by Daniel Hurst
The thought has occurred to me that he might be gone for good, leaving me in this room forever, or at least until somebody comes and opens this door one day to discover my skeleton lying on this bed. It’s a terrifying thought, but my husband is clearly not the man that I thought he was. So how do I know what he is or isn’t capable of doing? He’s deceived me for this long.
Maybe this is the part where he leaves me to die.
It’s crazy to think how happy we used to be. The best time in our relationship was our honeymoon, although most couples could probably say that. It’s not hard for things to go well when you are newly married, soaking up the sun and chatting whimsically about how wonderful the rest of your lives are going to be together. It’s usually all downhill from there, just not with this much of a steep descent. But when I look back, I know that the decline in my happiness began as soon as we came back from Italy and moved down south. That was when I started to retract from my normal life.
No longer burdened by the necessity to work, I had high hopes about the freedom of the future that awaited me. But the novelty eventually wore off, even if it took a while to do so, and there are many consequences to that decision to walk away from work.
No purpose. No friends. No money of my own.
Craig didn’t want me to be happy.
He wanted me to be trapped.
And trapped I am. Okay, so I haven’t been locked in a room for the last three years, but I have essentially been locked away in this house. On my own all day, miles from another human being, I have gradually withdrawn from society more and more until society is barely even aware of my existence. That is just how Craig wanted it because now there will be no one looking for me. No boss to query my absence from work. No concerned friends texting or calling to find out why they haven’t seen me. Nobody at all to miss me for either personal or professional reasons. Mum died last year. She had been ill for some time. Perhaps that is why Craig has been waiting to do this.
He was waiting until the last person in the world who knew about me had gone.
With nothing but these four walls to stare at, it would be easy to go mad. I’m not ashamed to say that I have already shed a few tears since I have been in here. But losing my mind or losing control of my emotions will not help me get out of this situation. The only way I am going to be able to do that is by being calm and clever, which is exactly how my husband has been ever since he met me.
He must think he is so smart, wherever he is, smug in the knowledge about what he has done to me. He must think he is better than me. He must think he has won.
But he is wrong.
While he has the upper hand right now, it doesn’t mean that I can’t still beat him. I can get out of this. I just need to make a plan. I will be in here a long time whatever I do, so I might as well use it to my advantage. Presuming he returns to bring me some food then I will have enough strength to keep going. The only question then is what do I put it towards?
I look around the dark garage, desperately trying to see anything that could give me some inspiration for a plan. But even if I could see properly, my options seem limited.
But then I have an idea.
It’s going to tough, but maybe it will work.
Maybe it won’t be a bad thing to be in here a while.
Maybe the longer I am in here, the more chance I have of getting out.
51
CRAIG
The sun has already set by the time I arrive back home. As I guide my car onto the driveway, its headlights briefly illuminate the house before I turn them off, plunging the home back into darkness again. But if it seems dark out here, it will be nothing compared to what it is like in the room where Megan is being kept. At least out here there is a little moonlight to help me navigate from my vehicle to the front door. But in the garage, there will be nothing but complete and utter darkness.
Sometimes I leave the light on for her in there.
But this weekend, I made sure it was off.
Slotting my key into the front door, I unlock it and go inside, my body aching but my mind excited to see my prisoner. That was a long drive back from Manchester, but it was worth it. I got to see old friends, as well as hang out in some of my favourite old haunts, and I feel like it did me good to have a little change of scene. It’s been a while since I had a holiday and I imagine it will be a while until I get another one, so a brief break, albeit one in the north of England, is much better than nothing.
Moving through my home, flicking various light switches as I go, I eventually reach the kitchen, where I open the fridge and pull out the carton of milk inside. Giving it a quick sniff to test that it is okay to consume, I put the lid to my lips and drink the cold liquid. It’s not as good as a beer, but it will satisfy my thirst. But only for a little while.
I make a check on the contents of the fridge as I drink, noticing that most of the items inside have expired while I was gone. Megan always liked to buy a lot of fresh stuff, which presumably made her feel like she was being healthy, but it only meant that we had to go to the supermarket more often to replace it all.
I had thought about doing our food shop online, saving us the hassle of having to go and queue up at a checkout on a regular basis, but I had decided against it. To do that would have meant a delivery driver would have had to come to the house each week to drop off our goods, and that would have gone against my desire to keep my wife isolated at all times. Even the postman doesn’t come to the front door after I installed a large post box at the bottom of the driveway, meaning he can drop the letters inside it and move on without ever having to come into contact with my wife sitting inside.
Everything I have done here, every small and seemingly insignificant detail, has been done with one goal in mind.
To make Megan as isolated as possible.
If nobody visits the home, be it friends, neighbours or even delivery drivers, then nobody will know how lonely the woman who lives here really is.
They never saw her, so they will never miss her.
