But why would Evie do that? Why leave a note, when she knew that Sarah was right there in the house?
‘Someone – I’ve been thinking… Someone could have got a la-ladder…’ She stuttered on the word – ‘They could have used a ladder to get onto the roof, and pulled it up, and lowered it down into one of the courtyards, and climbed down and got in that way – I often don’t lock the sliding glass doors into the courtyards, which is so stupid, I know, but they’re secure, they’re safe, that’s what I thought. The house is safe…’
It had always felt safe, with its blank outer walls and its internal courtyard gardens, onto which all the rooms faced. A modern take on a Roman villa; that had been her ‘vision’, as Evie called it.
‘I think that’s pretty unlikely, don’t you?’ said Lewis gently.
He was rubbing comforting circles on her shoulder with his thumb, and it felt so nice, but she didn’t want to be comforted. She pulled away from him, and in the same moment the doorbell jangled.
Lewis stood. ‘They’ve made good time. You wait here in the warm, Sarah, and I’ll bring them through.’ He left the room and closed the door behind him.
She sat on the sofa for three seconds.
She couldn’t sit.
She went to the door and opened it and she could hear their voices and smell the drift of wet salty air, and she could hear Lewis saying, ‘… remitting/relapsing delusional disorder. She’s also severely agoraphobic. She’s very confused.’
‘You’re her GP, sir, is that right?’ It was a woman’s brisk voice.
‘Yes. Dr Lewis Gibson – here’s my photocard ID. I’m going to have to authorise an emergency detention, I’m afraid, under Section Two of the Mental Health Act. I’ll come with you to the hospital – to Marnoch Brae. We can do the paperwork there.’
‘And social services?’ This was a man’s voice, deep and calm.
‘Yes, I’ve called them. An AMHP – an approved mental health professional – will meet us there.’
‘Will she require restraint?’
Sarah barrelled into the hall, she barrelled past Lewis, she grabbed the woman in her bulky black uniform and she screamed at her: ‘My eighteen-month-old son is missing! I don’t need you to take me to a hospital! I need you to find my son! My child who’s missing! Who’s been taken!’
From behind her: ‘She doesn’t have a child,’ said Lewis.
Sarah stared into the policewoman’s carefully blank face. Had she heard that right? Or had she imagined it?
When she turned, when she rounded on him, when she said ‘What?’ he repeated it, over her head:
‘She doesn’t have a child.’
And now he looked down at her, his handsome face full of sympathy and understanding and pity.
Why was he saying that?
‘Of course I have a child! Lewis! What –’
‘Sarah.’ He reached for her arm but she pulled away, she backed away, she turned to the policewoman.
‘I have an eighteen-month-old son and his name’s Oliver, Oliver Booth, and he’s disappeared! I don’t know why he would say –’
‘All right, Sarah,’ said the woman, finally, looking at Lewis. ‘Does she have shoes?’
Sarah ran.
She ran the other way, into the kitchen, making for the back door, but she could hear them behind her, the policeman saying, ‘This isn’t helping anyone, is it?’ and she felt herself grabbed from behind and then she was smack down on the floor, her face pressed to the wood-effect vinyl, her arms yanked up behind her back, cold metal handcuffs snapping on her wrists.
2
Sarah woke from a muzzy, headachy doze to find a large, doughy, thin-lipped face looming over her, unblinking, unsmiling. It was the face of the fat blonde nurse she vaguely remembered trying to punch last night.
But had that actually happened, or had it been one of the nightmares that had spooled through her head, one after the other, all night? Nightmares in which Oliver was washed out to sea and she was left helpless on the shore, unable to move, unable even to call out; nightmares in which she ran through abandoned warehouses looking for him as fat nurses pounded after her, clawing at her clothes, her hair, pulling her back –
So real. It had all seemed so real.
‘I thought you wanted to see the doctor,’ said the nurse. Her name was Carol, according to the badge on the dark blue uniform.
‘What doctor?’
The nurse gave a huge sigh, as if she could hardly bear the tedium of this exchange a moment longer. ‘Dr Laghari.’
Dr Laghari. Yes. She needed to see Dr Laghari. He was the one she had to convince. It was no good screaming and shouting at the nurses, shouting that Lewis should be locked up, not her. No good punching their lights out. No good throwing her breakfast at the wall, as she was pretty sure she had done this morning. She remembered this nurse, Carol, snapping at her as she’d cleaned up the mess: ‘You can see Dr Laghari when you’re calm.’ She remembered that now. She remembered everything. She remembered why she had to see the doctor.
It was because he was the one with the power.
He was the one who could call the police and make them listen.
He was the first step to finding Oliver.
And so she must be calm. Yes. She was calm now, wasn’t she? That was why Carol was saying she could see the doctor. Because Sarah was nice and calm.
The medication was helping, of course. They presumably had her on antipsychotics and a high dose of sedatives – she recognised the flat feeling, the cotton-wool fuzziness that was making it hard to control her thoughts, to stop them butterflying away from her. Not that the nurses had specified what the pills actually were – they arrived in a little plastic beaker, unlabelled, and seemed to be none of Sarah’s business.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, please. Dr Laghari.’
She sat and put a hand through her hair and looked down at herself. She was wearing busily patterned pyjamas in blue and red and white and yellow.
‘Robe and slippers,’ ordered Carol, but didn’t move to help.
There were white, foam-soled slippers lined up neatly under the bedside cabinet. Sarah slipped her feet into them and stood, but had to put a hand behind her to the bed to steady herself. Sighing again, Carol twitched the pale blue waffle robe from the back of the door and handed it to her.
Was it a deliberate policy, to make psych patients wear nightclothes during the day? It immediately put you at a disadvantage; underlined the inequality of the relationship between patients and staff.
Calmly, she put on the robe and tied the belt. Calmly, she walked after Carol into the corridor, when what she wanted to do was slam the bitch against the wall and make a break for the exit.
Oh, my darling! Where are you?
Why had Lewis told the police she didn’t have a child? How was she going to make them believe her, when Dr Lewis Gibson, respected local GP, had told them Oliver didn’t even exist?
There was a woman shuffling along, pulling what looked like a charger behind her on the polished grey vinyl floor, the cable between it and the plug she was holding alternately slackening and extending as she tugged it after her. One of her eyes was slightly higher than the other.