The Butterfly Effect (19 page)

“Leave it,” I said. “I’ll do it in the morning. It will keep until then. Nat, you are the most wonderful friend, but you have got to stop looking after me! I owe everything to you, but I have got to start standing on my own two feet, and that includes taking out my own rubbish and catching a bus into town all on my own!”

So it was settled. I half-thought he would decide to take the day off work and go with me, which would have posed a problem as I could hardly choose his present with him beside me. Also, I was actually looking forward to doing it on my own. It would be an achievement and it would prove that there really was a future for me after all.

But I never got to do it. The idea of a future was all just a dream, a mirage, and Nat was right all along. I was so excited about the prospect of my trip, and I had spent so long getting ready, that I simply couldn’t be bothered to check the footage from the camera trained on the back yard. The bin was now so full that the lid would not shut, and I felt I had to empty it before I went out, but time was getting on. It was ridiculous, the bin could have waited, but I had told Nat I would do it in the morning and it felt wrong, somehow, not to. So I took a chance. Never, not once, in the whole time we had been recording the back yard, had anyone entered it. Cats and birds were the only visitors, so what was the chance that anyone would be there on that one occasion when I didn’t check?

However small that possibility may have been, it was a risk that I should never have taken. Maybe the letters I burned would have warned me. I will never know, not unless I am able to have some kind of sensible conversation with him when he comes, but I can’t think about that now. The very thought makes me quiver, makes me want to be sick. Now I can only try to deal with the huge waves of regret that overwhelm me when I think of how stupid I have been. If I ever see Nat again I will apologise to him a hundred times and it will still never be enough to make up for all the time he wasted on me, only for me to throw it all away in the end. He will probably forgive me, knowing Nat, but God knows I don’t deserve it.

Christmas Day! It hardly seems possible that I have been here four days and nothing has happened. I can’t even begin to think what it means, and I don’t want to, as none of the options bears thinking about.

It looks as if it is a little brighter today, so I get the chair down from my barricade and stand by the window in case I can see the sun. When I was a little girl I was always disappointed if Christmas Day was sunny, but now I think about going for a walk before dinner, along the lane at the back of Mum and Dad’s house, the sun already dipping in the sky and our cheeks stinging. I don’t know where that memory came from, but it feels like a happy one, and I wonder if I have been too hard on them. Maybe it isn’t their fault they make each other unhappy, or maybe they are not unhappy at all, just in the habit of appearing that way. I resolve to look at them differently if I ever get out of here, and the first thing I do will be to take them for a belated Christmas dinner.

Then I think about Nat. It’s strange how I have only thought of him as my rescuer during these days, and how little I have worried about his own well-being. We had talked about spending a lot of Christmas Day together, and he had already planned the menu, saying he would cook for me. Now he will be on his own, but he will be beside himself with worry, I know that. I imagine him at the police station, demanding to speak to people of increasing seniority, demanding that more is done. I doubt he will cook anything, and he will spend the day pacing up and down, or trawling through the evidence in my flat, looking for the tiniest clues.

Of course there is the likelihood that Greg will turn up today, but I imagine he will be needed at home for the morning and the much-vaunted Christmas dinner, so I may have this morning to continue work on the barricade. However, I have not looked at my fingers yet, and when I do, I doubt there will be any more work today as they are red raw and swollen where I have been gripping the coin between thumb and forefinger. I am useless with my left hand, so I will have to hope the screws will hold. The thought of this, the thought of him unlocking the door then pushing, pushing, perhaps shouting angrily, or whining, please Amy, Amy my love, let me in! This makes me angry, and I almost want him to appear now, to get it over with, so I can tell him what I think of him.

Suddenly, I have grown, and I am upright and fierce, shouting at the figure cowering in the doorway.

“You little shit! You have ruined my life! You have stolen my job, my future, even my ability to grieve! If you take one step towards me I swear I will kill you. I will gouge out your ridiculous fake eyes, I will tear out your blonde-tinted hair and I will rip out your heart. Bastard! How dare you talk about a relationship with me when it was obvious I didn’t want it? Now, go and die; find some way to kill yourself quickly before I do it, because, if I do, it will be slow, and I will enjoy every minute of it!”

I’m shaking all over, and I realise I have said the last part of that aloud, shouting, as if he were really in the room, but I feel better for it. There is a bit of spirit left in me after all, and I wonder if I will be able to behave like that if he does get in. Maybe I really could scare him off, if I am angry enough, which I am, even angrier than I thought, so I jump out of bed and shout at the door.

