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The woman, who I only now properly took in, had one of those “behind glass” faces that people who sit behind counters and deal with the public often develop. The sort of two-steps-back expression of someone who has had to armor themselves against the prickliness and neediness of a never-ending queue of humanity. She was also morbidly obese, clad in a florid tent, her exposed flesh resembling a candle in the act of melting. “No appointment?”

“I’m looking for my sister.” I could see this was going to require full disclosure. “She’s gone missing, and we think she’ll come here.” The “we” was to borrow some authority from consensus. “Have you seen her? She’d be asking to see our mother.”

The woman surprised me with a fleeting look of compassion. “I’ll have to ask. I’ve only been on an hour.”

And undermining any conviction I had in my ability to read people, she got up with some effort and walked to a door behind the reception. “What’s your sister’s name, dear?”

“Sophie,” I said, vowing not to judge a book by its cover. “Sophie Archer.”

She disappeared through the door, and behind frosted glass, I could see her talking to a taller someone. It was this second woman who emerged after thirty seconds of discussion. Older, dark-haired where the first had been bleached blond, rail thin, her face pinched, a tight expression behind wire-framed glasses. There was something curiously familiar about this one, though for the life of me I couldn’t place her.

“Mr. Archer?” She had a slight foreign accent. Her name tingled on the tip of my tongue, like a sneeze wanting to explode.

“My mother’s Caroline Archer. I wanted—”

“Visits have to be arranged in writing with Mrs. Archer’s doctors. Ahead of time. A minimum of a month’s warning is required so that the request can be properly considered.”

“I just need—” I cut myself off, understanding that shouting wouldn’t help, and continued in an almost reasonable tone through gritted teeth. “Has my sister been here today, or yesterday?”

“We can’t share that sort of information.” She seemed almost offended. “You could be anyone.”

“I’m Frederick Arch—”

“Do you have photo ID?”

I narrowed my eyes at the bureaucratic specter…and yes more basic epithets bubbled under my tongue…An anger out of all proportion pulsed through me and, for several pounding beats of my heart, actual murder twitched in my fingertips. These are not good things. At last, I took the breath that the tension had denied me and found myself scared at the pure unadulterated rage and the demands it made. I was, perhaps, my mother’s child after all.

“Fuck!” A shout of release, and I turned on my heel, striding for the doors.

I stalked out of there muttering the filthiest words I knew, frustrated beyond measure but also achingly relieved that I hadn’t surrendered to that almost alien anger. It had been mine—I knew that—but it felt that something outside me had fed it. I reached the street and admitted that I was making excuses. Own your mistakes. Someone had told me that. Sophie maybe.

Before I’d gone five yards the curses were aimed at myself, the stupidity of my “quest,” the idea that somehow they might let me in as if the hospital really were the motel it resembled. I’d gone another five, wondering if I could get back to Werton that night and where I was going to sleep if not, before it struck me…I knew who the older woman was.

It wasn’t until I’d stopped staring at her and turned my back on her that the truth struck me, slap-bang between the shoulder blades. It seemed fitting. I realized there on the tarmac of the hospital car park that I hadn’t ever seen the woman again after the day my mother hauled me out of that tacky little tent. She’d pulled me away with the would-be fortune teller screaming after us that I was a crack in the world.

It hit me then that, perhaps, that had been the day when it had all started going wrong. She’d called me cracked, but it had been my mum who had fractured, falling apart like a vase hit by a bullet in slow motion. Each piece, each chip, tumbling away on its own course, as if suddenly given permission. That day. That woman. Those words.

“Mademoiselle Lefevre.”

Chapter 22

Red

It made no sense. Why would my old French teacher be working here? Why would Summer Fair, fortune-teller-tent, cracked-crystal-ball Mademoiselle Lefevre be here, stopping me from seeing my mother?

Reversing direction happened in the same way the understanding of who I had been talking to had arrived—automatically, beyond my control.

I went back into the car park from the road, keeping my eyes on the hospital doors. Reflections blinded me to the interior, but I hoped the receptionist was too occupied with her screens to be looking out.

The hospital and its car park had a narrow border of those thick, ground-covering shrubs that landscapers for such building projects love to throw in. Low-maintenance greenery to collect and hide rubbish. Around the car park, the bushes were a wooded, small-leaved, slightly prickly sort with tiny orange berries, and would reach only to my knees. Good cover for cats and Coke cans, but that was about it.

Around the sides though, the once-a-month gardeners had decided not to bother with trimming unless the vegetation fingered its way past the ground-floor windowsills. With the building to my left and eight feet of brick wall to my right, I followed the narrow, greenery-choked gap down the side of the building, deep in the shadow of the oncoming evening.

Someone had thoughtfully included some rather spiky shrubs into the mix, along with an extra dash of stinging nettles and bramble. All of which made for slow, painful progress. Additionally, the windows all had security grilles. I rethought my plan of action several times. Or rather rethought my non-plan, my impulse. But each time, the strangeness of Mademoiselle Lefevre’s intervention kept me going.

Toward the back of the building, I spotted a window on the second floor that had been slid up several inches to admit the breeze. While parkour would be too grand a description for what I’d learned from climbing, and more often falling, to and from my window at the Togetherness Trust home, I had at least had some practice.

Operating on the principle that people very rarely look out of their windows, especially if there are dusty, louvered blinds blocking a view of a brick wall, I took a chance.