The Violet Hour
Page 26
‘No,’ Marsh said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Do you think she’ll understand?’
‘Hard to say. She’s been here five years, ever since her mother died. I’m not sure I’ve reached her once.’
‘What was her original diagnosis?’
‘A heroin overdose, more than twenty years ago now. She jumped from a second-story window, spent a year or so in a body cast. It seems her body recovered, her mind never did. Her mother cared for her for fifteen years. Then she came to Fostoria.’
‘Shame,’ Alice said.
‘Yes,’ Marsh replied. He got up, walked over to the window, leaned against the sill.
She looked up at him.
‘We’re bringing you to a new place, my dear,’ Marsh said as he took her hand in his. ‘Soon. A brand-new place. Brand-new people. Do you think you’ll like that?’
Julia Raines looked at him, squeezed his hand gently. The doctor was taking her somewhere.
Maybe Gillian will be there, she thought.
Maybe Gillian will finally be there.
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Copyright © Richard Montanari, 1998
Richard Montanari has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Material from The Wasteland and Whispers of Immortality by T.S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Penguin Books Ltd
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