“Contraband,” Lance said in a monotone, having moved on to Kay’s bag.
“Now, that was naughty,” Dr Mimi admonished, reaching for the litre of dry Amontillado and placing it on the shelf behind her desk. “And suggestive of a dependency problem.”
“No alcohol?” Kay asked meekly.
“Heavens no!” Dr Mimi exclaimed with the same genuine pleasure. “No caffeinated beverages; no smoking or e-cigarettes; no overstimulating spices; no cream, butter, or full-fat milk; and no sexual relations amongst the stakeholders. We have an eight-thirty p.m. curfew, after which you’re to retire to your private suite. Breakfast is at seven, lunch at eleven, dinner at five—and attendance is compulsory. If you’re ever tempted to be babyish and turn up your nose at the fine nutrition this establishment provides, we reserve the right to force-feed. The council has placed your wellbeing in our hands, and we take our duty of care ever so seriously. Ordinarily, visiting hour is between one and two p.m. on Saturdays. But just to be extra, super-cali-fragilistic careful during the coronavirus outbreak, we’ve banned all visitors until further notice. Even if visitation rights resume, you poor dears shouldn’t get your hopes up. We find that after a handful of token appearances, friends and family make themselves scarce. We’re our own special village here, and outsiders can feel a bit left out. Oh, and lastly: participation in group activities is required. We don’t want you turning inward. Socializing is in the interest of your mental health, and we all want to help you get better.”
“Those people collapsed in the hallway,” Kay said. “They’re getting ‘better’?”
Feeling compelled to assert himself as a person and not a human drool bucket, Cyril had meantime gone to Settings on his smartphone. “Mrs Mewshaw, could you give me the WiFi password, please?”
Dr Mimi chuckled. “Oh, poopsie, you won’t be needing any password! But that does remind me.” She held out her hand. “We have to confiscate your phones.”
* * *
The brutal decontamination was justified, as so many tortures these days, by COVID-19. Perhaps the allusion was OTT, but Kay’s associations with being led stark naked into a big cement room for a “shower” had inevitable associations with the Second World War, and the disinfectant with which they hosed her down left her skin reeking nauseously of bleach. The thin gown provided thereafter opened at the back and exposed her buttocks. Although she was assured that, natch, cupcake, her clothes would be returned after they’d been washed and pressed, she watched her smart navy frock tossed carelessly atop a snarled laundry cart with a forlorn presentiment that she’d never see it again. As she saw poor Cyril being led away for his humiliating enema, Kay was shown to her room. Down a dismal neon-lit corridor, the shrill perfume of cheap detergent vied with an underlying stench of excrement. “So,” she remarked dryly to her minder. “Where’s the pool?”
Her “private suite” was grey and confining, with a minimal toilet and basin, a flat mattress that seemed to have absorbed a whole Waitrose luxury assortment’s worth of human effluents, and only one ornament on the walls: a digital display that declared, TODAY IS WEDNESDAY; THE DATE IS 1 APRIL 2020; MY NAME IS KATE WILKINGSIN; I AM HAPPY. April Fool’s Day. Too perfect.
The windowless room had neither a TV nor a radio. In all, the amenities were worse than Wandsworth Prison, which was at least awash in illicit mobiles and Class-A drugs piloted into the facility by the drones of organized crime. Surely crooks could have turned an even higher profit smuggling contraband into care homes. Just now, Kay would have paid hundreds of quid for that supermarket Amontillado.
Kay spent her first night tossing in self-recrimination. This debacle was all her fault. If she hadn’t sent that text to Hayley, they’d never have ended up in Close of Day Cottages. What had possessed her to go behind Cyril’s back and tattle? Why hadn’t she simply stood up to him and said, “I’m afraid I can’t go through with this”? For that matter, given the alternative of ending up here, why hadn’t she simply gone through with it? Was she that much of a wuss?
And there was no discernible end to this incarceration. Of all people, Roy had volunteered to serve as their “nearest relative,” whom statute designated as the sole person who could file a legal appeal for their discharge from detention. Per convention, the court had also awarded Roy power of attorney, which gave him carte blanche command of their finances, including their pensions. Why he might ever be motivated to release his parents from this purgatory was not altogether evident. Chillingly, she recalled the lone comment Cyril had passed in the paddy wagon on the way here: “We should never have had children.”
Her greatest torment was separation from her husband, to whom she might at least have poured out her remorse. She worried about him, too. Kay herself was hardly enthusiastic about being persecuted, treated like an idiot child, and deprived more indefinitely of her liberty than the average murderer. (And for what? Criminally, they’d contemplated sparing both family and the NHS the price of their protracted decline.) But Cyril put even greater store in dignity than she did, and the man would be crazed. Righteous fury could get him into trouble. That enema was a warning: the slightest resistance would be met with crushing retribution. They made films about this stuff, and in retrospect it was ominous that Cyril had ardently watched Cool Hand Luke five times.
To her dismay the next morning, in what staff referred to smirkingly as the “restaurant,” seating was assigned, and she and Cyril were separated at distant tables. She only managed to crane her neck and lock eyes with him once. Rather than glint with the steely, biding-his-time subterfuge she expected, his harrowed expression evoked a circuit board struck by lightning; why, she’d not have been surprised to see a wisp of acrid smoke rise
