The Sanatorium(33)

But there’s no one there.

As the last door starts to swing back on itself, she steps inside.

She works through it: Could they have gone out another way?

Putting her hand on the opposite door, she gently presses.

Yes: the cubicle opens out onto the other side of the changing room so people can go in and out from either side.

A growing sense of uneasiness builds inside her. It’s possible: someone had been there, slipped out the other side.

They definitely haven’t gone through to reception. She’s been facing that way the whole time. But they could have gone to the pool . . .

So where are they now?

There’s only one way to check. Slipping her shoes off, she pads back out to the pool, scans the space.

A lurch, deep in her gut.

Only Will is there, striking out through the water. Elin stands, frozen for a minute, then makes her way back through the changing room to the spa reception.

Someone was there. Someone was definitely in there. Watching.

Looking up, Margot smiles. “He’s still swimming?”

“Yes. Going for a record by the looks of it.” Elin forces a breeziness into her voice that wasn’t there before. “Did anyone else come in after me?”

“No, it’s quiet. I think people went out earlier because of the break in the weather. It’ll get busy again soon, now that the snow has started up again.”

Elin nods, fingers tightening around the strap of her bag.

Part of her wants to dismiss what she heard as a figment of her imagination, a different sound altogether, but another part of her is sure: Whoever was in there was watching her.

Waiting.





26





Needing to clear her head, Elin leaves the hotel via the back entrance, hikes the short path up toward the forest, the opposite route to the one she’d taken earlier with Will.

Her mind keeps circling over what happened in the changing room.

Is she letting her imagination get the better of her?

I’m not sure.

But despite the confusion, with every step, she feels stronger, more in control.

It’s always the way: she does her best problem solving while exercising—churning through unresolved questions about cases, thoughts about Sam, Isaac, her mother.

But the snow is hard work. Underneath the thick layer of soft powder that’s just fallen, there’s an older, more compacted layer.

Elin stops at the top of the path, just before the entrance to the forest, breathing heavily. Snow is settling on her jacket, caught in the creases of the fabric.

She exhales slowly, her frosted breath clouding the air. The snow has stopped but the sky is still leaden, heavy. She can tell there’s more to come.

Even though she’s no longer moving, her heart is pounding, sweat starting to soak her thermals. It’s the altitude—the air is viscous, sticky. Her body hasn’t yet acclimatized.

She closes her hand around the inhaler inside her jacket pocket, her fingers grazing the blocky edge of the mouthpiece. The cold air doesn’t help. At home when she exercises, the air is warm, moist. As long as she takes her preventive inhaler, starts slowly, paces herself, she’s fine. But up here, the air cooler, thinner, she has to be careful. On her guard.

She closes her eyes, takes one, two deep breaths, and in that moment, off her guard, her mind trips, catches.

A rapid-fire series of snapshots:

A breeze cutting the surface of the rock pool, making a blur of the rocks below.

A hand grabbing her arm.

Blood dispersing like smoke through the water.

Fear ties itself into an ugly knot in her stomach. She’s never had this before.

The intrusion of the flashbacks into consciousness, this merging into real life. They usually came in the gray time, when she’s drifting off to sleep, or awakening. They’ve never crossed the line before.

Disconcerted, she takes a long breath, walks higher. Snow is smothering everything: the ground, the trees, branches bowing under the weight of it.

Her boots are rubbing at the backs of her heels. Despite the thick socks, her feet are sliding around with each step. The shop assistant had warned her that they were too big, but she’d ignored him.

Elin’s never liked anything too tight. The legacy of asthma.

It’s strange, she thinks, how for her, claustrophobia doesn’t only exist in spaces outside herself, but within her too.

That horrible sense of being trapped inside your own body.

One of the first things she did when she bought her apartment was to knock down the dividing wall separating the two main rooms.

As the last section came down in a cloud of dust and plaster, sending light flooding through the space, her sense of relief was palpable.

Elin turns, taking in the landscape opposite. The gray weight of the sky stretches out endlessly, only broken by the jagged horizon of mountain peaks. Clusters of chalets are dotted across their flanks, impossibly small.

On this side of the valley, the winding strip of the road leading to the town on her right is barely visible between the snowdrifts banked up on either side.

The town itself is hidden by a small ridge. Elin can just make out the metal spine of the chairlift infrastructure, pylons heading upward into the mist.

On her left is the hotel below. The weak rays of sunlight pushing through a break in the cloud are reflecting off the vast expanse of glass, the snow piled up high around it.