“Come on then, stop hiding, you pathetic, cowardly idiot! Show yourself! Come and tell me you love me, come on, and I’ll show you how much I love you!”

I hammer on the door and shout some more, but then suddenly I see myself from some detached position slightly to one side, and I’m like a demented woman, like Mr Rochester’s mad wife in Jane Eyre, and I don’t want to be like that. Look what he is doing to me. There is barely a trace of the old me left. Three years ago, I was at college, I was a normal student looking forward to a career; there was barely a cloud on the horizon, but all that has gone. Now, I’m either cowering within the safety of my four walls or I’m ranting at someone who can’t even hear me.

This has to stop. I have to prepare. I have to assume that today will be the day, that Greg will want to share the most important day of his year in some way, but I know he will also need to maintain face with his parents. I’m certain they are not involved, so he won’t be able to go out somewhere until later in the day. I think of what his mother said, that Sunday, when I thought he was nothing more than an irritation. She said she would be heartbroken, or devastated, something like that, if he wasn’t there for Christmas dinner, and nobody has Christmas dinner before midday at the very earliest.

It’s still quite early now, so I make some toast and a black coffee and try to be calm. I can’t swallow very well and I keep gagging, but I manage to get about half a slice down and then I try to imagine what is happening in his house. Will he wake up really early with the excitement of it all? Will his mother have made up a nice little stocking for him? Will his father have donned a white beard and hobbled into his bedroom, carefully placing the stocking at the foot of the bed? It wouldn’t surprise me. A chocolate Santa, a mini-aftershave, a novelty pen, a tangerine? Then they will come downstairs and she will make breakfast for them all, and there will be presents under the tree. What do you buy the stalker who has everything? I know what I would like to buy him, a hand grenade with the pin removed, but then I think of his mother’s loving smile the minute before she is blown to bits alongside him and I put an end to this train of thought. It’s good to be angry, but this is going too far.

Next, I try to think of how he will get out later. That might give me an idea of how long I have, and I think of him helping to clear the table and stack the dishwasher. Oh, Greg, you are such a dutiful son! Your mother will be so proud of you when she hears what you have been doing for the past two years. I start to imagine her in court, a tissue held to her eyes, and his father, frail and grey, hollowed out with the shock, the embarrassment of it, but that isn’t helping either. I must concentrate, so I imagine the room tidy and clean, his parents sitting quietly in their shiny leather armchairs, perhaps with a glass of sherry. Is this the time? Is this when he can make some excuse to go out for a while? I remember the girlfriend, and I think yes, if she’s still on the scene, that’s what he will say. Mum, Dad, is it OK if I pop round to see Tracey, or Susan, or Arabella or whatever the poor cow is called? And he’ll have a nice little present, all wrapped up in his mother’s Christmas wrapping paper, but that present won’t be for Tracey, or Susan or Arabella, it will be for me.

I wonder what he will have bought for me. He must be running out of ideas by now, as he has sent so many gifts already. Some of them were actually quite nice and I would have liked them under different circumstances, but this one will be different. It will be symbolic, expensive. With a shudder, I imagine opening a small package to find a little velvet box inside, and when I open that, there is an engagement ring inside. A huge diamond, or maybe something antique. I try to imagine how I would deal with that, but I can’t, and my mind slips back to Richie. We had talked about marriage, and although neither of us was particularly bothered about it for the moment, we had agreed it would probably happen at some point.

“Maybe we’ll get engaged when we come back from Canada,” he’d said. “We could have another party. It would be a nice way of getting all our friends back together again.”

I pointed out that he hadn’t actually proposed to me yet, but he said I would have to wait for that.

“I’ve got a year or so to plan, haven’t I? Don’t think it’s going to be here, or in some quiet little restaurant. When I propose to you, it’s going to be in style, so you’d better say yes!”

I laughed and said this was a risky strategy on his part, but we both knew there was no chance I would say anything else. And now I wonder what he would have done, what spectacular occasion he would have devised. He never got the chance to plan it, or if he did, it never blossomed into any more than an idea, and I never got the chance to say yes. Sometimes I can’t believe how much it still hurts, even after all this time, when I remember these odd little moments, when I allow myself to think about what might have been.

So, having worked all this out, I’m quite convinced that nothing will happen yet when it does. I hear the sound of a key being inserted, hear the lock click.

