A door led into a tiny bathroom with a toilet and a basin with sensor-operated taps. The toilet had an integrated seat without a cover and the floor was an ugly mosaic of chipped tiles with stained grout. There was no window, nor even a proper mirror, just a piece of polished steel fixed to the wall with bolts, one of which was missing. She couldn’t bear to look in it. No one had given her any dinner – not that she wanted any.
The nurse’s grim face appeared at the panel in the door once more. Without a word, she flipped a switch, and everything went dark. Louisa felt her way back to the bed, got in and stared up into the blackness. Tomorrow she would speak to a doctor and make him or her see that she wasn’t in the bit least suicidal. She could explain everything. Everything would be all right.
CHAPTER FIVE
She must eventually have fallen into a light sleep, because she awoke to what sounded like the Perspex of the nurses’ station being hit with great force and pieces of furniture crashing to the floor. A woman was shouting something she couldn’t make out, as well as a whole medley of swear words that she could.
Immediately, Louisa was on guard, heart thudding. The shouting got closer and closer.
‘You bastards!’ a woman screamed over and over, her voice hoarse.
‘Behave yourself, Marisa!’ came an exasperated male voice.
Then, with a lurch of horror, Louisa realised the door to her room was being pushed open. In the dim light from the corridor she saw a large, solidly built woman standing in the doorway, her arms pinned behind her by two male nurses. Her face was covered in blood, and two savage dark eyes glared out furiously. She bellowed like a bull.
‘What? Are you taking the bloody piss? Who’s this bitch?’ the woman spat. ‘Get the hell out of my room or I’ll rip your bloody throat out with my bare hands! Get out!’
The nurses manhandled her inside as she yelled and roared, then hauled her to the other bed and pushed her face down onto it. The force tipped the bed up with a crash. A female nurse hurried in with a syringe, which she stabbed deep into Marisa’s buttock. Marisa let out a shriek of outrage and struggled and swore a moment longer – then went limp. Between them, the nurses heaved the bed upright and dragged her onto the bare mattress.
‘Is all right,’ the female nurse told Louisa; she had a strong Eastern European accent. ‘Nothing worry. Go back now sleep.’
‘But… she said she was going to kill me!’
‘Don’t mind her,’ said one of the men. ‘She doesn’t mean any harm; just came off her meds, that’s all. She won’t be any trouble now.’
And with that, they all left. Marisa was now snoring loudly, slumped over the bed like a drunk on a swimming pool lilo, her arm hanging over the side. She smelled strongly of stale sweat.
Louisa went to the window. It was starting to get light. Outside, she could make out a circular lawn, around which the hospital building was arranged in three wings. In the middle of the lawn was an enormous oak tree which must have been very old. A large split in its trunk revealed that it was partly hollow. One of the hospital wings, she saw, was covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. The wing opposite it was built of crumbling red bricks and looked in desperate need of repointing. All the way down the building were rows of high windows, barred, their glass faintly gilded by the weak morning light. A series of terraces ran up to the property, sparsely planted with rhododendrons and neglected roses, bare and leggy, some still heavy with the previous season’s hips. The whole place exuded a tired, quiet desperation. It looked like an old Victorian asylum, not a facility fit for the twenty-first century.
The pipes around the ceiling began to knock, which surely meant things must be gearing up for morning. Things, hopefully, would seem more optimistic in daylight, Louisa thought. She picked up her duvet and laid it over Marisa, then opened the door. Quietly, she padded over to the nurses’ station, outside of which several tatty, stained leather armchairs were arranged.
She sat down in one of them, tucking her dressing gown over her feet. The rows of novels and TV magazines in the racks opposite were vaguely comforting, as was the muffled sound of the radio from the nurses’ station – signs of a rational outside world that still existed somewhere.
She looked around. The old wooden panelling was painted burgundy. An odd choice, she thought, for people with mental problems – hardly calming. The paint was chipped, revealing years of different colour schemes beneath. In several places the wood had been repaired, presumably from where people had lashed out at it. In the corner was an old fireplace with most of the tiles missing from its surround. Above it hung a noticeboard with several flyers enjoining patients not to assault or spit at the staff or steal from one another, along with leaflets on alcohol and drug abuse, quitting smoking and the complaints procedure. A list of contraband items included razors, tweezers, cigarette lighters, belts and underwired bras. There wasn’t a single painting or picture anywhere to cheer things up.
Eventually, Louisa felt her head fall back and her eyes closed.
The next thing she knew she was being shaken awake. It was the nurse with the melting face.
‘Get up! Go to the dining room. It’s breakfast time, not nap time.’
Louisa’s heart lurched. She got up, anxious and dishevelled. She wanted to wash, and brush her teeth and hair, but she was without possessions, beyond the few things they’d given her. The corridor was full of men and women of various ages and shapes and sizes, many extremely unkempt, but all dressed in a combination of pyjama pants, t-shirt and dressing gown. A young man and a middle-aged woman stood outside the nurses’ station, staring blankly in. The woman’s hair was grey and matted and her lips were moving. The young man turned, and Louisa saw that he had nothing on but his dressing gown, which was wide open, displaying all his anatomy. The nurses ignored them both.
Most of her fellow patients seemed to be moving in the same direction, so Louisa went along too. No one moved with any sense of purpose. It was a tide of lethargy. She reached the canteen, a long, high, light-filled room with fabulous fanlight windows and French doors all the way along the back wall which looked out on the central lawn. But they were all barred, their glass smeared and dirty. It had probably been an orangery once. Anywhere else it would be a prized, precious space – a restaurant in some National Trust property, or an elegant venue that could be hired for weddings.
At bolted-down tables and chairs were scores of patients, some slumped in their seats, oblivious to the food congealing on paper plates before them. Others stared out of the windows. An obese man in a stained t-shirt in the middle of the room seemed to be doing tai chi moves.
‘Such eyes!’ A very slender woman with long grey hair appeared at her side. ‘Such knowing eyes! You’ve seen so much,’ she said. ‘I feel you looking into my soul!’ She brushed Louisa’s cheek and was gone.