Redemption - Garrett Leigh Page 0,1

attention it had been high summer. The solitary tree in the exercise yard had been bright green and lush, the only slash of nature among men who’d forgotten how to live, and men who forgot that the seasons changed and in six long years hadn’t bothered to ask the prison for a coat.

Shivering, Luis shifted his bag on his back and wrapped his arms around himself. Maybe the bus would be warm, but first, a trip to the job centre beckoned, followed by a check-in with a probation officer paid too little to give a shit, as long as he kept his nose clean. The few friends he’d made on the inside had told him to give it a couple of days. To get settled, get wasted, and get laid. But what was the point? He hadn’t felt settled since the army men had come to the house on his fifth birthday, and the last person he’d fucked had been a road man, just like him.

He reached absently to the dog tags hanging around his neck, the sole personal possession the prison had handed back that morning. The warm metal against his cold hands grounded him, and he found the will to keep moving.

The job centre was on the high street. Inside, a security guard directed him to the waiting area. He said words, but Luis missed them. He took a seat, wishing he had a phone like everyone around him to pretend he had something to do. Time on his hands meant himself on his mind. Fuck that shit.

A man dropped into the seat beside him.

He smelt of weed and attitude. Luis studied the floor, but the sensation of being watched was hard to ignore. Don’t look. Perhaps if he had, he’d have found the dude minding his own business and not giving a single fuck about Luis’s paranoia. But he didn’t look. He counted breaths, heartbeats, and stains on the carpet until his blood roared in his ears.

Luis sprang to his feet.

He booked it out of the building and crossed the road. New bars and pubs had opened since he’d last been here. He took a step towards one. Stopped. Changed his mind. Bars were crowded with idiots who wanted to fight. Luis didn’t have the spoons for thug life anymore or the ears to cope with the noise.

Despair was like the flu. It crept up with mild symptoms, then impacted like a freight train. Luis’s bag contained nothing but a pair of old jeans, sweatpants, and two T-shirts. It had seemed featherlight when he’d slung it on his back. Suddenly, it weighed a ton, and the bustle of the street boomed in his good ear, rattling his brain.

They’d warned him about this, on the inside. How the world had grown since he’d left it, and it would take time to acclimatise, but as a bus roared past and the market traders shouted above it, Luis couldn’t see how he’d ever get used to this. Noise, colour, life. Inside, he’d craved it, but now he had it in abundance, it scared the shit out of him.

Calm your tits. He had two quid in his pocket, spare change he’d had when he’d been arrested. Back then, there’d been a cafe at the end of the road, hidden away behind the bank. Toni’s. The same family had owned it for a million years, and if he closed his eyes—in the middle of the street again like a total fucking moron—Luis could hear the booming voice of the Italian granddad who’d served bucket-sized mugs of tea and doorstep sandwiches.

His stomach growled. He couldn’t afford the sandwich, but god damn, he needed the tea.

The streets passed in a blur. Luis half expected to find the cafe had been turned into a hipster coffee bar, but it was there, in all its steamed-up window glory. He clutched the door handle like a drowning man. There was a sign on the glass panel, faded and blurred by condensation.

Help Wanted. Apply Within.

If it wasn’t fate, it was the cruellest trick.

The door banged open. Paolo ignored it. If customers wanted his attention, they soon let him know. He kept his gaze on the two dozen rashers of bacon on the grill, flipped them, and cracked eight eggs into the frying pan to his left. Toast was the bane of his life. With a million other things to do, it was often the task that slipped by.

Or went horribly wrong.

The scent of burnt bread reached him. He