She needed to think about how she could get in touch with Evie.
Last time she’d been sectioned, she had tried, over and over, to tell them that it was a waste of time keeping her locked up here. That all she needed was Evie. Her twin. Even after What Happened to Mum and Dad, Sarah had refused to see a therapist – what was the point? No one knew her better than Evie. They had talked and talked, cried and cried, hugged and hugged for hours, days, weeks. They had got through it together, like they always did.
What therapist in the world could do that?
They were twin-sufficient, as Evie said. All Sarah needed was Evie.
Borrowed light.
For her kitchen in the Roman House, Sarah had chosen a Farrow and Ball colour called ‘Borrowed Light’, a soft, light blue that was described as ‘evoking the colour of summer skies.’ She had been drawn not so much to the colour, although it was completely right for that simple, sleek kitchen space, but to the name itself.
Borrowed light.
After What Happened to Mum and Dad, after her retreat from it all, she had begun to live a sort of borrowed life, borrowed from her twin, her wonderful sister Evie whose love had saved her. In those early years of Sarah’s isolation in the London flat, Evie used to take hundreds of photos a day on her phone, and then in the evening she’d load them onto Sarah’s laptop and they’d sit on the big couch and scroll through them while Evie told Sarah all about her day, and Sarah imagined herself there, sitting at Evie’s desk in the office eating that pink-iced donut, or walking through the leafy summer-smelling park, or meeting Erica and Yvonne and Debs in the beer garden of their favourite pub by the river – ‘Look at Debs’s sunburn! And oh my God, we’ve only been there five minutes and this random guy’s buying Erica a drink – I managed to get a candid shot of him – see? The one with the hair?’
Evie had had a professional video taken of her wedding, although Evie hated wedding videos, just so Sarah could feel she was there. Watching it in the flat with Evie, George, and George’s parents, she had almost felt as if she were watching herself. As if that were her life as well as Evie’s. When they’d got to the vows, when the vicar on the screen had done his ‘Do you, Eve Frances Elizabeth, take this man’ bit, Sarah had interrupted him with a resounding ‘No!’, and Evie had had to pretend that Sarah had wanted the vicar to call her ‘Evie’ not ‘Eve’. George’s parents had seemed to accept this, but George had rolled his eyes.
As the video had gone on, though, as she’d spotted Erica and the guy with the hair, as Evie had smiled and laughed her way through it all, so obviously ecstatically happy, Sarah had found herself smiling too, feeling what she was feeling, living it with her. Borrowing the happiness of Evie’s special day for herself.
Oh Evie.
Evie.
She looked out at the plants, at the rain just starting to spatter against the window.
She had to think, to catch the butterflies.
She needed to persuade Dr Laghari to check out what she’d told him. To look up Oliver Booth in the database and see that yes, he really did exist: Sarah Booth’s eighteen-month-old son Oliver, who’d last attended Golspie Health Centre for earache on the 15th of December last year.
She remembered that day vividly – Oliver’s hot, angry little face, his uncomprehending distress as he’d writhed in her arms, the solid, surprisingly strong little limbs thrashing as he refused her efforts at comfort. He hadn’t been able to understand why Mummin couldn’t make it better, or why it had to be Evie who took him to the nice lady who was going to look at his ear and give him medicine to make it go away.
But Dr Laghari wasn’t going to check her story. He didn’t believe a word that came out of her mouth – and why should he, when she’d arrived at Marnoch Brae raving about organ harvesting? She was asking him to believe a woman with a history of mental illness over that pillar of the community, Dr Lewis Gibson.
How was Lewis involved in this?
She’d read about cases where dentists and doctors took advantage of children in their care…
But her brain skittered away from the thought.
She needed Evie. She needed Evie. She had to get to a phone.
‘Evie,’ she said, out loud.
‘No,’ said an amused voice. ‘It’s Julia, actually.’
Sarah jumped up out of the chair.
A skeletally thin girl was sitting on the bed, her face gaunt, her skin so translucent you could almost see the jutting cheekbones and jaw through it. She was so insubstantial that it was easy to believe that she’d drifted into the room, soundlessly, on a current of air.
‘Julia,’ the girl repeated. ‘So you’re in here for what?’
Sarah gave her a smile, putting all the warmth she could muster into it. ‘I’m Sarah. It’s good to meet you, Julia. This is going to sound kind of rude, but can I ask you…’
‘Yeah, they say I’ve got anorexia.’
Ordinarily, she’d have been sympathetic. Ordinarily, she’d have let Julia talk about herself and tried to help; tried to give her the benefit of her own, if brief, experience of an eating disorder. But not today.
‘No. Sorry, I mean, I’m sorry about that, but – I’ve got a bit of an emergency here. I need to call my sister, but they’re not allowing me near a phone. Do you have one, or do you have access to one?’
‘Nope. Ditto. They don’t let me have access to phones in case I contact my mates on the forum.’
‘Oh.’ A forum for anorexics, presumably – not that they’d call themselves that, unless ironically.
Sarah was about to ask her something else, something else important, when the girl fractured her thoughts by saying: ‘Okay, I’m guessing you’re bipolar?’
‘No.’ What was it she had to ask? It was there, the question, just out of reach. ‘I’ve got what they call a “suite” of conditions which they lump together under the umbrella of post-traumatic stress disorder. But –’
Julia grimaced, her lips pulling back from teeth that, in her skeletal face, seemed huge and horse-like. ‘Were you, like, in the military?’
Sarah had to laugh, but the sound that came out of her mouth was more like a yelp of pain. ‘No. I’m an architect. The trauma was – a family thing.’ And then, as was often the way, as soon as she’d stopped trying to recapture the thought, it came back to her. ‘Are you having any visitors today?’ She tried to keep her tone light.
‘Nope. But my mum’s coming in tomorrow.’
‘Could I ask you a huge favour? I need to contact my sister urgently. Do you think your mum would get in touch with her for me, and tell her where I am and that Oliver’s missing? I’ll give you her phone number, and she could try Facebook and Instagram. Evie Booth is her name. Could you ask your mum to do that?’
Julia made a face. ‘I can ask, but Mum’s kind of got a one-track mind, you know? All topics of conversation end up at Food Issues Central.’
Sarah couldn’t deal with this now. ‘Well, don’t you think she might have a point?’
‘Okay I don’t eat much, but that’s because I have a slow metabolism. I just have to look at food and it goes straight to my belly.’ She prodded at her sweatshirt top.