The Second Sister by Claire Kendal

Author:Claire Kendal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007531707
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

Tuesday, 15 November

The Tour

I have seen this place from the road many times before, driving along what locals still call Lucifer’s Lane, though it has never officially been given that name. In the road atlas, it is just a numbered road skirting atop a sunken valley. Inside this valley sits the hospital for the criminally insane that Jason Thorne is unlikely ever to leave.

The hospital itself is an imposing Victorian building, typically beautiful and terrifying from the elevated road. It looks like something from a Gothic nightmare, despite the propaganda in the information leaflet. Patients, not prisoners. How many different ways did they manage to stress this?

There is a last glimpse of the whole complex before I follow the narrow slip-road down the hill and wind my way to the car park. When I emerge from my car, I can hear no screams from inside the building. At least nothing piercing enough to escape its thick red bricks and the high walls circling the entire grounds.

Hospital, not prison. Really? The walls are topped with razor wire.

I find my way to the main reception building and murmur my name into an intercom. The door clicks and swings open, and I step over the threshold and towards the barrier of safety glass that encloses the receptionist.

‘I’m Ella Brooke.’ I slide my passport into the shallow metal tunnel that runs beneath the safety window. My hands are visibly trembling and I hope she doesn’t notice. ‘I have an appointment with Jason Thorne, but I’m meeting Adam Holderness first.’

She shoots me a tight professional smile before extracting the passport from her side and examining it. ‘It says your name is Melanie.’

‘Melanie is on my birth certificate but I go by Ella.’

Do you see how much trouble you cause me?

Really? What about when I saved your ass yesterday because I changed your name?

The woman scrutinises the passport again, flicking her eyes between my face and the photograph. She puts the passport onto a photocopy bed, then returns it to the tunnel without comment, leaving me wondering if she will let me in.

‘Is everything okay?’ I ask.

‘I suppose the image matches your face.’ Her hair is so over bleached and over straightened and over long it seems to exemplify every warning you ever gave me about the things that cause hair to look and feel like straw.

‘That’s a relief.’ She doesn’t laugh. ‘Here’s my letter of invitation, to see Mr Thorne.’ I slide it through.

She stretches her nose and purses her lips in the manner of a banker regarding a forged £10,000 note. But she seems to decide that I am not an imposter with a master plan to free all the inmates. She gives me a name badge and points me towards the search area, which is full of guards with guns on their belts.

Patients not prisoners. Did the people who wrote this really not mean it to become one of those ironic refrains you cannot get out of your head?

The guards X-ray my bag, then direct me to stow it in a locker.

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