The Visitor: A Wild Cards Story

By Mark Lawrence

The first Visitor story - this appeared initially in George RR Martin's Wild Cards series, specifically book #26, Knaves Over Queens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Lawrence
• Release date: Oct 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201589059

Mark Lawrence

Mark Lawrence is the internationally bestselling author of the Broken Empire trilogy that starts with Prince of Thorns.

Book preview

The Visitor

Mark Lawrence

Cambridge, 2017

‘I’d rather be dead than like that.’

The new girl was very pretty, Angela thought. She had long blonde hair and painted nails. Sometimes Betty would do Angela’s nails and let her choose the colour. On those days she felt happy whatever happened, even if nobody noticed and nobody but Betty commented.

‘If I ever get like that, shoot me.’ The new girl was called Jenny and she chewed gum as she spoke. She didn’t seem very happy to be at the home. She didn’t like her uniform or the smell of the place or touching the residents. Angela knew all this because Jenny spoke as if she weren’t there, complaining about one thing then the next. Angela wondered if maybe Jenny wanted to be in the movies instead. She looked as if she might have come from one with her highlights and make-up. She might have stepped into Carstons from another world where everything was better and more alive.

When Jenny left the room to fetch a feeding tube for Angela, Sarah Regan, who stayed to change Angela’s pad, told her that the new girl was all silicone and hair extensions and only here because the job centre had sanctioned her benefits. Angela didn’t really know what any of that meant but she was very interested in Jenny and so she made an effort to remember. Silicone, extensions, sanctioned. It amazed her to think that at nineteen the new girl was just two years older than she was. She looked like a princess and Angela wanted to know everything about her. Maybe Jenny would even be her friend like Betty was. Betty was very nice but also very old. Sarah Regan said Betty was a bag of bones and should have retired ten years ago. Angela loved Betty, more than her own mother if she was honest, which she tried to be, but she would very much like to have a friend of her own age.

‘There, all done,’ said Sarah. ‘All changed.’

Angela would have said thank you but talking, like moving her limbs or being able to eat, was a skill that had always escaped her. Her mother said that she had been broken before she was born and that it was all part of God’s plan but that none of us were clever enough to understand the plan and so often it looked like cruelty even though it was kindness. She would sit quietly after she said things like that and stare at her hands and her hands would be in fists with white knuckles. Angela preferred chatty people. When your side of the conversation is limited to smiles, eye pointing, and opening your mouth for ‘yes’ it’s much better if the other person can talk the hind legs off a donkey, like Betty could.

‘Nice dry pad,’ Sarah said. Angela liked that she called them pads. Sarah wasn’t always kind but she talked to Angela as if she understood, and that was worth more than kindness alone. She was a solid woman in her forties with a red slab of a face, big flabby arms and a sharp tongue, but she said that she called a spade a spade, and since she called a pad a pad Angela was prepared to believe her about spades. Some of the other staff called pads ‘nappies’ however old you were, as if you were a baby still, and Angela didn’t like that.

Jenny returned with the feeding tube and Sarah attached it to the plastic button in Angela’s belly.

‘Urgh, that’s so weird.’ Jenny made the disgusted face she had made so often since arriving earlier in the week.

‘The milk goes straight into her stomach,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s all she has, special formula milk and water.’ She gave Angela an unsmiling look. ‘When you was little we used to feed you mush. Awful chore it was. Doctors told us to stop ’cos of the choking. Half of it was ending up in your lungs, Angie.’

Angela remembered the taste. They only ever gave her three things: apple puree, creamed potato, and vanilla yoghurt. She had loved them all. She wanted to have them again but nobody had ever asked her opinion on the matter and it had been two years since she last had a spoonful – apple, it was. Two years since she tasted something, four years since her mother had brought her to the care home and said she might be staying a while.

‘We always let Angie lie for a while before hoisting her

Reviews for The Visitor

[Mrs Regis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent short read. Intriguing concept and development of characters.