The Captive

by Deborah O'Connor

  ‘So you didn’t mention anything about hearing John on the phone at the trial and you also didn’t mention this?’

  ‘Ask my lawyer. She thought it would have made my story worse.’

  Again he reached for her hand.

  ‘Last night,’ he said, stroking her wrist with his thumb.

  ‘A mistake,’ she said, shaking him off. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  His whole body had been leaning toward her, pressed against the bars, but now he straightened up and put his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Right.’ He nodded his agreement.

  ‘Right,’ said Hannah, and she meant it, but the syllable wavered, the sound puttering through the air.

  Jem

  I’ve been back with Mum for three months when she stops taking her medication. She says she doesn’t need it anymore, that it makes it hard to think. If she can’t think she can’t read and, for her, reading is everything. She tells me again about her PhD in literature. How, one day, she is going to be a professor.

  I miss the Tarkers, especially Lucas. But I go to watch him at football practice every Sunday and then afterward we go for hot chocolate. He’s clever. Top of his class.

  Mum stops sleeping. She stays up all night reading and insists on keeping all the lights in the flat on, her music loud. She has an idea for a paper she wants to write. She says that, when people read it, every university in the land will want her on their faculty, that she’ll be invited to speak at conferences all over the world. I put my pillow over my head but it’s no good. Eventually, I seek out the dark underneath my bed. Stuff my ears with toilet roll.

  The fridge is empty. Books litter the floor, pages splayed. Mum is tired. She goes to bed for a week. On Sunday after football I ask if I can have two croissants with my hot chocolate. Mr Tarker takes me to one side. He wants to know if everything is OK. I lie. I don’t want to be taken into care again. I won’t.

  I’m hungry. I look in her purse but it’s empty. She lies in bed all day. Stops showering. Her room smells bad.

  I don’t want to ask Kenzie for help, to get him in trouble again. I figure that, this time, I can look after myself.

  I decide on the Waitrose in Wandsworth for two reasons: it’s busy and full of rich people. Rich people have insurance; losing their wallet won’t break the bank.

  I walk the aisles and stop people with silly questions. ‘Do you have the time?’, ‘Did you drop this?’, ‘Which way to the cheese counter?’

  I perform my little dance and then I take what I can.

  What I need.

  Mum is up and then she’s down. Sometimes the flat is spotless, the bedsheets clean, the cupboards full. She gets a job a few hours a week lecturing at Birkbeck. Sometimes she doesn’t come home for three nights in a row.

  Pickpocketing becomes routine. Necessary.

  Lucas and I remain close.

  He’s ten now. I’m fifteen.

  We go to the cinema together. The football.

  His cleverness pays off. He wins a scholarship to some fancy school, everything paid for, and so I decide to take him out bowling to celebrate.

  We go to the All Star Lanes in Whiteleys. They sell Americana merchandise – T-shirts, varsity jackets, shirts – at the counter. I buy us matching baseball caps. Red and white, they have a rooster bending down to throw a bowling ball on the front. We put them on.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’ says Lucas and pulls the peak low.

  We play. He wins.

  We’re back at the counter, waiting to exchange our shoes, when I decide to skim the pocket of the woman to my right. It’s a habit now, a reflex no longer confined to the wealthy of south London, and as soon as I clock her elbows resting on the counter I take the opportunity to remove the phone and travelcard from her right pocket.

  When I look round I see Lucas, staring.

  ‘What did you just do?’

  Our shoes arrive and I hustle him away, toward the toilets.

  ‘Did you take something from that lady?’

  I say nothing but I can feel the red creeping up my neck. I can’t bear for him to think less of me.

  ‘Give it back.’

  ‘What?’ The lie is futile, but there’s no way I’m going to own up. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Jem.’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  The woman is still at the counter. I pick up a scorecard from the floor and hand it to her.

  ‘This yours?’

  She takes it from me and while she examines the scribbles on the front, I replace everything.

  Lucas waits until I’m done and then we leave. Before we can get outside he’s taken off his baseball cap. He wedges it in his back jeans pocket but the cap isn’t designed to be bent out of shape like that and so the stitching around the peak starts to come away at the seams, the thread frayed.

