“To the contrary, I looked it up,” Hayley said, pulling a Post-it note from her bag with the satisfaction of out-nitpicking a nitpicker. “One of the four legitimate reasons to leave the house is ‘to attend to a medical need or provide care for the vulnerable.’ Stopping two vulnerable people with mental health problems from topping themselves certainly qualifies as a ‘medical need.’”
“We’re terribly grateful for your concern,” Cyril said. “Still, what your mother and I decide to do or not do is up to us. Thank you kindly for your offer of support, but we’re of sound mind, and we don’t require your assistance, or even your advice.”
“Actually, I’ve been reluctant to say anything,” Hayley said. “But Mum has become, you know, pretty forgetful.”
“In what way?” Kay asked in astonishment.
“Just the other day,” Hayley said. “You couldn’t remember that author—”
“What, L.P. Hartley? That was a perfectly normal tip-of-the-tongue—”
“But it was the author of, you know, what’s-it, one of your favourite books—”
“See?” Kay said. “You can’t remember the title The Go-Between yourself—”
“It’s not one of my favourite books!”
“I live with your mother,” Cyril said, “and if she were becoming demented I would have noticed.”
“Not if you were demented as well,” Roy said. “You’d forget she was demented.”
“It’s impossible to prove a negative, so we can never conclusively demonstrate that we’re not insane,” Cyril said through his teeth. “Nonetheless, not only do I remember what year it is and who’s prime minister, but I can recite every PM, in order, since 1945. Winston Churchill! Clement Atlee! Winston Churchill—!”
“You already said Winston Churchill,” Hayley said with an eyeroll.
“Bloody hell, Dad, even I can remember Winston Churchill,” Roy said. “Make it a bit harder on yourself.”
“Anthony Eden! Harold McMillan! Alec Douglas-Home!”
“You’ve made your point, dear,” Kay said, patting his knee.
She was right, this recitation was undignified, and Cyril pulled up short.
“I think we should cut to the chase,” Simon said heavily. “We’ve decided it’s in everyone’s interest, especially yours, that you . . . get help. And we’re not presenting that as a choice.”
“What does that mean?” Cyril snapped.
Simon wouldn’t look his father in the eye. “We’re having you sectioned. For your own good.”
“What?” the spouses said in unison.
“Under Section Three of the Mental Health Act,” Hayley said officiously, “you can be detained if you ‘pose a threat to yourselves or others,’ even against your will. We all think it’s the only answer.”
“Hey, you haven’t heard the best bit!” Roy said. “Then you qualify for this, whatever—”
“Section one-seventeen aftercare services,” Hayley filled in.
“It’s not means-tested!” Roy said cheerfully. “The state pays all your care-home fees and you get to keep the house! Fucking hell, you get to keep everything! Most of the time Hayley’s bat-shit crazy, but this time she’s come up with a corker.”
“You have no evidence that would stand up in court,” Cyril said.
“We have evidence up to the eyeballs,” Hayley countered. “Mum’s text. Your bottle of poison. Not to mention that lunatic memorial service. Mum’s tearjerker farewell, which is longer than your average doctoral thesis. Two separate essays extolling the merits of self-euthanasia.”
“And then there’s the spending,” Simon said with a sigh. “I’ve gone through your bank records, and your expenditures are almost manic. You’d paid off the original mortgage years ago. Why refinance? What happened to all the money? This degree of fiscal irresponsibility isn’t going to look good to an AMHP.”
The fact that these kids were already au courant with the abbreviation for the Approved Mental Health Professional who could put them away for eternity was not a good sign. Worse, Cyril remembered with a thud that their buffoon of a prime minister had revised the Mental Health Act earlier this very month to require one physician, not three, to sign off on sectioning. A backhander to a single quack, and your inconvenient parents could be disappeared.
“For one thing, not that it’s your business, son,” Cyril said, “we spent a great deal on keeping your Nanna Poskitt and Grandpa Norman comfortable and cared for.”
“But you also made huge contributions to the People’s Vote campaign. Look how constructive that turned out.” Simon was a Tory Brexiteer and didn’t even have the good sense to be ashamed of himself. It was a miracle that he and his father were still on speaking terms.
“At the risk of the self-evident, we earned our money,” Cyril said. “So it’s up to us how we spend it. Furthermore”—he was winging it, but starting to panic, and they needed every scrap of ammunition that lay to hand—“locking up a qualified GP during a national health crisis would be criminally wasteful. The NHS has already appealed to retired physicians to return to active duty and help keep the service from being overwhelmed—”
“Dad,” Hayley said. “Please. You’re eighty-one. Exactly the demographic most endangered by this disease. On the front line, you’d only be a liability. Wanting to put yourself in the way of a killer virus is just one more sign that you need protection from your own destructive impulses.”
“But never mind that our money belongs to us,” Cyril said, returning to first principles. “Our lives belong to us, whether or not we’re your mum and dad, and it’s up to us how we choose to end them. We may decide, in our wisdom, to stick around until a hundred and ten. Equally, we’d be within our rights to jump off Blackfriars Bridge tomorrow.”
“That’s not how the law sees it,” Simon said, pained.
“And that’s not how we see it,” Hayley said triumphantly. “We promise to come and visit.”
