Алекс Михаэлидес - The Silent Patient

“Anyway, Mr. Martin was admiring the picture. And he picked it up to look at it more closely, and there it was.”

“What was?”

“This.”

The inspector pulled out something from inside his jacket. I recognized it at once.

The diary.

The kettle boiled and a shriek filled the air. I switched it off and poured some boiling water into the mug. I stirred it and noticed my hand was trembling slightly.

“Oh, good. I wondered where it was.”

“Wedged in the back of the painting, in the top-left corner of the frame. It was jammed in tight.”

So that’s where she hid it, I thought. The back of the painting that I hated. The one place I didn’t look.

The inspector stroked the creased, faded black cover and smiled. He opened it and looked through the pages. “Fascinating. The arrows, the confusion.”

I nodded. “A portrait of a disturbed mind.”

Inspector Allen flicked through the pages to the end. He started reading from it aloud:

“‘… he was scared—of the sound of my voice.… He grabbed my wrist and stuck a needle in my vein.’”

I felt a sudden rising panic. I didn’t know those words. I hadn’t read that entry. It was the incriminating evidence I had been looking for—and it was in the wrong hands. I wanted to snatch the diary from Allen and tear out the pages—but I couldn’t move. I was trapped. I started stammering—

“I—I really think it’s better if I—”

I spoke too nervously, and he heard the fear in my voice. “Yes?”

“Nothing.”

I made no further attempt to stop him. Any action I took would be viewed as incriminating anyway. There was no way out. And the strangest thing is, I felt relieved.

“You know, I don’t believe you happened to be in my neighborhood at all, Inspector.” I handed him his tea.

“Ah. No, you’re quite right. I thought it best not to announce the intention of my visit on the doorstep. But the fact is, this puts things in rather a different light.”

“I’m curious to hear it,” I heard myself saying. “Will you read it aloud?”

“Very well.”

I felt strangely calm as I sat in the chair by the window.

He cleared his throat and began. “‘Theo just left. I am alone. I’m writing this as fast as I can.…’”

As I listened, I looked up at the white clouds drifting past. Finally, they had opened—it had started to snow—snowflakes were falling outside. I opened the window and reached out my hand. I caught a snowflake. I watched it disappear, vanish from my fingertip. I smiled.

And I went to catch another one.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m hugely indebted to my agent, Sam Copeland, for making all this happen. And I’m especially grateful to my editors—Ben Willis in the United Kingdom and Ryan Doherty in the United States—for making the book so much better. And for all their helpful comments, suggestions, and encouragement, I’d like to thank Hal Jensen, Ivàn Fernàndez Soto, Emily Holt, Victoria Holt, Vanessa Holt, Anna Bingemann, James Haslam, Uma Thurman, Diane Medak, Nedie Antoniades, and Joe Adams.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex Michaelides was born in Cyprus in 1977 to a Greek father and English mother. He studied English literature at Cambridge University and got his MA in screenwriting at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He wrote the film The Devil You Know (2013) starring Rosamund Pike and co-wrote The Brits are Coming (2018), starring Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Parker Posey and Sofia Vergara. THE SILENT PATIENT is his first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Two

Chapter One: Alicia Berenson’s Diary

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen: Alicia Berenson’s Diary

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two: Alicia Berenson’s Diary

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Part Three

Alicia Berenson’s Diary

Part Four

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Part Five

Chapter One: Alicia Berenson’s Diary

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE SILENT PATIENT. Copyright © 2019 by Astramare Limited. All rights reserved. For information, address Celadon Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.celadonbooks.com.

ISBN 978-1-250-30169-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-30171-0 (ebook)

eISBN 9781250301710

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First Edition: February 2019