At first, in the early days and weeks and months, Charlie’s immediate awakening impression had been one of the smell, the overnight urine and the odour of too many bodies too close together for too long. It didn’t come any more. He’d become accustomed to it, he supposed. Like he’d become accustomed to everything else. Recognising the good screws from the bad screws. And the important prisoners, the hard bastards who ruled the jail, from those who accepted that rule. And the all male marriages, some happier and more contented than those he’d known outside, where the wife had been a woman. And the weapon making in the engineering shop: knives honed like razors and spikes sharpened to impale an arm or a leg, even a bone if it got in the way. And the use of tobacco for money. And the black markets that existed: marijuana was available, because he’d watched and smelled prisoners smoking it. He’d not seen the cocaine, but he didn’t doubt that it was around because he’d seen the snorting and been offered it in the first month. And booze. Charlie knew he’d have to make a contact soon, to get a drink. It had been a long time. Too long.

The prison was never completely quiet: always something metallic seemed to be hitting against something else metallic. This morning it was a long way off, on a far-away landing and Charlie gave up trying to guess what it was. He lay with his hands behind his head, staring up at the barred window; in the growing light, it looked like a noughts and crosses board, set out in readiness. Early on he’d actually used the reflected pattern that way, a mental chequer board, playing games against himself. Not any more.