  Hannah

  One month later

  Tuesday morning and Hannah was loitering in the kitchen, waiting for Jem and Mr Dalgleish to go upstairs to the shower.

  Jem had spent the past month trying to reassure her that she had nothing to worry about, that he wouldn’t steal anything from anyone again. Still, on the two days he went to wash, she had taken to searching his cell, checking there was nothing else he might be hiding. She’d yet to find anything, and although she knew each clean sweep was a flimsy reassurance, it was something and when you’re desperate to trust someone, to believe the things they say, then something can go a long way.

  Aisling’s murder investigation rumbled on. They’d released the dormouse without charge but had declared him still very much a person of interest. Hannah hoped it was just a matter of time before they had enough evidence to prosecute. Meanwhile the sadness she felt at losing her friend became ever more gnarled and confusing, mixed as it was with her guilt at having ignored her in those crucial final days and her rage at having been betrayed. Feeling those three things at once was disorientating, like listening to different songs at the same time. Then there was the fact that her brain didn’t seem able to accept that Aisling was gone. On more than one occasion she’d found herself in a kind of daydream, halfway through the act of leaving a voicemail, before realising her error and hanging up.

  Her grief for John was equally complicated. Now, as well as missing her husband she found herself in mourning for the man she thought she’d known and the illusion that their marriage had turned out to be. How do you grieve a fiction?

  London was balmy, more late May than December, and the French doors were thrown wide. She and Jem welcomed the morning breeze but Mr Dalgleish, sitting at the table signing and dating paperwork, felt otherwise. Shivery and pale, he held the pen in one hand and used the other to pull his jacket close.

  ‘Cold?’ she said, going over to pull the doors shut.

  The question was an affront. He released his jacket and sat up tall.

  ‘Perfectly fine.’ Most of his hair was gone now, the smatter that remained around his ears and back of his scalp like the fuzz on a newborn. He cleared his throat, wanting to change the subject. ‘Hear about that Host a few streets from here?’ He grimaced. ‘The one in the tent.’

  ‘Laurie Simmons?’ Hannah hadn’t been by the house on the corner since that day she’d ended up there by mistake.

  ‘Poisoned her prisoner. Gave him apple pie and custard laced with antifreeze.’ Mr Dalgleish motioned for Hannah to unlock the cell. ‘Two months left on his sentence and she killed him.’

  Hannah thought of the way Laurie had paused by her front door, how she’d had to fortify herself before she went to tend to her rapist inside. What torment must she have endured over the years? What fear?

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Holding Centre. The guy’s family want to press charges.’

  The thought of Laurie being found guilty, of having to spend the next however many years in the custody of her rapist’s relatives, was chilling.

  She pushed her black button, turned the manual key and pulled the door
open. Jem stepped into the kitchen, towel and washbag at the ready. They were almost at the stairs when there was a noise.

  A strangled yelp, like a dog being kicked.

  It was coming from out the back.

  Hannah went to look. There was someone in the middle of the pond. Splashing and coughing, their hair was plastered thickly over glasses that hung low on the bridge of their nose.

  Pru.

  She must have finally found a way to scale the fence.

  Hannah spun round to find that Mr Dalgleish and Jem had joined her in the garden.

  ‘She can’t swim,’ she said, the realisation a quick one-two punch that made her heart spasm. ‘Not anymore. Her dementia. Neither can I.’

  Pru’s cries were getting louder, her arms bashing at the water. She disappeared for a second and then resurfaced, spluttering and hacking.

  Another spasm, this one more brutal than the last, and Hannah clutched her chest, trying to slow her breathing.

  ‘She’ll drown.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Mr Dalgleish, taking off his jacket. He beelined for the steps, kicking off his shoes as he went, then slowed. Hannah thought he’d gone over on his ankle or that one of his laces had got stuck, but then his legs gave out from under him and he buckled to the floor.

  ‘Mr D?’ said Hannah, rushing to his side.

