I think I’ll knock the job-interview angle on the head now. I can’t really be bothered keeping it up, besides which I’m not sure the drink and drugs stuff would be going down too well in an interview anyway and the work experience does come to something of an abrupt halt.

So, Miss Armitage, what happened in January? You don’t appear to have worked at all after that . . .

Yeah, there are some things I would definitely be leaving out, like the whole assault thing, and, to be fair, Detained under Sections 2 and 3 of the Mental Health Act, 1983 doesn’t tend to look awfully good on a CV.

Actually, limited job opportunities aside, there’s all sorts of stuff that gets a bit more complicated once you’ve been sectioned, certainly after a ‘three’. Everything changes, basically. You can choose not to tell people and I mean most people do, for obvious reasons, but it’s all there on your records. Your time in the bin, every nasty little detail laid bare at the click of a mouse. Insurance for a start: that’s a bloody nightmare afterwards and travelling anywhere is a whole lot more hassle. There are some places that really don’t want you popping over for a holiday, America for one, which is pretty bloody ironic really, considering who they used to have running the place.

It’s the way things work, I get that, but still.

You’re struggling with shit, so you get help – whether you asked for it or not – you recover, to one degree or another, then you have loads more shit to deal with once you’re back in the real world. It’s no wonder so many people end up in places like this time and time again.

There’s no stigma when you’re all in the same boat.

Anyway, that’s probably as much as you need to know for now. That’s the what-do-you-call-it, the context. There’s plenty more to come, obviously, and even though I’ve mentioned a few characters already, there’s loads you still need to know about each of them and about everything that happened. I’ll try not to leave anything important out, but a lot of it will depend on how I’m doing on a particular day and whether the most recent meds have kicked in or are just starting to wear off.

You’ll have to bear with me, is what I’m saying.

Difficult to believe, some of it, I can promise you that, but not once you know what it’s like in here. Certainly not when you’re dealing with it every minute. When you know the people and what they’re capable of on a bad day, it’s really not surprising at all. To be honest, what’s surprising is that stuff like this doesn’t happen more often.