Page 1 of These Tears

1

Three doors between me and whatever poor sod sits on the other side with a murder charge stapled to his name.

I stiffen when the metal groans behind me as the first one shuts. I don’t expect it to echo so loudly, as if the building is clearing its throat for the next part. They sit at measured intervals, each with a narrow, armoured window that gives away nothing but shadow.

I trail along the overlit corridor, past cream walls browned at the corners and scuffed to shoulder height. Linoleum gleams under thousands of reluctant footsteps. Every step cuts through a lingering cloud of bleach, dust and a fouler undertone no photograph could capture unless the person behind the lens had felt it first.

I’ve snapped shots of tombs that felt warmer than this. Stone remembers the hands that shaped it, at least; these walls are trying to forget them. They’ve been made to erase, to look clean while reminding you exactly what the people inside are to the system: bodies to be moved, counted and contained.

Behind the last door, there’s a man I’m supposed to… befriend? Support? Teach, or…?

The paperwork should have read ‘self-destruction, with a volunteer badge’ in fine print.

My pulse seems to be trying to outrun me, but I keep my face smooth, mouth set like I’m here by choice, like I’m not listening for the next groan of metal as if it’s going to call out my name.

In all honesty, I’ve made worse decisions. Heartbreak scrambled the part of my brain responsible for self-preservation.

The guard beside me doesn’t bother hiding his boredom.

‘First time?’ he asks.

I swallow back the unease, eyeing his cap with shielded disdain.

Uniforms have never inspired much confidence in me. They often stood on my sister’s doorstep reciting procedure, while her abusive husband remained unblamed. Perhaps it wasn’t the whole system that failed her, just the badges that frequented her address.

‘Is it that obvious?’ I ask, already regretting the question.

He shrugs. ‘You look it.’

I wrinkle my nose at him. Lovely. Like a lamb to slaughter.

My attention – and anxiety – drag back to the final door. It opens with a mechanical shudder like something straight out of a disaster film. I half expect black smoke to start pouring through the gap.

It’s colder in this area. No windows, just CCTV cameras and signs that warn off unauthorised items.

My eyes catch on the bottom of the list: string, gum, hope – though I might have made up that last one.

‘Gum?’ I say as we pass through the checkpoint, where paint peels in small strips from the institutional green walls. They remind me of old, forgotten scabs. Might look almost macabre in a photo.

Mum’s reprimand resurfaces in the back of my head: Easy on the sarcasm, Leah.

‘They get creative around here,’ says the guard escorting me, his badge crooked and his tone bone-dry. ‘She’s all yours, George.’

A barred gate moans open and a heavyset man steps through. He moves with the weary confidence of someone who stopped believing in urgency years ago.

‘Afternoon,’ he says, his South London accent flattened by the stale heat of the corridor. It isn’t his voice that makes my face tighten, or even the cough that follows, sounding bad enough to finish him off with the next heave. It’s the smell. Like vinegar and stale coffee, familiar in the worst way.

I used to breathe that in every day as a teenager, back when my dad favoured the bottle. You don’t forget an odour that could double as paint stripper.

His bloodshot eyes sweep over me in stark, clinical motions.

My shoulder lifts to feel the weight of the missing camera strap, fingers closing around air before I remember the camera is locked behind two gates and a sheet of reinforced glass. I didn’t mind them taking the handbag. It’s just receipts and lipstick I hang on to but never remember to apply.

But the camera—

I’m still nursing the dismissive finger-wag the woman at the gate gave me when she locked my equipment away.

Without it, the fluorescent light seems to reach inwards, revealing the parts of me better left in the dark.