I think about them as I lie in my bed waiting for sleep. It comes too soon and I feel bad that I didn’t give them more of my thoughts, my heart and compassion. I keep forgetting his name as I used to forget hers, but I hold him, as I held her, in my mind. I imagine sitting with them in their cells, not speaking but being present as they sleep, or just sitting in witness, in solidarity for the life that they have been dealt. How many more innocent people are held behind bars? How many have their liberty stolen from them? And now the cricketer will also be locked away. They are brave. And I remember those men I met in that prison I visited outside Oxford. That stench of incarceration – of pent up frustration, boredom and fear. And I think of the man/boy we know in the coffee shop who’d spent years in and out of prison. Such a tender soul. “I was too frightened to come out of my cell,” he told us. I ache for him as I do them. Let there be some hope, or is hope worse? She was set free. Might they be too?
