The echoing, clanging spaces, the dull-eyed men sitting waiting for their weary wives and frightened children, and the wary warders watching every move, filled her with almost as much despair as she could feel in the air around her. She could take pictures of this, she thought, and horrify people outside, but she knew she would never get permission for that. She and Harry Barnard found themselves sitting across a bare table from Nelson Mackintosh in an equally bare visiting room that Monday afternoon sharing an agonisingly long silence. Barnard had called Kate that morning and said he had wangled a visiting order for the two of them to see Mackintosh, and urging her to make time to come with him. ‘He won’t open up to me if I go on my own,’ he had said. ‘He’ll just mark me down as another copper, even if I’m not from Notting Hill, but if you vouch for me we might get somewhere. Someone should tell him what’s going on with Ben. It’s best to tell Nelson first, I think. He can break it to his wife.
