So far this year, Mary’s sick leave totalled seven days, but that was enough to be stage three. The first day was to go to the doctor. For months, she’d been moody and rage-filled and ruminating and tired, so tired. Someone had unscrewed the top of her head and poured wet cement in; glug, glug, glug, she explained to the young male GP. It was surprising how much room she had inside for wet cement. And then it set, and she was immovable. When someone wanted her attention – Mary! Call for you Mary, Jimmy McKinley in reception for you Mary, Mary, Mum, Mary! – a huge concrete drill zzzz-ed at her casing: deafening, echoing, shuddering, cracking at her chest: MARY!

The young male GP gave her antidepressants.

Which caused sick days two, three and four, and her escalation to stage two. Mary had never felt less herself than while she was on Prozac. She didn’t understand the world. She couldn’t hear herself speak. She felt the anxiety, but she wasn’t thinking it. She poured sweat, she smelt, she gained five pounds.

Days five, six and seven were spent weaning herself off the pills, rocking in bed wondering if she was uncannily similar to Virginia Woolf. She suspected not; she suspected she’d have just taken the rocks out of her pockets and swum back. Also, fiction was pointless in Mary’s opinion. No-one ever told stories as wild and upsetting as the ones that happened for real in Renfield.

The flex incident one week earlier was indeed inciting. Mary decided, Fuck it, I’m giving notice. Now Roddie’s hit the big time, I’m gonna knit poufs and have a proper go at tap-dancing. She had narrowly escaped a thorough sacking and would resign with her record intact. She would leave with her head held high.

Mary arrived at the prison with two minutes to spare. Officer Mac-Donald (one of the ‘badduns’, rumour had it) tagged her from gate to wall to gate and deposited her at the ICM Suite. She’d been to these meetings many times, and the feeling of dread in her tummy was always justified, but even more so today, because Liam Macdowall was famous. His ‘book’ – Cuck: Letters to My Dead Wife – was being released on the same day as his person, which is why he had invited his ‘publisher’, Derek McLaverty to the meeting.

Derek was twenty-nine, skinny, bookish (i.e., could read), and a leading Men’s Rights Activist (MRA). Written in black lettering on his white t-shirt were the words: THIS IS WHAT A MRA LOOKS LIKE. Mary had an immediate chemical reaction to the guy. He reminded her of Thomas McInnes at St Pat’s, who spread rumours about her when she beat him at spelling and who chased her round Queen’s Park a few years later to finger her, spreading worse rumours cos she got away.