Days just merged into one for him now. He would be woken at seven o'clock with his daily cocktail of medicines — anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-this, anti-that — then left to his own devices. Most days he would read in the morning — scientific journals from the hospital library. His reading was slow these days, and not just because of his eyesight, but he liked to keep abreast of things. Somehow it made him feel as if his life was not being wasted. He had long since grown used to the unpleasant hospital food that was served at lunch time, and he would eat what he was given enthusiastically, knowing that he had to keep his strength up. In the afternoon he would sleep — the drugs made him tired; sometimes he would have meetings with the doctors, little more than kids to his old eyes, and answer the same questions that he had been answering for so many years.
All this was assuming he was not in the middle of what they politely referred to as an 'episode'. When he was having an episode, everything was different. Every one was different.
One of the inmates started shouting — a hoarse, hollow bark that would have been alarming had such sounds not been commonplace around here. Almost immediately a female nurse hurried into the common room to check on him. She had a friendly face — open and clear — and she put her clipboard and security card down on the table beside her as she wrapped an arm around the distressed inmate and spoke to him with calm, soothing words. Her patient started murmuring. The old man couldn't hear what he was saying, but soon the nurse seemed satisfied that she had settled him. She picked up her clipboard and left the room.
It took a few moments for the old man to realize what he was seeing. The nurse's security badge had fallen to the floor, and she had left without picking it up.
His limbs suddenly froze with adrenaline. His green eyes flickered around: had anyone been looking at him, they might have thought he appeared shifty. But nobody was looking at him — they were all distracted by the blare of the television.
He had to move quickly, that much he knew. He had escaped once before, many years ago and out of a place very different from this. Things had been different then. Less enlightened. When they finally caught him, he had been brutally restrained and dealt with severely. It had blunted his taste for freedom considerably. But lately he had been dreaming of trying again. He was old. He had been assessed as unlikely ever to be suitable for care in the community and so, if he wanted to live a little of his life on the outside now, he would have to take risks. But risks don't seem that risky when you have nothing to lose.
This was what he had been waiting for. An opportunity.
He stood up and sidled over to the inmate the nurse had been looking after. As he did so, he started to prepare himself to make small talk, but there was no need: the inmate did not seem to notice him as he bent down and slowly picked up the string with the nurse's card on it. Hiding it up his sleeve, he shuffled out of the common room.
It was busy in the corridor. He would have preferred to wait for a quieter time of day, but he knew that the nurse would soon realize she had forgotten her badge; when she realized it was missing, the whole hospital would be shut down. He was a familiar enough face, though, to be walking around, so nobody paid him any attention as he made his way towards the exit.
Suddenly he heard a voice. 'Everything all right, Joseph?' it said in a pronounced Cornish accent.
Joseph stopped still, then turned, very slowly, to see the smiling face of one of the young doctors who insisted on asking him foolish questions about 'how he was feeling'. He stared at the doctor for a moment, feeling his face twitching involuntarily. 'Everything's all right, Doctor,' he said finally. 'Everything's all right. Yes.' His head continued to nod as he spoke, and his fingers moved up to flick his floppy hair out of his eyes.
'Good,' the doctor replied, his face concerned. He stepped back a pace or two, his eyes narrowing slightly, before turning and walking off. Joseph stood still, watching him until he turned round a corner out of sight. Then he continued on his way.
There was a receptionist at the exit — a young man whom he did not recognize — but no security guard, he was relieved to see. Joseph stood a little distance away, watching him carefully. He was too old to run, and that would only have drawn attention to him anyway, but he knew he only needed the receptionist to be distracted for a few moments to give him his chance. He felt his bony hands shaking with anticipation.
The moment came soon enough.
The phone rang, and the young man's face lit up. Clearly it was a personal call — a girlfriend, maybe. The phone firmly pressed to his ear, he sat back in his swivel chair and spun round. Joseph didn't waste a second. He strode to the door and swiped the nurse's security card. The door slid open. He took a deep breath and, without looking back, stepped out into the main body of the hospital.
It was even more crowded here, and he went entirely unnoticed. By the time the alarm was raised in the psychiatric wing and the doors were locked down, he was out of the hospital, walking calmly and slowly down the road, an unknowable look in his eyes.
Chapter Two
Later that afternoon, Ben was jumping off a bus at the end of Annie's street. The rain had let up a bit, but there was still a grey drizzle and he was glad of the hood on his raincoat as he hurried down the road and knocked on the door of her parents' large, imposing house. A dog started to bark, and soon the door was opened by Annie's mum, a harassed-looking woman in the middle of a telephone conversation. 'She's upstairs,' she mouthed to Ben, pointing to the stairs. 'In her room.'
Ben smiled, stroked the ears of the Alsatian that was enthusiastically sniffing his legs, then went up to find Annie.
'Hi, An—' he started to say, but stopped when he saw her.
Annie was eccentric, to say the least, but he wasn't quite prepared for this. She was in the middle of her room, standing on one leg on top of a plastic storage box with a pair of woollen tights wrapped round her head as a blindfold. Both arms were raised in the air as she stood perfectly still, like a statue.
'Come in!' she said brightly.
'Er, right.' Ben edged round her and sat on the edge of her bed, not quite knowing if it would be rude to chat. 'It's me — Ben,' he offered finally.
'How's things?' Annie asked, still barely moving.
'Fine.'
He sat there in silence for a moment, looking awkwardly round the room. It wasn't a typical girl's room: there was a dressing table with various pots and potions that were a mystery to Ben, but on the wall there were pictures cut out from military magazines. Ben recognized a Typhoon F1 on one wall, and a jump jet on another. There was also a huge poster of British birds, as well as a photograph of her dad in full RAF regalia. Ben looked at the pictures for a while before turning his attention back to Annie.
'You going to be like that for a long time?' he asked eventually. 'Because I can always come back.'
Annie lowered one of her hands and removed the tights from around her eyes. Then she looked down at herself and managed to seem a bit surprised at the position she was in. 'Sorry,' she said whimsically, before jumping down off the box and kissing Ben lightly on the cheek. 'Just practising. You sort of get into it.'