I finally got Anna on her own. ‘Have you any blem on you?’ I asked quietly.

‘No,’ she whispered and blushed.

‘Well, what have you, so?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ I echoed, stunned. ‘But why?’

‘I’ve given up,’ she said quietly, not meeting my look.

‘Given up what?’

‘You know… drugs.’

‘But why?’ I demanded. ‘Is it Lent?’

‘I don’t know, it might be, but that’s not why.’

‘Well, what is the why?’ I was appalled.

‘Because, I don’t want to end up like you,’ she said. ‘I mean, in somewhere like this!’ she corrected herself frantically. ‘That’s what I meant, I don’t want to end up in here!’

I was devastated. Totally devastated. Even Luke hadn’t hurt me as much. I tried to compose my face so that she couldn’t see my pain, but I was in bits.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, a picture of misery. ‘I don’t want to do your head in, but when you nearly died it gave me an awful fright…’

‘It’s fine,’ I said curtly.

‘Oh Rachel,’ she wailed quietly, trying to hold my hand, to keep me from moving away. ‘Don’t hate me, I’m only trying to explain…’

This time I shook her off, and shaking like a leaf, I went to the bathroom to calm down.

I couldn’t believe it! Anna, of all people, had turned on me. She thought I had a problem. Anna, the one person I could always compare myself to and say ‘Well, at least I’m not as bad as her.’

56

The days passed.

People came and went. Clarence and Frederick left. So did poor, catatonic Nancy, the tranquillizer-addicted housewife. Even up to her last day, people were holding a mirror to her face to check she was still breathing. And there was joking talk among the rest of us about buying her a survival kit for the outside world. To wit: a Walkman and a tape with the words ‘Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out,’ recorded over and over again on it. I somehow suspected Nancy wouldn’t be appearing in the brochure as one of the Cloisters’ success stories.

Mike left, but not before Josephine managed to make him cry about the death of his father. The look on her face was something to behold – she smiled like the man used to at the end of The A Team. In another dimension I heard her triumph ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’

Over the next ten days or so space-cadet Fergus and fatso Eamonn left too.

Nearly a week after Luke’s and Brigit’s visit, we got a couple of new inmates, which, as always, generated great excitement.

One was a dumpy young woman called Francie who talked loudly and incessantly, running all her words into each other. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had shoulder-length blonde hair with two inches of dark roots on show, a gap in her front teeth that you could drive a truck through and cheap foundation several shades too dark, badly smeared onto her face. She was overweight, her hem was hanging and her skirt was red and way too tight.

My first thought was what a mess she was. But within seconds she knew everyone, was throwing cigarettes at them and had in-jokes and intimacy up and running. To my great anxiety, I saw that she was undeniably, if inexplicably, sexy. I got that familiar sick fear that Chris would shift his attention away from me.

She stood and carried herself as if she was a goddess. She didn’t even seem to notice the round bulge of her stomach through her awful pencil skirt. It would’ve had me suicidal. Jealously I watched her, and watched Chris watching her.

When she saw Misty she let out a little screech and yelled ‘O’Malley, what’re you doing here, you alco?’

‘Francie, you big pisshead,’ Misty reparteed, all delighted, smiling for the first time in almost a week. ‘Same as you.’

It turned out that they had been in the Cloisters together the previous year. The class of ninety-six.

‘You’ve been here before?’ someone asked, in shock.

‘Sure, I’ve been in every treatment centre, mental hospital and jail in Ireland.’ Francie roared with laughter.

‘Why?’ I asked, strangely drawn to her.

‘Cos I’m a looper. Schizophrenic, manic, deluded, traumatized, take your pick. Look,’ she ordered, rolling up her sleeves, ‘look at them for lacerations! All my own work.’

Her arms were a mass of cuts and scars. ‘There’s a cigarette burn,’ she pointed out conversationally. ‘And another one.’

‘So what happened to you, this time?’ Misty asked.

‘What didn’t happen!’ Francie declared, rolling her eyes. ‘I’d nothing to drink, all there was at home was meths for the greyhound’s feet, so I drank that. Next thing I knew it was a week later – I’dlostawholeweek, cany’believeit? I’veneverdonethatbefore – and I came to, being gang-banged by a crowd of fellas somewhereoutsideLiverpool!’

She paused for breath before launching into the tale again. ‘Left fordead, hospitalized, got given the morning after, arrested, deported, packed off back home, minute I get there they send me here. And here I am!’

The entire room had fallen silent, the look on each man’s face a picture as, no doubt, they yearned to be one of the boys outside Liverpool.

‘What are you in for?’ she gaily demanded of me.

‘Drugs,’ I said, dazzled by her.

‘Ooooh, the best,’ she nodded, her mouth bunched in approval. ‘D’ you go to any NA meetings?’ she asked.

‘Narcotics Anonymous,’ she explained impatiently to my momentarily puzzled face. ‘God, you cadets!’

‘Just the meetings here,’ I said, almost apologetically.

‘Ah no! They’re no good. Wait till you go to the ones outside.’

She leant closer to me and chattered on. ‘Full of fellas. Fullofthem! NA is packed to the gills with men, none of them a day over thirty, and they’re all mad into hugging. You’ll have your pick of them. AA isn’t half as good. Too many women and oul’ lads.’

Up until then, the Narcotics Anonymous meetings had made very little impression on me. I usually fell asleep. But I was delighted with what Francie had told me.

‘Which do you go to? AA or NA?’ I asked, bandying about the abbreviations.