“And the kids. Sallie and I made you cookies, but the nurse or guard or whatever took them away.”
“Yeah. It’s in case you put drugs in them. Or a razor blade, or something.”
“Right. I should’ve thought of that.” She glanced up at the camera hanging, very obviously, in one corner of the ceiling. “Mum and Dad send love, too. And Miriam and Oliver. Miriam says to hurry up and get better. She looked it up online and found out you can apply for a discharge after six months, so she’s expecting you home by Christmas.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“I told her it doesn’t work that way, but she says I’m underestimating the power of positive thinking. She’s already made an appointment for you with some guru guy who’s going to reiki the bad vibes out of your aura, or something.”
“Oh God,” I said. “Tell her I’m getting worse.” In fact, I had no intention of applying for a discharge until those two years were up. Before that, even if I was approved, it would only get me transferred to prison. The hospital was no five-star hotel and some of the company left a lot to be desired, but the place was blessedly free from gang wars and shower-room rapes and all the feral nightmare that I (from my smug middle-class perspective, Susanna said in my head) associated with prison. All of us in the hospital had done various major shit, but with a few exceptions none of us were looking for trouble, and the seriously scary types were kept separate. A lot of people were schizophrenic, and they mainly hung out together, but there were a couple of depressives and a guy on the autism spectrum who were surprisingly good company. The autistic guy in particular was very restful to be around. All he wanted to do was talk for hours about Lord of the Rings, and he didn’t require any input or even any attention from me; I would sit by the dayroom window and look out at the gardens, wide lawns and decorous topiary and spreading oak trees, while his flat rhythmic monotone went on and on like running water.
“Are we allowed to go outside?” Susanna asked suddenly. “In the garden?”
“I guess,” I said. We were, actually, but there were a few of the guys I would have preferred her not to run into, for my pride’s sake more than for hers.
“Let’s go. It’s lovely out. Who do we ask?”
It was lovely out: clean brand-new springtime, a warm generous breeze that smelled of apple blossom and fresh grass, little white puffs of cloud in a blue sky. The lavender bushes on either side of the path were in bloom; birds were everywhere, loud and jubilant.
“Wow,” Susanna said, turning to look back at the building: immense and sprawling, gray, Victorian, with pointed gables and bay windows.
“Yeah. It’s impressive, all right.”
“I think I was expecting some modern thing. Super-discreet. Something that could be a community center, or a block of flats. This place is like, ‘Fuck you, we’ve got a madwoman in the attic and we don’t care who knows it.’”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. She glanced over at me with a half smile. “Do they treat you OK?”
“No complaints.”
“Can they hear us out here? I mean, it’s not bugged or anything?”
“Oh for God’s sake,” I said.
“Seriously.”
“They don’t have the budget to bug anything. There’s him.” I lifted my chin at the large nurse standing on the terrace, rocking peacefully on his heels and keeping one eye on us and the other on three guys playing cards on the grass. “That’s it.”
Susanna nodded. She turned and we headed down the path, gravel crunching under our feet, Susanna tilting her face up to catch the sun.
“How are my parents doing?” I asked.
“OK, as far as I can tell. Relieved. I know that sounds weird, but I think they were scared of things going a lot worse.”
“Yeah. So was I.”
Susanna nodded. “There’s one thing I wanted to tell you,” she said, after a moment. “About Dominic.”
“Right,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about Dominic.
“I didn’t really clock it at first; not until a few months after we did it. Remember I told you how at the beginning of that summer, when I was just daydreaming about ways of doing it, I downloaded Firefox onto Hugo’s computer to do the research, instead of using his Internet Explorer?”
“Yeah.”
“So he wouldn’t find out I was searching for murder techniques.” Someone had dropped a Kit Kat wrapper;