I’d also got the visiting details for Golborne, the place in East Lancashire where Luke was being held. It made sense to start by seeing him first and then the others who’d been interviewed. I’d rung and arranged a visit as soon as I’d got home on the Tuesday after seeing Mr Wallace. They’d booked me in for the Friday morning. I duly reported to the visitor’s centre adjacent to the remand centre the following afternoon. Golborne Remand Centre is newer than either Risley or Hindley and boasts a better safety record – fewer suicides. It was one of the first places to be run by Group 4 Security, and when it opened there was a blaze of publicity, mostly about the adjoining Young Offender’s Institution which was to be run like a boot camp along American lines. Never mind that all the statistics show such regimes fail to turn around most young offenders. Just getting near the place made me want to abscond. The idea of being locked up terrified me, not only because of the loss of liberty but because of the enforced separation from Maddie.
