It always sounded like crunching snails, Jenny thought, as she walked up the gravel path. She was squinting, sunglasses forgotten. So many snails meeting their death under my Clarks’ boots. Crunch crunch.

She shook her head, trying to get the madness out. If she wasn’t careful, they’d keep her in instead. Do a swap.

She pushed a branch away, heavy with the rain that had cleared the day for a bright, cold sun that she couldn’t feel. And then she saw it. Oh what had she done. It was like something out of Jane Eyre. Austere and grey and drab. You could almost smell the disinfectant from here. Imagine the patients chained to the walls.

Jenny stood for a moment, watching a robin hop across the lawn, cocking its head to one side. Their eyes met for an instant. Two souls, connected. She looked to the first floor, wondered if her Mum could see the birds. She was always buying sacks of peanuts and chucking bread on the patio, then getting cross at the pigeons who jumped the queue. Does she even know what the birds are anymore, she wondered.

Jenny gulped. She felt the bile rise within her. Could taste the sick in her mouth. The robin hopped away. Almost as though he’s disgusted with me too, she thought. Her nose began to tickle. She would not cry. This had been the right thing to do. For the whole family. For Mum.

She carried on towards the mouth-like door, its teeth of brass lion-head knockers glinting in the sunlight. A play on word perhaps, she thought. Lions heads for Lyon House. Predatory. She felt like she was about to be swallowed up by the house. Eaten up. Chewed up. Ground up until she no longer resembled who she was. Until she became as her Mum was now, a forgotten piece of fruit, juice and goodness lost.

She stepped inside, guided by the bored tone of the telephone through the antiseptic green of the corridor. Her shoes squeaked as she climbed the stairs that led to the woman who’d given her life.