‘Good morning, Anna,’ said Dr Parvez, brightly enough. ‘Pamela sent someone to have a chat with you. Are you feeling up to it today?’

Anna’s eyes wandered back over to the doctor, as if seeing him for the first time, and then she nodded slowly.

‘Great.’ Dr Parvez turned to Heather and smiled. ‘I’ll get someone to bring you both a cup of tea.’

Heather seated herself at the table. She felt slightly foolish. What was she supposed to say to this woman? A soft murmur from the corner of the room revealed a television set no one was watching.

‘Hi, Anna, how are you? I’m Heather Evans. Pamela said I should come and have a chat. Would you like that?’ Heather cringed inwardly at the patronizing tone in her own voice. It was because the place felt like an old people’s home; she half expected to have to raise her voice, or avoid talking about politics. The woman sighed heavily.

‘A chat. Yeah. That would be good.’ She shifted in the chair, bringing her arms up around her chest briefly, as though hugging herself, and then dropped them again. ‘It’s very boring here,’ she said, some animation coming into her eyes. ‘Not much to do. I’m allowed to go for a wander, usually, but I got in trouble last time.’

‘How come? What happened?’

Anna shrugged and looked away, a slightly shifty expression moving over her features when a short young woman came over with two polystyrene cups of tea for them. Heather thanked her, and she moved to the far side of the room, where an old man was playing draughts by himself.

‘So. This seems like a nice place. How did you end up here?’

‘Referrals, one place to another, that’s me. They said I have mild paranoid schizophrenia.’ She pronounced it carefully, as though reading it off a card in her head. ‘With long-term delusions, occasional hallucinations.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Probably exacerbated by drink and drug abuse.’

‘That’s a lot to deal with.’

‘You’re telling me.’ With this out of the way, Anna seemed to brighten a bit. ‘It’s hard, and I take so many pills I rattle, but this is a nice place. Better than others. Pam sent you, did she?’

‘Yeah. I chatted to her about her art work, and she helped me out, so I said I’d come and talk to you.’ She cleared her throat. ‘She says she’s sorry she hasn’t been lately.’

Anna shrugged again. ‘Poor Pam, she worries a lot. She thinks a lot of this is her fault, when it’s not. It’s just the way my brain is made, but she … she finds it hard to see me when I’m going through a bad patch.’

‘Why would Pam think your problems are her fault?’