The baby, now twenty-one, was approaching. His eyes were still bright, but for different reasons. He did not look inclined to be happy. He sat with a grunt, spread his legs as wide apart as possible and crossed his arms.

‘Hi there, I’m Mary Shields.’ She extended her hand to shake John Paul’s, having decided many years ago that she’d rather risk getting hep C than be an arsehole.

Eventually, John Paul unlocked his arms and offered his hand, which was shaky, and dripping with sweat. ‘How long will this take?’

Men often entered these rooms angry, filled with distressing problems that it was too late to get help with, fully expecting another telling-off, another putting-down. Last week, she interviewed accidental murderer William Smith, for example. When he walked in, he looked like he could have murdered again, on purpose this time. William had crossed his arms and remained silent for five minutes. At the fifteen-minute mark he was crying because Mary had asked and listened and was coming up with some ideas. Angry didn’t scare Mary. You could do something with angry.

‘It’ll take three, three and a half hours. Why, do you have a date? In D Hall?’

‘Ha ha.’

Perhaps he was inclined towards happiness after all.

‘Just I have an AA meeting at eleven.’ He looked like every twenty-one-year-old she’d met in this place: a raw, angry, terrified kid trying his best to get on with his first stint in an adult jail, fully expecting it would not be his last.

‘You can refuse the interview if you like. I’m not forcing you.’ Please refuse! Then she wouldn’t have to do it. Why wasn’t she home in bed?

‘No, no, just that. It’s good, the AA and all that. Don’t want to miss it.’

Mary laid out her papers on the table and clicked her pen. ‘I’ll be as fast as I can. Mostly we need to talk about the offence and sentencing options. I have a recent report here, so I don’t need to go through your whole history. Just tell me about the fishfingers and we’ll take it from there.’ She wrote his name in capitals at the top of her pad: ‘No hyphen, two n’s, two l’s?’

John Paul was looking at the prison officer in the corridor. ‘Can I check with Dawn about going straight to AA?’

Cocaine or thereabouts had shrivelled his pupils, and Mary wondered if the wriggling meant prison piles, which might be a thing.