the impression of touching someone else’s face. It is warm, slightly oily, with the merest abrasion of growth beneath. It would be good to touch someone else’s face, he thinks, and have someone touch his.
Graham’s whistling reaches him from the corridor. After a second or two, he appears at the doorway and makes an exaggerated show of stopping, holding the door frame as if for support.
‘Fuck me,’ he says loudly. ‘It’s Clark fucking Kent.’
Richard laughs – a proper laugh that requires a small recovery afterwards. ‘Graham, I’m going to miss your sense of humour.’
‘Nothing humorous about it. Jesus – sorry – Christ – sorry – but God – ah, shit, sorry – you look young.’
Richard ignores the trio of blasphemy. ‘Try not to sound quite so surprised.’
‘I knew you were young underneath.’ Graham sits down, eyes still wide.
‘What about you then?’ Richard asks, keen to divert the glare. ‘You’re the one with the old-man beard now. Not tempted to shave?’
Like his hair, Graham’s beard is thick and black, although his beard is flecked with a lighter, nutty brown.
‘Too right,’ he says. ‘I’m shaving it next Thursday morning.’
‘Shaven for release, like a lamb to the … to the summer.’ Richard winces at his almost faux pas. ‘Good idea.’
Graham is still grinning, his shoulders wide and straight against the back of the chair. He looks away and back again. ‘I can’t get over it, like. I keep expecting you to pull your shirt off and fly out the window in your blue tights. You look so different.’
‘I feel different. Free somehow – I can’t explain it. But we’re not here to talk about me, so stop trying to distract me. Are you ready for next week?’
Graham glances at the floor. ‘S’pose.’ He looks up, smiles. ‘No, yeah. Yeah, I am.’
‘Who’s coming to meet you, do you know?’
‘Spoke to my mum; she’s coming with Jim in the car, like.’ He mentions Jim casually and seems cheerful. Richard is glad they’re coming. He feels connected to them, through Graham. He trusts them to look after him, this precious, precarious man.
‘I’ll probably see them on my way in,’ he says. ‘I always see the crowd waiting outside on a Thursday morning.’
‘You should say hello, like. My mum’d be made up. She knows about you. I’ve told her about you, like.’
He can see that Graham is serious and perhaps more – that he is asking him to do this.
‘I will,’ he promises.
‘She’s got dark hair, going grey, sort of shoulder-length and really straight. She’s skinny. Well, she’s got a bit of a pot now, but she’s thin on her arms and legs, and she’s small height-wise. Erm, she often wears nail varnish for special occasions and she’ll deffo be wearing lippy. I mean, I’ve not seen her without lippy for years, ’cos I s’pose, coming here, she was always in her best togs, like – always done up nice. And Jim is massive. He’s a mountain. I can’t really describe him any more than that. He’s quite Scottish-looking, if you know what I mean. Not totally ginger but kind of a weird colour, like tomato ketchup and mayo mixed together. Oh, and they’ve got a Mondeo now, I think. She said it was a greeny colour, like a seaweed colour, she said. Look out for it.’
‘I will. And how do you feel about Jim coming along?’
‘It’s cool. I mean, fair play to him. He’s a good bloke. That’s all in the past anyway, with the drugs.’ He smiles. ‘I think Tracy and Jade are staying with our Katy.’
‘Who’s Katy?’
‘What do you mean, who’s Katy? Didn’t I tell you they had a kid?’
‘Your mum and Jim had a child?’
‘Yeah.’ He puts his thumbnail to his mouth and worries the edge with his bottom teeth. ‘She’s like a cousin for Jade, except she’s her auntie. It’s like that country and western song, “I’m My Own Grandpa” – do you know it?’
Richard shakes his head and laughs. ‘And how do you feel about Katy?’
‘What do you mean, how do I feel? I can’t wait to get to know her properly. I can’t wait to spend time with Jade and get to know her an’ all. I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to her. When I’m clean, I’m actually quite a nice person, you know.’
‘Well, you know what my answer to that is.’
‘S-stay c-clean, then, yeah?’ Despite the good-natured replies, Graham seems suddenly jittery. The pressure of freedom must be disconcerting, terrifying, even. Seeing him