Chapter 16 : Thank heavens for padded bras, (or Primark at least)

I was led up the big staircase to “dream” (as they insisted on calling it) by Ingrid. Ingrid was a tiny thin woman of about 112lbs who must have been in her early twenty’s, she was also very pale but absolutely stunning. All her features where defined, her platinum silky straight hair fell effortlessly over her shoulders to the centre of her back and her walk looked almost like a dance, or that she should have been on a catwalk somewhere and defiantly not in the hall ways of a mental hospital. She was one of those girls that all the boys went mad for, and all of the other girls wanted to be. I felt completely inadequate in her presences.

Up on the first floor was a corridor of 7 rooms each with a name painted elegantly on them in black slanted lettering. The second one on the right next to “love” bore the word dream.

“Here we go then mi,” Ingrid said almost singing the words. Even her voice was perfect. “I have set the bed up for you all ready, all you got to do is put a few pictures up and it will feel just like home.”

She was wrong. No amount of pictures could have made Dream Ok. Dream was nothing more then a cell of a room painted in a NHS baby pink. A single bed and side table stood up against the left side of the wall, a chest of draws and a wardrobe down the other with a mirror next to them that looked like it was made out of tin foil. At the far end was a window, opened a crack at the bottom, dressed with Curtains of mismatched colours that clashed into each other horribly. like down stares the stupid amount it actually opened wasn’t enough to help with the sweltering heat. I felt sick.

“Right then what have we got in here?” Ingrid asked, taking my suit case out of my hand that had been dropped up to Apple gate before my arrival by Annie and Paul. It looked far to heavy for her to carry but she managed it easily before dropping it lightly onto my bed, making the itchy hospital blanket shift out of place.

“Do you want to come and give me a hand Mi? I will help you put it away as well if you want.” I walked over to the bed silently like the zombie I seemed to be becoming looking at the ground the whole time. I unzipped the bag slowly before she started pulling out the clothes writing it all down as she went on official hospital paper occasionally passing comment on some item of clothing she really liked. Then she came across Mr Hop.

“Awwww” she squealed in pure delight at coming across the chewed, moth eaten gray bunny rabbit that used to be white and now only had one eye. “Isn’t he just the sweetest?”

I had Mr Hop when I was first born and he had never been out of my hands ever since. My big sister had bought it for me when I was a few hours old, now he was all I had left of her. Arabella had died in a car accident when she was driving me home from one of our shopping trips together. By a cruel twist of fate I survived when she hadn’t but not with out the big red raised scare down the right hand side of my face. They said in time it would fade, but it had not showed any signs of doing so yet and it continued to stand as an ugly permanent reminder of that ugly day.

“Right, all done.” Ingrid said pulling me back into the room. I can leave you to unpack now if you want, I will just have to come back and check on you in 10 minutes. Have you got anything else on you that you want me to lock away?” Translation- If you have a bomb in your knickers please give it to me now

“No, I don’t think so,” I said forcing a smile. Only I knew about the small shiny sharp piece of metal I had hiding in the padding of my bra. Yeah she probably meant she wanted that too.