She pressed her forehead to the door. Under the white paint, she could make out the pattern and knots in the wood, as if it were not just a barrier between them but a living thing, complete with veins and sinews.
‘Jolyon, consider again.’ She struggled to keep her breath steady, to sound like a sane person. ‘You know this is not in keeping with my character. With your own lips, you told Mr Underwood you would stake your life on my nerves.’
‘They are broken, and my heart with them.’
She laid her palm flat, imagining his head pressed to the wood. If only he would look at her. If he looked into her eyes, he would know she was telling the truth. ‘You are too hasty. Ask Sarah—’
‘I have sent Sarah to her own suite! I cannot have her coming to your room, encouraging you in your delusions.’
She slid to the carpet, landing painfully on her bad knee. ‘You cannot confine Sarah,’ she tried again. ‘You have no authority over her. You cannot treat us like prisoners.’
‘It is for your own safety. I know what is best for you.’
But he didn’t even know who she was.
She remained on the floor, empty and spent. Presently, Jolyon’s footsteps sounded in the corridor. The library door opened and then closed.
Shadows of trees lay on the carpet by the window. Inch by inch, they lengthened across the floor. A detached part of her wondered which would get her first – the companions or the asylum. Perhaps Mrs Holt had sealed her fate by now; spelt out her doom in wires and crackles and clicks. Already, she felt the cold of a hospital dormitory closing in around her.
Did she deserve it? Perhaps she did. Not for the companions, but for the other things. Pa, Ma. She could blot them out but they never left her; they ran, dark, in her bloodstream. In Jolyon.
It was perhaps an hour later when she heard the noise: soft, at first, a crackle like logs yielding to a flame. She darted a look at the fire but the wood had burnt out. Again it came: a scratching, whispering sound. Right outside her door.
Elsie cocked her head, listening. This time she heard little clicks. Then a door, creaking open.
Jolyon’s wordless exclamation made her jump. Perhaps it was Mrs Holt returned? But there were no footsteps, no voices. Just that distant rustle, like twigs snapping. Or tiny bones.
She lay down awkwardly on the floor. The sliver of light under the door only revealed a stretch of maroon carpet.
Jolyon screamed.
She bolted upright, wincing as pain seared along her ribs. ‘Jo?’ She tried the door handle. Still locked. He cried out again, a strangled word that sounded like her name. ‘Jolyon!’
Now the sounds were amplified. Twisting, slithering. She thought of animals thrashing in the undergrowth, ensnared by branches. Dear God, what was happening?
‘Elsie!’ An anguished scream, bubbling with liquid.
Furiously, she pumped at the handle, hammered on the door. She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t get out.
No torture could be more maddening: to hear and not to see; to be powerless while he howled. The air became stifling, impossible to breathe, pressing in close, close.
Elsie cast about the room for an object to batter the door with. Her roving eyes fell upon the dressing table and she shot up a prayer of gratitude. Why hadn’t she thought of them before?
She dashed over, ignoring the pain in her knee, and seized a handful of hairpins. With sweating palms, she bent the first pin and tried to get it in the keyhole. It missed. Again she lined it up, and again it skidded out of control. ‘God damn!’ Her hands shook as if she had the ague.
Glass smashed.
‘Come on, come on.’ At last, she threaded the pin into the hole but it rattled and she couldn’t feel the tumblers. ‘Please!’
Hiss. The pin fell from her hand. Hiss.
There was another shout, and Jolyon’s voice died out. The silence was deafening.
Seizing another pin, she bent it with her teeth and thrust it in the lock. Relief surged when the tumblers clicked and moved, and the door yielded to her hand.
In the corridor everything was still. She hobbled out, gritting her teeth. Footsteps pounded to her left. When she turned, she saw Sarah hurtling in her direction, wild-eyed, Jasper at her heels.
‘Elsie! What happened? I heard screaming.’
‘Jolyon,’ she gasped. ‘Jolyon.’
Sarah’s eyes widened. ‘Not them?’
A noise burst from her lips: keening, animal. She had never known a pain like it. ‘No! Please God, no.’
Without another word, Sarah nudged her shoulder under Elsie’s armpit and helped her to the library.
It was a wreck. Books lay spreadeagled on the floor with their pages hanging loose. The carpet was a graveyard of paper, glass and shrivelled leaves. As they stumbled farther into the room, Elsie saw rips in the curtains which fluttered and danced in the breeze.
‘Jolyon?’ It did not sound like her voice – did not sound like his name.
Ink splattered across the desk, splintered with shards of green glass from the lamp, but the chair behind stood empty.
‘Elsie! Over there!’
She whirled round. The gypsy boy with his crook loomed before the fire. Something inhuman flickered in the flat face. Her eyes followed the direction of his crook.
The middle window was smashed to a spider web. Cracks radiated from a central, ragged hole. Something snagged on one of the points. Material. Hair?
The tattered curtains waved, frantic, motioning her away. But her feet moved without her permission, hopelessly drawn across the carpet, crunching on glass, to stand where the wind could slap her face.
Dozens of Elsies stared back at her from the shattered window, each one a different shape. Elongated, squashed, missing mouths; her face melting. And she saw that the cracks were edged with blood.
Taking a deep breath, she peered down from the sill.
Her Jolyon, her boy, lay face down on the gravel, his neck at an impossible angle. Dead.
The curtains gusted around, embracing her as she screamed.
Once, when she was very young, Pa had burst her eardrum. It created a noise, a noise so intense that it was somehow more than sound, drowning everything but its insistent ring.
After the noise had come severe pain. Burrowing into her head and making her dizzy, slackening her face. She felt everything and nothing.
It must have happened again, for she could not see or hear. Time slipped past her as if she were no longer there.
Suddenly she slammed back into herself, finding herself propped up behind the desk in the remains of the leather chair. Horsehair prickled through slashes in the fabric, rough against her tender skin.
Sarah was on her left, waving a bottle of smelling salts under her nose. To the right stood Mrs Holt.
‘Another terrible accident?’ she was saying. ‘My eye! It’s her, you daft girl. She’s not right in the head. I’m going for the police.’
‘It was the companions, Mrs Holt! Elsie had only just come out of her room, I saw the door open. There is no conceivable way she could have got in here and . . .’ Sarah saw Elsie stirring back to life, and put the smelling salts down.