The boy’s sister didn’t flinch; the news hadn’t come as a shock to her as it had to him. Evidently she had been told where she was going before setting off.

“Someone who keeps lying in the way that your sister lies must be sick in the head,” said the boy’s father. “Your mum and I have tried as hard as we can to make her see the error of her ways, but we’re not experts when it comes to mental illness. And that’s what a compulsion to deceive is—it’s a mental illness. So we’ve decided to let the doctors at the lunatic asylum deal with it. They have all kinds of techniques and special methods that are meant to be very effective. Like electric shock treatment—where they strap you to a table, tie you down and give you electric shocks that make your whole body light up. It’s very painful, but it works, apparently, when it comes to curing sick minds. That’s if the patient strapped to the table doesn’t catch fire—that happens sometimes, if the electricity current isn’t carefully monitored. I’m assured it’s never happened at this asylum, though, so we don’t need to worry about that.”

The boy was crying hysterically by this point. “Can you see what you’re doing to your brother?” his father said to his sister.

“I can see what you’re doing to him,” she replied.

“Can you see that you’re ruining his life? That’s why we have to put you in the asylum.”

The boy’s sister rolled her eyes and said, “I’ll escape. I’ll fuck whoever’s in charge and persuade them to let me out.” She was seventeen and had been sexually active for a year or so. Her brother knew this because it had been the subject of many of the closed-door rows in his father’s games room recently. His sister had been caught with boyfriends—sometimes in her bedroom, after she’d snuck them in when her parents were asleep; once at a friend’s house.

“Be facetious if you want to,” her father told her, “but you’ll soon see. No one escapes from places like the one we’re taking you to. You’ll be handcuffed for most of the time. Your legs will be chained together so you won’t be able to walk.”

The boy whimpered at the thought of this happening to his sister. She turned to him then and put her hand on his arm. He looked at her and she shook her head. “It’s not true,” she mouthed at him. “It’s a lie. Don’t worry.”