"Day room! La! We don't have such fancies as day rooms here. This is where you are and this is where you'll stay." With a push that propels me forward on to the bed, she stalks off.
I scramble to the bed head and crouch there, my back against the wall. I want to shut my eyes, to make all this disappear, but I feel too vulnerable. My stomach is clenched and my heart is beating so fast I think it will burst out of my chest, but I keep my eyes open, trying to be ready for whatever comes next.
We must be somewhere in the basement of the building; what light there is, filtering through high gratings, creates a muddy, underwater atmosphere.
Everywhere I look I see filthy, scrawny figures.
Some are inert—they stand like stones or crouch, whimpering, under their beds or lie, like bundles of rags that have been flung down. Others, driven by a restless energy, rage up and down the passage between the beds like tottering scarecrows, their thin stick arms gesticulating wildly. Some carry out the same sequence of actions over and over again, like machines. One stands at the door rattling the handle and calling for help. One keeps trying to eat coal out of the bucket until an exasperated attendant tethers her to her bed. My nearest neighbour is shredding her blanket, all the while staring at me and muttering under her breath.
No wonder Miss Gorman was terrified of Weeks, terrified of being sent here again. I look again more carefully, but I don't recognise her in any of these creatures. I don't recognise anyone.
"You friggin' bitch!" The sudden shout, so close, makes me jump and my heart hammers. But it's all right—they're not shouting at me. At the foot of my bed, two scarecrows are at each other's throats, scratching, tearing each other's hair and shouting obscenities.
Rather than stopping them, the attendants gather round as if it's an entertainment. But as quickly as it flared it dies down; the combatants lose interest and wander off. My heart beat slows a little. It wasn't me. But it might have been.
Now a bell rings and the patients are herded towards the door. An attendant approaches and frowns at my gown. "What have you done with your dress?"
"They took it." My voice is a wisp.
"Took it! More like you tore it up, you nuisance."
She goes off grumbling, returning shortly with a mud-coloured bundle that she thrusts over my head. I'm struggling to find the armholes when she yanks and twists my arms into the sleeves. I fumble with the fastenings but before I've done them up she seizes my arm and hauls me from the bed. The dress hangs like a sack to just below my knees. She jerks her head at the pair of shoes she has brought. I squeeze my bare feet into them.
"Come on, you great dollop, move." I stumble and she punches me on the back with her fist.
Patients under the beds are dragged out and we're hustled through the doorway and along the corridor. All the time, the attendants chivvy us with blows.
We scramble through a door into a bleak courtyard overshadowed by high walls. I stagger a few paces, using a wall as a support, but I haven't the strength to stand. I collapse on to the hard ground and it takes me a while to get my breath back, for the shuddering in my body to subside.
This must be our exercise yard. There are a few snowdrops in one corner, but they're lying on top of the soil, their blooms crushed. The light hurts my eyes—above our heads is a square of blue sky, so bright I can't look at it. The air is fresh and sharp and I breathe in great lungfuls. How long since I've been outside? Not since the night I tried to escape...
No one is walking. They carry on as they did inside while the attendants stand round gossiping. Some patients squat in the dirt. One piles stones up in a heap, another is eating a snowdrop. Out here the rampaging ones have more room to fling themselves about and I hunch up close to the wall, trying to keep out of their way. Some are amusing themselves by throwing things over the boundary. One has a crust in her hand, which she launches with a whoop, while another tips out her shoes. A brown lump falls out—and I suddenly realise, with a little shiver of revulsion, that it's excrement. This is hurled over with a scream of glee and the shoes follow after.
Something sharp strikes my head.
"Come on, you booby. Time to go in."
The attendant moves off, her keys dangling from her hand, leaving me stunned, but not from the blow.
What roots me to the spot is the realisation that to her, I'm no different from the others. I'm one of these lost, abandoned souls.
I've entered the lowest circle of hell and there is no escape.