‘It’s OK, you don’t have to keep it secret. It’s not like prison.’ I smile, because I really want to know. ‘Well, it’s a bit like prison.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘No probs,’ I say.

I reckon her reluctance is a bit strange, though. Most people in here tend to fall into one of two camps. Either they’re desperate to tell you everything or they don’t believe they should have been sectioned at all and that there’s been some horrible mistake. Graham, for all his tricks and tics, was one of the latter, forever waiting for someone to acknowledge their administrative error and tell him he could go home. Kevin and Shaun only ever really confided in each other, but others are a bit more forthcoming about their episodes and misdemeanours.

Ilias kept taking his clothes off in shops.

Bob had a breakdown after his wife left him – what a shocker!

Lucy freaked out after taking too much heroin. Or maybe it was because she hadn’t taken enough. Doesn’t make much odds.

Actually . . . thinking about it, I kind of fall somewhere between the two extremes. Yeah, I’m happy enough to admit that I went a bit bonkers, to talk about the knives and the people on my TV, but I still don’t think I should be here. So maybe it isn’t quite as clear-cut as I think it is.

Still none the wiser about Tiny Tears, though.

She says, ‘I think we could be friends.’

‘Do you?’

‘Best friends, maybe.’

She looks at me and I shrug like, Why not? but something about her is telling me to keep my distance.

‘You were so nice, the day I came in.’

‘I was being nosy,’ I say.

‘Nobody else really bothered. I mean obviously they wanted to gawp a bit, but none of them offered to help, like you did.’

‘Well, let’s see,’ I say.

She seems happy enough with that. ‘Tell me more about the nurses,’ she says. ‘You were going to tell me, remember?’

Right. The afternoon she arrived. Before she started blubbing for the umpteenth time in like ten minutes and I lost the will to live. ‘What do you want to know?’

She shuffles her arse back on my bed a little, makes herself more comfortable. ‘Everything,’ she says.

There doesn’t seem much point in telling her about Debbie, but for the next half an hour or so I give her the skinny on the rest of them. I tell her Malaika’s probably the best bet if she needs a fag and that Femi-Nazi’s got a temper on her. I tell her that George is a failed copper and that Marcus can be pretty strict sometimes and that she shouldn’t hold out too much hope for any deep and meaningful conversation with Mia.