  His teeth clacked behind grey lips. He was freezing but his face was glossed with sweat.

  ‘Should we call an ambulance?’ said Jem from his spot behind the white painted line.

  ‘Chemo,’ said Mr Dalgleish. He wrapped his arms round his chest as if to warm himself, but his muscles were weak and his arms fell back to his side. ‘This last session . . .’ He tailed off, no match for his juddering teeth.

  Hannah helped him to his feet and, trying to keep one eye on Pru, placed his arm across her shoulders. She scanned neighbouring gardens for signs of life. Should she go out front, knock on doors and ask for help? Would there be enough time? Or should she jump in the boat at the bottom of the steps, row out to her, would that be quicker?

  ‘If you come closer I can help you get him inside,’ said Jem, from behind the line.

  Jem.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ she said, guiding Mr Dalgleish to the house. ‘Mr D, you’re going to turn off the fence, then Jem can swim out to get Pru.’

  ‘What? No,’ said Mr Dalgleish, the suggestion re-energising him briefly. ‘Absolutely not.’

  Hannah took him over to the keypad on the wall.

  ‘Turn off the fence or she’ll die,’ she said, flipping open the white cover. ‘We have no choice.’ She leaned back and shouted outside. ‘Jem, get ready.’

  While Jem began shucking off his jeans and T-shirt Hannah turned her attention back to Mr Dalgleish.

  ‘He won’t run,’ she said, trying to convince herself more than anyone. ‘He can be trusted. Please, save my friend.’

  He shook his head and closed his eyes. Hannah sagged. He wasn’t going to do it.

  Another shout from the pond. Quieter this time.

  He reached for the tablet in his pocket.

  ‘If he escapes,’ he said, bringing up the code for the back fence, ‘I’ll say it was your fault, that you threatened me, that you made me do it.’

  Hannah nodded her agreement and, taking care to shield the screen, Mr Dalgleish pulled himself up to standing and typed in the six-digit number. As soon as the zone flashed green she ran outside to give Jem the thumbs-up and he was off, scrambling down the steps to the shore. She sprinted to the end of the garden to watch his progress. Pru was trying unsuccessfully to float on her back and kept tipping onto her front, arms flapping.

  Jem ran the first few metres, lifting his knees to reduce resistance, and then he stretched up his hands, arced his body and dived. He resurfaced a few metres away and began front-crawling toward Pru.

  He was halfway there when she flailed and sank. He sped up, arms curving through the air, and as soon as he reached the spot where they’d last seen her he took a breath and dived.

  The water would be murky, impossible to see more than a few inches ahead. What if he couldn’t find her?

  The surface stilled, the ripples deadening to nothing. Hannah dug her nails into her palms, pleading under her breath, ‘Come on.’

  Jem reappeared and Hannah’s heart lifted, but when she looked she saw that he was empty-handed. He took another gulp of air and dived again.

  A minute passed, then another.

  Hannah had given up all hope but then he resurfaced with Pru in his arms. He turned onto his back and, after positioning Pru on top of his chest, he hooked an arm under her shoulders and kicked back toward the shore.

  Watching him drag her onto dry land, Hannah tensed. Jem had done the right thing and Pru was safe but the fence was still turned off. If he wanted, he could get back in the water and swim away, disappear into the Heath, to freedom.

  He hoisted Pru over his shoulder and carried her up the stairs and into the garden. Hannah waited until they’d cleared the white line, then ran inside.

  ‘You can turn it back on,’ she said, giddy with relief, that Pru was OK, that Jem hadn’t run. ‘Mr D?’

  He was passed out in a heap, the tablet next to him, the six-digit code still on the screen.

  00-73-21

  The numbers made her think of James Bond and school sports days. 007, licence to kill, and teachers at the start of the egg and spoon race counting down the kids, 3-2-1, before starting them off with a sharp blow of their whistle.

  She typed the numbers in and pressed the button and the light flashed red. The fence was live again.

  Then she got down next to him and cradled his head in her lap. His skin was feverish, his neck wet with sweat.

