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CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

My back was damp. The left side of my forehead stung like I’d been nuzzling nettles, and a searing, splintering ache pounded through my skull. My brain was mostly white noise.

Slowly, timidly, I half opened my eyes. Intense halogen light speared through my head, elevating the pain from a staccato pulse to a constant, high-pitched whine. I took a moment to steady my breathing before trying again.

When I eventually managed to focus, it was on a diamond pattern in heavy steel mesh, bold against a background of dull gray concrete. I stared for some time, tracing the pattern with lazy eyes; after a while I could begin to turn my head, follow any one of a seemingly infinite number of paths across my field of vision. The one I chose wound tortuously floorward until my burning forehead touched sticky wet rubber but, curiously, I couldn’t see where it led. There was a packet of aspirin in front of my face.

I figured I was in some degree of trouble; the warm wetness beneath me ran from my head to halfway down my back, and out across my shoulders. I felt distinctly faint, and I surmised from the crackling sensation that my forehead had been breached, though to what extent I was almost afraid to find out.

Tentatively, I raised my hand to my head and traced the wound with my fingertips. The skin was rough and tacky, the lump the size of a golf ball, but it felt more or less intact. On inspection, my fingers were spotted rather than soaked with blood. I ran both hands through my hair, checking for further signs of injury. No one spot was any more tender than the next.

There seemed to be no damage south of my neck. Fingers and toes wiggled freely; arms and legs bent and swiveled at my command. My breathing was free and easy, there was no pain in my torso, and I could feel my hands patting and prodding. I slipped them into the wet patch beneath my back, drew them out and held them before my eyes. The liquid was clear and odorless, very much like water. Whatever I’d done to myself, it didn’t appear to be life-threatening.

Relieved, I closed my eyes against the uncomfortably bright lights, focusing on nothing but the deep red sunset that was the inside of my eyelids. I relaxed my body, let my head loll and the pain ebb away to a low hum, concentrated in an almost tangible ball at the back of my brain. I tuned out the static and welcomed back a slow train of rational thought and desirous images and random memories. I grasped at snippets of reason and information and spatial awareness, a rapidly expanding multidimensional jigsaw puzzle, the solution to which I relied upon to drive my next move. I felt a surge of anxiety as I realized I was trying too hard, so intent on finding all the pieces that I couldn’t properly see the ones I had. The pain exploded back out to the far reaches of my skull. I pulled myself back, took a long, deep breath, ejected the questions from my mind to make room for an answer.

And as I did so, everything fell into place.

The alarm rose in me so fast I thought it might spew from my mouth. I hurled myself against the cage door, and it deflected me with barely a rattle, bouncing me straight back down to the mat. I rolled to my feet and flew at it again, with the same result. Satisfied that the door was performing as intended, I quit while I still had my ribs. A cage is, after all, designed for the sole purpose of keeping things in.

I took instead to pacing frantically back and forth, struggling to ignore the blurred vision and screeching headache and concentrate on finding a way out. Of course, I knew that there wasn’t one, and the result was merely an incoherent, profane babble. The plan was soon abandoned in favor of simple blind panic.

Having no idea how long I’d been unconscious, it was impossible to guess at what might be happening above my head. If she’d stuck around and called the police, they’d have been here and hauled me out inside twenty minutes. If she’d walked home and called them, it could be a couple of hours. If she’d taken my car and intended to simply leave me here, I guessed I’d know in six. The reality, though, was that I could have been out for two minutes or two days and I’d be none the wiser. Her clothes were gone, but they were already kept in bags. The chrysanthemums, though crumpled, were still alive—but then they’d lain in a puddle of water.

I picked up the empty vase and, though overtaken by the urge to violently throw it at the wall, I refilled it instead. I scooped up the flattened flowers and dropped them carefully inside; stood them on the back of the sink. I felt a little calmer.

With my temper settled, I attended to the pain. The aspirin packet was nearly full, and I swallowed a handful with a glass of water. I lay on Erica’s bed to help it along; placed her pillow over my face and closed my eyes. At some point, I passed out.

Rehearsing the arrival of the police was a dead end. “Thank God you’re here” wasn’t going to cut it, given that I was imprisoned in a cell of my own devising, in a hidden basement underneath my own garage. And unless they sent a pair of unarmed beat bobbies, I wasn’t going to be fighting my way out. I imagined I’d feign unconsciousness and take my chances jumping from the ambulance. It wasn’t great, but it was better than “Damn, you got me.”

And where the hell were they, anyway? She could have crawled home on her hands and knees and they should still have been here by now. It’d be dark outside, and cold. I hoped she’d closed the windows.

