Him raping her on the concrete floor, the flexing muscles of his hard, perfect body sheened with her blood.
Him sticking the knife into her, over and over in a frenzy of bloodlust that defied comprehension.
I knew he’d like to do the same to me, that he had been stopping himself.
He rubbed the edge of his hand against the gusset of my knickers and I flinched in disgust. I braced myself, expecting him to rip them off and drive into me with all the force of a rabid beast. This was it, I was so sure of it. It was my turn, now. He might not kill me today, but he would be rough.
He was going to rape me.
But then he stopped.
Suddenly, there was cold air on my back where he had just been pressed against me.
‘Sit up, Joyce. Sit on the table edge and do not move a muscle.’
His voice was gruff and commanding, filled with a heavy lust that he seemed determined not to give in to.
And I knew, deep down, that the reason he hadn’t raped me was more than the fact he didn’t want to mark me for the honeymoon.
He was saving me for something.
If only I knew what that something was. The fact that he was restraining himself was somehow more terrifying than the act of sex itself.
Gingerly, I picked myself up off the table, feeling utterly humiliated. I sat on the table edge, only then realising that I was crying. I kept my head lowered, refusing to look at him.
He stood in front of me and I didn’t look away in time not to see the bulge in the crotch of his beautifully-fitted, blue jeans. I turned my face at an angle in disgust.
‘Look at me, Joyce.’
As much as it made me feel physically sick, I lifted my gaze. He stood less than a metre away from me, his arms folded across his broad chest like he was reprimanding a naughty child.
‘You need to stop crying, Joyce. I do not want you all puffy and ugly when we go to pick up Becky tomorrow. If you continue to cry, I will kill your daughter, do you understand me?’
Grimly, I nodded. I took a deep breath, doing my best to keep my terror and misery reined in.
‘What do you say?’ he asked me.
I looked at him blankly for a moment, not immediately getting what he meant. And then I got it. He wanted me to apologise. A rush of hatred for the man so intense washed over me it was a physical thing, swaying me on the spot.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, finding my voice.
‘What was that?’ he asked, cupping his ear.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, louder this time.
Ever so slightly, he nodded. ‘Better. Don’t you ever disobey me again. Consider that your last warning. Luckily for you, you’re not that clever. Can’t you see how thick the doors in this house are? They’re almost as thick as your head. I didn’t even hear your caterwauling until I was right on the other side of the door. That was your mother on the phone, by the way. Good news; she says that Becky has agreed to stay with her tonight. So it looks like we’ll be able to enjoy our time alone for a little while longer.’
The main thing I felt was relief. To gloss over that feeling, lest he should pick up on it and pre-empt my plan for tomorrow, I quickly spoke up.
‘Didn’t my mum ask to speak to me?’
‘Yes, she did, but she didn’t mind that you couldn’t. I said you were taking a bath and that you’d lost your charger for your mobile. She sends her love. Becky does, too.’ He fell quiet for a moment and I squirmed in discomfort under his watchful gaze. ‘And I know what you’re thinking, Joyce. If you pull any stupid stunts when we pick up Becky, I will kill you all. That’s a promise.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said as nonchalantly as possible.
But my plan, such as it was, was the only thing keeping me going. I fully intended to scream blue murder as soon as I got out of the car tomorrow. I was going to scream on the other side of the door for my mum not to let us in, to call the police immediately and bolt all the doors.
‘You’re lying.’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘Okay, so let’s say you do act out and we end up not going on our honeymoon, do you really think that this will end there? You’re my wife, Joyce, and when the dust settles, I will come for you. And anyway, do you really think that anyone will believe your word over mine? I am a respected surgeon; people look up to me. You’re not going to cause a scene tomorrow, are you Joyce?’
His arrogance was truly breath taking but I didn’t contradict him. I believed one-hundred percent that if I caused enough of a scene in public, so long as I got me and Becky and my mum far away from him, then everything would work out okay. He could make all the threats he wanted, there was no way that I was going to pass up an opportunity to make myself heard.
‘No. Of course I won’t.’
‘Besides, I paid a lot of money for that holiday so do you really think I’ll let you just not go? Get real, Joyce.’
Oh, I am getting real, you sick bastard, I said in my head. Because only a complete moron could be coerced into keeping silent in public.
‘Because like I say, if you try and fuck with me tomorrow, I will come for you and I will end you.’
We’ll see about that, motherfucker, I thought. We’ll see about that.
TWENTY-EIGHT
For the rest of the day he mainly left me alone in the dining-room. To avoid another “mishap”, as he called it, he made sure to secure me thoroughly in place to the dining-room chair. Almost every inch of me was taped to the chair, my hands behind my back and my feet a few inches from the ground.
I think he was disposing of the girl’s body because he had announced that he was ‘cleaning up’ in the basement. Not the girl’s body, I reminded myself in the most masochistic way. Molly’s body. I didn’t like to think of her as having a name, a personality and a life. I couldn’t let her become a fully-fledged person in my mind because that would inevitably lead down a road in my mind that could only lead to trouble.
