The first thing you learn about psychiatric services is you always have to wait. The review was scheduled for twelve, but I’ve been sitting outside the ward on a plastic chair that’s fixed to the wall for two hours, holding a folder of neatly ordered correspondence between my mum’s GP, mental health community worker, social worker, along with housing officer reports, medication reports, plus her original diagnosis. I call the ward every half an hour to let them know I’m still here. You have to do that, otherwise they have the review without you, make all her decisions for her care and then make some feeble apology, Oh, no-one told us you were waiting. But according to the law, if a family member has Lasting Power of Attorney for Health for a patient with psychosis, they have the right to participate in any case review. That’s why I’m here. Try as they might, they can’t keep me out. Eventually, a senior staff nurse who’s been on the ward for years comes to find me. She’s in her fifties, Caribbean accent, name’s Beatrice. I don’t actually hate her. She’s one of the few decent ones, but she still raises her eyebrow at my neatly organised folder. ‘Prepared as always, Jack.’

  The nurses don’t change that often but the same can’t be said for the junior doctors. My mum’s been held under a Section Two for the last twenty-eight days after she completely lost it and went on a rampage in the maternity wing of St George’s Hospital. In that time, she’s had no less than two different psychiatrists and a week in between where none of the staff on the ward could tell me who her doctor was supposed to be. Beatrice leads me into the conference room, where my mum is already sitting in jeans and a cardigan that I don’t recognise. But I’ve long since stopped trying to keep hold of her clothes when she’s in here. Her eyes light up when she sees me.

  ‘Jack!’ She exclaims and stands up to give me a hug. She smells of toothpaste and B.O. They only give her a shower if I make a fuss. ‘You didn’t have to come all this way to see me.’

  The psychiatrist arrives. He’s in his mid-twenties. He can’t be fully qualified and clearly spends more time at the gym than he does studying, as his expensive shirt bulges at the biceps. From his designer shoes, tailored waistcoat and overly styled haircut, I can tell that he’s rotated into psychiatry as part of his training, and has no plans to make a career of it. I know the type, I’ve seen enough of them over the years.

  He shakes me warmly by the hand and tells me that he’s heard a lot about me and is pleased to put a face to the name. He says he thinks it’s important that I’m there. ‘In many ways, you’re the most important person in the room.’

  ‘Isn’t that supposed to be my mum?’ I reply, not to trying to hide the contempt in my voice.

  He wags a finger at me and chuckles as if I’ve caught him out. ‘I heard you were a sharp one.’

  The first fifteen minutes of the meeting are boring summaries of mum’s response to drug regimens and attendance at group therapy sessions. When they finally get around to the important bit, the part I have trudged all the way from Balham for, the psychiatrist skips through it at lightning speed.

  ‘So is that agreed, Edith?’ he says to mum, who looks at him bemused, ‘Home tomorrow?’

  He gathers up his notes and tucks them away in the latest bulging volume of her hospital records. Box ticked. Job done.

  ‘If I could say something,’ I start.

  The psychiatrist gets to his feet. ‘Why don’t you share any thoughts with the staff nurse here and she can pass them on to me?’

  ‘Legally, you can’t discharge my mum,’ I say, opening my copy of her correspondence, ‘not, whilst she’s in psychosis, which she quite evidently is. At a previous review, it was decided that to do so put her, and I quote, “at a risk to herself and others”.’

  ‘Well, Jack, like I said, our expert opinion is that Edith’s made some wonderful progress, and now the best place for her to recover is with you at home.’

  ‘Have you actually spent any time with my mum?’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, in a concerned professional tone that makes me want to smack him. ‘Developing a close, personal therapeutic relationship with the patient is a key part of their recovery.’

  ‘It’s just if you’ve got such a close and personal relationship with my mum, how is that you don’t know that she doesn’t use Edith, she hates that name. She goes by her middle name, Marsha. She has done since she was seven years old.’

  The psychiatrist stares at me, a smile on his face and hatred in his eyes. But I’m long past caring what they think of me. I press on:

  ‘And if Marsha’s made such a good recovery, how is that she doesn’t know who I am?’

  Beatrice cuts in. ‘Come on, Jack, be reasonable, she gave you a big hug, when you arrived.’

  I turn to mum. ‘Marsha,’ I say and she turns to face me, moving her whole torso to do so. The lack of mobility a side effect of the anti-psychotics. ‘Am I your son?’

  She frowns, awkwardly. ‘How many times are we going to go through this?’ She turns to the psychiatrist, ‘He’s a lovely boy, but he’s not mine. They took my boy when he was a baby.’

  The psychiatrist sinks into his chair, resigned to the meeting not being over. He has no choice but to agree to extend the Section she’s being held under for another twenty-eight days. I’ve some sympathy with their situation. Psychiatry’s all about emptying beds as quickly as possible, to make room for the next emergency case brought in by the police or ambulance. But I don’t have so much sympathy that I want to look after a psychotic woman on my own.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Afterwards, I sit on the ward with mum and play drafts. She can always beat me, mad or sane. When it’s time to leave, Beatrice, the staff nurse, lets me out of the ward.

  ‘Wouldn’t she be better off at home?’ She asks, the question laden with guilt.

  ‘She won’t have a home if you discharge while she’s sick. We only make the mortgage every month because we let out bedrooms to lodgers. They’re hardly gonna stay in a place with a mad woman screaming the house down every night, are they?’

  The staff nurse frowns, ‘Well, you can’t expect us to free up a bed every time she gets ill.’

  ‘Can’t I?’ I ask, with faux innocence. ‘And there was me thinking that’s what a hospital was for.’

  She opens her mouth to say more, but I’m already walking away.