I toyed with the idea of plugging in the microwave; the clock would be reset to midnight, just as it was when I brought it down here, but I could at least monitor the passing of time. It was, however, badly damaged at the business end, and the last thing I needed was a fire.

Jesus, what if Rachel was trying to call? How long would it be before she started to worry? Who would she tell when she did? Would they come out here looking for me? And if they did, would they even find me?

And what if she didn’t start to worry? What if she was waiting for
me
to call
her
? What if she believed that she’d scared me away, that I simply wasn’t returning her calls? What if she reacted the wrong way? Would I ever know? And what would be worse—Rachel thinking I ran out on her, or Rachel finding out about this?

What if nobody knew I was missing? Would Annie ever notice? What if the bills went unpaid and the lights went out? What if I didn’t turn up to paint the Guide hut? Would
they
come looking? Is that their job? I don’t even know what fucking Girl Guides do.

The fridge was empty. No wonder she’d been pissed off. I’d already been hungry, but knowing this made me ravenous. My stomach was growling to wake the dead. The empty churning combined with the headache, the dizziness and the nausea made quite a concoction, and when added to the anxiety of incarceration it became almost unbearable. I curled up in a ball on the bed and awaited the onset of dry retching. Sometime later, I slept.

The camera was bothering me. It stared down defiantly from its perch, ten feet from the end of my nose. I knew where the cable went, and I knew that no one was sitting on my sofa staring at the television. Nobody was watching me. Nobody but the camera. I turned my back, stood stock-still. I’d have to watch my words. Don’t want them to think they’ve won.

* * *

“Don’t know when...I’ve been so blue...Don’t know what’s... No, okay, I know, but I never said I could sing, did I? If you don’t like it, don’t listen. I’m talking to myself, aren’t I? Am I saying this out loud? God, this had better be a dream. I haven’t had a cup of tea in...fucking
days
. You lock me down here with nothing but an empty glass and you expect me to—what, exactly? Freak out? How would you like it? You’re not even listening, are you? No, I didn’t think so. Typical woman. Me me me me me. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Shut up. Fuck off.”

“Did you just tell me to fuck off?”

“Don’t know when...I’ve been so blue-oo-oo-hooooo... Oh, for fuck’s sake, man, either sing the whole thing or sing something else, but don’t just repeat the same two fucking lines over and over and over and over and over...”

“Kisses for me... Save all your kisses for m—fuck.”

* * *

I paced to the brink of collapse, my mind out of focus, my awareness of my surroundings ever dwindling. When I finally fell asleep, it was midstride; I barely noticed hitting the floor.

I woke to see Rachel crouched over me, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, tears streaming down her face. Her words were muffled, indecipherable. I spoke to her, but I couldn’t hear my voice, and I didn’t know what I’d said. Her head bowed and she began to fall; I sat up to catch her, held her head in my arms but she was heavy and lifeless, a rag doll. I shook her, fearfully called her name again and again but it was too late; she was gone. My heart dropped out of my chest, and I struggled for breath as I held her to me, blood from an absent wound pooling in my lap. And then I caught a glimmer of movement from across the room, and I looked up into sparkling blue-green eyes filled with happiness and awe and profound overpowering relief, and for a moment my pain subsided. I gasped in wonder and giggled like a child. Until I realized that the eyes were Erica’s.

I woke up bolt upright, a scream halfway out of my mouth. My head was pounding, and my stomach was spinning, and I dragged myself to the toilet in time to be violently sick.

I sucked down a handful of aspirin, swilled it around with a dozen glasses of water. I lay sprawled on my back with my eyes screwed shut, willing away the pain, Rachel’s last breath playing on a loop behind my eyelids for endless, miserable hours. Or maybe they were minutes.

When the pain became bearable, I propped myself against the side of the cage and forced the pictures from my mind; stared at the bed and the toilet and the broken microwave and just waited. For exactly what, I neither knew nor cared.

The hunger soon gave way to a greater longing, a longing for fresh air and daylight; grass and trees and birdsong. A shower, a toothbrush and a change of clothes. A chair and a window and a soothing voice.

With longing came self-pity, and with self-pity came an acute awareness of the gravity of my situation. With that awareness came the embarrassment and shame of my own stupidity. And hot on their heels was anger.

It hit me like a bullet, exploding through my chest and sending white-hot splinters up and down my spine. I scrabbled to my feet, snatched up the microwave from the mat and launched it furiously against the wall. It dismantled itself impressively, a cacophony of shrieking metal signaling, if only to me, my renewed enthusiasm for finding a way out of this hole. I strode to the door, shards of glass and plastic crinkling underfoot and, returning the camera’s soulless stare, I made my intentions known.

