Waiting in the therapy room for Doctor Summer, Lauren felt quietly confident that this would be her final consultation before they discharged her. She knew from Nurse Pauline that the whole system was under pressure to move people on, as beds in the unit were expensive, and scarce. Doctor Summer wouldn’t want a healthy, sane person taking up a space that someone more obviously in crisis could make use of. The police section she’d been detained under only allowed them to keep her for three days. After that they were required to make a full assessment and decide whether more medical intervention was required. If not, she was free to go. Today was day three, decision day.

Lauren had been carefully, patiently normal for more than two whole days. She’d made sure Nurse Pauline had noted down many positive things in her book, to replace the pages Lauren had removed containing less flattering comments about how she’d behaved during Patrick’s first aborted visit with the accursed stroller. She’d torn those notes into small pieces, wrapped them in loo roll and flushed them, along with the first several doses of whatever medication they were trying to make her take. Her mind was crystal clear; she was completely in control; the picture of a model patient.

Yesterday the doctor had decided she was well enough to have the babies back with her full time. Under the supervision of a nurse, of course. They’d been with her the whole night, and her eyelids stung from lack of sleep. It was amazing that the babies themselves were still awake, as they hadn’t appeared to close their eyes at all the entire time. They’d been playing games with her—pretending to be Morgan and Riley when the nurse was awake, then each time the nurse had dropped off Lauren heard them speaking to her, hissing at her. She knew their names now, which one called himself Bishop and which one Selver. She knew they wanted the same thing she did—for them to be returned to their rightful place under the water, for Morgan and Riley to come home. And in those moments, when the nurse was asleep, they told her exactly what she had to do to make it happen. They would lead her there, to where the exchange would take place. But first, she had to get them out of this prison.