Greene Parks gives me the shits. It’s the kind of place that looks as if it could be welcoming on the outside, with its jaunty Victorian charm and smooth stone façade, hanging baskets full of petunias and a bright red door. But it’s the metaphorical equivalent of covering up piss with perfume. And here it seems, the top notes of eau de urine have won out.

A nurse greets me and Davis with an affable smile that belies the nightmarish sadness I’m sure she experiences on a daily basis. I find it odd, really, because despite my job I’ve never got used to seeing, and hearing of, the atrocities human beings encounter and cause one another. They can still shock me. However, Nurse Arlington, as she introduces herself as, appears to have become desensitised to her surroundings.

Never become hardened Danny, Rach used to say, don’t let the job rob you of that soft sod I know you are inside.

But although Greene Parks looks like it could be a hotel from the outside, there’s no room for ambiguity inside. It’s a hospital; a mental hospital, an asylum. There is an expanse of grey that seems to take over your pupils and all your peripheral vision, people walking around in white suits like astronauts. The atmosphere is punctuated by shrill noises and cries, the sounds of anguish and despair. It’s the kind of place that would soon make sane people mad. Yeah, it’s basically One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest. That was Nicholson’s defining moment wasn’t it? He even outshone his performance in The Shining in that film, and he’s pretty fucking brilliant in The Shining. Shit, who was the lead actress who played his wife in it? I can see her, I know her name… fuck… all toothy and awkward, played the terrorised victim brilliantly.

Nurse Arlington strikes me as a hard bitch beneath the smile, robotic, almost sub-human. Or perhaps she’s just found a way to cope working in a place like this, a place for mentally disturbed children and young adults. Sadness literally drips off the ugly, faded floral curtains that somehow seem incongruous, a failed attempt at brightening up hell. I have to wonder what Arlington’s calling is? I’m pretty sure Lidl pay better.

‘Doctor Magnesson is expecting you’, she says in an accent I can’t place. Eastern European maybe? Doesn’t really matter, but it sounds as hard as she looks and I think about how the little hat and dress she’s wearing have always represented comfort, comedy, even sexuality in our culture, yet probably mean something very different to the lost souls that exist like ghosts among these grey walls.

Davis looks as pissed off and uncomfortable as me, which reaffirms that she’s completely sound of mind. We’re led down the cold, grey corridor. The doors to the cells are on the left, and faces appear at them as we walk down it to a soundtrack of banging doors and the clatter and rattle of keys. The air is punctuated by the occasional shout and cry. A young girl, a teenager, fifteen tops I’d guess, with greasy black hair and a grey tracksuit that seems to blend into the walls waves at us, and I smile and wave back.

‘Don’t be alarmed. New people. New faces. They always react like this,’ Arlington says, like they’re dogs in kennels. I sense she feels contempt for the poor wretches she looks after and I dislike her for it. Smiles seems scarce here. The young mentally ill and criminally insane. How does that happen? I think of her, of Florence, of Rebecca Harper, and wonder how you can be so fucked up at nine years old that you end up here? Am I naïve? Probably. But children aren’t born evil, are they? Neglect, abandonment, abuse… It’s rare that you don’t see at least one of these as prefixes to the deterioration of a child’s mental well-being. Statistics prove that many people who are victims of abuse go on to become abusers themselves. I don’t think it’s right; I don’t think it’s an excuse. But I do think it explains a lot.

‘Doctor Magnesson is very busy, I’m sure you’ll understand, but she has agreed to fit you in. Your colleague explained the urgency.’

I think Nurse Arlington is expecting a thank you so I deliberately withhold it. I’ve not really taken to her. I’m struggling to hold it together as it is.

‘This is her office,’ she stops abruptly and knocks on the grey door. I half expect her to say, ‘the doctor will see you now,’ but she turns abruptly on her spongy heels without so much as a goodbye and as she does it comes to me… Shelley Duvall.