  It’s only four pm when I leave the hospital, but it’s already dark. Last night’s snowfall has frozen and the pavement is treacherous. There’s no money on my card for the bus, so I’m walking home. I’m starving, but I know for a fact there’s no food in the house. I used up a dusty packet of noodles and the last tin of tuna last night. I can’t go thieving until the supermarkets close; I’ve got a hungry seven hours to kill.

  The lights are on in the hallway, which means the new lodger has come back from work. I only accept tenants who go to an office, home workers have the heating on all day, which eats into the rent. It’s still a beautiful house, double fronted, three bedrooms, and a long back garden. Heaven help us if we lose this place. I find the lodger in the kitchen, making dinner. Teresa is twenty-three, only two years older than me, but feels in a completely different stage of her life. She has short blonde hair, wears vintage clothes and does postgraduate research in some kind of science. School, university, work. Everything seems to have fallen into place for her. I was surprised that she took the room, but she later admitted, ‘I wanted something real, you know?’ By real, I suspect she means poor.

  She’s making her dinner from a box of ingredients that comes through the door once a week. Cooking by numbers. Moroccan meatballs, according to the guide she’s propped up against the kettle.

  She chews on a stray piece of fennel and asks how my day was. I lie and tell her that it was fine. I’ve been lying about everything since I was ten years old. Social workers ask how everything is, I say fine. Police bring mum back in the middle of the night, I tell them dad is working overnight and will be back tomorrow. School asks why she doesn’t come to parents evening, and I say she’s looking after my long dead gran. It’s become my first instinct, even when I don’t have to, I find myself spinning a story.

  Teresa’s join-the-dots meal smells delicious. I don’t know if she sees me salivating or can hear my stomach growling, but she offers me a bowl.

  ‘The ingredients are for two and I can’t eat it all.’

  I’m so hungry I don’t even refuse once out of politeness. She serves up and we sit at the kitchen table, chatting. Or at least, she does. The flavours of her jigsaw meal are rich and exotic. I soak them up as she chats away. I’m always fascinated by people with ordinary lives. Two parents. Holidays in Spain. She describes her childhood in the provinces as boring. But boredom is a luxury. To not have to respond to a new crisis every day. Teresa says she has a joint in her room and offers to share. I decline and she momentarily panics that I disapprove of cannabis, which I don’t, but I need to go to The Other Place tonight and it’s too dangerous to go there stoned. As Teresa goes up to her room, I sense that she feels a little rejected. I load the dishwasher and wonder if there was subtext to the offer of a smoke. I feel my dick stir. It would be a terrible idea to sleep with a lodger, but it’s not like I get a lot of opportunities to meet women.

  I wait until after eleven, when the house has settled down, to go to The Other Place. I grab my knapsack, and head to the glass back door, which looks out onto the long, untidy garden, a few broken pieces of garden furniture protrude from the carpet of snow. I take hold of the door handle, make a silent decision and when I open the door, the garden at night is gone and there is a forest outside. Sunlight pokes through the lush trees, which still have their summer leaves. I tug my knapsack onto my back and leave one world and enter another.

  As I cross the threshold of the doorway, I feel a rush of warmth on my face. The brightness of the sunlight makes my eyes water. I allow myself to enjoy the new season for a moment, before I close the door behind me and set off at a brisk pace. I don’t like to stay in The Other Place for any longer than is necessary. There are creatures here. Some are animals, some are more than that, but certainly not human. When I was a kid, I would escape my mother’s madness here, but after being hunted by a reptilian creature - with scales for hair and bright green eyes - that jabbed at me with a spear, I return only out of necessity. Mostly for foraging expeditions like this one. Not that I dare pick the fruit or hunt the animals that live on the forest floor. It may deadly for all I know.

  I learnt through trial and error that distances in The Other Place are the same as they are in my world. If you walk a mile here and open a door, and you’ll be in the same place relatively as if you’d taken the same number of steps back home. It’s seven hundred and thirty-two steps to the nearest supermarket from our house. I count them as I make my way through the forest. It’s near enough to the door of an old stable. When I open that door, I step into the shadowed main shopping floor of Sainsbury’s Balham. It’s been closed for over an hour. There won’t be anyone here until the deliveries at five in the morning. There’s a twenty-four-hour security guard at the delivery gate, but he never comes onto the shop floor. The main risk of being here comes from the high street outside. While the lights are low, they’re not off, and anyone looking will be able to see me as I exit one aisle to go down another. If anyone kicks up a fuss or calls the police, I’ll be done for. I can open doors between worlds, but I can’t magically wipe my face off the CCTV.

  I never take much. I don’t want anything to be missed. I silently fill the carrier bags I brought with chicken, fish, fresh vegetables, rice and pasta. I hover over the wine and decide to slip a couple of bottles of red into the bag; I need to decompress after the stress of mum’s psychiatric review. I grab some necessities for mum when she gets out - toothpaste, deodorant, sanitary towels and leave the way I came.

  It’s still the middle of the day in The Other Place. For some reason, and I have no idea why, it’s always the opposite time of day and year to what it is at home. Day instead of night, summer instead of winter. But it’s regimented in its difference. There are laws operating between there and here. This isn’t the carefree whim of some pointy hatted magician; science is present in all its rigour. I only wish I knew why.

  I pause as I enter the other world. I sense something’s wrong. I’ve been coming here since I was five. I can feel the mood of the forest. I stand motionless, listening intently. Some hunter gatherer instinct has awoken. I’m in danger. But why? I realise what it is. There’s no birdsong. The inane chatter in the trees has been silenced. There’s a predator nearby. I turn, slowly, searching for it.