“Erica,” I said, “I’m going to kill you.”

Awaking later from a pain-induced sleep, and having finished off the box of aspirin, I found my sustained anger complemented by a startling clarity of thought. The white noise was gone, and with it the underlying panic; I saw everything in crisp relief and pin-sharp color, and for the first time I was able to fully take stock of my circumstances.

I’d been abandoned in a steel cage in a concrete basement under twelve feet of soil. The cage was designed and built to be impenetrable without cutting equipment or perhaps a mechanical digger, neither of which were available.

I had a mains water supply, at least until my unpaid bills began to cause offence, but no food. Unless by some miracle I was discovered, this would inevitably lead to my demise. However, should starving to death prove too much of a drag, I had the choice of a knotable curtain or a live electric current to help me along. A forcible exit, then, was out in favor of an untimely and undignified death.

There did, however, appear to be a third option; whether newly presented or newly discovered I couldn’t say for sure. As much as it galled me, the more I stared at the cage door, the more I had to admit that it wasn’t padlocked. And the greater my acceptance of this fact, the clearer it became that I ought to try the bolt.

Needless to say, the door wasn’t locked.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

I held my breath as I crouched stone-still in the darkness, listening for the faintest sign of life outside the cupboard. Hearing none, I cracked open the wooden door a thumb’s width and hunkered down to squint through the gap. Nothing. Silent and dark and a dry sixty degrees.

I flung the door wide and stumbled out into the garage. The van was just as I’d left it; clean, locked, alarm warning light flashing. As far as I could tell, everything else was in its place; lawnmower, barbecue, patio set, toolbox, garden fork... Garden fork. Better than nothing. I swept it into my arms from where it stood against the wall; cobwebs stretched and snapped and draped themselves over my fingers.

Armed, I set about finalizing my escape. I reached above me and pulled the emergency release for the electric door, popping the latch on the motor rail. After a preparatory deep breath, I threw the door up over my head, adrenaline coursing, fork poised in readiness for whatever might loom out of the darkness.

Whatever I was expecting, I was way off. Unfiltered sunshine blasted into my unsuitably wide eyes, painfully blinding me and knocking me off balance. I staggered out onto the driveway, all too aware that the swiftly advancing garden tool would be a red rag to any waiting marksmen. However, between swiping the sun out of my eyes with my free hand and steeling myself for the hail of bullets, I somehow forgot to drop it. Miraculously, I was still standing when I managed to squint between my fingers and take in what lay before me.

The driveway was empty but for the Interceptor. The house lay still, ground-floor windows open, front door closed, a lone pigeon perched quietly on the roof. And behind me nothing but trees, their branches nodding lazily in the gentle breeze, bark rustling to the rhythm of tiny squirrel claws. There was nobody out here but me.

The car didn’t seem to have moved; the keys were still in the ignition, the driver’s-side window wound down. The hood was cold. If she’d gone, it was on foot, and if she hadn’t, she was here alone. I was starting to suspect the latter, and it made me uneasy. An ambush is an ambush, no matter how many hands it’s laid by. And she’d already felled me once.

The possibilities for booby-trapping the house, and the scope for bluff and double bluff, were endless. Since she would surely have realized that I’d be expecting a trap, I was optimistic that she wouldn’t have bothered with one. On the other hand, if she’d anticipated my line of reasoning and my intention to just walk in through the door, I’d be a sitting duck for a twelve-gauge and a ball of string.

By the time I had my hand on the door handle, the issue had become one of trajectory. If she’d rigged a makeshift pulley, with the door ultimately tied to a trigger across the hall, and if she’d expected me to expect it, would the gun be aimed at the door or off to one side? And in the case of the latter, which side?

After much deliberation, and shamefully late in the game, it occurred to me that the simplest option available to Erica would have been to leave me locked in the cage, and that the booby trap was in fact a figment of my concussed imagination. Unless, of course, that was what she wanted me to think.

“Fuck it.” I twisted the handle and gave the door a gentle push, let it swing slowly open to reveal a quiet, empty hallway. Wielding the fork like a bayonet, I slipped inside, pausing to listen after every tentative step. Nothing to hear but the ticking clock in the kitchen and the big bass thrum of my pulse.

I edged toward the living room with one eye on the stairs, tingling in anticipation of the slightest movement. I could see before I reached the doorway that the room was empty and unspoiled. My books were still on their shelves, the cushions still on the sofa; the fruit bowl was full, dead-center of the coffee table. Good.

