The Sanatorium(17)

The problem with that is that the rest of the brain more or less shuts down. The cerebral cortex, the brain’s center for reasoning and judgment, becomes impaired, so thinking about the best move in a crisis is impossible.

Another sound.

A zip, she thinks. Rustling.

Adele swallows hard. What are they doing?

Think, she tells herself again, think. There’s still time. . . . As long as you don’t look, you can get yourself out of this.

It’s only when she feels hands on her that Adele realizes that closing her eyes is a miscalculation, that already, without her conscious knowledge, her reasoning has been impaired. By closing her eyes, she has thrown away any chance, however small, to escape.

Yes. Fear has done its damage.

Adele doesn’t feel it at first. The cold, the exertion—it’s numbed her skin.

All she feels is pressure. A fingertip pressure on her right thigh.

It’s only when the sharp metal point of a needle slides from the subcutaneous tissue through to the muscle that it registers.

A dull, heavy pain.

Adele tries to kick, scream. She opens her eyes but she can’t see anything. A blackness is already engulfing her. An impenetrable darkness that smothers everything.





13





Please.” Catching up with her, Will grabs her hand. “Come back.”

“I can’t.” Rocking back on her heels, Elin feels the tug of it again; the tipping over into panic.

“Elin.” He strengthens his grip on her hand. “If you keep walking away every time we discuss things, there’s no point in being together, is there? If we can’t share things, there’s nothing linking us. No proper ties.”

She looks at him. His face is flushed, angry, but his eyes are warm behind his glasses. Elin feels a surge of guilt: he cares, that’s all. He wants to talk, which is normal, isn’t it? In a couple. Normal is what she has to be, try to be, for Will.

She nods, following him back to the table.

When they’ve sat down again, Will lightly touches her arm. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes.” Elin hesitates. She doesn’t want to start the conflict again, but the words are out before she can stop them. “Will, what you were saying then, you’re wrong. I have moved on. Look at us . . .”

“You had, but it’s stopped, the last few months. The past, it’s like a roadblock. You’re reluctant to leave the house unless it’s to run, and you don’t like socializing anymore.” He pauses. “I heard you, you know, the other night, in bed. You called out Sam’s name. I thought you were dealing with it, Elin. The grief. That it was better.”

Elin absorbs his words. Better? How would it ever get better? Her grief for Sam is locked inside her, in every cell.

She doesn’t know how to resolve it. How do you go about unpicking someone from your life when they’re the thread tying every part of you together?

She knows it’s hard for Will—he wants to see progress, some kind of sign that she’ll be over it, if not now, then soon. Sometimes she wonders if he saw her as a bit of a project when they first got together, like one of his old buildings that needed renovating. A small redesign, one more push, the final fix, and she’ll be shiny and new. Except she isn’t, not yet—she’s falling behind schedule—his schedule, and he doesn’t like it.

“It scares me, Elin. How far this could go.” Will looks at her. “Your job . . . they won’t hold it forever, you know that, don’t you?”

I know that, she wants to say, but I’m not sure I can be a detective anymore.

She keeps telling herself that finding out the truth about what happened the day Sam died will fix everything, that she’ll be able to move on, but what if it doesn’t? What if this is the new status quo?

A sob backs up in her throat, comes out as a squashed, hiccupy gulp.

Will puts a hand across hers, squeezes. “Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. We’re both tired.” He reaches for his glass. “You’ve been going through all of your mum’s stuff, we’ve been traveling all day, and now this—”

He has a point. The last two evenings she’d been going through her mother’s things late into the night. Every item—books, clothes, the faded photographs still in their frames—had brought memories flooding back, left her feeling strangely isolated, adrift. It’s been more than six months since she died, but the grief is still raw.

Draining his wineglass, Will lowers his voice. “That’s what pisses me off the most, you know. The fact that Isaac left you to deal with caring for your mum, her estate, the crappy admin, the personal stuff, and now you’ve come out here, for him, and he’s playing games.”

“I know,” Elin says tightly. “But I thought it might be different this time.”

Will raises an eyebrow.

“Come on, he should want to be here, Will. It shouldn’t be this hard . . . and he said, didn’t he? He said we should meet for dinner.”

“Stop.” Will cuts across her. “We’re falling for it. What we’re doing—getting wound up, questioning, overanalyzing—you said that’s what he wants. Let’s just enjoy the night.” He picks up the drinks menu, scans it. “Cocktail?”