She would not go through this again.
Blue sidestepped until she couldn’t see into Sabina’s room anymore, fumbled in her back pocket for her room key.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sabina said and stared at Blue as though Blue were unstable.
‘What is it?’ Mrs Park stared too, shrewd eyes assessing her, trying to work out what was wrong with this woman, what cure was needed, what intervention.
‘It’s nothing.’ Blue whispered it, the words designed to calm herself more than the two other women. ‘It’s nothing. It’s nothing.’
She wanted to say there is nothing there, that thing doesn’t exist, what I can see is not real. She locked these words in her head.
‘Blue, my dear, why don’t you—’
‘I need to shower,’ Blue said and undid the lock, slipped in her room and bolted the door behind her. Eyes closed, she tried to force out the feeling that the world lay crumbled around her, that it was too much, too heavy a burden to live with, but with her eyes closed, her mind showed her that image again. That thing. That g—
‘They don’t exist.’ She said it aloud.
She heard the women talk in the corridor. Sabina would check on Blue in a bit, she said. Mrs Park would ready lunch; a bit of home-cooked food would do everyone good. Then she would check on her husband, check on Milton.
The older man who was too unwell to walk up the stairs and yet Blue saw him, was sure she had seen him … She would not think about that.
The shower went some way to clear Blue’s thoughts. She stood beneath the water, forehead pressed to the tiled wall, and concentrated on the prickling sensation as the water pummelled her back.
She must have seen that face before, and like a fly in amber, it stuck in her memory and had risen to the surface today, a subconscious distraction from Mother’s anniversary. A justification to run from this retreat full of strangers, of unfamiliar sights and sounds, of odd dreams and strange sights. Run – run away. There’s an excuse now; this house is not safe.
She wouldn’t run. She would conquer. Blue would stay and make herself join in the dancing and art lessons and the therapy. She would talk to Milton and see that he’s nothing but an old man with poor health and that whatever she saw last night was just a dream.
And what she saw in Sabina’s room wasn’t real.
She finished in the shower and went to get dressed. She’d neglected to turn on the extractor fan; the windows and mirrors were fogged grey with steam. Her things were still neatly packed in her rucksack; she hadn’t put clothes in drawers, hadn’t arranged bottles and pots on the dresser as Sabina had. It would be so easy to pick up her bag and go.
The instinct was hard to quash; a sense of dread told her she shouldn’t have come. The mist began to fade from the mirror, and Blue thought about how hard she’d worked over the last three years to try and make sense of her life, how this trip had been part of that plan and had given her a short-term purpose.
She closed her eyes, breathed in and out. The fear, she told herself, was useless. Fear was a block to progress.
The fear held firm.
Blue was afraid to open her eyes.
Convinced that, if she did, the face looking back wouldn’t be hers. The hair would not be black but very pale. The eyes would not be her turquoise helix eyes, but— It was unbearable, she couldn’t look. Blue turned her back on the vanity table, faced the wardrobe.
She forgot there was a mirror there, too.
The mist on that glass had cleared.
Terror seized her chest and rang like an unholy bell in her ears.
Her face stared back, haggard, black hair a damp mess, her body naked. Her hands trembled as she pressed them to her mouth to stifle a cry.
She sat heavily on the bed, grabbed the pillow and squeezed it in her fists, bit down on its edge to stop her cries from being heard. She cursed the vision in Sabina’s bedroom, cursed every vision she had ever seen, damned them to hell for their misery. She damned Mother, damned Devlin, damned herself for lacking the courage to stand up to them sooner.
Sabina was next door, and Blue wished she could go to her, confess how lost she felt, be hugged and feel comforted.
Impossible.
The moment they touched, Blue would be overwhelmed. The glimpse of it on the stairs had been too much; she couldn’t even graze Sabina’s hand without falling apart.
‘Blue?’ Sabina rapped on her door as though Blue’s thoughts had moved her hand. ‘Are you OK?’
Blue pressed the heels of her palms to her eye sockets and told herself to get a grip.
‘Just out the shower,’ she said with forced composure. ‘Give me a sec to get dressed.’
‘Let me know when you’re ready, we can go down together.’
Blue wiped her nose, dried her eyes, made herself look in every mirror. She dressed in clean clothes, neatened her hair. Hunger ate at her stomach; she’d feel better after food and a mug of strong tea.
It would all be OK, she told herself. She knew what she would do.