I’m sitting on the bed, propped up against the pillows, dreaming a little and wondering if I should make a drink and I am utterly unprepared. How stupid! I have been anticipating, fearing, this moment for four days and now, when the time has come, it is a surprise. I should be by the door with a cup of scalding hot water or a pile of missiles to throw at him as he enters, but there’s no point thinking about that now, as I am paralysed. I shrink back, clasp my arms around my legs and focus on the door. It is partially open, but the slats are holding, and then I hear him.

“Amy! Amy! For God’s sake, what have you done? Let me in.”

He’s speaking in a kind of stage whisper, as if there are other people around, but I know there are none, or they would have heard me any number of times before. However, although I would love to scream and yell at him, alert the whole world to my plight if only they could hear me, my voice is frozen too.

The door rattles again and I see the slats begin to shift. I can hear him still, muttering to himself and swearing as he shoulders the door, each push forcing the screws out a fraction more. Suddenly, movement returns to my limbs and I roll off the bed and wriggle my body under it. It is very tight, and I’m gasping, crying, pushing with my toes, pulling with my fingertips until I am jammed underneath. I try to get nearer to the centre but I’m stuck now, a situation that would normally fill me with fear, except there is another, greater fear to override it.

I can’t actually see the door from my position, so I have to rely on my ears, and I can hear the splintering of the wood as one of the slats gives way, hear the sound of the door hitting the desk as the other one falls off. Then I can hear the desk being pushed aside, as I knew it would be, and the door closes again. I hear a click as it closes and another as the lock is turned.

“Oh, Amy, you silly girl, what have you done?” he says, and then my brain does somersaults as that wasn’t Greg’s voice, nor was it that of a stranger.

“Nat?” I whisper. I still can’t believe it. Maybe Greg has learned to sound like him.

“Yes, it’s me. Come on, out you come,” he says, kneeling down beside the bed and putting out his hand.

It takes some time to get me out, as I really am stuck under there, but when I’m free I throw myself into his arms. This is the moment I have been imagining, dreaming of, all this time, and I am laughing and crying at the same time, soaking the shoulder of his jacket with tears and probably snot too, but I don’t care about that and I doubt he does either.

We stay there like that for a while, probably less time than it seems, but then I open my eyes and I see the barricade all in bits, I see the fridge-freezer and the walls and the wardrobe and I have to get out, now, this minute, this second. I pull away and run to the door, forgetting that it is locked, rattling it, pulling it, kicking away the broken slats in frustration.

“Come on, unlock it, quick!” I cry. “Greg could be here any moment! We’ve got to get out and go to the police!”

Nat is impassive. He has not moved, but has simply turned to face me.

“You don’t need to worry about Greg,” he says.

“But how do you know?” I can hear my voice rising. I sound like a child.

“Don’t worry how I know. It’s all in hand,” he says. “You have to trust me, Amy.”

Of course I trust him, that goes without saying – he’s here, for God’s sake, he’s come to rescue me just as I dreamed he would – but I can’t understand the lack of urgency and I can’t stop worrying. Why would he want to stay here anyway? Even if Greg isn’t on his way, I still need to talk to the police, and I want to get out. I want to see daylight, I want to go home.

“Nat, please! Can we just go now anyway? I’ve been here four days and I’m going mad. It’s Christmas Day! Let’s go and tell the police, then you can cook me that dinner you promised, or we can go to a pub, a restaurant. Anything, I don’t care!”

“It’s not as simple as that,” he says, then he comes to me and takes my hand; takes me over to the bed and sits me down, one hand holding mine, the other exerting a gentle pressure on my shoulder until my knees bend. He sits down beside me, still holding my hand, and my heart is going crazy now, but not in a good way. What on earth can he mean? What possible reason can there be to stay here? Why isn’t it simple?

I haven’t spoken. I think I must be going into some kind of shock, what with the fear of it all, then the relief, then this … this what? It’s too much to comprehend, and I’m slumped there, head down, trying, really trying hard not to cry, because there shouldn’t be anything to cry about now, it should all be laughter and relief, but something isn’t right. Nat reaches up with his other hand – he hasn’t let go of mine yet – and puts a finger under my chin to tilt it up and towards him. I don’t resist, as this is Nat, Nat my hero, Nat my friend. Whatever is going on here, he will have his reasons I tell myself, it’s just that it doesn’t feel that way. It all feels wrong.

“The thing is, Amy,” he says sadly, “I can’t let you out right now. It’s still dangerous out there, and you’re a risk to yourself. I can’t stand by and let something happen to you, you must understand that, so you’re going to stay here. Don’t worry, I’ll be coming much more often. I had to go to Norwich, for work, or I would have been here ...”