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watching.
    It was two days till show time.

CHAPTER 4
    ‘I don’t think you realise how beautiful you are,’ he whispered. ‘There is a flower inside you just waiting to blossom.’
    She blushed and tilted her head, leaning against the wall of the corridor with her hands by her sides, as open as a book.
    ‘I mean it. You are beautiful.’
    ‘Shhh. I am not. Cut it out,’ she protested, but she was smiling. ‘Stevens is coming any minute,’ she warned.
    Ed Brown leaned a little closer to the bars. ‘I can’t wait until we’re together,’ he whispered. ‘I think about it every day in here.’
    ‘Oooh,’ she cooed and glanced at him lovingly, another warm smile creeping across her face. But then she turned and looked up the prison corridor, and her body language changed completely. She stiffened. ‘Stevens. How are you?’ she called out in a dull, professional tone.
    He could hear footsteps approaching his cell and Ed retreated to the corner of his cot. In seconds Stevens appeared. He was a solid and imposing six foot four, with arms like a gorilla’s and a chip on hisshoulder. Probably a police academy reject, Ed decided. Stevens worked the day shifts in these protected quarters of Long Bay Correctional Centre, noon till midnight. He was one of the reasons Ed Brown had taken to keeping a nocturnal schedule—anything to spend more time with her and avoid the long boring hours with Stevens hovering outside the cell, bereft of any usefulness or even decent conversation. Now Ed slept from five in the afternoon until midnight when the shifts changed, and his woman came back. The lights out didn’t bother him. His lawyer had made sure he could have his own reading lamp and TV on any time he wished, as long as he was courteous about the volume. And Ed was always courteous.
    ‘What on earth do you two find to talk about?’ Stevens sniffed, running a hand across his shaved head, which was covered in a curious road map of rough scars.
    Oh, but you don’t realise we have so very much in common , Ed thought with a barely detectable grin.
    ‘Gotta do something to pass the time,’ the night-shift woman replied.
    That was true. Unlike in the movies, most prison guards did not go out of their way to make life miserable for those they supervised. The guard had to be there, the prisoner had to be there—in Ed’s case he was still on remand for his upcoming murder trial, now less than forty-eight hours away—so they coexisted as pleasantly as they could manage. No point in making life any more difficultthan it already was. There were plenty of conversations had, and friendship, of a sort, was not unusual between guards and some of the more compliant, long-term inmates. So on the surface, Ed’s late-night gabbing sessions with the night-shift guard were not odd. It was the subject of their discussions that was unusual, but that remained their little secret.
    ‘See ya tomorrow.’
    Relieved from her twelve-hour shift, Ed’s budding ally walked away without looking back. Ed could hear her keys jangling as she disappeared, the sound a kind of music in his ears.
    It had taken almost thirteen months, but Ed Brown had found his target. She was perfect—a hardened and unattractive woman, no husband, no children and no social life to speak of, a lonely corrections officer who privately longed to be swept off her feet by a romantic suitor. She had been as tough as nails at first, as one would expect, but just as Ed had anticipated, the hard surface had melted with patience and the right touch. Deliberation and equanimity were some of Ed’s great strengths. In due course she had cracked like an egg for him, all gooey and messed up in the centre.
    Perfect.
    ‘Excuse me, Pete?’ Ed politely addressed Stevens. ‘Could you please turn that there on for me? The uh…TV?’
    Ed was careful to show servitude and an exaggerated lack of intelligence when he spoke topeople like Stevens. It made them assume he was dumb and obedient,