Transgressions

by Sarah Dunant

  Millie took her time at the water bowl, the sound of her lick-lapping unnervingly loud in the stillness. Then, when she had had enough, she jumped up onto her mistress’s lap, stretching herself out under one hand, nuzzling into it, demanding to be caressed.

  She obliged, glad of the warmth and the company. They sat together as the night deepened. Come now, she thought. I’m ready for you now. Ready to watch from the shadows as your stretched coat hanger fails to gain you entrance and you realize too late that you’ve been busted. Then watch as you creep back across the gardens to a house where one particular window will light up and I will know which address to give to the police. Or maybe I wouldn’t even bother. Maybe I would simply track you down myself, enact my own revenge like the avenging angel of my fantasies. What would she do? How would it feel? The thought excited and terrified at the same time. She let it go.

  Time passed, and after a while she stopped thinking, growing still in the rhythm of the night silence, waiting now as if she could wait forever. Eleven, twelve, one, two. The French windows and the cat flap stayed closed.

  At two-thirty she began to feel suddenly sleepy, her body stiff from being in one place too long, her mind numb with the quiet.

  She got up and walked to the window, peering out into the gloom. The garden was empty. There was nobody out there, she was sure. So she had been wrong. He would not come tonight. Of course, in some ways it made more sense for him to wait. Let her stew in her own fear a little longer. There was no point in driving herself even madder through lack of sleep. She checked that all the locks and bolts were in place and, locking the kitchen door behind her, she went up to bed.

  thirteen

  She never knew what woke her up, never could work out if it was an actual sound or some subliminal reverberation of terror breaking in through the layers of dreams. All she knew was that suddenly she was out of sleep and wide-awake, eyes open, mind alert, with no sense of the journey from the unconscious to the conscious, no residual grogginess at all.

  She was lying curled to one side, her head facing the entrance to the room. The flickering digital clock told her it was 4:10 a.m. She lay still, her eyes acclimatizing to the darkness until at last she could make out the shape of the bedroom door, half open. And as soon as she saw it she knew something was very wrong.

  She was instantly rigid with fear, as if everything in her life that she had ever been afraid of was, at this moment, gathered together and tapping at the window of her brain. She lay exactly where she was, not moving a muscle, not even allowing herself to blink. She tried to breathe normally, but the action seemed to hurt her chest. What is it? she thought frantically. What is it you can feel?

  The answer came from her ears rather than her mind; somewhere in the room behind her she registered the sound of a long release of breath, so steady, so controlled, that there was almost a sweetness in the sigh. Millie, she thought immediately, the fog of fear lifting a fraction, giving her back her wits. Millie sleeping too close. She waited for what felt like an age. But when it came the next time there was no mistaking it. The sound was too loud, too nasal, for Millie, the exhalation too drawn out, as if the breath were being released through the mouth rather than the nose. Not animal but human and coming from close by.

  Her mind rejected what it couldn’t handle. It wasn’t possible. How could anyone have broken in through those locks? This was her imagination playing truant from reason, scaring her as it had scared her that night when she had followed him up the stairs only to find the landing empty of everything but her fear. Learn from that. Only confront it and it will, once again, disperse like smoke.

  She swallowed once, twice, then, slowly, with a languor that might have been read as sleep but was more the semi paralysis of terror, she shifted her body over from the curled position until she was lying on her back. And so it was that as her feet moved farther down the bed they encountered an obstacle at the bottom, too heavy and too firm to ever be the body of a cat. And this time she knew that the nightmare was real.

  She froze, too late remembering to complete the move naturally. Time stopped still. She opened her eyes again, and through the fringe of her lashes she made out the shape of a figure sitting at the end of the bed.

  Oh God, may my death be without pain, she thought, the idea reaching up from the epicenter of her soul, blocking everything else out. Without pain and without humiliation, please, oh, please. But even as she thought it she knew it was impossible. Because that is not how the world works, and because no one is allowed to make pacts with God so late in the day.