  Jem appeared soon after, breath ragged. He placed Pru carefully on the floor, water dripping everywhere, and began performing CPR.

  Two chest compressions and she coughed, her head rearing up to vomit a puddle of brown water. He waited, making sure her breathing was OK, then grabbed his duvet from the cell and covered her with it.

  He looked at Hannah and the unconscious Mr Dalgleish.

  ‘He fainted,’ she said, scanning the kitchen for her phone. ‘I’m going to call an ambulance.’

  ‘Not necessary.’ Looking down, she saw he’d opened his eyes. ‘Give me a moment, I’ll be fine.’ He tried to push himself up to sitting, only to collapse back.

  ‘Someone was watching the house,’ Pru murmured under her duvet. ‘I was trying to get away.’

  ‘That was the other day,’ said Hannah. No doubt she’d heard what had happened with Aisling’s stalker, how he’d broken into Hannah’s place, and had got it confused with the here and now. ‘You’re safe.’

  They sat there like that for a while. Hannah holding Mr Dalgleish, Jem holding Pru.

  Jem’s stomach was smeared with pond mud and droplets of water hung from the tip of his nose, earlobes and lashes. Every time he shifted on his hips one of the drops would fall to his thigh with a tiny splosh and Hannah would think about how he had had the chance to run and didn’t. How he could have gone and left her but he came back.

  He came back.

  It was something.

  Jem

  Lucas has been at his fancy school a year and is doing brilliantly. I’m halfway through my A levels and while Mum is still up and down, at least now, no matter how bad things get, I can provide. The flat will stay warm, our bellies will be full.

  It’s a Saturday night when she goes out with friends. I stay home and work on an essay, due Monday. I’m in bed asleep when she comes in. I hear a man’s voice through the wall and then music. The bass makes the floor vibrate. I crawl under my bed and stuff my ears with tissue.

  Sunday morning and Mum and the man are still up. Mum is kneeling on the sofa, the soles of her tights dirty and laddered. A glass of red in hand, she’s talking fast, one of her spooling monologues that goes on and on. The man is older. Thick-thighed and paunchy, he wea
rs his shirt tucked into his jeans. He’s smiling but it’s forced, like he’s waiting for something he thought should have happened already.

  ‘My boy,’ says Mum as I open the curtains. ‘Jeremiah. Got a big brain, like me.’

  The man appraises my wrinkled T-shirt and boxers and his pretend smile dissolves. He’s realised he’s waited all night for nothing.

  I turn off the music, get a bowl and cereal from the cupboard. I’m meeting the Tarkers at 10.30 a.m. Lucas has a football match. He’s been picked for the first team, centre forward.

  I settle at the table with my breakfast and grab my book and half-written essay, read over what I wrote the night before.

  The man gets to his feet.

  ‘I should be going.’

  Mum doesn’t break stride. She continues talking, an endless cheery babble.

  I keep my head down and assume he’s on his way out of the flat, but then I feel him next to me. He swigs the last of his wine and puts down the glass.

  ‘People who read books.’ He sneers at my mum, then hacks and reaches back to spit in the sink. ‘Think they’re so much better than everyone else.’

  Slowly, I turn the page.

  ‘Don’t ignore me.’ He bashes the edge of my spoon. Milk and cereal fly up and hit me in the face. ‘It’s rude.’

  I wipe my cheek with the back of my arm and get to my feet. I’ll go to my room, stay there till he’s gone.

  ‘I said, don’t ignore me.’

  He shoves me toward the fridge and I can’t help but bounce back into him.

  It’s all the justification he needs.

  I feel his fingers in my hair, his nails digging into the roots, and then my head is moving fast toward the corner of the table and I ricochet back, onto the floor.

  Mum stops talking and for a moment there’s silence.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I told you, he’s my boy.’

  His boot meets my stomach, then my ribs, then my face.

  When I come round they’re both gone. My ear is wet, my hair stuck to the carpet.

  I hear banging. Someone at the door. I think it’s Mum, she’s forgotten her keys, and limp down the hallway. But when I open the door I find Lucas shivering in his football kit, socks bunched around his calves.