This was easy. Second day in, and Shirley Dander was on top of their shit already.
But going along with it would mean pretending she was okay with being here, and that might be a stretch for them to accept, given the forthright assessment she’d made of the place, its facilities and its staff within an hour of her arrival, and then again sometime during the second hour, and maybe a couple more times after that, before everyone agreed it might be best to call it a night. They’d think, in fact, that she was faking it to speed up the whole process of recovery and release. So no, best plan would be to stick with the dignified silence she’d mostly maintained since the previous morning. Dignity was definitely looking like being one of her better things, which, come to think of it, probably counted as a learning too. But there was nothing to say she couldn’t leave here wiser than she’d arrived. It didn’t mean she’d be removing this place from her shit-list any time soon.
Of course, putting its name on any kind of list would be easier if it had a fucking name in the first place. Instead, it was just known as the San, an abbreviation redolent of the Chalet School books her mother had forced on her when she was ten; books she had refused to read as a matter of principle, and then had refused to admit to reading as a matter of survival, because to back down from a principle was just baring your throat for the bite. There was no battle as fiercely fought as a girl’s with her mother. Mind you, the battles fought by a grown woman with her mother could get pretty heated too, which was a good reason for making sure her mother never got to find out about Shirley’s current whereabouts. She’d almost certainly blame it on Shirley’s recreational drug use, and Shirley was sick of being hit with that particular stick. If it’s doing me harm, how come I’m fine? A clincher, but it went sailing over her mother’s head like, Shirley didn’t know, an albatross.
Which was exactly the sort of crap they’d want to hear about: battles with her mother. Yawn.
They also wanted to hear about all the dead people, but they could go fuck themselves.
Light was sneaking through the blind, which meant they’d be knocking on the door soon; a soft, polite knock, as if they didn’t want to disturb her. And then there’d be hours of hanging around waiting for something to happen, which, when it did, would consist of Shirley sitting first in a big circle with a bunch of time-ruined losers, and then in a private pair with one of the happy-clappy therapists, in either instance refusing to join in because of the whole maintaining-a-dignified-silence thing. In between these sessions there’d be time to wander round the grounds, or do a jigsaw, or run amok with an axe—there was a workshop near the stables; there might be an axe going begging. She made a mental note to check. Then there’d be lunch, and then another group session . . . Christ. She’d never thought she’d miss Slough House.
Of which there were ghostly reminders here. Catherine Standish, for instance, haunted its corridors, having been one of the San’s success stories. Because as all the slow horses knew—Jackson Lamb made sure they did—Catherine was a drunk; her history a sordid, vomit-flecked montage of emptied bottles and broken glass, which made it almost comic to see her now, like she’d had a broom handle surgically inserted. Ms. Uptight, in her Victorian spinster costume. Like butter wouldn’t melt, when time was she’d melted more butter than Shirley had had hot toast. So yeah, she was currently top of Shirley’s shit-list, above Louisa Guy and Lech Wicinski, who’d lured Shirl to Wimbledon in the first place; above Roderick Ho, because the whole bus thing was his fault; above Ashley Khan, who would turn out as annoying as everyone else; and even above Jackson Lamb, without whose say-so nothing happened round Slough House—ahead of them all was Catherine, because Catherine had made out that this was for Shirley’s own good, as if Shirley should thank her for the opportunity.
People keep getting hurt, she’d said. People keep dying. We have to look out for one another.
Yeah, right. Shirley would be looking out for Catherine, that was for sure.
Meanwhile, it was about keeping her head down and waiting for everyone to realise that all she needed was for people to stop getting on her case. A few days, tops. And she could manage that, but she’d be happier if she’d had time to pack properly—all the sermonising about self-control and clean living would be easier to take with a bump of coke to help it down, not to mention it would increase their chances of getting her to open up. She’d be first to admit she was more voluble after a line or two. This whole place, now she thought about it, would benefit from a more lax attitude, and a bar wouldn’t hurt either. She wondered if there was a suggestion box, and whether it would infringe her code of dignified silence to make a contribution.