Page 3 of Insomnia

That’s all she said before hanging up and now that I’m here, I know why. She’s tricked me into coming.

This is a private ward, but it’s ageriatricprivate ward. I go past a couple of rooms and I can’t help looking in through the half-open doors. In one a man, skin shrunken into his cheekbones, hair wispy thin, is silently descending into whatever comes next. In another, a patient is watchingHomes Under the Hammeron a too-loud TV, and in the last one I reach there’s a wheelchair folded against the wall and a woman is reading a magazine to an old woman, perhaps a mother or aunt, who’s listening and carefully sipping a cup of tea. Snapshots of lives. I don’t want to reach the room that holds the snapshot of mine.

“Can I help you?” A nurse makes me jump.

“I’m Emma Averell. I mean Bournett. I’m looking for Phoebe Bournett?”

“Emma? Patricia Bournett’s other daughter?”And there it is.“Have you signed in?” She is loud and irritated and even the woman reading to her mother in the room next to where I’m standing stops and looks around. I step farther away from the doorway.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Emma. Here.”

Phoebe’s standing farther up the corridor. My older sister.

Her hair’s grown long and hangs free around her shoulders, and in her tunic top, skinny black jeans, and ballet pumps, it’s hard to believe she’s forty-two. But it’s a disguise. There’s nothing carefree about Phoebe, and a closer look at her face tells a different story. Lines are showing in her forehead and around her mouth, no longer gossamer threads, but sinking deeper, the fishhooks of time tugging her skin downward.

“You nearly gave me a heart attack, Phebes. I thought you were sick.”

She studies me for a long moment. “It’s uncanny.”

“What?”

“You look so much like her. Like she wasthen.”

Why can’t she ever say anything nice?Hey, Emma, I’ve missed you. How’s work? I’m so proud of you.No, she has to go straight for the jugular. As if she resents loving me. Sometimes—now for instance—I’m sure she does.

“I’m nothing like her.”

“You don’t remember.” She shrugs. “But youdolook like she did then.” She frowns a little. “I mean, exactly like her. Quite disturbing.”

I refuse to rise to the bait. “I left work because I thought you’d had an accident. If you’re fine then we can catch up later.”In another couple of years probably.

“You wouldn’t have come if I’d told you.”

“This is about her, isn’t it?” She’s right, I wouldn’t have come. And nothing is going to make me stay.

“You mean Mum? She’s not Voldemort. You can use the word.” She nods toward a closed door. “She’s in there. She smashed herhead against a mirror in the night.” She pauses as I take an involuntary step backward. “Repeatedly. She’s got a life-threatening cerebral hematoma. I thought you’d want to know.”

I look around and frown. “Where are the guards?”

Phoebe laughs then, a burst of sharp surprise. “She’s a fragile seventy-five-year-old woman with a severe brain bleed who’s barely done more than shuffle and mumble in decades. She’s hardly a flight risk.”

“They should still have someone here.” I would feel safer if there were guards. Someone watching the door. Childhood fears go deep.

“No one cares anymore, Emma.” Phoebe, always so blunt. “About what she did. And it’s a secure unit she lives in, not a prison.”

Sometimes I Google the place. I’ve been doing it more often recently. I don’t even know why; maybe it reassures me to know that she’s still behind several sets of security gates and metaphorical bars. Hartwell House’s Medium Secure Unit.For patients who have been in contact with the criminal justice system and who present serious risk to others...In a superhero film it’s the kind of place that would be called “an institution for the criminally insane.”

“Only because she was too mad for prison,” I mutter. “AndIcare.” Now it’s me who’s vehement. “I can’t believe you made me come here. I’ve always been clear I never want to see her,” I say. “Actually, I can’t believeyou’rehere.” A thought strikes me. “Howareyou here?” How the hell would the unit have contacted her? I’m surely the easiest daughter to find. Phoebe doesn’t even live in the country.

She shrugs, the noncommittal mildly annoyed shrug that normally means she’s about to drop a bombshell.

“I’ve been visiting her.”

And there it is. I lean against the wall. I should be at the office. I’ve got a full day. This is something I did not need. “What do you mean visiting her? When?”

“Not often. But over the past few months.”

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