But yesterday’s water is all gone and I’m very thirsty, I am dying of thirst, my mouth tastes bruised, my tongue is swelling. That’s what happens to castaways, I’ve read about them in legal trials, lost at sea and drinking each other’s blood. They draw straws for it. Cannibal atrocities pasted into the scrapbook. I’m sure I would never do such a thing, however hungry. Have they forgotten I’m in here? They’ll have to bring more food, or at least more water, or else I will starve, I will shrivel, my skin will dry out, all yellow like old linen; I will turn into a skeleton, I will be found months, years, centuries from now, and they will say Who is this, she must have slipped our mind, Well sweep all those bones and rubbish into the corner, but save the buttons, no sense in having them go to waste, there’s no help for it now.

Once you start feeling sorry for yourself they’ve got you where they want you. Then they send for the Chaplain.

Oh come to my arms, poor wandering soul. There is more joy in Heaven over the one lost lamb. Ease your troubled mind. Kneel at my feet. Wring your hands in anguish. Describe how conscience tortures you day and night, and how the eyes of your victims follow you around the room, burning like red-hot coals. Shed tears of remorse. Confess, confess. Let me forgive and pity. Let me get up a Petition for you. Tell me all.

And then what did he do? Oh shocking. And then what?

The left hand or the right?

How far up, exactly?

Show me where.

Possibly I hear a whispering. Now there’s an eye, looking in at me through the slit cut in the door. I can’t see it but I know it’s there. Then a knocking.

And I think, Who could that be? The Matron? The Warden, come to give me a scolding? But it can’t be any of them, because nobody here does you the courtesy of knocking, they look at you through the little slit and then they just walk in. Always knock first, said Mary Whitney. Then wait until they give you leave.