Horror

A discharge that never reached the door

Vera Dale waited outside Rowan House with two sandwiches and her discharge notice. She had been twenty-seven when a doctor signed it. She was sixty-eight now, and the paper had outlived both the doctor and the institution. “People always photograph the bars,” she told Anya. “Could you photograph the date?” Vera had finally been allowed out when the building closed in 1978, twenty-three years after that authorisation; she had found the original notice only this week.