He returned almost immediately. There was a smirk on his fat face as he handed me a note. I recognized the superintendent’s clumsy scrawl. It was brief, a one-liner: Janice is here. Come. Now. Truncated, even in writing. I got up and pulled on my sweat-grimed shirt. I slipped my feet into my old, worn-out slippers. I followed the warder. We passed the parade ground, and the convicted men’s compound. An iron gate, far to our right, locked permanently, led to the women’s wing of the prison. We passed the old laundry, which now served as a barber’s shop on Saturdays – the prison’s sanitation day. A gun-carrying warder opened a tiny door in the huge gate that led into a foreyard where the prison officials had their offices. I had been here before, once, on my first day in prison. There were cars parked before the offices; cadets in their well-starched uniforms came and went, their young faces looking comically stern. Female secretaries with time on their hands stood in the corridors gossiping. The superintendent’s office was not far from the gate; a flight of three concrete steps led up to a thick wooden door, which bore the single word: SUPERINTENDENT.

My guide knocked on it timidly before turning the handle.

‘The superintendent wan see am,’ he informed the secretary. She barely looked up from her typewriter; she nodded. Her eyes were bored, uncurious.

‘Enter,’ the warder said to me, pointing to a curtained doorway beside the secretary’s table. I entered. A lady sat in one of the two visitors’ armchairs. Back to the door, her elbows rested on the huge Formica-topped table before her. Janice. She was alone. When she turned, I noted that my mental image of her was almost accurate. She was plump. Her face was warm and homely. She came halfway out of her chair, turning it slightly so that it faced the other chair. There was a tentative smile on her face as she asked, ‘Mr Lomba?’

I almost said no, surprised by the ‘Mr’. I nodded.

She pointed at the empty chair. ‘Please sit down.’ She extended a soft, pudgy hand to me. I took it and marvelled at its softness. She was a teacher; the hardness would be in the fingers: the tips of the thumb and the middle finger, and the side of the index finger.