But then she mumbles, more to herself than to me, ‘I can persuade that man of anything – he doesn’t know this, he must never know this, but we will get you out of here, and we will go to London. Are you ready to fly through the clouds? I couldn’t bear another girl like that one on my conscience, and you wouldn’t make it here.’

I see Mama pointing at an airplane and shaking her head over and over. ‘How does it not drop from the sky? God did not make us birds.’ She is stomping on the ground in her rain boots, laughing. ‘You’d never get me up there, in that tin can with wings, not in a million years.’

18. Sammy

18

Sammy

My nurse walks back in, feet firmly on the ground now; he’s not dancing and he’s not smiling.

‘How’re you doing?’ he says. ‘You have visitors.’

As my eyes begin to adjust to the light, I can make out blurry figures, undeniably familiar. The shape of my father is sitting on a chair beside the bed and my mother’s back is to the window. I thought I told that psych I didn’t want to see them. He probably met them and decided there’s no threat there, believed their stories about my hyperactive imagination, heard all about my history.

Dad notices that I’m awake, and his big warm hand reaches out to hold mine, cradling it like it’s a small bird. I try to smile at him, reassuringly, though I’m sure it comes out more like a smirk. He clears his throat as if to say something, but just increases the pressure of his thumb instead.

I can hear my mother start to sob. My nurse goes to comfort her, patting her on the back. ‘There, there, there, there …’ as if to a child.

I pull my hand from my father’s, not able to bear the feelings that his touch brings up, then turn my back and face the wall. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls all the sheets with him, so I’m left with one shoulder bare. ‘It’s never as bad as all that. Come on now, love, whatever it is, it will pass, and things will be brighter tomorrow …’ he says, trailing off, realising, I guess, how stupid his own words sound.

‘She needs professional help. We can’t handle her any more,’ Mother’s convincingly distraught voice says.

I can hear Dad: ‘That’s not true, Margaret, you’re overwrought, you don’t know what you’re saying. She’ll be fine, just needs to come home and rest for a bit, eat one of your lovely dinners.’

I almost laugh, but mother’s sobs take up the space instead.

‘She’ll be properly assessed later on today,’ my pal, the turncoat, says.