She had a shower and washed her hair with shampoo from an oversized plastic bottle. It smelt of apples. She dressed in jeans, a clean shirt, a chunky cardigan, wondering who had chosen the clothes she had here. Felix? Mostly he had packed as if the weather was warm. There was even a checked dress in the case, and a grey linen jumpsuit with a pink belt that she hadn’t worn for years. Most people here wore tracksuits, sweatshirts, things you could pull on with minimum effort.
She cleaned her teeth and stared in the speckled mirror at the face that stared back. Hollow cheeks, cracked lips, a bruise on her cheek, a scratch running from her jaw to her ear. How had that happened?
‘Can I go outside?’ she asked a care worker when she went into the common room, where the television played to no one. He looked like a schoolboy and had pimples on his forehead and gel in his hair.
‘If you don’t mind freezing to death,’ he said.
She didn’t have a coat or jacket, so she put a blanket round her shoulders and went out into the corridor.
It all felt unreal. Her feet tapping on the linoleum floor, shouts in the distance, someone talking to themselves behind a closed door, the exit slowly coming towards her as she walked.
The garden was a large walled enclosure with no means of escape. There were a few leafless trees, and some shrubs in a bed at the far end. The care worker was right. It was freezing. Her feet ached in their thin trainers, her cheeks stung, and her gloveless fingers throbbed. The sky was a dull white and as she walked a few flakes of snow fell.
Nancy didn’t know what day it was. She had no sense of how long she had been here. She knew it was nearly December, or perhaps it already was. Christmas was coming. She had to be out before then. She had to be out before the next year started.
She walked in a loop around the garden, then heard feet crunching on the gravel path behind her and turned. It was the nurse with the missing top tooth who had grinned down at her after Mil Burns had assaulted her. She was tall and looked solid. Her shoulders were broad and her hands large. Her badge identified her as Beth Styles. Nancy remembered the nurse laughing, pushing her into the cell, threatening her. She remembered the feel of her hands and the smell that had come off her, sweat and perfume and breath that smelt of coffee. She pulled the blanket more securely around her, feeling weak and helpless.
‘Hello,’ she said.
Beth Styles made a noise.
‘It’s trying to snow,’ Nancy continued. ‘I wish it would. I love snow.’ She turned her face towards the blank sky.
‘Too cold to stand around,’ said the nurse.
‘I wanted to say that I’m sorry I made a nuisance of myself,’ said Nancy. ‘I know you have a hard job and people like me must make it even harder.’
Beth Styles regarded her suspiciously.
‘Yeah?’ she said.
‘I wasn’t in my right mind,’ said Nancy.
‘You were kicking off something rotten.’
‘I know. I was angry. I said things I shouldn’t have.’
The woman shrugged her heavy shoulders.
‘We get used to it,’ she said. ‘It’s part of the job, restraining people, ignoring things they shout at you, crying for help. You get used to it.’
Nancy stared at her, biting her chapped lips.
‘That must be difficult,’ she said at last.
‘We do what we do.’
‘Is it very upsetting?’
‘Upsetting?’
‘Seeing people in such distress.’
‘Like I said, you get used to it.’
Nancy, Josie and the woman with long braids, whose name was Roxanne, decorated the plastic Christmas tree that had been put up in the common room. Nothing sharp, nothing metal; no long ropes of tinsel. Plastic baubles in pink, purple, red and green on loops of string.
‘Very nice,’ said Josie sarcastically, hanging one round her earlobe. ‘Makes you feel properly festive, doesn’t it?’
The therapist’s name was Loretta Slater, but she told Nancy she should call her Lorrie.
‘All right, Lorrie,’ said Nancy. She smiled, folded her hands in her lap.
There were only five women in the circle this time.
‘Who would like to begin?’ asked Lorrie. Today she was wearing a green corduroy jacket over tight black trousers and had brushed her hair behind her ears.
Roxanne put up her hand.
‘I had a terrible night,’ she said.
Everyone waited.
‘Terrible,’ repeated Roxanne.
‘Because you couldn’t sleep?’ Lorrie asked eventually.
‘I was thinking about my little girl,’ said Roxanne. ‘Missing her mummy.’
And she began to cry. Nancy realised this was the woman she had heard before, sobbing as if her heart must break. She leaned forward, wanting to comfort her in some way.
‘That must have been very painful,’ said Lorrie.
Roxanne tried to answer, hiccuping and wiping her face with the back of her hand.
‘Sorry,’ she said eventually. ‘It gets to me sometimes.’
‘Of course,’ said Lorrie. ‘Of course it does.’
‘If I could only see her. Just the once.’
‘Can’t you?’ asked Nancy.
Josie, sitting next to her, kicked her foot.
‘Social services took her,’ she hissed.
Nancy sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, another woman was talking about how the drugs made her feel.
‘Groggy,’ she said. ‘Heavy.’
The other women nodded, and Nancy nodded.
‘Kind of numb,’ agreed Josie. ‘Sometimes that’s a relief though.’
Nancy took the opening.
‘I agree,’ she said. ‘I know it’s for our own good, but it can feel hard to think properly about all the things I need to think about.’
Lorrie nodded at her encouragingly.
‘I’m only just beginning to understand that it was right I should be sent here,’ said Nancy, looking from face to face. ‘At the beginning, all I felt was a sense of betrayal. I thought I’d been trapped by the people I trusted. I was angry and wretched and self-pitying, and I didn’t see how horribly hard it must have been for them as well. One of the things that happened when I was ill was that I lost all empathy for others. I feel ashamed of that.’
‘Oh, fucking fuck,’ said Josie. ‘Really?’
Nancy ignored her.
‘The pills calmed me down and gave me a chance to recover. But now I feel they aren’t helping so much. It’s like a great, thick blanket has been thrown over me.’
‘Have you talked to the doctor about it?’ Lorrie asked. ‘Perhaps the dosage can be decreased.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nancy gratefully. ‘I will do that.’
‘What are you up to?’ asked Josie.
‘I’m working on getting better.’
‘I know what you’re doing.’ She poked Nancy in the ribs with a forefinger. ‘I won’t tell.’