Dying for Christmas (14 page)

He placed the glass of pinky-beige liquid in front of me. I was so hungry, I ignored the stringy bits of egg yolk floating on the top and the unmixed lumps of butter and drank the whole glass down in one, gulping it back without stopping to think.

Dominic eyed me with undisguised disgust.

For a few seconds I stared brazenly back, emboldened by the sudden rush of pure joy that came from being momentarily full. Then I felt a now familiar rumbling in my stomach and rushed to the bathroom. Dominic’s chuckles echoed around the flat.

For once he didn’t follow me. As I knelt on the tiled floor, my eyes scanned the room. Soap, towel, shampoo. I checked behind the toilet for bleach that I could throw into his eyes when he wasn’t prepared.

Nothing.

What kind of man doesn’t have bleach behind his toilet?

Still Dominic didn’t appear.

Alarm bells should have been ringing, but there were a lot of other noises in my head. Maybe I just couldn’t make them out.

In the inner hallway, I hesitated. The bedroom door was ajar, and through there was the ensuite bathroom with another unexplored cupboard. But it was the locked room that held me enthralled. What if I turned the handle and, just for once, it opened? What if I walked in, locked the door behind me, and found that portal back to the life I’d become convinced lay inside? As soon as the thought crossed my mind it was instantly real. In my head I saw myself crossing the threshold and right on to the outside where the blue winter sky was shot through with the white imprint of passing aeroplanes and the breeze blowing off the river whipped your hair back in your face and froze the breath in your mouth.

I crossed the hall. I wrapped my hand around the cool, metal orb of the doorknob. Nothing.

‘Oh Jessica, you didn’t really think, did you …?’

His disembodied voice punched me out of my trance.

‘Leave the handle alone, sweetheart. It really is too pitiful to watch.’

I looked around at the empty hallway. And only then did I get it – the tiny red light up in the corner that I’d always assumed to be part of some intricate alarm system. It was a camera. So too the ones in the bedroom and bathroom.

I walked slowly back around the partition wall of the kitchen.

‘Where are the screens?’

He frowned. ‘Screens?’

‘The ones you’ve been watching me on? Where are they?’

‘Oh those. Why they’re right here, of course.’ He withdrew from his back pocket a Smartphone in a black leather case. ‘Don’t worry, Jessica, it’s not connected to a network. I wouldn’t want anything to distract us from one another. I just use some of the apps, like Nannycam. It’s supposed to be for anxious parents who want to check up on their kids while they’re away, or over-attached dog owners. But it suits my purposes.’

I hoisted myself back up on to the chrome stool at the breakfast bar and gazed down dully at my hands in my lap.

The incident with the webcam seemed to have cheered Dominic up. He hummed as he cleared away in the kitchen. I was noticing that he responded to me being caught on the back foot. He needed to feel he was the one in charge.

Travis is a bit like that in some ways. If you want him to do something, you have to make him believe the decision is his. The thought that Travis and Dominic might have something in common was not a comforting one.

* * *

Edward and Liz Gold looked even smaller than the last time Kim saw them, as if they’d shrunk in the wash overnight.

‘How do you mean, happy?’

Edward Gold was looking at her as if she’d used a term he was unfamiliar with.

‘I mean, does it seem to you that Jessica and Travis’ relationship is solid? Are they close as a couple?’

The Golds exchanged a glance.

‘They seem happy enough,’ Edward said slowly.

‘But Jessica has never really confided in us about things like that,’ Liz said. ‘She’s a private person. She always has been.’

Kim nodded.
Private
seemed to be everyone’s favourite word when it came to Jessica. What Kim wanted to know was where the line was between private and secretive.

‘So there’s a chance things could have been going wrong in the relationship and you wouldn’t have necessarily known?’ Liz frowned. She clearly didn’t like the inference that hers was the type of family where unhappiness would go unnoticed, sneaking in the back door like someone else’s cat.

