The main building was no longer visible from here, and the drive curved up and round to the right, disappearing into what looked like a soft wall of green until she moved close up to it and saw the path straighten out again in front of her. Its surface was fractured and heaved up by quitch-grass and dandelions, puddles collecting in the cracks. Foxgloves and brambles held sway in what had evidently once been tended beds at its edges and the branches of the trees on each side were overgrown and meshed together, creating a tunnel of interlocking stems filled with the smell of wet leaves, wet earth.

She followed it round the rightward curve, then to the left. The trees thinned, then stopped, the path opening out into an area which had been concreted over for a car park, now covered in tussocks like boils. She stopped. The building was there suddenly in front of her, shockingly black even against a grey sky.

It was lower than she had imagined, but very wide, with an impressive entrance at the centre, carved scrolls of stone above the lintel. The square brick water tower in the middle of the complex had escaped the fire, although it was blackened. The decay of the place was evident in its every line. The points of tapering brick which Kate had described adorning the parapet of the roof were now all knocked off leaving jagged edges. The windows on the ground floor were boarded up behind the rusted bars and though the upper windows were uncovered there was no glass left in the frames. Through those to the right, at the eastern portion of the building, she could see only sky. At the west end, the windows were dark, looking into the one whole remaining wing of the building. As she walked nearer, a pigeon, startled from behind clumps of thistles, lifted itself to the roof with slapping wings.

On her way along the west wing she saw a large sign nailed to the front of the building warning, ‘Danger, Falling Masonry’. For what seemed a long time she made her way down the side of the building, through rampant grass and thistles which sent cool shocks of water down her thighs with every step she took. There was nothing to see. No chink of the windows was left uncovered. About half way along were two wooden doors with large rusty keyholes, and she pushed against them, relieved when they refused to budge and she didn’t have to go inside.

Very little remained of the hospital’s east end and the fire had worked its way round and eaten into most of the middle wing which separated the two open quadrangles, but had stopped short of the water tower. These areas were cordoned off with flagging white plastic tape. Most of the rubble must have been taken away, leaving only some charred bricks which looked as if they had come loose since the clearance. Uneven sections of walls remained as partitions between the rooms.