‘Nearly there,’ she said from somewhere remote, way outside my field of concentration, her words turning and waking something in my mind. On the right of the gravel track we were travelling along a white house appeared, truly white, though its roof was covered with snow and seemed to be made of some kind of thatch. A sign informing no conceivable traffic stated, in gold on black, “One World Intensive Rehabilitation Centre”. Snow had formed crescents in the upstairs windows making the house look like a many-eyed startled face glaring beyond us at some distant, unseeable horror as we passed up the short drive to the front door. A man stepped out, a tubby, short man, bespectacled, untidy brown hair swept back from his forehead. He nodded at Anna. ‘Excuse me, Peter,’ she said forcedly. ‘I shall just be a few minutes. You had better wait here.’

By now they would be happy, the staff back at the hospital, flying in their happiness over their momentary, genuine regret at my being taken out of their care. And to add to their happiness no guilt could be attached to them, since it had not been their decision that I should go. They would be free, feeling free of me, the stiffy, the one who stuck out amongst the moving ones, those amenable to the treatment they offered, those who could at least hold some kind of a conversation or take themselves off to the toilet. I, the clayboots, the old rock that littered the ward, was no longer among them, frustrating them in their work; and now they would appear an iota more modern, my place available for a more hopeful case. But it wouldn’t have done for me to have been angry with them. I could not afford anger; it might have made me do something I would regret, if that were at all possible. I had my moments though, I admit, late at night perhaps, when I would lie in my wet bed, screaming in my skull for the darkness to come and make a mess of me, have done with me, turn me to water, to powder, to spirit me away into nothing, finish me for good. Then this fiery sentiment would die and I would be left, days later perhaps, clinging to life in the same pathetic way I had craved my own demise.

Anna exchanged words with the man, he nodding expressionlessly, she occasionally opening her hands as if going through some process of self-justification. The two fell silent and he looked at me, staring through the glass of the windscreen, absorbed in his quiet thoughts; then he disappeared back inside the house. Anna shuddered, hugged herself, and her breath was a white flame on the cold air.

FIVE