‘Are you primping or preening, Miss Barker?’ Annette asked the mirror, and replied with a smile. Talking to yourself was supposed to be the first sign of madness, but Annette had little patience left for others’ definitions of insanity. Almost a year had passed since she had entered that world without mirrors, where she would only see her face in polished steel sanitary ware, and even then, it did not pay to linger over the distorted reflection. Now, four days after her departure, she could examine at leisure, a face that was almost a stranger’s, not unfamiliar, but carrying the imprint of lost time.

Deciding that she was still at the primping stage, Annette turned again to her lipstick. For the second time, revulsion threatened to rise in her throat, which she quickly suppressed - a momentary lapse, the memory alone of minor torture masquerading as treatment. If only everything were as easily overcome. Annette’s smile beamed from the mirror once more, a habit that had served her well under observation, when allowing a troubled mind to show could create further troubles. Even when she realised what she was doing, the smile had become such second nature it refused to fade.

With her eyes still fixed on the mirror, Annette reached for a tissue to blot her lipstick, and came within a whisker of pressing Tony’s letter between her lips. Quite why he’d written on airmail paper, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was the only stationery he’d had to hand — who knew, and what did it matter? Setting his letter aside, Annette’s attention returned to her make-up. Blotting complete, however, she picked up the single folded sheet and read again Tony’s hurried scrawl.

Dearest Annette,

Hopefully these words will find you free and happy. I cannot imagine the ordeal you will have gone through by the time this letter reaches you, though I have thought of little else since it became apparent what they planned. One hears such terrible stories about what goes on inside those places, half-truths I am sure, and yet I fear for you Annette. Perhaps you are laughing at my concern and can look back at what proved to be merely a minor inconvenience. Please say you are smiling at my silliness.

Annette was smiling - she couldn’t help herself. She had smiled at her captors, at the machines that tormented her, and at visitors whose names and faces she could not recall. Alone in the night she smiled into the darkness as she struggled to remember their names, as a means of forgetting the awful feeling of suffocation that preceded seizures. What Tony had taken for half-truths had been frighteningly close to reality, and yet reality had been unimaginably worse.

Not only had they taken away her reflection, Annette was deprived of time. There were clocks, of course, they were necessary for the daily routine, and bells, but no calendars. She lost hours - days even - to drugs, and when the convulsions eat away at her memory, they robbed her of the past. Only the conviction that she still had a future kept her from rocking back and forth like the others. Perhaps in their own way, Annette thought, the others were marking the seconds of imprisonment with each oscillation.

Without a calendar, it was impossible to fix any sort of pattern to her life. There was no forewarning of when treatment was due, or when visitors appeared. Treatment was a rather benign description of what Annette went through, but visits were in some ways crueler. She always welcomed friends, and assumed a friendly facade for the more frequent visits of those responsible for where she was. In time, however, when her memory failed, Annette could not easily tell one from the other, and she wore the same facsimile smile for both.

For their part, all her visitors wore the same mask of smiling concern; in the absence of mirrors, how well someone maintained this mask, gave Annette an idea of how she looked. Shuffling back from visits, Annette had the inescapable realisation that she looked awful. On release, a first glance in a mirror told her how accurate that impression had been. She could not remember a time when her skin had been so pale, or shoulders so bent, and she had obviously lost a great deal of weight. Fortunately, Tony had given Annette the means to repair the damage done — she turned again to his letter.

Hindsight’s a marvellous thing, and what I wouldn’t give to turn back the clock and prevent what has happened. Had I just been more cautious, had I not tried to force the issue, things could have been so much better for you. At least I had the foresight to put away some savings where the family would not find them. There’s not a fortune in the enclosed Post Office book, but it should be enough for you to make a fresh start near friends, and put the past firmly behind you. Good luck dear Annette, and good health.

Admittedly, Tony’s meagre savings would not have impressed many, but the money bought a train ticket, cosmetics and a basic wardrobe that was worth its weight in gold. Annette had even made it stretch to a wig she could wear while hair grew back on the shaved parts of her head. It was a shorter style than she would have considered before, but fashion had changed while she was away, and her new skirts were shorter still. Annette had always considered her legs her best feature, and she had little to fear in exposing them. Better yet, flat chested girls were definitely the vogue, though she doubted that would last.

‘Are we happy, Miss Barker?’ Annette asked her reflection, and the smile said everything. It was time to preen she decided. To free up both hands she let Tony’s letter fall from her fingers, to the dressing table, where it landed on her medical discharge. Had Annette been able to tear her eyes from the mirror, she would have seen that only the doctor’s signature and one line above were visible of the form:

This is to certify that the patient Anthony Barker no longer has any inclination to wear clothing of the opposite sex.