Sarah Pearse - The Sanatorium

Hearing the dull crack of a twig snapping, Adele whirls around.

A figure is standing in front of her. A faceless figure.

She blinks, the tears in her eyes making her vision go in and out of focus. A dream , she thinks, wiping her eyes. Perhaps that’s all this is. Maybe she’d lain down on the bed in that last room, fallen asleep . . .

But when her sight clears, Adele realizes that this is no dream, no half-awake hallucination.

The reason the person is faceless is because he or she is wearing a mask.

From the side, it resembles a surgical mask; thin straps bisecting their cheek, pulled taut around the back of the head, but from the front, Adele realizes it’s more than that. A gas mask , she thinks, with a cold feeling of dread, taking in the wide, ribbed tube extending from the mouth to the nose. A kind of peculiar gas mask . . .

It’s huge, completely obscuring their face. She can’t make out any distinguishing features.

The figure is stepping forward now, moving toward her. Adele feels her knees give way.

No more running. She can’t run anymore.

8

Elin stiffens. This is wrong , she thinks. She shouldn’t have agreed to come.

Isaac takes a step forward, hesitating, then finally pulls her toward him.

A shock wave moves through her. His hair is against her face, longer, dark curls nearly past his jaw. He smells different, too, tobacco, an unfamiliar soap.

Elin closes her eyes. Too late. Images rush in.

A glimmering, white-capped sea. Water, thick with seaweed, sloshing inside red buckets. Seagulls caterwauling.

Withdrawing, Isaac meets her gaze, a strange mixture of emotions in his eyes.

Love? Fear? It’s impossible to tell. She can no longer read his face; time has blurred her sense of him. The idea stings—the only real family she’s got left, and part of him is strange to her.

As he clears his throat, his fingers come up to his eyelid, scratching into the corner, near the tear duct. A familiar gesture: he’s got eczema. Flare-ups throughout childhood. A variety of triggers: heat, synthetic clothing, stress.

“We saw people getting off the funicular. Laure was convinced you wouldn’t have made this one, but I wanted to check.”

“We ended up getting the earlier train.” Elin forces the words out. She looks past him. “Where’s Laure?”

“She had to go and see her boss about something for the party. She won’t be long.”

Isaac turns to Will. “Good to finally meet you, mate.” He vigorously pumps Will’s hand before leaning in—a half hug, which Isaac dominates, his left hand coming around to Will’s back. Two, three hearty pats. A blokey gesture, but a power move all the same. The subtle movement into his body space, the taking of control.

Will’s oblivious, his face open, smiling. “Good to meet you, too, and congrats. Big news . . .”

“I could say the same. You’ve done the impossible, haven’t you?”

Will hesitates, uncertain. “What do you mean?”

“Elin.” Isaac nods to her.

There’s a pause. Will stiffens, doing the things he only does when he feels threatened—pulling back his shoulders to broaden his chest, jutting out his jaw.

Color rises in his cheeks. An unfamiliar color, because Will doesn’t do embarrassed, but then Isaac’s always been able to do this: wrong-foot people. Put them on edge.

“You’ve managed to pin my sister down.” Isaac’s laugh splinters the silence. “I thought it would never happen. Mind you, she always was a dark horse.”

It’s a clichéd joke, so they laugh, but Elin knows what he’s doing. He’s showing her that he still knows her, can read her. He’s showing her who is in charge.

“I could say the same, couldn’t I?” she retorts, but as soon as she says the words, she regrets it. Her response is delayed, louder, brittler, too obviously laced with something, and falls flat. She looks away, her neck burning.

Will changes the subject. “When did you arrive?”

“A few days ago. We were going to ski, but they closed the lifts.” Isaac gestures at the swirling snow outside. “It’s been like this since we got here.”

Skiing. He’s good, Elin remembers; a gap year in France before his postgrad, then holidays. He did it the hard way—worked, saved, worked again. Neither of them had it easy—no inheritance or parental fund to draw on.

He looks fit, she thinks, examining the lines of lean, sinewy muscle visible through his shirt. Strong. Like her, his face is thinner, more defined, new lines, but his blue eyes are unchanged; wide, guileless. Unreadable. Her school friends would say he hadn’t changed. Still looks subtly stubbled, disheveled. Forever the indie boy drummer.

“When does everyone else arrive for the party?”

“A few days.” Isaac shifts from foot to foot. “We thought it would be nice if you came out first. A pre-engagement party. Some family time.”

He lightly touches her necklace. “Still wearing it?”

Flinching, Elin nods, instinctively enclosing the soft loop of silver in her hand, away from his touch.

“So what do you think of this place?” Isaac moves his hand away, gestures around him. “The hotel.”

Elin stiffens. She knows this tone; he wants a reaction. The fact that it used to be a sanatorium, the studied minimalism . . . he wants her to find it uncomfortable.

“It’s fantastic. Unique.” Reaching up to push her hair away from her face, she realizes how short it is. A new thing, after her mother died.

“And Will? The architect’s view?”

Will’s back on familiar ground, using all the words she predicted and more— crisp, well-executed, a perfect restraint . While he’s speaking, she watches Isaac.

Part of him hasn’t changed, she thinks. His attention’s already wandering, his gaze imperceptibly moving to her . A single, loaded glance. So much is going on in it: he’s showing that he’s bored by Will, that he knows she’s aware of it, and even worse, that he knows Will hasn’t clocked it. He’s on top.

A few minutes later, Will turns. “Elin, I was asking Isaac about the proposal.”

“Yes,” she replies, “I—” But she doesn’t get the chance to finish.

A voice: “Functional . . . that’s how I’d describe it. A ring, in my ski boot.”

Laure. There she is, behind Isaac. Smiling, slightly flushed. She loosely embraces Elin before stepping back, greeting Will.

She notices Will take her in; a microexpression of approval that he swiftly squashes. Elin feels a bolt of jealousy. She’s seen recent photos of Laure, but they didn’t do her justice: she has the type of face that only comes alive in person. Her features are bold, uncompromising; dark eyes, a perfectly straight fringe stopping just short of thick, well-contoured brows.

She’s changed. There’s a poise, a composure to her that she didn’t have before. The Laure she remembers was more relaxed, her face artless, full of an easy openness. Now her features seem on a tighter leash.

She’s wearing things Elin would never have considered, she thinks, trying not to stare at the arty ensemble; high-waisted gray jeans, several tank tops, layered. A fine-knit lime-green cardigan is slung over the top. A scarf, also gray, is draped loosely around her neck. Silver bracelets loop her wrist.

“Sorry for the short notice.” Laure shrugs. “It was all so last-minute.”

An understatement. Elin had received the invitation only a month ago; a parcel, and inside, a neon Post-it stuck to the top of the simple, matte brochure:

Isaac Warner and Laure Strehl are engaged & having a party. Here . . . An arrow pointed to the brochure beneath. You only need to pay for flights—Laure works in the hotel. Let me know. Isaac.