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Back The Missing Sister
Chapters (58)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. By the same author
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  56. Author’s Note
  57. Acknowledgements
  58. THE BEGINNING
Penguin Books

26.

Diana, Cheltenham, 1922

I wake up with the most terrible headache I’ve ever had. It’s as if someone has beaten me about the head with a cosh. The room is bright, too bright, and when I look about I realize it’s entirely tiled in white and there is a sickening smell of carbolic in the air. I’m not at home.

I am blinded by the light and, as panic grips me, I long to escape back into the dark. Then a thought hits me. A terrifying thought. This must be the Grange. I try to move and find I am bound to the bed, not too tightly but tight enough that I can’t get out. Why has he had me brought here? He promised he would never send me without my permission. I begin to shout Douglas’s name, until I am screaming, but he does not appear. Instead a young woman dressed in blue, who I think must be a warden, walks in and tells me if I’m not quiet I will disturb the other patients.

She walks out again, and I begin to shake with fear. Why have they brought me to the Grange? My head still aches, and my thoughts are spinning so fast I can’t catch hold of them. I try to remember but nothing comes clear. My brain is a fog. Where was I yesterday? What was I doing? I screw my eyes shut in the effort of remembering and try to force the images to return. Then I hear a voice, an actual voice, asking me a question. I open my eyes to see that the young woman has returned and I wince at the smell of body odour as she looms over me.

‘I asked if you could hear me,’ she says, prim, full of self-importance, and clearly looking down her nose at me.

When she tells me I’m in the Cheltenham General Hospital and Dispensary, not the Grange, there’s something I can’t put my finger on and I don’t believe her.

‘Why am I tied to the bed if I’m not at the Grange?’ My voice comes out as a husky rasping sound and my throat feels raw.

‘It’s for your own safety,’ she says, and leaning over me again, whispers, ‘We had to pump your stomach.’

‘I don’t understand. I want to go home. Why can’t I go home?’ Tears fill my eyes and I can’t prevent them from falling and dampening the sheet.

She purses her lips. ‘You have caused everyone a great deal of trouble, but I imagine you probably will go home.’

‘Have I …?

‘What?’

‘Damaged myself?’

She shakes her head. ‘The doctor is speaking to your husband now and they will make the decision.’

‘Decision?’

‘Whether you are safe to return or not.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be safe?’