We stopped for passengers – even before I could see them I knew to be a bit wary – two young men whose loud voices & way of talking marked them as potentially volatile; I made sure to focus obviously on my paper as they made their way past me & the only other passenger to the back of the bus – just to make sure there would be no upset about what I was looking at them for.
I need not have concerned myself – they were just interested in their own conversation. And soon, so was I. By the time we got into the city centre my feelings might best, if ridiculously, be described as maternal.
Each had just got out of some kind of rehab & had been given a council flat of his own - making it virtually certain that they had spent their childhood in care. Notes were being eagerly compared: “My kitchen is painted green.”
Then they agreed: “It’s good to be able to sleep through & not wake up in a sweat.”
The conversation took a darker turn. The younger of the two – who, to judge by the way he spoke, loudly & slowly & dragging slightly on his words, had some kind of intellectual impairment, was awaiting a court appearance. He seemed to accept it philosophically, just a normal part of life. He had been shoplifting – at someone else’s behest, he confided. It was the simple wonder in his voice that made your heart go out to him.
"They were waiting for me as soon as I came out of the store! And – they had been watching me all the way down there – they showed me the cctv footage!"
He fully expected to go to jail this time.
And he was scared, scared of Strangeways.
Some sympathy & encouragement from his friend.
"Yes, but Shipman’s in there. I’m scared."
"Oh him! You don’t have to be scared of him. He just thinks he’s above everybody else. As long as you let him think you believe that, you’ll have nothing to worry about."
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