Machines Like Me

For the final week of Miranda’s incarceration, I travelled to Ipswich and slept on the living-room sofa of an old school friend. It was the time of an exceptional Indian summer. I drove the fifteen miles each late afternoon to the open prison. By the time I arrived, Miranda would be finishing work. We sat on the grass in the shade by the reeds of a choked-up ornamental pond. Here, it was easy to forget that she wasn’t free. Her weekly calls with Mark had continued over the months and she worried desperately about him. He was closing up, he was slipping away from her. She was convinced that Adam had helped bring the case against her in order to ruin her adoption prospects. He was always jealous of Mark, she insisted. Adam was not designed to understand what it was, to love a child. The concept of play was alien to him. I was sceptical, but I heard her out and didn’t argue, not at this stage. I understood her bitterness. My unspoken view, which she would not have liked, was that Adam was designed for goodness and truth. He would be incapable of executing a cynical plan.

Our appeal was delayed, partly because of illness, partly because the adoption agency was being radically reorganised. It wasn’t until Miranda was moved from Holloway that the process officially began. There was a chance we could persuade the authorities that her criminal record was not relevant to the care she could provide. We had a good testimonial from Jasmin. During the summer, I was drawn into the kind of labyrinthine bureaucracy I would have associated with the declining Ottoman Empire. It depressed me to hear that Mark had behavioural problems. Tantrums, bed-wetting, general naughtiness. According to Jasmin, he had been teased and bullied. He no longer danced or flitted about. There was no talk of princesses. I didn’t pass this on to Miranda.

She’d been consulting local maps and had a clear idea of what she wanted on her first day of freedom. The morning I collected her, the weather was beginning to turn and a cool strong wind was blowing from the east. We drove to Manningtree, parked in a lay-by and set out on the raised footpath that follows the tidal River Stour to the sea. The weather hardly mattered. What she had wanted and found was open space and a big sky. It was low tide and the vast mudflats sparkled in intermittent sunshine. Tiny bright clouds raced across a deep blue sky. Miranda skipped along the dyke and kept punching the air. We walked six miles before lunch, which I’d prepared as a picnic, at her request. To eat it we needed to get out of the wind. We came away from the river to shelter against a barn of corrugated iron, with a view of coils of rusting barbed wire partially submerged in beds of nettles. But that didn’t matter. She was joyful, animated, full of plans. I’d been keeping it from her as a surprise, and now I told her that during her time inside I’d saved almost £1,000. She was impressed, delighted, and she hugged and kissed me. Then, she was suddenly serious.

‘I loathe him. I hate him. I want him out of the flat.’

Adam remained concealed in the cupboard in the hall, just as we had left him, following the deed. I hadn’t carried out his final request. He was too heavy and awkward for me to lift alone and I didn’t want to ask for help. I felt both guilt and resentment and tried not to think about him.

The wind shook the barn’s roof and made a booming sound. I took her hand and made my promise. ‘We’ll do it,’ I said. ‘As soon as we’re home.’

But we didn’t, not immediately. When we arrived home, there was a letter for us on the doormat. It was an apology for the slowness of the appeal process. Our case was under further review, and we would hear a decision very soon. Jasmin – very much on our side – sent a neutral note. She didn’t want to get our hopes up. Over the months, it had sometimes seemed to go our way, other times, it looked like a lost cause. Against us: it was bureaucratically inefficient to make an exception to the rule – a criminal record nullified an adoption request. For us: Jasmin’s reference, our heartfelt statements, and Mark’s love for Miranda. I hadn’t yet made it into his cast of significant adults.

We were man and wife, together again in our own strange alignment of two tiny flats. We were in a mood to celebrate. What were we doing, eating dry cheese sandwiches by a collapsing barn when here we had wine, lovemaking, and a chicken to defrost? The day after we came back, we had friends round for a homecoming party. The next day we spent sleeping then clearing up and sleeping again. The day after that, I set about earning some money, though with minimal success. Miranda put her academic work in order and went to the university to re-register for her course.