The kitchen, on the other hand, conflicted me. Whilst there was no sound from within, the back of my neck told me a different story and as I neared the door, I felt urged to back away. I stood entirely still, held my breath, strained my ears until they rang in my head. I stared at the reflections on the windows, the chrome toaster, the oven door. Nothing moved. I relaxed, told myself I was needlessly paranoid. And then I walked on in and proved myself wrong.

“You took your time,” she said. “Sit down, I’ve made you a cup of tea.” Erica sat at the breakfast table, draped in low-cut chocolate satin and an arrestingly pleasant smile. Before her, steaming tea and buttered toast, miniature jams and Lyles maple syrup, a stack of American pancakes. A mobile phone I recognized as my own. And, most troublingly, a loaded .38 revolver—also mine.

My desire to skewer her with the garden fork grew in direct proportion with the dawning of its impossibility. She and I both knew that I’d never get within striking distance, but I tightened my grip on it nonetheless, finding some small comfort in the gesture of intent.

She laughed. Not her usual reflective, sad-eyed half sigh but the kind of ticklish giggle one might afford a newly trained puppy as it excitedly presents its paw. “Come on,” she said, “don’t be silly.” She nodded toward her opposite chair as she spread blackcurrant jam onto a slice of toast. “Sit down and have some breakfast. I’ll be sick if I eat all this.”

“I’m not interested in breakfast,” I said. It was an obvious lie; the grumbling from my stomach all but shouted me down as the thick smell of fried batter, until now having somehow eluded me, surged through my nostrils and set my mouth watering. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to build up some energy before I skinned her alive, however halfhearted my intention to do so; nevertheless, for some stubborn reason, I stood my ground.

“It’s a beautiful day.” She smiled between bites. “We should get out and do something. Go to the park maybe, or the seaside. I haven’t been to the seaside in years. We used to go to Cart Gap when I was a little girl. Me and Mum and Dad and my friend Marie. I always used to end up getting upset because my dad paid her more attention than me. He was always asking her if she wanted an ice cream, and if
she
wanted one then he’d ask me if I wanted one, too, and then he’d take her off to the ice cream van with him and tell me to stay and keep Mum company. Funny, I never really thought there was anything suspect about it until just now. I wondered why she stopped coming over to play.” She laughed girlishly through a mouthful of toast. “Where the hell is Cart Gap, anyway?”

I was starting to feel self-conscious, standing here
en garde
in the middle of the kitchen while she airily daydreamed all over the table. “That’s a lovely story,” I fumed, “but the only place you’re going today is back to your room.”

The smile lingered as she dropped a new slice of toast onto her plate and dipped her knife into the jam. She spread it in one slow, careful swipe. “Oh, shush,” she said. “Don’t be such a bloody grouch.”

A what? “A grouch?”

“Yes, a grouch. I’ve made you pancakes, and you’re just standing there with a sour face, pointing your tool at me. You know, I don’t think laminate flooring needs to be turned. You’re not likely to grow anything, anyway.”

My response didn’t do me any favors. “It’s fucking oak,” I snapped, which just made her laugh so hard that she had to put her knife down.

“Christ—” she giggled “—you really are angry, aren’t you?”

Yes, I was. I slammed the fork into the floor, left it springing back and forth as I advanced on her. “Angry?” I roared. “Are you out of your mind? You hit me over the head with an oven and locked me in a cage for a week, you psychotic little shit!”

Her mood changed in a heartbeat and she was on her feet, the revolver in her hand and aimed directly between my eyes before I’d even reached the table.

As unsure as I was that Erica had the nerve to pull the trigger, I wasn’t going to take any chances. She had, after all, had the nerve to brain me with a microwave, and I’d already been humiliated so comprehensively that face-saving was now viable in only the most literal sense. As such, I stopped in my tracks.

“You’re damn right I did,” she snarled. “You fucking deserved it, and not only that, you needed it, too.”

“I did what?” I suspected that, if challenged, she could back up her first assertion, but, “I needed it? What, like a hole in the head? I mean, sure, I wasn’t concussed before, but then I haven’t got a pet pig, either, and I’m pretty sure I don’t nee—”

“You’ve been asking for it for fucking weeks. You’ve been bumbling around with your head up your arse, not knowing what day it was and generally being a massive useless twat and, more to the point, neglecting your responsibilities, i.e. me. You’re a shambles and a liability, and I’m not going to sit down there on my own and starve to death while you’re off gallivanting around, doing God only knows what with God only knows who without so much as bothering to remember that I exist, you stupid, selfish, useless bastard. And you know what else? You weren’t down there a week, it was forty-three hours. You couldn’t even make it two days, for Christ’s sake. Do you know how long
I’ve
been down there? Three fucking months, that’s how long. Are you starting to get the picture yet? You want to ask me how fucking angry
I
am? No, I didn’t think so. I suggest you sit the fuck down, right now, and eat your fucking pancakes.”