Closing the fridge and throwing the dregs of the milk carton away, I am prepared to head upstairs to bed before a slight pang of guilt hits me out of the blue. As annoying as it is, I know I should probably listen to it.
Opening the fridge again, I search inside for anything that could still be considered edible, before locating a bit of cheese and a jar of pickle. It’s barely a meal, but it will at least prevent her from going hungry for another day. I was only out of the house for around thirty-six hours, leaving Saturday morning and arriving back early Sunday evening. But while that wasn’t long enough to really relax while I was away, it was more than long enough for Megan to get hungry as she waited for me to return.
I’ll go and do a proper food shop tomorrow, but for now, this will have to do.
After slicing the cheese into chunky strips and putting them on the plate with a spoonful of pickle beside them, I head to the locked garage door and listen in for any sound on the other side. There is none. Megan is either sleeping or sitting quietly. Either way, she will be hungry and weak. No matter how much she hates me right now, I do not doubt that she will be glad to see me.
Unlocking the door, I pull it open, flooding the dark garage instantly with the light from the kitchen. Megan stirs on the bed before rolling over and peering into the bright light, a hand above her eyes to shield her vision.
“I’ve brought you some dinner,” I say, though I use the term very loosely.
Leaving the meagre meal on the exercise bench, I head back for the door, not interested in engaging my wife in any conversation tonight. She makes no attempt to converse with me either. It’s just before I close the door that I decide I better say something else.
“You should probably come and get the plate now,” I tell her, referring to the cheese and pickle sitting on the exercise bench. “You’ll never find it in the dark once I close this door.”
She is obviously annoyed that I am right because it takes her a few mome
nts to get moving, but she does eventually get off the camp bed and come over to retrieve her meal before I plunge her back into darkness again.
“Goodnight,” I say, as she stuffs one of the pieces of cheese into her hungry mouth. “Sleep well.”
52
MEGAN
I’ve heard the rumours that eating cheese before bed can give you nightmares. I don’t know if that is true, but I’m about to find out. I was far too hungry to not eat the pathetic meal that Craig brought me, even if it isn’t going to be conducive to sound sleep. But if I were to suffer a nightmare tonight then would it be the fault of the cheese? Or would it be down to the fact that I am locked in a garage, being held prisoner by my sadistic husband who has been lying to me ever since we met?
It’s a moot point anyway. With everything that is going on right now, I doubt I will be getting any sleep tonight.
With the rumbling in my stomach sedated a little by the small amount of food I have just put inside it, my mind can process my thoughts a little easier. That means that I can think about what I am going to do when I finally get out of here.
Because I will get out of here.
I have no doubt about that.
I could go straight to the police and tell them what my husband has done to me, but that isn’t what I want to do, at least not straight away. What I really want to do is find out what happened to Sally. If he has hurt her, then I won’t be going to the police at all.
I will kill him.
It’s sad to acknowledge it but Sally is my only friend in the world right now, and even that is stretching the limits of the truth. She’s only met me once. She barely knows me, and she owes me nothing. Yet she is the one I am thinking about as I lie in this garage, digesting the scrap of cheese that I was just served and thinking about what life could be like when I get out of here.
Craig must think that he is so clever with everything that he has done. He has manipulated my life from the first minute he met me right up to this very moment now. Every single decision we had seemed to arrive at as a couple had really started in his brain and he had just manoeuvred me into a position whereby I would agree with him. I would hate him even more than I do right now if it wasn’t so genius. But just like I have underestimated him, so too has he underestimated me. He could have just left me in here to rot, but it looks like he isn’t going to do that. As long as he keeps feeding me, then I have a chance.
I have a chance to get out of here and get my revenge.
53
CRAIG
It’s been three weeks now since I locked my wife in our garage. They say time flies when you’re having fun, and I have to admit, these past few weeks have certainly flown by. But then again, I do have much more time on my hands now that I’m not spending every spare minute of the day keeping tabs on Megan and what she is up to.
I’ve been able to focus on my work more, which means I’m making significant headway with all the projects that I’ve been meaning to get off the ground in my workplace ever since I became the manager. I’ve been able to set up more client meetings, wining and dining some wealthy business owners who are thinking of moving their accounts over to my bank and away from my competitors. And I’ve also been able to get in a few extra games of squash, beating my colleague, Danny, several times over the past few weeks, which has ensured I have put him firmly back in his place.
But it’s not just me that has been using all this extra time to get back into my fitness. Even Megan has started working out. I’ve heard her running on the treadmill when I have listened in occasionally, and I even caught her doing some sit-ups on the exercise bench when I went in to feed her the other day. The only thing she hasn’t touched are the weights, but they are far too heavy for her to handle.
I just left them in there to remind her about how much stronger I am than her.
