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said and they began to walk down the corridor, light pouring in from the windows to his right.
    ‘Why don’t the prisoners clean the place themselves? It would give them something to do, no?’ he asked.
    ‘They are not capable. Too mad, too ill.’
    They reached another locked door, which opened automatically with a buzzing sound. ‘Now you clean and dust, everywhere inside the locked doors. Kamal come check later so you do it well,’ Yassir said.
    ‘I have a question,’ Darren said to Yassir, who looked up expectantly. ‘Why is Kamal such a, how should I put this …’
    ‘Ballbreaker?’ Yassir answered for him, smiling.
    ‘Tosser.’ Darren grinned.
    ‘Some people are just born angry,’ Yassir replied. He turned and waved to the camera in the ceiling and the door buzzed open. ‘Have a good day,’ Yassir said, and the door clanged shut behind him.
    Darren was alone now in a long corridor with no windows. It was very quiet. Darren had never been in a prison before. It was featureless and unpleasant; a thousand sad stories seemed to crowd around him.
    He dunked the mop in the rapidly cooling yellow water, placed it in the colander-shaped hole at the side of the bucket and squeezed. He dutifully began to mop the floor in a figure-of-eight motion, as Kamal had instructed. Dull. He moved along two feet, and repeated. And repeated.
    Three hours later he was so bored he felt he would die. The folly of his mad scheme to meet Olivia overwhelmed him. His back ached, and the place was hardly teeming with prisoners or people of any sort: two men in civilian clothes had walked past him about half an hour ago and ignored him; while he mopped in another corridor an unmarked door had been opened by a woman and he got a glimpse of a room with blue carpet and a chair before the door closed with a click behind her.
    He had a break for lunch and ate it in the changing room, reading bullying notices about what to put in the bins and where to put recycling, no doubt pinned up by Kamal. It was like he posted reminders of himself all around the facility, just in case anyone was fortunate enough to be able to forget him for a minute.
    By the afternoon he was thoroughly sick of the endless corridors that smelled of boiled cabbage and he was disorientated: windows were rare and he felt trapped, with no light and only the wall clocks to tell him the day was wearing on. A door at the end of the corridor buzzed open and a man in civilian clothes with a large name tag round his neck came out. Darren stopped mopping and stared. With him were three inmates, unmistakable in their white tops and loose-fitting white trousers. Two of the women were middle-aged; a third was younger, only a little older than Darren. He watched them, fascinated, as the group paused by a side door at the end of the corridor. The man held the door open for them and said, ‘Come in, ladies.’
    The door closed behind them and silence returned. Darren hurried with his mop down to the closed door and tried to listen to what was being said inside. He heard nothing at first, and then some faint laughter. He backed away. Olivia was no doubt also called a lady in here. People held doors open for her. She got to laugh. Something unpleasant began to stir deep within him.

9
     
    T he next morning Darren returned to Roehampton. He had sworn to himself at the end of his joyless and unfruitful shift yesterday that he was never going back, that Mum’s illness had brought on a temporary madness of which cleaning floors at Roehampton was the manifestation. But now here he was, unable to resist taking another mopping tour of the hospital.
    He changed into his uniform and lined up outside the cleaning cupboard with a new group of cleaners. Kamal wasn’t there and a woman called Roksandre doled out the cleaning rota. He was given Newman and Forsyth wards. No one asked how his first day had gone; no one asked his name. Yassir was the only face he recognised and they smiled at each