Excerpt from The Ballroom by Anna Hope, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"There's no baby," the other woman said, raising her voice. She grabbed the shawl and shook it out, holding up the holey piece of cloth. "See? There's nothing."

"Babby! You've hurt my babby!" the old lady screamed, and fell to her knees, scrabbling on the floor. The uniformed woman hauled her up by her elbow. More women joined the commotion then, as though they'd all been given the signal to bawl. At the height of it, a bowl shattered on the floor.

"What did you want to do that for?" It was the same hard--faced woman from last night. The Irish one. Ella put her thumbs in her palms to grip them.

"You want the tube?" said the woman. "You want the tube again?"

Baby--woman was shaking her head from side to side and crying as she was dragged to her feet and pulled from the room.

Across the table, Clem was eating calmly. When she had finished, she put her spoon to the side of her bowl and folded her hands in her lap.

Ella leaned forward. "Where did they take her? Where did they go?"

Clem's gaze flicked up. "To the infirmary."

"Why?"

"So they can feed her through a tube."

"Where am I?"

"Sharston Asylum." Clem's eyes were a still and steady blue. "Why, where did you think?"

Ella looked down at her hands, clasped into fists; she stretched her fingers on the table: eight of them, two thumbs. But they did not look like her own. She turned them palms up and stared. She wished for a mirror. Even that old piece of cracked rubbish they had at the end of the spinning sheds. The one they'd all elbow each other out of the way for on a Friday. Even that. Just to see she was still real.

She looked up. Doors. Nurses standing at each like jailers, carrying one of those big rounds of keys.

Sharston Asylum.

She'd heard of it. Since she was small. If you ever did anything stupid: the asylum. For the lunatics. The paupers. They'll send you to Sharston, and you'll never come out.

She stood, grabbing one of the passing nurses by the hand. "Wait. There's been a mistake!"

The woman shook her off. "Shut up and sit down."

"No! You don't understand—-there's been a mistake. I'm not mad. I just broke a window. I'm not mad."

"Breakfast's over now. Get back in line."

A scraping of benches. The clatter as several hundred women stood, lining up by the door. More uniformed women appeared, a huddle in the doorway. One of them was older, wearing a smaller headdress and badge. She was looking over. Now she was crossing the room toward her. There had been a mistake. They knew it now. Relief made her shaky.

"Ella Fay?"

"Yes."

"I'm the matron here. You're to come with me."

Ella clambered out from the bench.

"Good luck," said Clem.

Ella didn't look back. She followed the woman, walking out into the corridor, and when the doors were locked behind her, her knees went, as though they had been kicked from behind. She put her hand against the wall to steady herself.

The matron clicked her tongue in the back of her throat. "Are you ready, then? Come with me."

"Am I leaving now?"

The woman's jaw twitched, as though a fly had just landed there and she couldn't brush it off. It didn't matter. Soon she would be outside. There were two shillings sewn into the hem of her dress, and she would spend them this time. Do what she should have done yesterday. Take the train. Far away—-to a place where the land stopped and gave way to the sea.

They marched through one set of doors—-two, three, four. Every time they reached one, the silent nurse held Ella by the shoulders while the matron clanked around with her keys. They came to a lighter corridor and beyond it was the green of the entrance hall. She could see the plants, hundreds of them, and the thousand little tiles on the floor. She was marched past the front door into a stuffy room with a couple of chairs and a table and not much else.

Excerpted from The Ballroom by Anna Hope. Copyright © 2016 by Anne Hope. Excerpted by permission of Random House, A Penguin Random House Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.