We played ladies with a girl called Rhoda. There were six little girls, three in Rhoda’s family and three in ours. So we could have a father, a mother, two children (a good one and a bad one) and a visitor or a servant. But the only one of us who could act a first-rate mock swoon was Rhoda. She had a colourless pale face and was lean, with a faraway, languishing look in…

I was not always polite, not always biddable. The monotony bored me. I despised the everlasting red tape, the sheep-like stupidity. What one did, all did, and because they always had done such and such it meant that they always must. Doctor McNair was a pretty good sort, if a bit pompous to her underlings, and a bit servile to her superior. Doctor Sally Bottle, I frankly despised for a toady. She licked the boots…

Angelina Judd was not the only patient fired with desire to cheer her fellows. There was Susie Spinner, a sparrow-like creature with a giggle, and nostrils that bored into her face like a pair of keyholes. You saw these black holes before you saw Susie. All the rest of her was colourless—neutral drab hair, grey skin peppered with pale freckles, toneless giggles in bunches. After each bunch of giggles at one of her own…