She hadn’t loved them immediately, but she loved them after a spell. It seeped into her. Slowly. Like the love was something she’d been sipping at. Intoxicating. Accumulating. Snowballing. Slowly, quietly but unstoppably until she was quite drunk with it, and it was all she did. She loved them, it was her calling. Every instant was devoted to it, every thought, every action, every reaction. All her plans, all her dreams were about them, through them, for them, because of them, because of this love, that had not been there immediately but came upon her slowly, inexorably, irreversibly. That was why it was such a shock when it disappeared, the love: just like that, click your fingers, gone. She’d looked at those creatures in the stroller and the love was not there, not for them. It existed in her as a painful yearning, a missing part, reaching out to her real babies, wherever they were now, wherever that revolting woman had taken them. Under the water, somewhere. It didn’t matter, she’d find them. Because she was their mother, and that was her job.

Nurse Pauline watched Lauren inspecting the tray of food, and without taking her eyes from the patient she slipped her notebook and pen out of her tunic pocket and rested them on her knee. If I don’t eat this, thought Lauren, what is that nurse going to write? She needed to stop the treacherous note-taking, starting right now. All of the evidence needed to be in her favour. Lauren cleared her throat and reached for a piece of cutlery. She forked up a lump of the sloppy beige and brown mess and held her breath as she swallowed it down. Pauline nodded, smiled and wrote a short note, but what did it say? Lauren ate her meal nicely? Lauren pretended to like her meal? Lauren hesitated before attempting to eat her meal? Lauren ate the food even though she clearly didn’t want to?

The smell of the food was outrageous. She took a gulp of lukewarm water from the plastic beaker, but the taste of the gelatinous yuck stayed on her tongue. Yes, she thought, placing the flimsy vessel down again, if I had a real glass perhaps I would think about slashing my way out of here. She glanced up at Pauline, who was openly staring. Did she have to do that? The whole situation was inhuman. Don’t they know, can’t they see that this kind of close scrutiny would drive anyone mad? The way she was being inspected made Lauren wonder if her face might be giving too much away. She flattened her expression, and then, suddenly overcome with fatigue, turned towards the window to see sparrows kicking up dust in the brownish remains of the lawn outside.

“You not hungry, love?” asked Pauline. The woman seemed suspicious. Was Lauren allowed to not be hungry?