Page 108 of The Bargain

“Of course, sir.” I glance back at the crowd. “Congratulations, all, and best of luck with the exams and your wonderful, perfect futures. I’ve been your head girl, Desdemona Sutton-Knight.”

42

Utterly Outmatched

Elias

I thought the first day would be the hardest. I was wrong.

The first day of incarceration is all shock, a series of jarring, unnatural moments. The loud slam of a metal door, the flash of white light, the stale chemical stink. The first day, you’re still in denial, you still think this is temporary—that someone will make a call, fix the paperwork, tell you it was all a misunderstanding. The first day, you still have the energy to ask questions.

By the third day, you’ve stopped asking, and by the fifth, you’re no longer wondering. You start bargaining with yourself. If I can get through this day, I can make it through the next. If I make it through one week, I can make it through a month.

By the seventh, the hopelessness has well and truly set in.

Every day is harder than the one before, not because anything changes, but because nothing does. The same walls, the same lukewarm air, the same plastic meal trays, the same fluorescent lights buzzing endlessly. You know it’s supposed to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—but it could be the same twenty-four hours looping endlessly.

They took everything on the first day: my phone, my clothes, even my shoelaces. They handed me a pair of grey sweats and a plastic toothbrush. I tried to comfort myself by thinking that at least I had my pride and dignity left—then they made me stand for the mugshot.

Turns out they can take that, too.

The whole process is chilling because it’s antithetical to the nature of the universe, where everything is organic. Here, everything is pure machinery: ugly, efficient, unnatural and utterly impersonal. A system that doesn’t need to hate you to destroy you.

Hatred would make it personal, and this isn’t personal. It’s paperwork. Sign here. Stand there. Hands behind your back. Step forward. Thank you for your cooperation.

Except that they say cooperation when they really mean surrender.

And let’s be honest: surrendering is the one thing I could never teach myself to bear.

I try not to think about her.

But every time I tell myself, Don’t think about Desdemona, my brain conjures her instantly: the cut-glass syllables of her perfect diction, the faint smell of sunshine and soap on her skin, the little lines between her eyebrows when she’s frowning at me. I tell myself not to imagine what she’s doing right now—and of course that’s exactly what I do. I picture her sitting perfectly straight at a desk, her blazer immaculate, pretending she’s fine.

Maybe she is fine. Maybe she’s forgotten me already. She told me she loved me, but her heart is young and elastic. Even if it breaks, it will mend. And that would be better, wouldn’t it? My pain would only be made more unbearable by hers.

At least now, only one of us is suffering.

I press the heels of my palms against my eyes until the red light blooms behind my eyelids, until I see nothing at all. It’s just seven days, I tell myself. I’ve survived worse, haven’t I?

But I’m not so sure anymore.

On the eighth day, I’m lying on the flat hard bed with my hands crossed behind my head, trying to find the golden ratio in the rectangles of the walls and ceilings, when the custody sergeant knocks on the cell door.

“You’ve got visitors.”

I know it’s not Desdemona and I don’t expect it to be. I stand up, resigned and hollow. I’m taken down a corridor that smells like stale bleach, the floor slick and dull at the same time, the lights above humming, a constant mind-numbing droning. When we reach the door at the end, the officer swipes his keycard, and I step into a room so bright and sterile it hurts my eyes.

There’s a long table in the centre and a single chair waiting for me on one side.

On the other, well⁠—

An entire army.

I could almost laugh at the overkill.

There’s the Hastings’ lawyers, three of them, indistinguishable in their navy suits and bland expressions, armed with notepads and shiny pens. Next to them sit the Pearsons, composed and immaculate as ever, their posture that of people attending a board meeting rather than an eighteen-year-old’s inquisition. They have their own lawyer, who looks identical to all their other staff members: posh and white and obedient. There’s a police superintendent by the door, belly stretching his uniform, and finally, at the far end, my court-appointed solicitor—who looks young, helpless, and utterly outmatched.

Well. That makes two of us, then.