"—so that's rule four, and I know it sounds daft, but you'll understand by Thursday."
Maureen hands over the laminated sheet like it's nothing. She's watching Priya's face all the same. The sheet is warped at one corner from being wiped down too many times, and there's a coffee ring on the back that's gone right through to rule six. Priya reads it standing in the corridor outside Room 9, because Maureen won't do the handover sitting down. Says she thinks better on her feet. Priya doesn't ask why standing helps her think; she's learned in three days here that you don't ask Maureen things unless you want the flat, careful answer.
Don't let Mr Aldous near the east dayroom after 4pm. He gets agitated. Not dangerous, just loud, and it upsets Doris.
If a resident asks about "the old wing," tell them it's closed for renovations. Don't say demolished. Don't say the word.
The dayroom window that faces the car park — the one on the ground floor, second from the fire door — some of them wave at it. Let them. Wave back if it's quick and nobody's watching too closely.
Priya laughs at that one, short and confused, the kind of laugh you make when you think someone's about to tell you it's a joke.
"There's nothing there," she says. "That's just the car park."
"There's nothing there now," Maureen says, and moves on before Priya can ask what she means by now.
Never tell them how many are left. If someone asks how many rooms are on this floor, say you don't count them, you're not management. If they ask which of their old friends are still here, redirect. Don't correct them if they get a name wrong. Especially don't correct them if they get a name right that shouldn't be right.
The wing came down in March. Everyone on this floor remembers it, all of them, the noise of it, three weeks of it, and every single one of them will tell you it hasn't happened yet.
If you're on nights and you hear the wave — that's what the girls call it, don't ask who started it — the shuffling along the corridor toward the dayroom at two, three in the morning, you don't need to intervene. They go to the window. They stand there a while. They go back to bed on their own.
Count them going and count them coming back. If the numbers don't match, do not go looking that night. Write it in the log as unaccounted, hand it to the morning shift, go home.
Priya's stopped smiling by rule seven. Maureen's voice hasn't shifted at all through any of it, still the same flat register she'd use to point out the fire exits on a first tour.
- If you ever see someone in the car park after dark, on the patch of gravel where the wing used to stand, do not go out to them. They will look like a resident. They will be dressed for the weather, always, whatever the weather is. Draw the blinds in the dayroom instead. That's what the blinds are for. Not privacy.
That.
If a resident tells you they've been outside, that they went to see their room, their old room, ask them what they saw. Write down exactly what they say, word for word, and put it in the folder in Maureen's desk, the one marked Handover — Do Not Photocopy.
If it's your name in that folder one day, someone will read it to the new girl standing where you're standing now.
The list ends there. No rule eleven. Maureen takes the sheet back and squares its corners against her palm, tidying it like a deck of cards, and her eyes go past Priya's shoulder, down the corridor toward the dayroom. The blinds are up. The glass holds nothing but the dark shape of the car park, and close against it, a hand lifted flat and still, not quite touching the pane from the other side.
"Someone left the blinds up again," Maureen says, and doesn't move to close them, and doesn't stop looking at the glass either. Priya remembers, later, that she never did find out what happened to Doris.