She headed down the bumpy track, not looking back, but in her mirror she could see him running behind her to open the gate. He waved her off enthusiastically and she turned towards Kirkcudbright and the A75 southwards to Dumfries. Crossing over the River Nith to the Carlisle road, Netta turned off right at St Michael’s church and took a sentimental detour past the hospital. She parked her car and made for the open section of the beautiful grounds, strolling into the parkland and the rockery, sitting on a bench to gather her thoughts.

Not many people had such affection for their lunatic asylum, this strange alma mater with its own coat of arms and mottoes. What was the maxim behind its philosophy now?

‘Absence of occupation is not rest.

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.’

The treatment she’d suffered in there had served her well enough in its way. Yet her stay was like some half-remembered dream, like pieces of a jigsaw she could never quite assemble, for some of the bits were missing. She looked up at the sun-lit grandeur of the buildings. Park Royal was one of the most famous institutions in Scotland: ‘A Ritz among Madhouses,’ some wag had once joked to her. Within these walls rich and famous alongside poor and homeless – housed separately, of course, in different buildings amongst the grounds – found respite from an unsympathetic world.

Here began her first exile, her trial of tears, those amber days. Why had Park Royal become such a safe haven against the terror of her illness and the harshness of those outside who didn’t understand it? Netta smiled to herself, recalling all the babies she had made there.

3

Amber

‘Colour of the dancing child.
Frozen life trapped in the sun’s kiss
Worn for energy
Too much orange drains the mind.’

Snapshots from The Royal, 1945

There was still a merciful mist of forgetfulness veiling those first months at Park Royal like a sea haar on a grey shoreline. Everything was bleached and threadbare like over-laundered linen, as tasteless as bland vegetables; vague memories of drugged limbs dragging themselves round the grounds, the occasional blue flash, the smell of burning rubber and taste of acid on the tongue. There must have been a progression of sorts from acute ward and restraints to a single room with an iron bed where sometimes Netta felt she was sent to bed like a naughty child for some misdemeanour. ‘What am I doing in this place?’ said her own voice through a mist.