The Other People: A Novel(79)

He passed the kitchen, the store cupboard, a small bathroom. There were two bedrooms down here, where the nurses slept, but the doors were ajar and they were empty. Upstairs, there was another spare bedroom, bathroom and the master, where Isabella was sleeping. He took the stairs, slowly, pausing on each step, conscious that he was only delaying the inevitable.

Finally, he reached her room. He hesitated. Waiting for something—anything—to prevent him entering—his phone to ring, the ceiling to cave in, the earth to open up. But there was nothing, except the stern stillness of the house.

He pushed the door open and walked inside.





The pale girl sat near the shoreline. Izzy hesitated for a moment and then sat down beside her.

The sea was hard and choppy today. Angry brown waves drew themselves up into small mountains before throwing themselves recklessly at the shore. The blustery wind tugged at the girls’ hair. One light. One dark. But Izzy didn’t feel the cold. She didn’t feel anything when she was here.

They sat for a while in silence. Then the pale girl said, “He’s near.”

“The Sandman?”

The girl nodded.

“Who is he?”

“Death. Salvation. A man. The coming of the end. He came here once. A long time ago. He took a piece of the beach back with him. And now I sense him all the time, like a discordant note, getting louder and louder.”

“Is he a bad person?”

The girl turned. Izzy realized it was the first time they had sat so close. The girl was far older than she had thought. Not really a girl at all but, somehow, still childlike.

“You know what a mirror does?”

“Reflects?”

“It reverses everything. There is no good or bad. It just depends which side of the glass you’re standing on.”

Izzy thought about Fran. How she loved her but was also sometimes scared of her.

“I suppose.”

“Miriam used to tell me two stories about the Sandman. In one, the Sandman sprinkles sand into the eyes of children to send them to sleep and give them wonderful dreams. In another, he steals their eyes. Two sides of the mirror. The giver of dreams. The stealer of eyes.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s like this place,” the girl continued. “I’m safe from the darkness here, but the longer I stay, the more in danger I am of losing myself.”

Izzy looked out to the sea, rippled with black and silver. The sky loomed overhead, full of pent-up fury.

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you remember when we first met?”

Izzy tried. She searched her mind, scrunched her eyes.

“Not really. It feels like I’ve always been coming here.”

“You were just a baby. But we made a connection. You kept me tethered here. To life. It made my existence bearable. But it’s not enough. Not anymore.”

“Why? What will happen if you stay?”

“What do you think the beach is made of?”

Izzy glanced around. The beach was mostly shingle that petered out to sand at the water’s edge.

“Pebbles, sand?”

The pale girl held up a hand. The wind blew through her fingers and the tips slowly crumbled, flesh dissolving into fine grains which sprinkled back down to the beach.

“That’s what this place does eventually.”

Izzy stared at her in horror. “What can I do?”

“Help me leave. With a friend, I don’t think I’d feel so scared. Are you my friend?”

Izzy stared into the pale girl’s eyes. For a moment, they didn’t seem friendly. They seemed…something else.

She hesitated and then said: “Yes. Of course.”

The girl held out her mutilated hand.

“Then come with me.”





She slept. A pale girl in a white room. Machines surrounded her. Mechanical guardians, they tethered the sleeping girl to the land of the living, stopping her from drifting away on an eternal, dark tide.

Their steady beeps and the labored sound of her breathing were Isabella’s only lullabies. Before the accident, Gabe knew that she had loved music. Loved to sing. Loved to play.

She still looked like that young girl. Perhaps that was why he continued to think of her that way, despite her now being a woman of thirty-seven. The intervening years had not carved their mark upon her face. No grief or joy. No excitement or pain. It remained smooth and unblemished by the passage of time. By the experience of living.

A small piano had been placed in one corner of the room. The cover was up, but the keys were coated in a fine layer of dust. On top of the piano there was usually an ivory shell, its silky pink insides like the delicate curves of an ear.

But not today. Today, there was no shell.

And Isabella was not alone.

A figure sat beside her bed.

Her grey hair was cropped short. She wore a plain blue nurse’s uniform and a single crucifix around her neck. Her head was bowed, as if in prayer. The machines beeped and whirred.

“Hello, Miriam,” Gabe said.

She raised her head slowly. “Gabe. This is a surprise.”

But she didn’t look surprised. She looked resigned and a little weary.

Gabe hovered at the end of the bed.

“I needed somewhere to stay, for a little while.”