutter.

She shakes her head. ‘Don’t sound surprised. It makes you seem guilty.’