‘What kind of a person is Travis, would you say?’

This time there was no hesitation.

‘Oh, he’s wonderful. We’re all very fond of him.’ Liz Gold’s wiry curls shook when she talked, as if to underline her vehemence on the subject of Travis Riley’s good qualities. ‘You must understand, Detective Harper, Jessica is a very unusual girl and there was a time we worried that she might not find anyone who … well … appreciates her quirkiness. So when she brought Travis home and he was so—’

‘Normal,’ her husband butted in.

Liz Gold didn’t look too pleased about being interrupted. ‘I wasn’t going to use exactly that word, but yes, I suppose it was a relief that she’d found someone who was nice and engaging and ambitious for the future, and who seemed to accept her for who she was.’

‘So as far as you know they weren’t arguing about anything?’

‘Arguing? No. Look, what exactly are you suggesting? Do you think Travis has something to do with Jessica’s disappearance?’

Liz Gold’s voice had risen rapidly during this speech and her husband reached out and put a reassuring hand on her arm.

‘We’re just trying to build up a picture of Jessica’s life at the moment,’ Kim said. ‘We want to make sure we don’t miss any clues.’

‘Well, I can tell you now you’re barking up the wrong tree with that one.’

‘So, Jessica is happy with him?’

Edward Gold made a strange noise through his nose. ‘Good luck in working that one out. We’ve been trying for twenty-nine years to find what makes Jessica happy.’

‘You bought her sessions with a psychotherapist?’

‘That was her mother’s idea.’

Liz looked sheepish. ‘We just wanted to make sure she was achieving her potential, that she wasn’t stressed about anything.’

‘And do you think they worked?’

The couple glanced at each other, and then away.

‘Not really,’ Liz Gold admitted. ‘If anything, she’s seemed more withdrawn. Certainly the last few months. I think it might have something to do with work.’

‘Really? Why do you say that?’

‘She’s been spending a lot of time there. Working late a lot. Weekends even. And there was that Facebook thing.’

‘I really don’t think she wants to know about that, Liz.’

Edward was clearly unhappy with the turn the conversation was taking.

Kim smiled in what she hoped was a warm way. ‘Tell me anything at all, no matter how trivial you think it is. You never know what could turn out to be important.’

‘Her brother James told us about it. Apparently someone made a spoof account for Jessica. Photoshopped her face on to a pretty hardcore image. Pornographic, you know.’ Liz Gold mouthed the word ‘pornographic’ as if Kim might be shocked. ‘It got taken down almost immediately and James says it happens all the time, but it must have upset her. She wouldn’t talk about it. Just said someone at work had been bullying her a bit but she’d sorted it out. That was months ago though.’

‘And Travis was supportive? Is supportive?’

‘I’m sure,’ said Edward.

‘They’ve had their ups and downs though,’ said his wife. ‘There was that period, wasn’t there, about a year or so ago where they seemed to be drifting apart a bit. Remember, we were all a bit worried about it? But they came through that. Travis is worried sick about her. You can see that in his face.’

Kim nodded and smiled, saying nothing.

‘Can I ask you something, Detective?’ Liz Gold’s tortured green eyes were locked on to hers. ‘Do you have children of your own?’

The pain was sharp and savage.

‘Yes, two.’

‘Then you might understand. Your children don’t always turn out quite the way you’d expected but all you can do is love them and hope they find other people to love them too.’

Chapter Twenty

Dominic had insisted that I change for dinner. I was wearing a raspberry-pink top cut low at the front and a pair of white jeans which I’d had to roll up several times.

Dinner had been yet two more plastic containers from the fridge, one with salmon en croûte and the other dauphinoise potatoes. I was starving but after almost three days without food, apart from the disastrous smoothie, my digestive system recoiled in disgust. As I shovelled in my food, I could almost feel the fat bubbling up through the pores of my skin.

Afterwards Dominic led the way to two leather armchairs by the door to the balcony in the far corner of the living space.