* * *
The council van in which they were bundled out of Lambeth had no windows—it was effectively a paddy wagon—which meant that Kay and Cyril had no idea where in the country they were driven to, giving this nominal adventure a Kafkaesque texture from the start. On their arrival at Close of Day Cottages, there wasn’t a cottage in sight; the facility looked more like an Amazon warehouse or a Tesco distribution hub. In compliance with one of the many capricious but ironclad rules that would soon govern their lives, they were pushed to the administrator’s office clutching their hastily packed bags in wheelchairs, though they were both capable of walking unassisted and carrying their own luggage. The hallway to the office was lined with elderly residents slopped to the side with mouths open, their unseeing gazes so stony that they might have been carved into the architecture like gargoyles. For Close of Day Cottages’ newest admissions, a basket of emotions hit all at once: claustrophobia, horror, depression, and hysterical desperation to abscond by whatever means possible. Both spouses registered with a gut punch that being methodically determined to end their lives at a time and on the terms of their choosing and feeling genuinely, frenetically suicidal were chalk and cheese. At a stroke, involuntary institutionalization managed to induce the very urge to seek oblivion that sectioning was meant to cure.
“Well, now, what have we here?” The plump, fifty-ish woman behind the desk crisply stacked papers that didn’t appear to need straightening, smiling with her mouth but not her eyes. She sported a bold statement necklace reminiscent of Theresa May. Her tight checked suit was a brand of ugly that only high-end designers can conjure, and she exuded a malicious cheer. “Kate and Cyrus! I’m Close of Day’s director, Dr Mimi Mewshaw—though I don’t stand on ceremony, and you can call me Dr Mimi.”
“Kay and Cyril Wilkinson, thank you,” Cyril corrected. “And are you a medical doctor?”
“I’m fully accredited, if that’s what you’re worried about, poopsie.”
“I take that as a no,” Cyril said. “I am a medical doctor.”
“We’re not ‘sweethearts,’” Kay said. “We’ve been married for nearly sixty years.”
“It’s just that we don’t have any double suites available at the minute, so I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with singles.”
“You mean we can’t even sleep in the same bed?” Cyril asked, eyes popping.
“No, sweetie, afraid not. And you’re one-seventeen council charges, meaning the compensation is quite inadequate—below cost, to be honest—so if a double does become available, we have to prioritize private self-paying guests. Beggars can’t be choosers! But at your age, treasure, really. What does it matter? We find our clients sleep more soundly in separate beds anyway. Less chance of getting agitated.” Dr Mimi turned to her computer screen and clicked away. She had one of those monster terminals that could have been twenty years old, which didn’t speak well for the rest of the facilities. “I see here you’re classified as in danger of self-harm? That’s a special regime, but don’t you worry. Safety first! Lance, could you search Kate and Cyrus’s bags, please?”
The tall black orderly who’d been lurking by the door took Cyril’s bag and splayed it open on a nearby table. The carefully folded button-downs and trousers with their creases lined up all got pitched willy-nilly in a rumpled pile.
“What is this, airport security?” Cyril asked incredulously.
“Medication,” Lance announced, holding up one of the only bottles left in Lambeth once Hayley was through protecting her parents from themselves; the laxatives had been tucked away in Cyril’s travel toiletry kit.
“That’s only over-the-counter senna,” Cyril objected. “Surely I can be trusted to manage my own bowels.”
“We control all your medication,” Dr Mimi said. “If you overdosed on that, think what a mess you’d make for our staff. Speaking of which, Cyrus—”
“I think I’d prefer ‘Dr Wilkinson,’ if you don’t mind.”
“Why, funnily enough, I do mind,” Dr Mimi said, clapping her hands in delight. “All our stakeholders are on a first-name basis, and I’m sure you’ll be with us long enough to get used to the friendly atmosphere! But like I was saying, treasure: when was your last poo?”
“I can’t see why that’s any of your concern,” Cyril said coldly.
“I’ll put you down for an enema, then,” Dr Mimi said sweetly. So when she asked “Katie” the same question, Kay was quick enough to say, “This morning.”
“Sharps,” Lance said robotically. He’d found the Swiss Army knife, metal nail file, fingernail clippers, and corkscrew that Cyril had checked into airline holds for decades. The razor and razor blades got pitched on the director’s desk, too. Yet the confiscations became less logical: felt-tip pens, a blank spiral notebook, his laptop, the iPad from Simon, a copy of the most recent New Statesman, and his hardback of Thomas Piketty’s Capital, which being chained in Dante’s nine circles of hell should at last have provided him the leisure to plough all the way through.
“I would like to request the return of my reading material, please,” Cyril said, and this sadistically jolly glorified lollipop lady couldn’t have appreciated the degree of self-control required to remain civil.
“We find militant political magazines and big, boring books about how terrible the world is, well,” Dr Mimi said. “They’re a wee bit dark for a self-harmer. The material might also get into the hands of other stakeholders, who could find it upsetting.”
“So what are we supposed to read?” Kay asked with alarm, doubtless anxious about her copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, which was definitely “dark.”
“I’m sure you’ll find our community activities so exciting, princess, that you’ll be too knackered to read any old books. Katie, my poppet, I see here from your GP that you’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure?”
Cyril shot Kay a look of surprise.
“Because that means we have to put you on a no-salt diet.”
“I’m sorry,” Kay said in a panic; she was very fond of olives and pecorino. “But according to more than one massive study, low-salt diets have significantly worse outcomes for coronary disease and stroke than diets with moderate sodium levels, and a no-salt diet would probably kill you.”
That smile finally mirrored by a sparkle in her eyes, the director seemed pleased that fatally bland food would be received in the punitive spirit she intended.
“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 organize
d 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.
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