Long wards with high-up windows led off the central hallway. Ancient hospital beds stood behind the tattered remains of curtains. There was outdated, abandoned medical equipment. She recognised an old blood pressure machine on the floor, its rubber bulb almost completely rotten.
‘In here,’ said Kerry, leading her through a door with a crooked sign that read Matron’s Office. Inside, the plaster was falling off the wall in chunks and disintegrating pipework hung down from the ceiling. There were half-collapsed bookshelves and the remains of a wooden desk, its leather top coming detached on either side so that it looked like a large scroll. Kerry opened a glass cabinet to reveal a veritable Aladdin’s cave of contraband: a multipack of cigarettes, two bottles of vodka and various packets of biscuits and chocolate.
‘Wow, you weren’t joking about the vodka!’ said Louisa.
‘I would never joke about something as serious as alcohol,’ said Kerry, unscrewing a bottle. ‘Aperitif?’
‘No, thanks. But if you had a nice Madeira…’
‘All out, sorry. We only have vodka.’
‘Ah. I imagine this is what it must be like in Siberia.’
‘Just so.’ Kerry grinned. ‘But don’t knock it, Doc: they can’t smell vodka on your breath.’
‘Of course. Where the hell did you get all this?’
‘I’m resourceful. Takes more imagination than you might think to be a fruitcake. Come on.’
Kerry dragged open a door and they emerged outside into a small, sunny courtyard completely enclosed by the buildings around it. Old-fashioned yellow rosette roses were just coming into flower, scrambling up and down the worn brick walls, and poking through were the palest pink montana rubens clematis flowers, just like the ones in Louisa’s grandmother’s garden. Two enormous rusty operating tables had been dragged into the middle. Kerry climbed up onto one and lay back with a sigh of pleasure.
Louisa was transfixed. Once, this must have been the hospital matron’s own private courtyard. Now it was a secret garden. Left unchecked, the plants had outgrown their original containers and spread their roots down between the broken paving stones. The rose bushes had grown thick bark, like trees.
‘Come and chill out,’ said Kerry.
‘I will. In just a minute. This place is like something out of a fairy story. I’m going back inside to look around.’
‘Sure. Just be careful. A lot of the floors are rotten through.’
Louisa went back through the hallway, then through another set of double doors, which led to a vestibule with three corridors running off it. She ventured down the middle one. Peeling paint hung down from the ceiling in tatters like dirty icicles. It was strangely beautiful. There were rooms with high ceilings on either side of the corridor, some empty, others filled with old bed frames and hospital screens. There was a lavatory, its old-fashioned cistern fixed high up on the wall. Next to it was a dilapidated wheelchair, positioned so that it looked as if the occupant had only just that minute swung themselves from one to the other.
She passed what must once have been the sluice, then a kitchen, with a rusting old range abandoned in the middle, along with a single wooden crutch. Then she came to what had clearly once been the pharmacy, with a dispensing hatch, a sink hanging off the wall and the remains of various metal cabinets standing around. One cabinet was almost completely intact. She ran a hand over its small, neat drawers and read the labels: Analgesics, Sedatives. She pulled them open – but there was nothing inside but dust.
Then, without any warning, the cabinet gave a loud wheeze and collapsed to the floor with an enormous crash. Glass shattered everywhere. Louisa froze as the noise ricocheted through the empty hallways and her heart throbbed. She felt as if she’d committed some unspeakable crime against the sanctity of this place.
But then as swiftly as it had gone, the stillness returned like a tide, filling every corner and crevice. Slowly, she exhaled. Then she heard something – a voice. It seemed to come from overhead. She listened. Nothing. No, she must have been mistaken.
Then:
‘Hello?’ The voice again, muffled but unmistakable. ‘Is there someone there?’ It was a man’s voice.
Her heart began to pound again. This wasn’t good. She ought to go back, find Kerry, and get out.
‘Please, can you help me? I’ve fallen.’
Her mind was racing. If she was discovered here, it would be bad – very bad. And for Kerry too. But Louisa couldn’t walk away from someone who was hurt.
‘Hello?’ the voice called again.
‘Just a minute,’ she called. ‘I’m coming!’
CHAPTER NINE
Louisa went back out into the empty, filthy hospital corridor. ‘Where are you?’
‘At the top of the stairs.’ A young man’s voice, clear and very well-spoken, but tinged with anxiety.
She walked a little further and saw, just before the next double doors, a narrow staircase leading upwards. Carefully, she climbed up, and found herself on a landing, the walls covered in red graffiti. Halfway along there was a round, glassless internal window through which it was possible to see back down to the corridor below. At the end of the landing, oddly, there stood a perfectly intact hardwood door with a polished brass handle.
‘Where are you?’ she called.
‘At the end.’ There was relief in the voice.
She pushed the handle and went in. The room was dark. A pair of wooden shutters over the window were almost completely closed, allowing in only the tiniest crack of light. A man in pyjamas and a dressing gown was half-sitting, half-lying in the middle of the floor, tangled up in a wooden chair. He immediately put his hand to his eyes and turned away.
‘No, please,’ he said. ‘The light hurts.’
‘Sorry.’ She pushed the door closed and he jumped at the noise. As her eyes got used to the dark, she saw that the room was neat and furnished. Against the wall on the right-hand side was an old-fashioned iron hospital bed, its sheets and blankets pushed to one side. Everything smelled clean, of lavender and sandalwood.
The man rubbed a hand across his face, wiping away tears. ‘Could you help me back into bed?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got myself trapped somehow.’
His pyjama leg had got caught up, and she could see that his right leg was bandaged down to the foot. She bent down and disentangled him, then put a hand under his arm to help him up – and saw that wasn’t going to work. He was quite a lot bigger than she was.
‘Perhaps you might fetch my cane,’ he suggested.
‘Ah, good idea,’ she said, spotting the outline of a hooked walking stick by the bed. She brought it back.