‘It suddenly occurred to me that you might be getting claustrophobic, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘If we sit here you’ll be able to make the most of the view. It’s so important, isn’t it, to feel part of the world?’

I looked at his face, those blue eyes, and had no idea if he was being ironic.

Tonight he seemed to have completely forgotten his bad mood of earlier. He brought me champagne and told me I was beautiful. I remembered how flattered I’d been when he said that to me in the café. Who was that woman I’d been then?

‘We are soulmates, you and I,’ he told me. ‘Conjoined twins.’

A large boat appeared on the river with coloured lights flashing and music ringing out and the sounds, getting louder and louder, of people enjoying themselves. Could it be New Year’s Eve already? I tried to work it out in my head, but already the days were slipping away from me in a blur of empty hours. How many presents had I already had? Four? And still one to come today? That would mean it was the 29th of December, my fifth full day of captivity. There was still time for me to be rescued and out of here before this year turned into the next.

The thought that I might not see the next year flitted briefly across my mind like a sweet wrapper on a breeze. I batted it away.

As the boat passed the flat, the sound of a 1980s disco hit wafted inside, accompanied by screeching laughter. Normally a party boat would be my idea of hell. Stuck in a confined space with crowds of people and thumping music, no way of escape. Once Travis and I went on an overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Santander. The vessel was the size of a small town, yet still I couldn’t fight off that fear of being trapped once it pulled away from the harbour, knowing I couldn’t get off until we docked again. ‘You need professional help,’ Travis had snapped at the end of the journey, fed up with my tight-lipped silence. But now I longed to be on that boat with every fibre of my being. I wondered if any of those party-goers might glance up here to the sixth floor. We’d be tiny figures, Dominic and I, but they might just be able to make out that we were sitting at the vast window of an opulent apartment, me in a pink top. They wouldn’t be able to see the champagne, but they might guess at it. They might even envy us, in our warehouse-conversion splendour.

How many assumptions do we make each day based on a total travesty of truth? I wonder.

And now it was that time again. The moment that had become the focal point of our day.

‘Which one is it today? Have a guess.’ Dominic was standing by the Christmas tree with an impish smile, quite as if he was a normal husband or boyfriend playing a flirtatious little game with his beloved. He was wearing black jeans and a blue long-sleeved T-shirt, the exact colour of his eyes.

‘That one.’ I indicated the largest present under the tree.

‘Greedy, Jessica. Try again.’

‘The one over there, with the sticking-out bit.’

‘Nope. Here it is. This one is today’s.’

He brought the present over, carrying it carefully as if it was made of eggshell.

Definitely a book, I thought. Even through the thick wrapping paper, I could feel its sharp corners. I was reminded of when my brothers and I would gather around the tree on Christmas morning, before our parents were up, and carefully feel all the presents, my brothers rounding on me if, during my inspection, the paper was pierced by a plastic doll’s limb or the edge of a toy car.

When the paper came off, it was revealed to be a hardback of
Bleak House
. At first I thought the title might be Dominic’s idea of a joke. Then I opened it. There was an inscription on the title page.

Congratulations, Dominic Lacey
Winner of the English Prize 1988
Silverton Park School

So Dominic was real then. I know it shouldn’t have been a surprise, yet somehow it was. All the stuff he’d told me before about his sister and his parents, I’d been able to convince myself it was fiction, a story he was spinning to freak me out. Somehow this book, with its message in blue ink with big, loopy writing made him real.

‘I bet you were a model pupil at school, Jessica.’

His tone was teasing. Gentle. The memory of yesterday’s stinging slap to my cheek and this morning’s smoothie was fading as if it had happened to someone else. I found I wanted to talk. I remembered a documentary I’d once seen where they interviewed a girl who’d been kidnapped and held for a few days in a huge iron pipe. ‘I kept talking about myself. I knew I had to show him I was human,’ she said. ‘Then it would make it harder for him to kill me.’