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preliminarily diagnosed as schizophrenic. To begin with, she was not thought to be an alcoholic as so much else was wrong with her. She had severe abscesses, a minor venereal disease plus genital herpes, skin disorders, and poor physical condition from lack of decent food. Eighty cigarettes a day had left her with a persistent heavy cough. She contracted pneumonia, and for a few days it was doubtful that she would live. When she pulled through, the hallucinations, screaming fits and vomiting made the doctors suspect severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
    A string of psychiatrists and doctors interviewed her and prescribed various medication. After two months she was transferred to the nightmare of Ward C, Watts City Mental Hospital where LA County sent only their worst cases, the drop-outs and no hopers. Drug-crazed kids, deranged old ladies, suicidal middle-aged women — every fucked-up female soul who walked the earth seemed to be marooned with Lorraine. They added chronic alcoholism to Lorraine’s list of ailments. Her liver was shot, and she was warned that if she did not give up drinking she would be dead within the year. Eventually she was transferred to the White Garden rehabilitation centre.
     
     
    Rosie Hurst was working as a cook at the centre, one of those women who gave their free time as part of a rehabilitation programme. Rosie, a big, plump, sturdy woman, with short, frizzy permed hair, was a recovering alcoholic with six months’ sobriety. She worked hard and was as friendly as she could be with the inmates, a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God attitude never far from her thoughts. Some of the saner inmates were allocated menial jobs in the kitchen and that was how Rosie got to know Lorraine Page.
    Lorraine didn’t want to live. She had been waiting to die, wondering hazily why she wasn’t already dead, and then musing that, perhaps, she was. And this was hell. It wasn’t such a bad hell — the drugs made her more relaxed — but she wanted a drink. It was the only thought that occupied her dulled senses. Her mouth was thick and dry, her tongue felt too big, and she drank water all day, bending down to the small fountain in the corridor, hogging it, mouth open, hand pressed down on the lever for the water to spurt directly into her swollen mouth. Nothing dulled her thirst.
    ‘How long you been an alcoholic?’
    Rosie had been watching her in the corridor. Lorraine couldn’t say because she had never admitted it to herself. She just liked to drink.
    ‘What work did you do?’
    Lorraine could not recall what she’d been up to for the past few years. All the weeks and months had merged into a blur, and she could hardly remember one year from another. Or the bars, dens, seedy, run-down clubs where she had been drunk alongside girls she had once picked up and locked away. They had liked that. And the pimps she had hassled and booked in her days as a vice squad trainee, liked being able to sell her so cheaply. She was known to go with anyone, as long as they kept her supplied with a steady flow of booze. Hotels, bars, dives, private parties… Lorraine would be cleaned up and sent out. It didn’t matter how many or who they were, just as long as she made enough money for booze. She had been arrested, not just for hooking but for vagrancy, and released, pending charges, but had never made her court appearance. She had simply moved on to another bar, another town.
     
     
    At the time of the hit-and-run accident, Lorraine had reached rock bottom. So far down in the gutter she couldn’t even get a trick, and no pimp wanted her attached to his stable. So many truckers, so many different states, she was unaware she was back in LA. She owned only what she stood up in, had even sold her wedding ring. She was such a wreck that the prostitutes didn’t want her hanging around them. She was even out in the cold from the street winos, because she stole from them. She had become incapable of caring for herself or