  When you can’t depend on mercy, then what else is there to do but fight? But how? The phone was on the side table, the distance between it and her a hundred miles and nothing in between to help. No, this one had to come from inside. I don’t want to die, she thought again, the terror rising up like a wild wave and wiping out all thought. She closed her eyes and tried to steady her soul, concentrating on her breathing, making it as even, as relaxed, as his. But even as she did so she know he wasn’t fooled. In the darkness he moved a little; she felt the bed tremble under the shift of weight. He knows I’m awake, she thought. He can feel it, just as I can feel him. And if I don’t do something soon I will drown in my own fear, and then I might as well be dead.

  Her voice, when it came, was splintered with tension, but stronger than she felt.

  “Who are you?”

  The words hung in the darkness. He gave a little snigger. “You’re awake.” And in contrast his voice was rather like his breath, unexpectedly soft, almost sibilant.

  She kept swallowing back the fear. “How did you get in?”

  “You left the kitchen door open.”

  No, I didn’t, she thought. No, I didn’t. But then she thought again. Of course she had left it open. But not tonight. Last night. It took a while for the meaning to sink in. Last night . . . He had been somewhere in the house for a night and a day.

  “Where . . . where have you been?”

  Again that sniggering sound, half laugh, half noisy sigh. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Here, there. Everywhere.”

  It was the way he spoke as much as the words: flat, emotionless. She made an involuntary move, her legs pulling up the bed to get away from the closeness of him.

  “Don’t move.” The voice exploded outward, harsh and cracked. She noticed his left arm jerk swiftly from behind his back to his side. What’s he holding? she thought. Jesus, what’s he holding?

  She froze, then swallowed again, the saliva and the fear. “I have to sit up,” she said. “I can’t breathe lying down. I have to sit up.” And it was clear from her voice that she was telling the truth.

  She waited. He said nothing. She waited some more, then took the silence as assent and pulled herself up a little farther, until her head was resting against the propped pillows, her feet curled away from the weight of him.

  “That’s enough,” he barked.

  She stopped instantly.

  “You move anymore, you touch anything, you do anything funny, and I’ll kill you, d’you hear?”

  She nodded, her eyes back down on the hand. But you haven’t yet, she thought. Thirty seconds in and you haven’t yet. And as long as we’re talking there’s still space between us.

  In the gloom she could make out more of him now: he was smaller than she had first thought, wiry, with a short, stand-up haircut above a narrow, rather squashed face. I’m going to throw up, she thought. No, you’re not. There’s no time for that now. She swallowed again. The silence grew. He seemed content to wait. Maybe he was enjoying her fear.

  “Why me?” she said when she could be sure of her voice.

  Again no answer.

  “Was it the music?”

  “What?”

  “All those months ago? Was it the music?”

  And this time he laughed. “You used to dance in the garden.”

  So I did. So I did, God help me. “You must like Van Morrison.”

  “Who?”


  “Van Morrison. The CDs you took. They were his.”

  “Oh, I don’t play them,” he said. “I don’t have the right player. I just put them on my windowsill. To remind me of you.”

  The remark sent a shiver through her. That first CD had gone missing in July. Nearly five months. Five months of a creeping obsession with no form of release. Don’t even think about it. Just keep talking. Keep the words flowing. She kept her voice light. Like conversation. “So if I looked out could I see your window as well as you can see mine?”

  “No more questions,” he said, the voice retreating suddenly back into fury. “Just shut the fuck up, d’you understand?” And his words were an echo from something else, but she couldn’t think what.

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” His hand twitched. “You ought to be. You ought to be.”

  She had to tense her muscles to stop herself from shaking. Why isn’t he doing something? she thought. He must know how terrified I am. Why isn’t he making his move? She stared into the darkness, waiting. But this time she couldn’t find anything to say. Still he stayed where he was. And then she remembered where she had heard those words before. They had been on the computer screen: Mirka’s kidnapper moving toward her in the cell . . . The translation. How far had he read?

