The Sanatorium (Detective Elin Warner, #1)

by Sarah Pearse

For her, even easy, everyday things become something to be agonized over until they swell out of all proportion.

‘There’s something about the building, the history, it gets inside your head.’

Seeing yourself like that – shadowy, distorted – it’s like looking into the darkest parts of your soul.

Elin soon got the sense he didn’t see her the way she had always seen herself. The effect was almost dizzying; it made her want to live up to what he saw in her, or what he thought he saw.

Only people with influence, money, possess that kind of inbuilt belief that they have the right to take up so much space.

Her body is reacting to something here, something living, breathing, something woven into the DNA of the building, as much a part of it as its walls and floors.

How do you go about unpicking someone from your life when they’re the thread tying every part of you together?

The curation – the person they’re pretending to be – can say a lot: an insight into someone’s desires, their insecurities.

This is revealing: the complete lack of flaws, or ability to show herself as living anything other than a perfect life, indicates an insecurity.

She can almost understand it, she thinks, wanting to step out into this nothingness. A perfect, endless oblivion.

Grief … it’s like a series of bombs exploding, one after another. Every hour, a new detonation. Shock after shock after shock.