I couldn’t afford to go there, not yet, anyway. I had to be strong for Becky. Whenever I closed my eyes, thoughts of that poor girl crept into my head but every time I resolutely pushed them away.
He came in to check on me every hour or so. Every time he did so, he made me drink from the water bottle. He also asked if I needed to urinate in the blue bucket that was now a permanent fixture in the room. Each time he asked I told him no, but by the fourth asking, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Last night had been humiliating enough, when he had hovered over me in the bathroom, watching me as I went about my business.
But this time, it was beyond humiliating. In order for me to perform the feat of urinating in the bucket, I had to be partially cut free. Aaron had come prepared for this, with his trusty roll of electrical tape and chunky kitchen scissors. He proceeded to cut my arms and my left leg free, so that I was balanced awkwardly on one bent leg, still attached to the chair by my other shin.
‘You’re not going to piss your knickers, are you Joyce?’ Aaron asked me. ‘Because if you do, I will be mad.’
He placed the bucket in front of me and hatred for him tightened in my chest. Not having any choice in the matter, I squatted over the bucket as close as I could get and pulled the gusset of my knickers to one side.
‘No, no, no,’ he said, just as I was about to urinate. ‘Take them off.’
My insides twisted into a tight knot of disgust, but I needed to go, damn it. What was one more small humiliation on top of everything else?
Yet shame still curdled in my guts as, under Aaron’s watchful gaze, I slipped my knickers down and off my freed leg. They gathered in a bunch around the knee of my right leg and my humiliation was complete.
In this highly demeaning manner, I squatted over the bucket and urinated.
When I finished and had pulled up my knickers, he quickly taped me back into place on the chair.
He left the room without saying another word.
* * *
When I was put to
bed that night, he didn’t handcuff me to the headboard again. Instead, he had elected to use that hateful electrical tape to bind my wrists together and I had slept on my side with back to him, my hands nestled between my breasts. He had also bound my ankles together with the tape.
He had said that he didn’t want any marks on my wrists when we went to pick up Becky.
I woke up in the early hours, desperate for a pee. To my shame, I knew I couldn’t wait until morning. After that horrendous incident with the bucket, I had held it in, sickened by the mere thought of a repeat performance. Thankfully, I didn’t need to poo, probably because I had been so violently sick last night on the basement floor, and I hadn’t eaten anything since our wedding meal.
But I was still desperate to urinate. I lay on my back, staring up at the darkened ceiling.
‘I really need to go.’
My voice was a lot louder in the dark than I expected it to be and I flinched at the sound of it.
He sat up on his side of the bed, rising up like the undead. He peered down at me, his eyes looking like two empty sockets in his featureless face. When he spoke, he sounded wide awake.
‘You will learn to control your bladder. And you will be punished for this down the line.’
I gasped when he slid out of the bed, reminding me of a crocodile silently entering the water. He came over to me and scooped me up and out of the bed, cradling me to his chest. I was instantly transported back to the last time he had carried me like this, back when my world and everything in it was still functioning normally. Back when I was so madly in love with this kind, sweet man…
Had that really only been a few weeks ago? It felt like a lifetime.
He carried me out to the en-suite bathroom and unceremoniously plonked me down on my feet with the toilet directly behind me. I gasped in humiliation when he bent over to roughly yank my knickers down to my knees and then shoved me down so that my backside connected with the rim of the toilet bowl. My jaw clacked together at the sudden jolt that shot through my torso. Aaron strode over to the light-switch, and the dark bathroom plunged into piercing light that hurt my eyes.
I squinted up at him as he stood before me, arms folded. Even in just his snug undershorts he cut an imposing figure.
‘Piss, then, for Christ’s sake.’
I let go of my bladder in a hard stream that splashed against the bowl. I didn’t even try to quieten it – what was the point? Only when I was done did I realise that I couldn’t wipe myself. Aaron smirked at me.
‘It doesn’t matter, just drip-dry. You’ll be taking a bath in the morning, anyway.’
And that was that. Unceremoniously, he shoved his hands under my armpits and pulled me to my feet, yanked up my knickers, then scooped me up into his arms once more. He carried me back into the bedroom and lay me down on the bed with very little gentleness.
The room was plunged into darkness once more and I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling, heart pounding, wondering how the hell my life had come to this in such a short period of time.
Aaron lay with his back to me on his side, his breathing slow and steady. Surely he couldn’t be asleep already? I thought about smothering him with a pillow, then thought better of it.
This was hopeless.
No, I couldn’t think like that. Tomorrow was my chance, and I would be fucked if I was going to pass that up.
* * *
‘Wake up, sleepyhead, today’s the big day.’
Groggily, I opened my eyes to that familiar, hateful voice, feeling disorientated and confused. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but sometime during the early hours I guess I must have done. Neither had I heard Aaron get out of the bed, but there he was, sitting next to me, fully dressed in jeans and my favourite grey pullover of his that perfectly matched his eyes.
As I came to myself, I became aware of was the prickling coldness in my hands. When I wriggled my fingers against each other, I was alarmed to discover that they were completely numb. I sat bolt upright in bed, panicking that I would permanently lose the feelings in my hands if I couldn’t get the blood flowing through then because of the damn tape.