  “You screwed him last night, didn’t you?” And for the first time the voice had some animation in it. “I heard you. Heard you doing it.” Where had he been? Outside the door? In the bathroom? A million places. Try not to think about it. “Mind you, I bet you’ve had some practice. Must get it from writing that stuff.”

  “What stuff?” she said, although she already knew.

  “You know what stuff. The stuff in your book.”

  “How much of it did you read?”

  “Oh, I’ve got it all. Loads of it. Tons of it. Garbage.”

  “How—?”

  “I told you. Garbage. Rubbish bins. Your leftovers.”

  Rubbish bins. He had gone through her rubbish bins, must have collected all those pages of first drafts, corrected, scribbled on, then thrown away. It would have read even more crudely before she started to polish it up. No wonder he must have thought her weird enough to target.

  “I didn’t write it. It’s not mine. It’s just a book that I’m translating.”

  “Yeah. I bet it is. Bet you’re not like those women, either.” And again he laughed.

  His hand shifted near to his body, and this time she saw what he was holding. A length of twine, from the same ball that she had used to secure the window lock. She kept on thinking to keep feeling at bay. The garden twine. So he had been in the cellar. Was that where he had hidden? Had he slept there while she slept upstairs, or had he waited until the house was quiet and then started roaming, listening, watching, touching . . . ? Touching. Everything but her.

  Why not? In the last twenty-four hours he would have had ample opportunity to catch her unawares, to attack her in her sleep, incapacitate her and drag her kicking and screaming into his fantasies. But instead he had waited until she woke of her own accord, and now here they were, still sitting with an ocean of bedspread and fear between them, with him making suggestive remarks like some sniggering teenager.

  She looked at him again, and now she became aware of his tension as well as her own, aware of the way he was holding his body, rigid, hunched, his fists clasped tightly at his sides. Maybe she wasn’t the only one around here who was scared by what might happen.

  She moved her body back against the pillow.

  “Don’t move,” he shouted. “I told you not to move.” And as he said it he made a jerky move toward her, bringing up his other hand in a threatened blow, revealing, as he did so, a hammer clutched in his fist.

  At the sight of it they both seemed to flinch simultaneously. For a second she thought she was going to lose it, but through the wave of terror she thought, I was right, he is scared. He is scared. At some level he’s as petrified as I am. Except that when he gets frightened he gets violent.

  “It’s okay,” she said quickly. “It’s okay. I’ve stopped. See.”

  She waited. So did he. Then gradually the hammer moved down, so now both fists were close by his sides, weapons tightly grabbed. She tried not to look at them.

  “It’s just that I’m cold, that’s all,” she said gently. “Do you understand? I’m scared and it makes me cold. I need to reach out and get that top that’s on the bed near you. Is that okay? I’ll get it and sit straight back here. I won’t do anything else. I promise.”

  Another live silence. He could have got it for her, picked it up and flung it at her, or told her once again to fuck off, but he didn’t. Instead he just stared. Then he grunted.

  Infinitely slowly and gently she leaned forward, until she was almost within touching distance of him, as if testing herself by getting closer than the fear allowed. He stayed rigid. She picked up the shirt that was lying on the duvet, and gathered it quickly to herself. She was about to move back when something made her stop. For that second, they sat there, frozen in time. Then, instead of retreating, she turned her head toward him. He was near enough now for her to smell his breath. A hint of mint? Some kind of breath freshener, like some awful parody of a date. He gave a nervous snort, but stayed still.

  She risked a look. In the half-light his skin was sallow, the face angular and pinched, the mouth, now that she could see it, thin. How I hate thin lips, she thought, like a small soul, dried out, stretched too tight, only interested in taking, not giving. Not the kind of mouth that any woman would want to kiss.

