When I saw the drip going into my arm and smelt the funny disinfectant smell, I understood where I was. I had no idea how I’d got there. Or what was supposed to be wrong with me.

But I had the bleakest feeling of comedown I’d ever had. Like I was standing right on the most desolate edge of the universe, staring into the abyss. Emptiness all around me, emptiness deep within me. All so horribly familiar.

I hadn’t felt like that for over two months. I’d forgotten how really, truly unbearable it was. And of course the first thing I craved, to make it go away, was more drugs.

What happened? I wondered.

I had a vague memory of lurching through the bright, evening streets with my new best friend, Tiernan. And going to another pub and drinking more and snorting more. Taking a handful of my Temazepam when slight paranoia kicked in. I remembered dancing in the new pub and thinking I was the most brilliant dancer in the whole world. Kerr-ist, how mortifying.

Then I’d gone with Tiernan to another pub where we’d got more coke. Then another pub. Then maybe another, I had a vague memory, but I wasn’t sure. And after that we’d gone with three – or was it four? – of his mates to someone’s flat. It had been dark by then. And we’d taken a couple of Es each. Apart from a flash of a nightclub-type scene, that may have been real or imagined, I remembered absolutely nothing else.

I could hear someone crying, sobbing their eyes out. My mother. Reluctantly I opened my eyes, and it just added to the feelings of overall weirdness when I saw that it was Dad who was in floods.

‘Don’t,’ I croaked. ‘I won’t do it again.’

‘You said that before,’ he heaved, his face in his hands.

‘I promise,’ I managed. ‘It’ll be different this time.’

Apparently I’d been knocked down. According to the driver I’d rushed right out in front of her and she’d had no way of avoiding me. The police report described me as ‘crazed’. The people I’d been with had run away and left me lying on the road. I was told that I was extremely lucky – apart from a huge bruise on my thigh, there wasn’t anything wrong with me.

Except that I was losing my mind, of course.

I wished, longed, yearned to be dead. More than all the other times I’d wished I was dead.

A rock-heavy slab of despair flattened me. A cocktail of depression made up of the terrible things my mother had screeched at me, my shame at relapsing and Chris’s rejection of me.

I lay in my hospital bed, tears trickling down the side of my face and onto the pillow, loathing myself with a dull, heavy passion. I was such an utter failure, the biggest loser ever created. No one loved me. I’d been thrown out of my home because I was stupid and useless. I couldn’t ever go back there again, and frankly I didn’t blame my mother. Because, as well as all my other terrible faults, I’d relapsed.

That was killing me. I’d ruined everything, totally destroyed my chance of a happy, drug-free life. I despised myself for all the money Dad shelled out on me going to the Cloisters, for all the good it had done me. I’d let everyone down. Josephine, the other inmates, my parents, my family, even me. I was racked with fierce guilt, shame and mortification. I wanted to disappear off the face of the earth, to die and dissolve.

I went to sleep, grateful to check out of the living hell my life had become. When I woke up Helen and Anna were sitting by my bed, eating the grapes someone had brought me.

‘Fucking pips,’ Helen complained, spitting something into her hand. ‘Haven’t they heard of seedless grapes, welcome to the twentieth century. Oh, you’re awake.’

I nodded, too depressed to speak.

‘Jesus, you’re really bad,’ she commented cheerfully. ‘Ending up in hospital again from taking drugs. Next time you might die.’

‘Stop.’ Anna elbowed her.

‘Well, you needn’t worry,’ I managed to drag the words out. ‘It won’t be your concern anymore. As soon as I’m well enough to get out of here, I’m going far, far away where you’ll never have to see me again.’

I planned to disappear. To punish myself with an empty, lonely half-life away from family and friends. I would wander the earth, welcome nowhere, because I didn’t deserve any other form of existence.

‘Listen to the drama queen,’ Helen mocked.

‘Stop,’ Anna wailed, distraught.

‘You don’t understand,’ I informed Helen, my heart breaking from my almost-orphan status. ‘Mum told me to get out and never come back. She hates me, she’s always hated me.’

‘Who, Mum?’ Helen asked in surprise.

‘Yes, she always makes me feel like I’m useless,’ I managed to say, even though the pain nearly killed me.

There was much mirth and scoffing from the pair of them.

‘You?’ derided Helen. ‘But she’s always telling me I’m hopeless. For failing my exams twice and having a poxy job. Every second day she tells me to get out and never come back. At this stage, I worry when she doesn’t.

‘It’s true, I swear.’ She nodded at my disbelieving face.

‘No, it’s me she really hates,’ Anna said. If I hadn’t known better I’d have thought she was boasting.

‘And she can’t stand Shane. She’s always asking why he doesn’t have a company car.’

‘Why doesn’t he have a company car?’ Helen asked. ‘Just out of curiosity.’

‘Because he doesn’t have a job, stupid!’ Anna said, rolling her eyes.

My spirits lifted an atom or two. I tentatively began to think that maybe I wouldn’t commit suicide or run away to sea just yet. That perhaps all wasn’t entirely lost.

‘Is she really mean to you?’ I croaked. ‘Or are you only trying to be nice.’

‘I don’t do nice,’ Helen said scornfully. ‘And, yes, she’s horrible to both of us.’

It was glorious for that terrible apocalyptic depression to lift, even momentarily.

Helen awkwardly pawed at my hand and I was so touched by her attempt at affection that tears came to my eyes, for the eighty-ninth time that day.

‘She’s a mother,’ Helen told me wisely. ‘It’s her job to shout at us. She’d be stripped of her badge if she didn’t.’

‘It’s nothing personal,’ Anna agreed. ‘She thinks if she gives out shite to us that we’ll make something of ourselves. Not just you. She does it to all of us!’