Asylum by Patrick McGrath

local police, who were informed of the escape when after two hours he had not been found.
    Brenda and Stella responded to the announcement of these dramatic events with exclamations of surprise and concern. But it was Brenda who thought of Charlie, who had not come home yet. Stella promptly simulated extreme anxiety; she channeled the emotional impact of Edgar’s escape into anxiety for Charlie. She hoped that Max didn’t notice that the boy’s welfare was his grandmother’s rather than her own first thought.
    Max’s curt response was that Edgar Stark had no interest in boys. “He wants to get as far away from here as he can.”
    Shortly afterward Charlie came running into the house in a state of high excitement at hearing the siren, and eager to know everything.
    Stella went back into the kitchen to finish cooking dinner. He wants to get as far away from here as he can. She stood at the stove with the tears coursing down her face. She heard Brenda come in. She wiped her eyes with her apron and lit the gas under the potatoes. She had to maintain a façade that suggested nothing other than reasonable distress that the hospital would now undergo gross disruptions, to the detriment of patients, staff, and staff families alike. She murmured something of this to Brenda.
    “It is a terrible nuisance,” Brenda said. “Very tiresome of the man indeed. And he worked in the garden?”
    “He was restoring the conservatory.”
    “It’s shocking to think he came into this house. What would have happened if one of us had been here at the time? I understand he’s committed violence against women in the past.”
    “I suppose he made sure the house was empty first.”
    “What if Charlie had surprised him upstairs in your bedroom? In your bedroom , Stella! Don’t you feel violated? That he came into your bedroom?”
    “It’s a shock. I haven’t altogether assimilated it.”
    “Of course not.”
    Brenda conducted this interrogation without once taking hereyes off Stella. Something in the younger woman’s reaction to the escape puzzled her, and Stella was aware of it. What had she given away? Was it her failure to think of Charlie, when told that an escaped patient was at large in the countryside? Or had she failed to show sufficient surprise; as though she’d known? She prayed she could get through the evening without further scrutiny.
    But worse was to come. Halfway through supper the telephone in the study began ringing, the hospital telephone, and Max left the room. When he returned he told Stella that Jack wanted to see them both at his house.
    “He wants to see you both?” said Brenda.
    “Yes, Mother,” said Max with uncharacteristic firmness. “He wants to see us both.”
    They drove up past the Main Gate just as it was getting dark. Long strips of cloud, pink, blue, and mauve, were strung across the fading sky, and against the thickening evening light reared the Main Gate with its two square towers and the double gates between. As they’d got into the car Max had asked her why she thought Jack wanted to see her as well, and she’d told him she had no idea. He said nothing more, and they drove in silence until they reached the superintendent’s house, up beside the female wing.
    Bridie opened the door to them, looking suitably grave. With a pang of distaste Stella recognized how deeply over a long marriage she had insinuated herself into the fabric of Jack’s working life, and it occurred to her that she would never be in Bridie’s position now. Previously she had thought it hers for the taking, the role of medical superintendent’s wife, and she had mentally spurned it. Now she saw she would never be offered it; the superintendency was lost. She wondered had Max grasped this yet.
    Bridie showed them into Jack’s study, a large book-lined room, comfortably furnished, and Jack, his broad back to them, fussed at the whisky decanter and asked them without turning if they would have a drink. Stella said yes