I sip my tea and take another bite of soggy toast. I sneak looks at her. I’m not scared any more and I’ve got my breath back and I’m suddenly enjoying myself, putting flesh on this woman’s bones.

She’s at least sixty, but she’s dyed her hair very blonde like she still gives a shit what people make of her. Or maybe she’s done it precisely because she doesn’t. Either way, it’s good. She sounds local, so I wonder if she’s opened a place in the area where she grew up. Or maybe there’s been a greasy spoon here for ever, like a family business, and she took it over from her parents. I wonder if that was what she wanted, what she’d imagined for herself when she was younger.

I’m making suggestions to myself, trying to guess what her name might be, when she saves me the trouble.

‘I’m Sylvia,’ she says.

I would never have guessed that. I’d been leaning towards Veronica or Madge. ‘Alice . . .’

‘So, what’s the story, Alice?’

I look at her and she’s sitting there like she’s just asked me what the time is. She says she knows I’ve got a story, I mean hasn’t everyone, so the rest of the toast goes uneaten and my tea goes cold while I tell her. Everything. When I’ve finished, she doesn’t look as if she’s wishing she’d never asked, but maybe she’s just got a naturally kind face.

She nods towards the door. ‘That place up the road?’

‘Hendon Community Hospital,’ I say.

‘Yeah.’ She gets up and walks across to a tall fridge against the wall, comes back with a can of Coke and sits down again. ‘I had a cousin went through the same thing as you. Years ago now. They didn’t really call it what it was back then, though. Didn’t give it a name. Everyone in the family just said she was suffering with her nerves. You know?’

‘Is she OK now?’

Sylvia shakes her head. ‘She’s not with us any more, bless her. Well out of it if you ask me.’ She opens her can. ‘The suffering bit’s right, though.’ She looks at me. ‘I can see it, love.’

I don’t know what to say, so I just stare down at the scratched red tabletop.

‘I can’t even imagine what it’s like . . .’

I finally look up and I swear she really wants to know. An old bloke comes in and she asks him if he wants his usual. When he says he does, she tells him to sit down and says she’ll be with him in five minutes.

Then she turns back to me.

‘Sounds stupid, but a lot of the time you’re just . . . irritated,’ I say. ‘It’s so bloody infuriating when people don’t believe you.’