Outside. It’d be better to open the letter out of doors, then if he needed to walk around to help him think through its contents he’d be able to. There was nowhere to pace in the room: the bed and the chair took up all the available space. Stephen went to the door and along the corridor. The bathrooms were to the left of his room, so he turned right; this must be the way to the stairs and lifts. His room was on the second floor. He came to the television room that Glen had mentioned. There were flamingo-coloured plastic armchairs with pale wooden arms arranged in a semi-circle. The television squatted in front of the chairs, the sound too low to catch, the picture flickering like a fish-tank. A couple of people sat slumped. By the window a woman was rocking back and forth, muttering. Stephen suddenly felt frightened. Who were these people? They were nothing like him.

Seeing them made him feel more alone than being by himself in his room. Beyond the TV room was a door, with a thick glass panel reinforced with wire. There was another identical door only a few feet further along, as if the two functioned as a kind of air-lock, like the kind you saw in prison films. He went to push the aluminium handle down, but it wouldn’t give. He tried the door again, yanking, pulling at the handle.

He hadn’t thought he was shouting, not out loud. But a male nurse appeared as if responding to a commotion, and took him gently by the elbow. The softness of his touch was so surprising to Stephen that he allowed himself to be led back to his room without resisting.

‘I need to get out, I need to just walk a little while,’ he told the nurse.

‘Someone will take you out in the morning, if you want a walk. There aren’t enough of us on duty at the mo, I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t need someone with me, I’m fine. Just got some thinking to do.’

‘Someone will take you in the morning, once rounds are over. I’ll make a note of it so it doesn’t get forgotten.’

‘But I’m free to go, right? I don’t have to stay here?’

‘You’re free to go, but if you do you won’t be able to come back without being formally readmitted. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to keep track of everyone, keep you all safe.’

This sounded reasonable. It wasn’t as if he had any place else to go, not until he went back to Cornwall. Stephen felt calmer now. ‘OK,’ he said.

‘They’ll be round with the trolley soon, for your tea,’ said the nurse.