All in all, life is pretty good right now. The only thing I’m missing is companionship, but I’ll have to deal with my current wife before I can start thinking about finding another one. With love on my mind, I pick up the photo on my desk and stare at the picture of my wife, smiling back at me without a care in the world. Her beauty cannot be diminished, no matter what has happened to her since.
I end up so lost in the picture that I fail to notice that Danny has just walked into the room.
“Fancy a quick game of squash at lunchtime?” he asks, snapping me back into the moment.
“Lunchtime? That’s a bit short notice,” I say, leaning forward and replacing the picture frame on my desk.
“I know, but I’ve been thinking about our last game, and I realised something,” Danny says, approaching my desk with his hands in his trouser pockets.
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
“I realised that I was winning until you changed your strategy.”
I laugh because I admire his self-belief, if not his memory.
“I changed my strategy, did I?” I say, reclining in my chair and looking forward to whatever story he has conjured up in his mind to explain the last whopping I gave him.
“Yeah, you started playing more delicate shots. Chipping the ball instead of striking through it. It changed the game for sure, and it was good tactics on your part, but I have figured out the way to beat them.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“So, this lunchtime, what do you say?”
I let out a deep sigh and turn to my computer screen to check my diary for the rest of the day.
“I’m not sure I can fit you in,” I say, noting that I have a two o’clock meeting with the Head of Compliance about irregularities that have come to light with historical payments.
“That sounds like you’re worried to me,” Danny says, looking around my office and no doubt admiring the fine surroundings that I have to myself every day.
“You think I’m worried?” I ask, smirking at the suggestion. “Let’s see how worried I am at midday. I’ll see you on the court.”
“Great!” Danny replies, and he’s just about to turn and walk away when he notices the photo frame in my hand.
Taking it from me, because he’s not the kind of person who would ask for permission first, he takes a moment to regard the picture before passing comment on it.
“How did you ever manage to get a woman like this?”
“I ask myself that every day,” I reply, and he can tell that I mean it because he stops joking around and returns the frame to my desk.
“Are any of us ever going to meet your wife?” he asks me, but I fix my eyes on my computer screen so that he doesn’t notice the flicker of emotion across my face.
“I’ve told you. Get yourself a girlfriend, and maybe we can do a double date.”
He laughs at my response, well aware that he is a long way off finding a girlfriend and settling down like the rest of the grown-ups in the office.
“Fair enough. See you at midday!” he calls to me as he strolls out of my space.
I watch him go before returning my concentration to my work. But I can’t focus, and it’s not long until I find myself reaching for the photo frame again.
Sitting back in my chair, I run my fingers over the glass, tracing the hair of the woman in the photo.
“I miss you Anna,” I whisper, even though there is nobody around to hear.
54
MEGAN
I’ve done my workout for the day, and now I’m back on the camp bed with the box on the floor beside it. The photo of Craig and Anna is lying on the mattress beside me and the shock of seeing it has started to wear off.
Besides the photo, the contents inside this box are all things to do with their relationship. There are several of Anna’s diaries, along with love letters and items of jewellery that only have meaning to them. These are the kind of things that two lovesick teenagers would have, but then I guess that’s what they were when they met. They both look so young in the photo. Him, but especially her. She looks happy. Not at all how she looked the last time I saw her alive a day befor
e she died.
But it’s the diary entries that are interesting me the most now. It’s sometimes difficult to read them because I only get the chance when Craig leaves the light on, but it’s on now, which means I can make out the handwriting. These are Anna’s words, and they go back years.
Craig has left them for me to read, the dates on the first pages telling me the year they relate to. I’ve figured out which is the first one. It starts in 2005. Anna would have been seventeen then, which probably meant the words in this diary were scribbled when she was alone in her bedroom at her parent’s house.
A diary is always a very personal thing, but a teenager’s diary?
People would rather die than have somebody else read that.
As it is, Anna is dead, and I am sitting here going through her thoughts. Even now, I can get a sense of her personality from the way she puts her words together. The long, rambling sentences that are a mirror of how deeply she used to think about things. The use of exclamation marks to emphasise her points also mirroring the passion she had for certain things. And the wicked sense of humour that she possessed, evident here on these pages, although I am a long way from being in the mood to see the funny side of any of these jokes.
So far, most of the entries have been about what Anna did that day at sixth form, what she is planning to do at the weekend, or how she can’t wait to grow up and leave home. But there are more mentions of Craig creeping in as I read on. At first, she had written about how she had noticed the handsome guy in the sixth form common room, and they had shared a brief smile when they had made eye contact across the sea of students. Then she had said about how she had noticed him more and more around the college until finally, she had asked a friend what his name was. Once she knew it was Craig, then his name had seeped into her diary entries, until the point where I am now, when they are both about to attend the same house party together. Anna was clearly excited about being in the same place as her crush and wrote about how she was hoping to make a move on him if she got the chance.