A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,124

to her feet. It was a hesitant movement, unnatural, as if she were being propelled upward and forward by a force other than her own free will.

"Darling, you know you don't have to go in there if you're afraid," her husband said.

She did not reply but rather, with the back of her hand upon which the heavy scoring from the metal brushes stood out like cutaneous veins, she stroked his cheek. She might have been saying goodbye to him.

"Ready?" Samuels asked when he opened the door. His sharp glance made a rapid assessment of Gillian, cataloguing her potential weaknesses and strengths. When she nodded, he went on crisply. "There's nothing to worry about. I'll be in there and several orderlies are within calling distance should she need to be quickly subdued."

"You act as if you believe that Bobby could really hurt someone," Gillian said and preceded him to the next room without waiting for a response.

The others watched, waiting for a reaction from Roberta when the door opened and her sister entered. There was none. The big square body continued to rock.

Gillian hesitated, her hand on the door. "Bobby," she said clearly. Her tone was quiet, but matter-of-fact, the way a parent might speak to a recalcitrant child. Receiving no response, the young woman took one of the three chairs and placed it in front of her sister, directly in her line of vision. She sat down. Roberta gazed through her to the spot on the wall. Gillian looked towards the psychiatrist, who had pulled his chair to one side, out of Roberta's vision. "What should I - "

"Talk about yourself. She can hear you."

Gillian fingered the material of her dress. She dragged her eyes up to her sister's face.

"I've come up from London to see you, Bobby," she began. Her voice quavered, but as she proceeded, it gathered strength. "That's where I live now. With my husband. I was married last November." She looked at Samuels, who nodded encouragingly. "You're going to think it's so funny, but I married a minister. It's hard to believe that a girl with such a strong Catholic background would marry a minister, isn't it? What would Papa ever say if he knew?"

The plain face offered neither acknowledgment nor interest. Gillian might have been speaking to the wall. She licked her dry lips and stumbled on. "We have a flat in Islington. It's not a very large flat, but you'd like it. Remember how I loved plants? Well, I've lots in the flat because the kitchen window gets just the right kind of sun. Remember how I could never get plants to grow in the farmhouse? It was too dark."

The rocking continued. The chair on which Roberta sat groaned with her weight.

"I have a job, as well. I work at a place called Testament House. You know that place, don't you? It's where runaways go to live sometimes. I do all sorts of work there, but I like counselling the kids the best. They say I'm easy to talk to." She paused. "Bobby, won't you talk to me?"

The girl's breathing sounded drugged, her heavy head hung to one side. She might have been asleep.

"I like London. I never thought I would, but I do. I expect it's because that's where my dreams are. I...I'd like to have a baby. That's one of my dreams. And I'd...I think I'd like to write a book. There are all sorts of stories inside me, and I want to write them down. Like the Brontes. Remember how we read the Brontes? They had dreams as well, didn't they? I think it's important to have dreams."

"It's not going to work," Jonah Clarence said brusquely. The moment his wife had left the room, he had seen the trap, had understood that her entry into her sister's presence was a return to a past in which he had played no part, from which he could not save her. "How long does she have to stay in there?"

"As long as she wants." Lynley's voice was cool. "It's in Gillian's hands."

"But anything can happen. Doesn't she understand that?" Jonah wanted to jump up, fling open the door, and drag his wife away. It was as if her mere presence in the room - trapped with the horrible, whale-like creature that was her sister - were enough to contaminate and destroy her forever. "

Nell! " he said fiercely.

"I want to talk to you about the night I left, Bobby," Gillian went on, her