The Sanatorium(19)
“Geek.” Elin smiles, then freezes, putting her finger to her lips. She can hear something: footsteps, the crisp squeak of snow. A lighter clicking. A voice, speaking in melodic French.
Peering over the balcony, she glimpses choppy black hair, a scarf.
Elin sucks in her breath.
Laure.
She’s walking out of reception, slowly picking through the snow near the front of the hotel. She’s wearing a thick black puffer coat, unzipped. The gray scarf is still around her neck, but loose, ends now dangling to her waist.
Laure comes to a stop just below their balcony. There’s a cigarette in her hand, thin plumes of smoke eddying into the air. She’s talking loudly, rapidly, into a phone, gesticulating, the tiny glowing light from the tip of her cigarette dancing against the night sky like a firefly.
Elin stays still, scared to make a move, draw attention to herself.
Laure turns, ever so slightly. The glow from the outside lights catches her face, highlighting the acute angles; the slice of jaw, the bold nose, her brows.
Her expression is fierce, her eyes narrowed, lip slightly curled.
Elin can’t understand the French, but the feeling in Laure’s voice is clear. Sharp edged. Angry. Nothing like the person she’d seen earlier.
Elin stares, transfixed. This new Laure is alien to her.
15
Day Two
The smell hits her first: freshly baked bread, bitter coffee, the savory tang of cheese.
Elin scans the table: baskets of shiny croissants, baguettes, tiny rolls studded with salt flakes. A dark-haired waiter, brandishing wooden tongs, is transferring pains au chocolat to an empty basket. He moves aside, revealing ham, salamis, smoked salmon, ceramic bowls of creamy yogurt.
Her stomach turns.
“Now this is what I call a breakfast.” Will rubs his hands together.
Elin laughs. “Sure you’ll cope?” His appetite is the stuff of legend. Postsurf, he’s been known to eat not one but two twelve-inch pizzas, and then finish off with an industrial quantity of ice cream. Breakfast is his favorite meal—the big refuel.
Grinning, he nudges her. “So what are you going for?”
“I’m not really hungry.” She reaches for the jug of orange juice, and pours some into a glass. Midpour, her hand falters. “Shit.” She watches the juice pool on the tablecloth, liquid sunshine, before being absorbed.
“Lightweight,” Will whispers, trying not to laugh.
Elin smiles, tries to ignore the dull ache in her temple. This is why she doesn’t drink. She’d tried too hard, she thinks, conscious of the moment, four cocktails in, when it became less about fun and more about obliteration.
Dangerous echoes, she thinks. Her mother did the same thing when Sam died. Drank to block it out.
Elin remembers days when her mother hardly left the house. Spent hours staring out at the beach, endless cups of tea growing cold in her hand.
Her father took the opposite approach. Accelerating, he sprang into a relentless kind of action. Cleared Sam’s room. Removed all newspapers from the house. Resolutely switched off the TV whenever the news came on.
She always thinks that his leaving, only a few years after Sam’s death, was the natural continuation of that. Starting another life in Wales, a new wife and family: the ultimate way to move forward. Closure by deletion of the past.
Elin couldn’t escape them, though—the words he’d tried so hard to outrun.
They were everywhere: at the kiosk on the seafront, in the news playing loud on TV in the restaurant.
LOCAL BOY DROWNED. THE TOWN IS STILL IN MOURNING AFTER THE TRAGIC DEATH OF SAM WARNER, AGE EIGHT.
Elin shrugs the thought away. “Are they here?” Taking a plate, she glances across the room. However positively she tries to position it in her head, it’s going to be awkward—the missed meal, the memory of seeing Laure from the balcony, angry and exposed.
Will looks over her shoulder. “No. All clear.” Stabbing a piece of salami, he levers it onto his plate.
Nausea sweeps over her. The thick slices of sausage are slick with oil, tiny orbs of white fat studding the interior. “I’ll try some bread.” Picking up a plain roll, she spoons a single, scarlet blob of jam onto her plate.
She finds a table by the window, sips her orange juice. The liquid is thick, fresh, the pulp fibrous on her tongue.
Head starting to clear, she looks outside. Fresh snow is piled high against the windows, impossibly white against the blue-sky backdrop. For the first time, it looks inviting rather than sinister. Perhaps Will’s suggestion to go for a walk wasn’t such a bad idea.
Will strides toward her, plate piled high. “Don’t look now, but Isaac’s just walked in. He’s on his own.” Sitting down, he lowers his voice. “He’s coming over.”
Elin looks up as her brother approaches. “Hey.” She keeps her tone neutral, already preparing words, clever sentences spooling through her head, but stops when she sees his face.
Something’s wrong, Elin thinks, looking at his mussed-up hair, the wild expression in his eyes.
“Laure’s gone missing,” he says quietly, looking around to check that no one’s in earshot.
“What?” Her pulse quickens.
“She’s missing,” Isaac repeats. “Something’s happened to her.”