Читать книгу The Silent Fountain - Victoria Fox - Страница 20

Vivien swallows the pills with relish. The green ones are her favourite; they can knock her out for hours. All she wants right now is to be knocked out.

Every time she closes her eyes, she can see the girl’s face. Up close, the resemblance is uncanny, and what she hoped was a mistaken similitude, a trick of distance or light, is exposed as fact. They could be sisters. The girl is the spitting image. I thought you were gone from my life, she thinks. I thought we were through.

Adalina closes the curtains. ‘You will sleep now, signora?’

Vivien can sense the pills start to take effect, a drowsy, rocking motion like being on the swell of the sea. In the early days she would fight it, begrudging how it robbed her of control. Now, she surrenders, lets it claim her, oblivion.

‘Find him, Adalina…’ she whispers, as she tumbles towards sleep.

‘Shh…’ The maid sponges her forehead.

‘I have to see him again,’ murmurs Vivien. ‘Let him know I’m…’

‘Quiet now, signora, go to sleep.’

‘Find him for me, Adalina. Before it’s too late.’

‘Calm now, signora, that’s it, there now, calm…’

‘You must find him… Promise me you’ll find him…’

Against her delirium, Adalina’s face morphs and swells and at points ceases to be there at all. Vivien is aware of a sponge crossing her brow, or is it her own hand, her own skin, hot and damp and cloying? She hears the maid exhale, or perhaps it is herself, on the cusp of sleep, falling, dreaming… Quietly, Adalina leaves the room.