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and down, seeing if you’re all right, not hurt or anything.
    “Hello mum.”
    “Hullo dear,” she says. “How’s everything? Are you all right?”
    “Yes mum.”
    “You look thin. Are you getting enough to eat?”
    “Yes mum.”
    You sit down across the table from her. There’s a long silence. A screw comes in and sits down at a far table and pretends to read his newspaper. The newspaper is partly to show that he’s not really listening. You can’t read a newspaper if you’re listening. He sits half turned from your direction to let you know that he’s a good fellow and isn’t really going to watch you with your visitor, but he’s still got you in the line of sight from the corner of his eye.
    “How was your trip?” you ask your mother.
    “Oh, not too bad,” she says. “The train was a bit late getting away, that’s all.”
    “Well, as long as the trip wasn’t too bad,” you say.
    “No, it wasn’t too bad.”
    “That’s good.”
    Another long silence. For weeks you’ve been looking forward to a visit, now you can’t think of much to talk about.
    “I’ve baked you a cake,” she says, suddenly fumbling in her bag. The screw is glancing across. Your mother brings out the cake. It’s wrapped in cellophane.
    “It’s a fruit cake. You like fruit cake, don’t you?”
    “Yes, thanks.”
    “I’m afraid it didn’t rise as well as it should have.”
    “It’ll be fine.”
    “Would you like a piece now?”
    “Er, no thanks, I’ll have some later.”
    “It’s got plenty of fruit in it. Dates, raisins and currants.”
    “Beaut.”
    More silence. You feel a tightness in your chest as though you’re starting to suffocate. You’re trying to think of something to talk about. The trouble is, you can only think about your life here, and you don’t want to talk to your mother about that. You don’t want to bring it out into the open about what this place is and why you’re here. You want to keep the madness thing in the background because you know it would embarrass you both.
    Your mother looks miserable. She’s waiting for you to say something. To show you’re truly glad to see her. You feel a stab of pain and pity for her. Your little mother, sitting there miserable because she loves you. She made you a cake and came all this way in the train to see you, and now you’re sitting across the table like a stranger.
    “What are the doctors like, dear? Do they seem nice?” she says. You both feel a little wince at the word “doctors”. because mentioning “doctors” brings the madness thing a little into the open.
    “We’ve only got one doctor. They call him Electric Ned.”
    “Why is that?”
    “He likes giving shock treatment.”
    There’s another wince at the words “shock treatment”. “Shock treatment” is bringing the madness thing too close. You’re both embarrassed now.
    “Poor Auntie Janet had another stroke,” she says to steer the talk away.
    “That’s a shame,” you say. You only met Auntie Janet once, when you were a little boy. Even then, she was about eighty and smelled funny and you didn’t like her. But now you want to talk about Auntie Janet.
    “She must be pretty old now,” you say.
    “Over ninety,” your mother says.
    You try to think of something more to say about Auntie Janet. You can’t.
    “How’s the weather been in the city?” you ask.
    “Oh, reasonable. We had a light shower yesterday.”
    “Oh.”
    “How’s it been up here?”
    “Not too bad.”
    “That’s good.”
    The silences are so awkward now you feel driven to ask a question it’s probably better you didn’t ask.
    “Er, have you seen Stanislav lately?”
    “I saw him about two weeks ago. He came into the bar while I was working. He was drunk of course.”
    “What happened?”
    “Oh, he made a scene. The publican told him to get out and threatened to call the police. You can imagine what it was like.”
    Yes, you can imagine. In your memory stretches a dark series of