Locks by Ashleigh Nugent

Author:Ashleigh Nugent
Language: eng
Format: epub

Plates of food wobbled, span, and rattled when released from dinner ladies’ hands. We ate in a long hall behind the big Waltons house. It was un-brushed and unlit, big brown stains on the walls.

Shepherd invited me to sit with him at the head of a long concoction of tables of various lengths, heights, and widths. The boys ranged from about eight years old at one end of the table to us lot at the other. The grey-green plastic chairs were all connected together by little loops on their sides. It felt like being back at junior school, but in an alternate reality where dinner ladies wear paisley bandanas and suck their teeth.

The food looked pretty much the same as what I’d eaten for every meal since being arrested. It was still ricey-mush with titchy bits of orange stuff, but now it had what seemed to be tiny bits of chicken as well.

Shepherd had a larger portion than everyone else, with bigger chunks of chicken and some tasty looking red sauce. He smiled at the dinner lady as she placed the plate down in front of him. ‘Thank you, mummy,’ he said. ‘Ian, the English man, him need some a dis too, mummy. Thank you.’ She patted him on the head and smiled, then launched the plate originally meant for me in the general direction of Straw Man. He frowned up at me as the plate wobbled in front of him. The dinner lady went back to the kitchen and returned with a special plate for me, all spicy red sauce and big chunks of chicken.

The food was better than any meal I’d eaten in the past week, though still less appetising than most meals I’d eaten in the sixteen years and eleven months before getting arrested in Jamaica. We even had dessert: a flavourless dry sponge that you needed water just to swallow, even though it had custard on it. Well, me and Shepherd had custard.

‘No worry ’bout food for the others,’ said Shepherd as I tried to not look at Straw Man and the others forcing down flavourless sponge with tepid water. ‘Soon we mek sure dem all get something special, if you like. If you have a little money to help, we can mek something special happen. Then everyone feel OK.’

‘Yeah man.’

‘Irie man.’

‘Irie, mate.’

‘You need some more lesson in Jamaican dialect from Saddle and his tape,’ said Shepherd. ‘Saddle.’

‘Yes man,’ replied Saddle. ‘Me see to dat straight after me finish dis dry-arse cake with water.’

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