Guilt: The Sunday Times best selling psychological thriller that you need to read in 2018

The last one was the night before I came to Bristol. Since I came to Bristol, the panic attacks have gone. What has stopped them? The smell of salt on the breeze? The way Sebastian melts into my soul? What will it take to make me throw away my blade? Or will throwing away my blade always be one step too far?

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Miranda (#ulink_24f5a8ab-a18a-5423-9835-09c5cdad6246)

I watch delicate fingers making the spliff, sprinkling the tobacco, spreading the shaken bud on top of it. Rolling tightly. Licking the edge of the Rizla paper, pressing the paper together with casual but practised insistence. You always roll the perfect spliff, don’t you, Zara? I have never been an expert. I don’t even know where to buy the stuff. But neither of us smoke much. An evening of you to myself. An evening of best Colombian Gold.

We lie on the rug in front of the TV – on our stomachs, facing each other. Your golden eyes sharpen beneath the electric light of the wintry evening as you light the spliff and take the first drag. You inhale deeply, as if you are sucking the elixir of life into your very being. A passing frown as you concentrate. Holding in. Holding in. Holding in. Release. The musky aroma of cannabis spreads thickly around us. Clinging. Sickly. Sweet. You pass the spliff to me. The same routine: holding, holding, release. The cannabis is making me feel floaty.

‘You and Sebastian. Don’t you think it’s too quick?’ I pause. ‘Is it lust, or love at first sight? Don’t you think it might just be lust?’ I ask.

‘I thought you’d ask that,’ you sigh, looking into the distance beyond me. ‘But it isn’t lust, it’s definitely love,’ you continue. ‘And when you really love someone you want them to love you back. You want to possess them.’ There is a pause. ‘I do worry that I love Sebastian too much.’

‘What’s different about Sebastian?’ I ask, handing the spliff back.

‘You sound disapproving.’

‘No. I’m curious. Just interested. I want to know.’

The spliff is burning down in your hand. Slowly, slowly, you take a drag. Then you say, ‘He’s volatile. Dark. There’s nothing bland about him.’

‘Don’t you think a bit of bland might be more relaxing?’

‘No. Bland is boring.’

‘So for you dark and volatile means love?’

‘You’re twisting my words. I didn’t say that.’

‘Come on, tell me, really tell me about love.’

‘Should I quote the Bible or Shakespeare?’

‘No. Tell it for yourself.’

‘When I touch him, something jumps inside me.’

‘That’s sexual.’

‘When I’m in a crowded room with him I don’t see anyone else.’

‘That’s antisocial.’

‘I think about him all the time when I’m not with him.’

‘Try being an accountant, not a photography student.’

‘That’s condescending.’

You laugh your heady laugh. You raise the spliff in the air, in sudden proclamation.

‘Listen Miranda, when you love someone you just know. It’s a physical actuality, a certainty that settles in your mind. And from that moment on, the rest of your life swings around it. The love, the certainty, is the pivot from which everything else flows.’

THE PRESENT (#ulink_c42615ae-52be-52b3-b9e2-4043b7f9b86e)

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Bail denied. Back inside the cattle truck. First it rattles along a straight road, presumably the motorway. Now it twists and turns down country lanes. Never-ending sickness. Never-ending discomfort. Even when the truck stops still the ground moves beneath her feet. Still she feels sick as she is escorted from the truck into the prison yard.

The prison building unfolds before her. It looks like a 1960s secondary modern school. Dusty, boxy, low-rise architecture. Surrounded by open countryside. Green upon green. Tree upon tree. Beech and oak, ash and sycamore. Air that tastes fresh. Air that tastes clean. But she will not breathe it for long. Soon she will be incarcerated.

She is the only prisoner to arrive today. No one else to watch. No one else to empathise with as the guard takes her through the yard.

Inside, the registration area looks like a hotel reception. Premier Inn? Travelodge? Almost, but not quite. The receptionist is a prison officer. A prison officer with shiny blonde hair, scraped up in a bun. Looking more like a ballet teacher than a prison officer. The ballet teacher hands her paperwork. So much paperwork. Piles of instructions. About the prison routine. About what will happen to her.

The ballet teacher hands her the suitcase her mother has brought in for her with a label on it announcing it has been checked. The ballet teacher, who is also Little Miss Admin Efficiency, with soft-pink painted fingernails and carefully dyed eyelashes, asks her for details, primly and crisply. Then when she has finished interviewing her, she telephones to request another officer to take her inside. Deepening her voice on the word inside, making it sound as sinister as possible.

‘Before you go inside you will be searched,’ Miss Ballet Admin Efficiency warns.

Her stomach tightens. Her chest burns. She thinks she’s about to have a panic attack. She’s seen too many films where women are strip-searched. Miss Ballet Admin Efficiency sends her across the vestibule to a doorway on the opposite wall. She knocks on it.

‘Come in,’ says an elderly voice.

She breathes deeply to prepare herself. But as soon as she steps inside the small, sterile room she sees a female officer of about sixty, smiling at her. She is gently patted down. So gently she’s not sure how they ever find anything. How easy it must be to smuggle things in. That worries her too. Her insides tighten again.

‘That’s fine,’ the elderly officer says. ‘Is it your first time in prison?’

‘First and last.’

A bell-like laugh. ‘Good for you. Good luck.’

Back into the vestibule. The next officer is waiting for her. The officer to take her ‘inside’. He is a big muscly man with bulging eyes and a bald head. Dragging her large red suitcase, she follows him into the holding room.

‘You’re the only one coming in this evening,’ he says conversationally.

She doesn’t reply.

The holding room is long and rectangular. It doesn’t have any windows, just doors coming off it. It has scratchy grey woollen sofas set in rows along its middle.

‘This is where you wait to go to your cell. Where you are processed.’

The bulgy-eyed man disappears. She sits on one of the scratchy sofas and waits. She tries to read some of the bumf she’s been given, but there is a mountain of it. Not a word goes in.

Next stage seems like an attack. More prison officers coming to see her. Handing her more paperwork she can’t read. Prison officers approaching her, asking questions, ticking her answers off on tick-box sheets. Questions. So many questions. What are all these questions about? Has she ever been depressed? Does she have any allergies? Has she ever taken drugs? Does she smoke? Is there any possibility she’s pregnant?

Somewhere in the middle of all this, a prisoner arrives to see her and asks her if she would like a cup of tea. A cup of tea? How is that going to help? Somewhere in the middle of it all she sees a nurse, who checks her blood pressure and asks her more tick-box questions. Some time after that she sees a doctor. Somewhere in between form filling and medical check-ups she collects a variety of plastic bags. Perforated of course. A plastic bag for the contents of her suitcase. A plastic bag with her bedding: pillows, sheets, duvet. A plastic bag with her allocation of plastic crockery and cutlery. A plastic bag with what are laughingly called luxuries: paper, pen and pre-paid envelope to write a letter home, tea bags and biscuits – rich tea and digestives. Eons of plastic bags.

She is taken to a cubicle where she is allowed to make a phone call. Her heart beats like the wings of a trapped bird as she tries to call her mother. Ten rings and her mother’s voice speaks to her from voicemail. She sighs inside. Where is she? This time, why isn’t her mother there when she needs her? She has always been there for her before.