It’s a farm here, inside and out. On Sunday mornings they make us bath, all three hundred women, eight at a time, our shrouds in a stinking heap on the floor. The bath nudges sharply against my bones. Women scream and whip the water with their hands. The outlet pipes are four inches thick and I wonder if I could fit down them and be sucked away into the black womb of the sewer. The nurses parade among us shouting and eyeing our bodies.

At mealtimes they are forever counting. No knives are allowed in the place. The prongs of the forks are an eighth of an inch long. They count them out, count them in. When they shout ‘Tables!’ we fight for a place at the benches round the pine tables even though we are always, in the end, sitting in the same place. At first I am numb and don’t know how to survive. As the days pass I am too hungry and wrangle and cram my mouth with the rest, for one hesitation and the food is down another’s throat. Food is all our pleasure here: warmth, comfort, a loving touch.

Am I a Certified Lunatic? I don’t even know. No one tells me what Daddy has said to them to make them seal me in. Every morning the man comes to take away the bodies on his covered trolley. The old ladies stay in bed and die, dropping like bugs from the walls. With half-obvious relish he says, ‘Any for me today?’ He gets 7/6d for each corpse and he gathers them like a bunch of flowers. Will I leave here like that? Perhaps this is the beginning of it, knowing this: that within these dark walls there is another behind which I stand. It is so close it fits my skin, and behind it I am too chilled to feel even despair. The doctor said I might be schizophrenic because I’m thin. I watch others and wonder if I am already as bad. I feel lost.

Some things I don’t do

I don’t stand for hours in impenetrable silence. The crust of my silence can still be broken.

I don’t touch myself intimately when other people can see.

I don’t relieve myself in my bed, except during treatment.

When we are outside for our morning shuffle round and round the scabby paths of the airing court, I do not look for leaves, shreds of groundsel, human waste, sycamore seeds to eat, nor do I chew my shoes, the hardest of leather (no laces) which can eventually be devoured after hours of sucking.

But nor do I – their mark of a degree of trustworthiness – get led out to work in the kitchen, garden or laundry.

What I do

When I am allowed near my bed, I find myself standing there for many minutes at a time, not knowing why I am there.

I sit in the dayroom and time must be passing but I can’t tell how long, nor can I solve the problem of how to lift and move an arm or leg even when there are alarms and fights on all sides. I look at the shiny wood of the floor and find patterns.