‘We must keep warm,’ I said. ‘Paper’s a good insulator. Here, put some of this on your head.’ I handed her an armful of the paper sheeting. We both draped our heads. ‘Very stylish.’ I tore more off to use like shawls. I wrapped sheets around my hips like a skirt. We sat on the sofa.
She adjusted some of the paper sheeting over her legs like a blanket.
‘I’m so hungry. I was about to eat when you rang.’
We leant close. I could feel myself warming up where we shared our body heat.
‘Somewhere,’ she muttered as she fiddled through her coat pockets. ‘Aah.’ She held out two sweets. ‘Barley sugar or Murray Mint?’
Oh, Agnes. ‘Barley sugar.’
We unwrapped our sweets and sucked.
How long would he be? What things had he gone to get? He’d never let us go now, would he? We knew so much.
‘When did you realise,’ I asked Agnes, ‘that they’d deliberately made Lily demented?’
‘Once we knew the high dosages were deliberate. Why else would they do that to her? But I couldn’t fathom out what was behind it all. Then when Dr Goulden was talking, I realised there were two lots of patients involved. Remember when you found out what had happened to them, Mr Theakston at Homelea and the other ones from Aspen Lodge, I can’t recall all the names.’
‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter. They all had Alzheimer’s, progressive dementia, like the textbooks. All except for Mr Braithwaite, he was a bit different.’
‘Yes, and he was the one who had surgery,’ she said.
‘For the tumour.’ I sucked on my sweet, turning it from one cheek to the other. ‘They did a biopsy. A bogus operation, like Lily’s. And he was on medication,’ I pointed out. ‘His daughter said something about it.’
‘To make him appear senile. He was healthy, he was one of their guinea pigs. Like Lily.’
‘Two lots of patients,’ I continued piecing it together, ‘the healthy ones who were made mad, then operated on, and the others the ones who really had Alzheimer’s.’ I paused. ‘Their brains went to Malden’s for research. Oh God.’ I felt sick. Barley sugar was supposed to be good for travel sickness, but what about other forms of nausea? ‘They were using material from those brains. That’s what he meant when he said they’d introduced tissue-diseased cells.’
‘They can do all sorts, can’t they nowadays, clone things, transplant things, use genetic material?’ She spoke softly.
‘Oh, Agnes, it’s horrible.’ My mind grappled with the scenario. Everything seemed to fit. ‘And if they can develop the disease, they can study it, see how it behaves.’
‘That’s what they do with animals, isn’t it? Grow tumours in mice and monkeys and what not.’