The Silent Fountain. Victoria Fox

man stands. He approaches slowly, tucking his phone into his jeans, casually finishing his drink, and for an optimistic moment I expect him to walk right out of there, proving me wrong, but then his eyes are on me again and like a bad dream he closes the distance, stopping at my table, his hands in his pockets.

      I pretend he isn’t there. When he pulls out a chair and sits down, I am forced to acknowledge him. He leans forward, his voice barely more than a whisper.

      ‘My name is Max,’ he says. ‘We need to talk.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      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.