  The thought repelled her, but she made herself hold on to it nevertheless. What advice was it that they always gave to rape victims? If you can’t fight it, lie back and let it happen. Bullshit. But if she resisted he would hit her. He could do it now if he wanted: smash her in the side of her head with his hammer then fuck her in a pool of blood. But you won’t do that, she thought. Not yet. Because you need me alive. If I’m dead there’d be no one to take notice of you. And you need that. You need my attention.

  She was working on instinct now, moving to a place where reason couldn’t reach. Survival versus fear. She made herself go back to the mouth—pinched, almost disapproving. She tried to imagine running her finger along the line of the bottom lip, teasing it open, sliding inside. Sex. The longing and the fear of it can mess a person up so badly. She remembered her own conflict between desire and paralysis from the night before. Then she thought of all his long, drawn-out games in the kitchen. And how, if you chose to read them as such, there had been almost a coyness to them, as if he couldn’t bring himself to demand what he really wanted. Not until he had witnessed her doing it herself.

  Except he couldn’t get it like Malcolm. Which is why he needed the hammer. His violence, her fear, the one endlessly dictating the other, the stuff of a thousand bad novels. Like the one they were both reading. But does it always have to end in blood and horror? Why can’t there be another way? There has to be.

  Do it, she thought. Stop thinking and do it. For once in your life just go for it.

  And still they didn’t move. Still they sat there in the frozen night.

  “Why don’t you put down the hammer?” she said at last, and to her amazement her voice sounded almost loving. “You don’t need it, you know. I can’t go anywhere and I swear to you I won’t try to escape.”

  She felt rather than saw his fingers twitch, then tighten further around it. She counted to ten in her head, then slowly, so slowly that he could see her every move, she lifted her fingers to his face. He let out a kind of growl, and his right hand whipped up and grabbed her wrist, forcing it down onto the bedspread, twisting the skin savagely as he did so. She registered the pain, but also the fact that the hammer had been left behind.

  “Bitch,” he hissed under his breath. “Bitch.”

  “You’re hurting me,” she said between clenched teeth as the burn worsened. “You’re hurting me. Let me go.”

  He was breathing hard no
w, too hard to speak.

  “Please,” she said, and they both heard the way the words came out, as much a quiet command as a plea. His response was to squeeze even tighter, his hand shaking with the force of the grip. She let out a small yelp of pain, though she didn’t take her eyes away from his face. The burn made her want to cry, then, just at the point where she couldn’t hold out any longer, she felt the pressure reduce, until gradually his fist relaxed and her hand was almost free. It took all her courage not to snatch it back, but instead to let it lie limply in his, both of them registering the touch without the violence.

  This time, as she moved her hand to his face, the air between them was alive with anticipation. And this time he let her touch connect. Her fingers fluttered over his cheekbone. She held them there till they were steady, then slowly traced the line of his cheek down to his mouth, and, after a beat of hesitation, played across his lips. His mouth fell open slightly. She took a breath, then with her forefinger she pulled down his bottom lip, feeling the moistness, exposing the fleshy bit inside. He made a sound, halfway between a moan and a growl, and bit backward. At first she thought he would take her fingers with him, crush and break them between his teeth, but it was more by reflex than design, like someone recoiling from a flame.

  Relax, she thought. Relax. Maybe she said it out loud. It was meant for both of them.

  She waited, then began again, now pushing her fingers inside. She encountered the edge of his bottom teeth, uneven and jumbled, as if they had grown crooked and never been properly corrected, then moved further in to find the tongue. The flesh was alive with muscle, rough and quivering, almost like the feel of her own vagina. It sent a shudder through her and she had to steel herself not to pull out. No time for the fainthearted now.

  She lifted herself up from where she was sitting on the bed and moved toward him. Their joint breaths sounded huge in the night. As if neither of them could get enough air in their lungs. She felt his hand clutch at his side, searching instinctively for the hammer, his fingers closing over it.