He seemed to think for a moment. I waited for judgment, but it didn’t come. “I didn’t guess,” he said finally. “From what I’ve seen, we all think you’re competent and reliable.”
I rubbed my drying cheeks. “I’m neither.”
“Then you fit in well here.” He gave a wry smile. “Thornton was fooled.”
I shook my head. “What were you doing, asking to come to the sessions today? Asking to go running alone? You put everyone in a tizzy.”
“Did I? That wasn’t my intent. I just . . .” He rubbed his jaw, searching for words. “I’ve barely left my room for six months. It suddenly bothered me. I don’t know why.”
“Well,” I said, glad to change the subject, “there was a great debate over what to do, since no one is supposed to know you’re here. Thornton eventually decided the other patients wouldn’t be believed if they ever went to the newspapers with it. That is, assuming any of them ever get well.”
“Bloody hell,” said Jack softly. “I don’t want to affect anyone’s recommendations for release. I’ll put the word out that the men are to be quiet about it.”
I stared at him. “They all already know you’re here, don’t they? Every one of them.”
“Kitty, try living in these close quarters for six months and see if you have any privacy,” he said. “Most of them have seen me at some point or another, and Mabry and I have talked more than once. If Thornton had ever spent a day in here, he would never have believed he could make such a stupid rule. I had no idea he’d tried.”
“But Matron lives here. She should know.” I thought back, went over everything again in my mind. Now that I recalled it, Matron had not seemed particularly panicked about the other patients seeing Jack. She had been more concerned about the nurses and the orderlies, since they were the ones who could leave Portis House and tell tales. “She may have pointed out the flaws and been overruled. Thornton doesn’t value her opinion much,” I said. “Even if Matron thought a rule was nonsense, she would keep her thoughts to herself and follow it anyway. She’d lose her job otherwise. Keeping quiet and following the rules seems to be the policy here.”
“And you have trouble following rules.”
“I can follow rules,” I countered, stung. “I cleaned the lav, didn’t I? That wasn’t a picnic, either.”
Jack frowned. “Wait. They made you clean the lav?”
I smoothed my palms over my braids. “It’s clean, isn’t it? Who do you think mopped up all of that horrible black mold? Why do you think I looked such a wreck when I met you?”
Even in the gloom I could see his gaze sharpen, the skin around his eyes tighten, as he became alarmed. “I didn’t notice what you looked like. And I assumed an orderly. Are you saying Matron had you do it alone?”
“She does it to all the girls.” Since I had stopped weeping, my head felt heavy and light at the same time. My eyes burned. “It’s a sort of test. But I’m getting the worst tests she can think of, because of what she knows about me.”
“For God’s sake. Alone.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes, agitated. “Kitty—this is going to sound strange, but I’ll say it anyway. You should get out of here. You have to go. Find another job.”
I barked a laugh. “Right.”
“Go to Newcastle on Tyne,” he said. “Or farther, if you can afford the ticket. Apply wherever you can. Find something.”
I stared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Kitty, it’s dangerous here. You shouldn’t stay. Frankly, you should run.”
“Run? Because of a bathroom?”
“It isn’t just a bathroom. It’s this place. Don’t you feel it?”
We stared at each other for a long moment. My head spun. He is insane, I thought. This place . . . But perhaps he was just trying to get rid of me. Perhaps he wanted me gone.
The thought drew me up like a splash of cold water. I’d thought I couldn’t do this, but the idea of turning around and leaving, of Jack asking me to leave, panicked me. “I can’t leave this place,” I said.
“You can,” said Jack.
“No,” I said. “And I don’t mean that I won’t. I mean that I can’t.” He frowned, and I stumbled on. “Weren’t you listening when I told of how I got here? How I lied? I’m desperate. I don’t have enough money for a ticket to Newcastle on Tyne or anywhere else. I own three blouses, two skirts, a pair of shoes, three pairs of cotton stockings, one hat, one pair of gloves, one wool coat, and four pairs of underwear. My last employer sacked me owing three weeks’ pay. I spent my last coins on my ticket here and the hired car, and I had to steal a stale bun from a baker’s stall because I couldn’t afford to eat at the same time. I’ve been running for four years, and I can’t go any farther.”
“My God, Kitty,” he said. “Running from what?”
I shook my head. “That’s my own business. If I leave here, I am on the streets. Perhaps a man will pay me a few shillings for a quick one. Is that what you’d rather I do?”
“I never said that,” he said, angry now. He leaned forward and reached into the dark, his hand finding my wrist. I watched his bare arm flex in the lamplight, the tendons on the inside of his forearm tense, my mouth gone dry and my pulse beating in the base of my throat. “Bloody hell, Kitty.”
His grip was strong, his skin hot on mine. The feel of it put me in a state near panic, and everything else burned away. “Why are you here?” I said desperately. “You’re Jack Yates. Who sent you here?”
“No one,” he said, not letting me go. “I checked myself in.”
“No. I don’t believe it. You’re not—”
“Yes, I am.” The shadows from the lamp played over the beautiful planes of his face, and I thought of what Martha had said, of how he’d tried to kill himself. “I’m as mad as the rest of them, Kitty. Never doubt it. For the last part of my life, I’ve wanted nothing more than to die. I don’t sleep. I don’t speak. I have nightmares . . . things I barely even remember, and I wake up wanting more than ever to be dead. I see visions, ghosts at night. I hear footsteps. Does that sound mad to you?”
“You’re not mad,” I said again.
His eyes left me, flickered to something over my shoulder through the door, and their expression changed so entirely I nearly gasped.
“He’s coming,” he said.
And from somewhere down the hall, the screaming began.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was Archie. He was half off his bed by the time I got to him, his head and body twisted back, arched as tight as an archer’s bow. His hands were up, the fingers flexing, grasping air. From his throat came a jagged scream unlike anything I’d ever heard from a grown man.
“Archie!” I reached past his hands and grasped his shoulders, tried to shake him. “Archie!” Too late, I remembered I wasn’t supposed to approach a man in the grip of a nightmare alone—but by then he was thrashing beneath me and his wrist clouted the side of my head. I switched my grip to his arms and tried to pin him down. “Archie!”