Читать книгу The Silent Fountain - Victoria Fox - Страница 13

‘Vivien?’

The maid knocks gently then steps inside. It’s rare that Adalina addresses her by her name, and Vivien knows it is because they are about to share a confidence.

‘What is she like?’ Vivien asks. It isn’t what she really wants to ask, but she cannot ask that yet. It will seem too desperate, too close to the bone.

‘As we expected,’ says Adalina. ‘She’ll be fine.’

‘You told her…?’ Vivien glances away. ‘How much did you tell her?’

‘I told her nothing.’

Vivien exhales. Adalina lays down a supper tray, soup and crackers, a bunch of grapes the colour of bruises, but she has no appetite.

‘Are you all right, signora?’

‘I saw her from the window,’ Vivien says, daring to meet Adalina’s eye, wanting to know if the maid has seen it too. But Adalina gives nothing away.

‘Do you think she looks like…?’ Vivien swallows. She cannot say the name. ‘I saw her and I thought what a remarkable resemblance she has to—’

‘She’s dark. That is where it ends,’ says Adalina.

‘But her height, her build, everything – it’s everything.’

‘Not at all.’ Adalina protests, unwilling to give her charge any scope for indulgence. Vivien notices this, and seizes it as proof of her agreement.

‘You can’t deny it.’

‘I can. Up close she is entirely different.’

‘It was like seeing her again.’ The ‘her’ is spat like venom. It’s been years – years – but the poison remains. She cannot get her mouth around it, the taste bitter, too horrible, too immediate, all that hate multiplying inside her with nowhere to go.

‘Then you must meet the girl,’ says Adalina. ‘I will arrange it.’

‘I cannot have her living here if you are wrong.’ Vivien is trembling, her voice skittish, her heart leaden. Get control of yourself, she thinks, aware the resemblance the girl has is impossible, a trick of her mind, but the uncanny is all around, in the windows, in the water, in shadows and reflections, and she would not put it past the house to test her in this way. Vivien has heard the noises late at night, the creak of a floorboard, the slam of a door, the howl of the wind so like a woman’s scream…

‘You must eat,’ says Adalina. The pills come out, the tray set down.

Without warning, Vivien takes her hand. Adalina is surprised.

‘It isn’t her, is it?’ she asks in a strange, disembodied voice.

‘Of course not, signora.’

‘That would be impossible.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘She wouldn’t come back for me, would she?’

Adalina is frightened now.

‘Never,’ she rasps.

‘She wouldn’t dare.’

‘No, she wouldn’t dare.’

Vivien releases her grasp. Adalina fills a water glass, as if nothing has happened. Sometimes, the maid stays to help with supper. Tonight, she leaves.