Aaron sat on the bed next to me and laughed. ‘Having problems there, dear?’
I bit my tongue before I could tell him to fuck off and continued to try and shake some feeling back into them as best I could. It wasn’t working and my vision blurred. Rapidly, I blinked away the tears.
‘Here, let me,’ Aaron said reaching for my numb hands.
I fought back the urge to pull away from him when he touched me, watching with disgust as he helped me. With infinite gentleness, he unravelled the tape from around my wrists and massaged my hands back to life. His kindness repulsed me, maybe even more so than a display of violence might have done. I watched him as he worked my hands over, wondering how I ever could’ve thought that his eyes were kind.
‘Is that better?’ he asked, letting go of my hands.
Mutely, I nodded my head. They were better, if a little tingly. But mainly the relief I felt that he had finally stopped touching me was immeasurable. Also, my hands were free. I wondered what damage I could do with him.
What are you going to do, a little voice scoffed inside my head, strangle him to death with your bare hands?
No, I would wait, as planned. I would get to my mum’s and I would kick off. I would do whatever it took to get him away from me and nothing Aaron could possibly say to me would stop me.
‘I am going to run you a nice hot bath, and you are going to make yourself look pretty. I want the works, full-face of make-up, hair done, everything.’
He got up off the bed and went into the bathroom. I heard the bath tap twisting round, then the rush of water as the bath started to fill. Instinctively, I reached for the nearest blanket and clutched it to my near-naked body, grateful for the fact that my hands were free. I thought about how my body ached all over, how there was a foul taste in my mouth and that I badly needed to urinate.
And for the first time, I realised that I was ravenously hungry. The shocks I had suffered had dulled my appetite, but now my need to eat was back with a vengeance. I clutched my stomach through the blanket, willing it to stop cramping.
He emerged from the bathroom, all smiles, and the sight of it sickened me.
‘Aren’t you going to drink your coffee and eat your croissant before it gets cold?’
I looked at him blankly, assuming that this was just a cruel joke.
‘Look,’ he said with the faintest flick of his head. ‘There.’
I twisted my head round to look at the bedside table where he had indicated, and sure enough, there was a mug of coffee and a small plate complete with croissant.
I blinked, but the vision remained. Instantly, my mouth pooled with water and my stomach gave a violent lurch of longing.
‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘I want you at your best, today.’
He’s poisoned it, came the certain thought, and I hesitated in my shuffling over towards it.
Fuck it, I then thought, reaching for the mug with one hand and the croissant with the other.
The coffee must have been from the pot because it was near stone-cold, which would account for the reason why I hadn’t smelled it when Aaron had carried it into the room and placed it on the bedside table before waking me up. The croissant, however, was perfect. I stuffed it down, not caring how much of a pig I looked in front of him.
Aaron watched me like an indulgent parent might watch a child eating a special treat, a half smile on his arrogant face. ‘Wait there,’ he said when I was one bite away from finishing, ‘I have another surprise for you.’
He left the room and I inhaled the last of the croissant and downed the coffee. When I was done, I glanced down at the tape wound around my ankles and shins.
I could unwrap that right now, make a run for it…
I dismissed the idea as soon as I thought it, telling myself that it was stupid. My one chance would come when I picked Becky up from Mum’s this a
fternoon and I wasn’t about to blow it.
Aaron came back into the room a minute later, brandishing a paper carrier bag.
‘The clothes delivery came this morning, and I’ve packed our suitcases. I took the liberty of fully kitting you and Becky out with new clothes, seeing as you didn’t seem that interested in doing it yesterday. And this is for you.’ He placed the bag next to me on the bed. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I picked this out for you to wear today. I thought the soft green of the dress would really compliment your colouring, and that the whole outfit would work on both sides of the world. I mean, you can wear the black tights in England, and just take them off on the plane before we land. The same with the denim jacket.’
I tried to keep the incredulous look off my face. His arrogance beggared belief.
‘Aren’t you going to look?’ he asked me with an air of innocence that I found deeply disconcerting.
Silently, I peeped inside the bag. True to his word, there was a cotton, short-sleeved green dress with small blue flowers on it and string ties at the waist. It was very pretty, and definitely something I might have picked out for myself. To go with it were a pair of flat, black pumps, a pair of black tights still in their packet, a simple, but expensive looking black underwear set and a faded denim jacket.
‘You’ll look beautiful in that,’ he said as he went back into the bathroom.
I could hear him run the second tap, and the water sloshing in the tub as he probably swirled it with his hand to check the temperature. I turned my attention to my new clothes. I didn’t like the way he was being so nice.
No, I didn’t like it one little bit.
The taps squeaked, and then the sound of the running water stopped. He came back into the bedroom.
‘Take that tape off your feet, you can’t bathe with that on now, can you? There’s everything that you’ll need in the bathroom; towels, toiletries, hair products, hairdryer… I’ll give you an hour to get ready. I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to lock you in the bathroom in case you try anything silly. One hour, okay? And if you’re still hungry, you can have something else to eat when you’ve finished getting ready.’
The Silenced Wife Page 22