Assured of her willingness to shoot me in the head, bereft of what might be deemed an adequate response and, strangely, more than a little aroused, I did as I was told.

After forty-three hours, which feels closer to forty-three days when incarcerated with only a brain injury for company, pancakes and maple syrup and hot, sweet tea make for an almost religious experience. After ten minutes under Erica’s watchful gaze, however, I was ready to crawl out of my skin. She stared at me unblinkingly, fingers folded together under her chin, eyes flickering between homicidal and hysterical. She didn’t speak, even after I’d pushed away my empty plate, and for the first time in my life the silence made me uneasy. Almost as uneasy, in fact, as my next thought. “Erica,” I said. “This may seem like an obvious question, but why are you still here? Why didn’t you just...go home?”

She smiled thinly, turned her eyes to the table, chewed on her bottom lip as she considered her answer. “I nearly did,” she said finally. “But then I couldn’t.”

“What does that mean? There’s a car in the driveway. The keys are in it...”

“I know, and I threw all of my stuff in it and drove it right to my house, but...” Her eyes fell to her hands, now playing idly with the revolver on the tabletop. “It’s my stepdad,” she muttered. “She’s moved him back in. I could see him through the front window, feet up on the table, reading the
Daily Mail
. That piece of shit beat the hell out of my mum and my sister and me for three years before we finally got rid of him, and I’ve been away for three months, and if you think the hours feel like days in that cellar, well trust me, the months feel like decades, and when I come out of there after
three months
I find everything back to the way it was, with that psycho fuckbag living in my house and putting his hands on my family, and I’m just not ready to deal with it yet.” She pushed the revolver to one side, sat back in her chair with a heavy sigh. After a moment’s silence, she looked me sadly in the eye. “I thought of all those cheesy lines about where the heart is and where you lay your hat and all that crap and, well, my life just isn’t the same as it was three months ago, is it? I’m not the same person anymore.”

“So, what, you hit me over the head to teach me a lesson and then just trot off back to your room? What the hell kind of a plan is that?” And why the hell am I pointing this out to her?

“Oh, I’ve got a plan, all right.” She nodded. “I’ll be going home, sooner rather than later, but not before you’ve taught me how to kill that fucking monster and get away with it, because God knows I didn’t do a good enough job last time. And I’ll tell you now, in the meantime, there are going to be a few changes, not least of which is that my room is now at the top of the stairs and to the right. You’re going to fit a lock, to the
inside
, and after that you’re not going to come in unless I say it’s okay. You’re going to stop treating me like a pet and show me some fucking respect. You’re going to buy fresh meat and proper vegetables, and you’re going to hand them straight over to me because, quite honestly, your cooking is sketchy as fuck. And most of all, you’re going to get rid of this Rachel woman because she’s fucking with your head.”

I felt my shoulders rise, tasted bile in my throat. “What do you know about Rachel?”

“Know? Nothing at all.” She smirked. “Except that she quite obviously doesn’t know the first thing about you, and she’s turning you into Bambi. Oh...” She sat up and slid my phone to me across the table. “And
she
wanted to go to the beach today, too.”

I snatched up the mobile, but could only stare cluelessly at a list of truncated text messages.

“You told her you were away today,” she continued. “But apparently she’s got the whole week off and, well, from the color of the gas bill, it doesn’t look like you were planning to go to work, either, so you told her to swing by tomorrow.”

“If you said anything to her—”

“You’ll what? Kill me?”

It would have been easy to say it, but in truth I didn’t know what the hell I’d do. Words failed me.

“You know why I let you out this morning?” she said.

“What?”

“I let you out because you looked up at me last night, and there was a whole new you in there. I could see it in your eyes, the same look you had the first time I woke up and saw you there with a carving knife in your hand. I thought you were going to cut me open and—I don’t know—fuck my liver or something. It was intense. And you stood there last night, and I honestly thought you were going to just reach out of the TV and tear me apart with your bare hands. And I thought ‘that’s it, he’s fucking back. It’s gonna be okay.’ But I was wrong, wasn’t I? You’re not okay. It’s going to take more than a concussion to fix you.” She dipped her head and looked up at me with amused puppy eyes. “Not to worry.” She smiled. “I’ll get rid of her for you.”