Laura was forty-eight in 1926. For the last ten years she had been an inmate at the Warwick County Lunatic Asylum in Hatton, Warwickshire. Life had become a comfortable routine. She was fed and cared for, had opportunities to be involved with domestic chores, handcrafts and social gatherings.
In 1921 at the census about 1000 people lived or worked there, 772 were inmates like her.
Did she look out across the countryside at the longboats plying the locks in the canal or hear the trains in the distance and remember her childhood?
She had a husband and children although she had not seen them for many years. It was easier that way, to shut the hurt out. She had pretended when her husband brought the children to visit that she did not know them. He stopped bringing them. The older girls would be grown now, maybe even married.
She told the staff who wanted to help her that she was not married, that she had money in the bank and that she was the Queen of Spain.
Why did nobody understand? She was lonely, abandoned, her family all gone. Her days had been busy with four children, but her mind would not rest. Why could they not go to America to join her brothers?
She had stopped caring for herself, the house and the children. Her neighbour betrayed her; told officials she was unkempt. How dare she? She was not much better herself in that run down court where they had all made their homes.
She hoped her children would be happy and successful, and blinked away a tear.
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