‘By, that’s put some roses into your cheeks, lass. I reckon as that’s done you good. Now I’m on me break, so although I said as you could only sit on the bench until I came back, as long as I’m with you, you can have a walk. So come on, let’s get started.’

‘Oh, Iris, thank you. I just don’t know what I would do without you.’

‘I do me best. But it ain’t easy. If I upset too many of me colleagues, I could find meself hounded out, so I have to take it steady. But, to me, your plight is the saddest I’ve known. I knaw as you’re not a sick woman, and I want to help you. What happened last night doesn’t help, though. Oh, I knaw as it weren’t your doing, but nonetheless it’s now on your notes, and that bothers me.’

‘Is there no way I can talk to someone and tell them what really happened? Does no one ever listen to the patients?’

‘Naw. You have to realize that those in here are classed as not being sound enough in mind to be able to speak for themselves. It’s wrong, I knaw, but that’s the way of it.’

Frustration gripped Mags. ‘Iris, if I am doing wrong by asking something of you, please forgive me, but at the moment you are the only person in the world on my side and the only person who can help me.’

Iris didn’t answer. She kept her head down and her pace steady. A little hope entered Mags. Iris had neither invited her to say how she could help, nor told her that she shouldn’t ask.

‘Please, Iris, if what I say upsets you in any way, just forget it and let us carry on as we are. Because without you and the little help and hope you give me, I would go under and be lost forever.’

Iris still remained silent.

‘There are people who would help me. Our family doctor. He wasn’t called to attend me. My husband brought in a doctor I’d never seen in my life, and who knew nothing of me. The doctor only saw the distress I was in and believed my husband’s lies.’ Feeling afraid at there being no reaction from Iris, Mags told her what Harold had said. ‘He never mentioned what had happened to my friend Betsy. He said I was distressed after a dream that I had; that I often revisited my time during the war; and that I was irrational in believing him to be a philanderer. The doctor took my protests as symptoms of a psychotic episode. It is clear to me now that this outcome was my husband’s intention.’

‘Eeh, lass, but what I don’t understand is why a man would go as far as having his wife sectioned?’

‘Because he wants all that was mine. And now he has it. With my father dead, he has my home, the family business and the land. Everything. And I know now that is all he married me for.’