The Solitary Wing – Part 1: Cell Four

It had been the boxroom. Now it was Cell Four.

Hester stood in the doorway and looked at it with the critical eye of a woman who had once run a prison library. Bare walls painted grey. A narrow bunk with a grey blanket. A single bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling. A tin mug on a shelf. And on the wall by the bunk, within easy reach, a brass bell on a cord, installed by a joiner who had asked no questions.

She was fifty-one, a retired prison education officer with thirty years of experience of real prisons and a clear, private line between those and this. Benedict was forty-three, her husband, a translator, who had told her, with enormous care, that he had always been drawn to the idea of a small, bare room in which nobody could ask anything of him. He wanted it done properly, and safely, and with the door that opened from inside.

At the kitchen table, over tea, they had written the terms. Conditions of Confinement. His limits and hers: no marks, nothing painful, no real fear, no more than one hour, no locked door at any point. The door was fitted with a plain latch, and he had tested it twenty times. The bell was to be rung if he wished to leave. The word was Visit.

"Say it."

"Visit."

"If you say it, I open the door and come in. No questions. Tea."

"I understand."

"I will check on you every ten minutes. Through the hatch. You answer."

"Yes, Warden."

"Not yet." She put on a long grey cardigan like a uniform coat and a pair of plain black shoes. Her voice dropped, flat and level, with the faint, formal weariness of the long-serving. "Prisoner. Number four. Empty your pockets."

He did. A phone, a pen, a handkerchief. She set them in a plastic tray.

"You will remain in the cell for one hour. You will not speak, except to answer. You will not lie down until told. You will stand or sit as the regime requires."

"Yes, Warden."

"Are you content, Number Four?"

"Content, Warden."

"Good." She opened the door. "In."

He stepped in. The bulb hummed. The door closed, softly, not with a clang but with a quiet click, and the room closed round him like a hand. He put his fingers on the inside latch. It moved. His whole body sighed.

Through the little hatch in the door, her voice came, cool and level.

"Sit on the bunk. Hands on your knees. The hour begins now."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Visiting Hour.