Hello everyone and welcome to my stop on
The Night Visitor blog tour! Today I have an extract of the prologue to share with you to give a taste of what you can expect from this brilliant book. Enjoy!
Prologue
Olivia
The Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London
Olivia huddled behind Arteries, Heart and Veins. Through the
gaps between the tall specimen jars in the cabinet she could see
the faces on the ground floor, looking up at Joy on the balcony.
It was such a long way down.
The room was packed: all two hundred guests must have
come. She couldn’t see their faces properly because the jars of
hardened arteries and diseased heart tissue were acting as a
screen and she didn’t want to look as if she was peering through
them. She watched Joy’s animated profile instead. Joy was saying
very kind things. Olivia felt sick.
‘Straight in at number two! That’s what we consider a triumph!’
Joy’s scarlet and gold earrings caught the light as she
raised her champagne flute and cried, ‘A bestseller in its very
first week. So, how about it? Shall we take it to number one?’
A cheer rang out through the museum; raucous voices lifted,
echoed off the high ceilings and shivered through the glass display
cabinets and medical oddities – faces torn by bullets and
bombs, dissected limbs, diseased and malformed organs suspended
in cloudy fluid. Bones, so gigantic that they must surely
be from whales or mammoths, were displayed between the
ground floor and this, the mezzanine. Under the clever, bleached
lights they looked so curved and smooth-lined
that they seemed more like sculptures than fragments of anatomy.
‘In case you missed it, there’s a table by the entrance where
you can get the book for Olivia to sign,’ Joy said. ‘But that’s enough
of a sales pitch from me. Let me hand you over to the woman of
the hour, Britain’s favourite history professor, Olivia Sweetman!’
There was nowhere to put her glass so she held on to it as she
stepped forwards. Joy squeezed her arm and moved out of the
way. Olivia walked up to the Perspex-covered railings and looked
down.
It really was too high – ridiculously so. What were the publicists
thinking, putting her all the way up here for the speech?
She would have been better off standing on the stairs or even on
the ground floor with the guests gathered round her. But it was
too late, all their faces were turned up, flushed with champagne
and the energy of the night and this spectacle – her – standing
alone in a yellow dress, glowing and supposedly triumphant.
They were all waiting for her to speak.
She took a deep breath. She longed to unfurl wings and soar
off this edge, over their heads and away to somewhere remote
and hidden where none of them would ever find her, but she
forced herself to speak. ‘Thank you so much, Joy, what a kind
introduction. And thank you, all of you, for coming tonight to
celebrate the launch of my book.’ Her voice came out clear and
calm even though the glass in her hand was trembling. She
rested that on the barrier too. She was used to public speaking,
to facing a crowd and being listened to, but it was different to
be looking down at friends, family, colleagues, journalists, TV
people, bloggers and critics with this awful, sickening secret
pressing in her gut like a tumour.
‘I hope you can all hear me? It’s an awfully long way down
and as some of you will know I’m not that good with heights.’
There was a ripple of laughter, voices called up in encouragement.
‘We’ll catch you!’ someone – a man – yelled from the
back. She wondered if the people directly below her could see up
her full-skirted dress. She crossed her legs.
‘OK! Well, it’s amazing to be here with you tonight in this
wonderful Hunterian Museum to celebrate the launch of Annabel.’
She noticed David standing at the front. His face was a mask
of neutrality. Jess was at his side, her bobbed hair held back by a
hairband. She was holding his hand. There was no sign of the
boys. Olivia smiled directly down at her daughter but Jess didn’t
react; perhaps she was more interested in the grisly objects in
the cabinets that framed the balcony.
‘It seemed fitting to have the launch at the Royal College of
Surgeons.’ She gestured at the cabinets. ‘Isn’t this an extraordinary
museum?’ She knew she was stalling, unable to bring herself
to talk about the book. She scanned the crowd for Dom and Paul
but she couldn’t see either of them. She had to control this sick
panic inside her – she had to sound relaxed. She’d prepared the
speech about Annabel and they were all expecting it. She could,
she would, deliver it.
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