Free Bedlam Burning by Geoff Nicholson

you have a firm and subtle grasp on the convolutions of the troubled human mind. Have you spent much time with the mentally ill?’
    â€˜Well, I spent three years at Cambridge,’ I said.
    He considered this remark to make sure I was joking and then he laughed, a laugh that started deep in his belly, then rose swiftly to become a fluting, high-pitched thing. And then Alicia felt she could laugh too. The professional courtesies had been observed.
    â€˜I see we shall all be getting on famously,’ Kincaid said.
    I smiled as distantly, as formally, as inscrutably as I knew how. I suddenly wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, but I wasn’t sure whether matters would be best speeded up by blandly agreeing with him or by saying nothing at all.
    â€˜Do you have many commitments, Gregory?’
    I said, ‘No.’ What else could I have said?
    â€˜So you could start on the first of the month?’
    â€˜I suppose I could,’ I said.
    â€˜Then let’s say you will. It’s good to have you aboard, Gregory.’
    Aboard? In what sense was I aboard? I’d been expecting, at best, to discuss the possibility of a job, but Kincaid talked as though he thought the deal was already done. He could only have got such an idea from Alicia, and I wondered why she’d wanted that. I was inclined to protest, but I knew it was all irrelevant anyway, and a pleading look from Alicia prevented me from saying anything at all. I didn’t want to cause trouble, didn’t want her to look bad in front of her boss. So, in as noncommittal a way as possible, certainly without actually saying the words, I let Kincaid think I was agreeing to start work as a writer-in-residence come the first of the month. That wasn’t far away but I hoped it was long enough for Alicia to find some means to get out of her self-inflicted humiliation. If she wanted to blame Gregory Collins and say he’d let her down, that would be just fine.
    â€˜Very well then,’ said Kincaid, ‘I’ll let Alicia give you the tour of the facilities, and explain the precise terms and conditions, show you your accommodation. You’d be living-in, naturally. You know, you writers are a peculiar breed. Alicia suggested you might be rather resistant to accepting the post, that you might take some persuading, but as ever she was just being cautious. Good. I shall see you next month. You’ll be very happy here. Goodbye.’
    We exchanged a soft handshake, then I was dismissed and Alicia escorted me out. She had the decency to appear shamefaced.
    â€˜You’re quite an operator, aren’t you?’ I said.
    â€˜Would you say so?’
    â€˜A bit of a con-artist, in fact.’
    â€˜Is that so terrible of me?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said, ‘but it’s also quite funny.’
    This was clearly, obviously, transparently the moment when I ought to have come clean, when I ought to have said that I was a con-artist too, said I was a Gregory Collins impersonator. Then we’d have laughed about it, seen how ludicrous and impossible the situation was, seen that we were kindred souls, and fallen into each other’s arms for one night of improbable, never to be repeated sexual bliss. But I didn’t come clean. I remained dirty and deceitful, and for the best possible reason: I wasn’t given the chance to be clean.
    We had come out of Kincaid’s office and Alicia was beginning her tour, but we were scarcely halfway along the clinic’s central corridor,a long, low-ceilinged conduit with ten or so identical grey doors leading from it, when one of the doors swung open violently and a demented-looking naked woman emerged and ran towards us. Actually, this was the most naked-looking woman I had ever seen: skinny and bare, ribs and tendons showing through the pale skin, a shaved head, an utterly hairless body, and although her demeanour was certainly wild and threatening, there was nothing