'Er… I…' Iris begins. She puts down the pen. She wonders what she is about to say. 'Can we see the room?' is what comes out.
'What room?'
'The room,' Iris repeats, gaining conviction now. 'Where she'll be sleeping.'
The man lets the newspaper drop to his lap. 'The room?' he raps out. 'You want to see the room? Hey!' He is leaning back in his chair, calling to someone, 'Hey! There's a lassie out here wants to see the room before she signs in!'
There's a gale of laughter and a woman's head appears round the door.
'What do you think this is?' the man says. 'The Ritz?'
There is more laughter but then, without warning, he stops laughing, leans forward over the desk and barks: 'You!'
Iris jumps, startled.
'You!' He stands up now and raps on the reinforced-glass screen. 'You're banned. Get out.'
Iris turns to see a woman with a head of heavy, bleached hair and a grimy bomber jacket sidling past the desk, her hands deep in her pockets.
'You know the rules,' the man is shouting. 'No needles. It says that on the door, plain as day. So get out.'
The woman eyeballs the man for a long moment, then erupts like a roman candle, gesticulating, shrieking a long and voluble string of curses. The man is unmoved. He sits down and raises his newspaper. The woman, with no recipient for her anger, turns on the teenager with the biro. 'The fuck are you laughing at?' she shouts.
The teenager shakes the hair out of her eyes and looks her up and down. 'Nothing,' she says, in a sing-song voice.
The woman steps forward. 'I asked you,' she says menacingly, 'what the fuck you are laughing at?'
The girl raises her chin. 'And I said, nothing. Or are you deaf as well as wasted?'
Iris glances across at Esme. Her face is turned to the wall, her hands over her ears. Iris has to step over the teenager's rucksack to get to her. And when she does, she takes her arm, picks up her bag and guides her out of the door.
Outside on the pavement, Iris is wondering what she has done, what she's going to do now, when Esme suddenly stops.
'It's OK.,' Iris begins, 'it's OK, you don't-'
But she sees a strange expression steal over Esme's face. Esme is looking up at the sky, at the buildings, across the road. Her features are illuminated, rapt. She turns one way, then the other. 'I know where this is,' she exclaims. 'That's…' she turns again and points '…that's the Grassmarket, down there.'
'Yes.' Iris nods.
'And that way is the Royal Mile,' she says excitedly, 'and Princes Street. And there,' Esme turns again, 'is Arthur's Seat.'
'That's right.'
'I remember,' she murmurs. She has stopped smiling now. Her fingers grip the edges of her coat together. 'It's the same. But different.'
Iris and Esme sit in the car, which is parked at the side of a street. Esme is pushing the seatbelt into the lock, then releasing it, and every time she releases it, she lifts it close to her face, as if examining it for clues.
'Hospital,' Iris is saying, to the remarkably unhelpful woman at Directory Enquiries. 'Cauldstone Hospital, I think. Or "Psychiatric Hospital"? Try "psychiatric"…No? Have you tried just "Cauldstone"?…No, one word… Yes. C-A… No. D. For – for "damn"…Yes, I'll hold.'
Esme has abandoned the seatbelt and has pressed the hazard light button on the dashboard. The car is filled with a noise like crickets. This seems to delight Esme, who smiles, presses it again, switching it off, waits a moment, then switches it on again.
'Really?' Iris says. 'Well, could you try just "hospital"?…No, not any hospital. I need this one, specifically. Yes.' Iris feels incredibly hot. She is regretting the jumper under her coat. She reaches out and covers the hazard button with one hand. 'Could you please not do that?' she says to Esme, then has to say, 'No, no, I didn't mean you,' to the Directory Enquiries woman who, magically, has managed to locate the whereabouts of Cauldstone on her system and is asking Iris if she wants Admissions, Outpatients, General Enquiries or Daycare.
'General Enquiries,' Iris says, sitting up, enlivened now. This nightmare is nearly at an end. She will ask Cauldstone where she should take Esme next or, failing that, return her to them. Quite simple. She has more than done her duty. She hears the connection, a ringing and then a list of options. She presses a button, listens, presses another, listens again and, as she is listening, she realises that Esme has opened the door and is getting out of the car.
'Wait!' Iris shrieks. 'Where are you going?'
She shoves at her own door and stumbles from the car, still holding the phone to her ear – it seems to be saying something about how the offices are now shut, how the opening hours are between nine a.m. and five p.m. and that she must call back within those hours or leave a message after the tone.
Esme is walking speedily along the pavement, her head tipped back to look up. She stops at a pedestrian crossing, which is beeping, the green man flashing on and off, and stoops to peer at it.
'I'm in the Grassmarket with Es – with Euphemia Lennox,' Iris is saying in as calm and assertive a voice as she can muster while sprinting along a pavement. 'The hostel you sent us to is simply not satisfactory. She couldn't stay there. The place is completely unsuitable and full of – of-She can't stay there. I know this is my fault because I discharged her but,' she says, as she catches up with Esme, grabbing a fistful of her coat, 'I'd like someone to call me, please, as I'm bringing her back. Right now. Thank you. Goodbye.'
Iris hangs up, out of breath. 'Esme,' she says, 'get back in the car.'
They drive away from the Grassmarket, south, away from the centre, grinding their way through the rush-hour traffic. Esme sits in her seat, turning her head to see things as they pass: a churchyard, a man walking a dog, a supermarket, a woman with a pram, a cinema with a queue outside.
As Iris turns the car into the driveway for the hospital, Esme's head snaps round to look at her. 'This is-' She stops. 'This is Cauldstone.'
Iris swallows. 'Yes. I know. I… You couldn't stay at that hostel, you see,' she begins, 'so we-'
'But I thought I was leaving,' Esme says. 'You said I was leaving.'
Iris parks the car, pulls on the handbrake. She has to resist the urge to press her forehead against the steering-wheel. She imagines it would feel cool and smooth against her skin. 'I know I did. And you will. The problem is that-'
'You said.' Esme shuts her eyes, screws them up tight, bowing her head. 'You promised,' she says, almost inaudibly and, with her hands, she is crushing the material of her dress.
She won't get out. She will not. She will sit here, in this seat, in this car, and they'll have to drag her, like last time. She breathes in and she breathes out and she listens to the shushing noise of it. But the girl walks round the front of the car, opens her door, reaches in to pick up the bag and she puts her hand on Esme's arm and the touch is gentle.
Esme releases her hold on her dress and she is interested in the way the material remains bunched up, pulled into peaks, even though her fingers have gone. The pressure on her arm is still there and it is still gentle and, despite it, despite everything, Esme knows the girl – this girl who has appeared from nowhere and after so long – has done her best. Esme does realise this and she wonders for a moment if there is a way to communicate it. Probably not.
And so she swings her legs sideways and, at the sound of the gravel under her feet, she finds she wants to cry. Which is curious. She pushes at the car door to shut it and that gets rid of the sensation – the satisfying clunk of it swinging to. She doesn't think she doesn't think she doesn't think anything at all as they walk up the steps and into the hall and there is the marble floor of the entrance hall again – black white black white black – and it is amazing that it is unchanged, and there is the drinking fountain with the green tiles, set into the wall, she'd forgotten that, how could she have forgotten that because she remembers now her father stooping to-