The Silenced Wife

by Collette Heather

  Just as I turned around to leave, a creaking noise reached my ears. I gasped, my breath catching in my throat and my heart racing. I strained my ears but heard nothing more.

  It had sounded very much like something had fallen over in one of the bedrooms down the hallway – a dull thud, like a chair toppling over.

  Or someone breaking into the house.

  The moisture sucked from my mouth and the walls of the bedroom closed in around me. I forced myself to take a deep, steadying breath.

  I guess on some level I knew it would be Aaron, but for the life of me I didn’t know why.

  Just when I was beginning to think that I had imagined it, the noise came again, louder this time, followed by the unmistakable sound of footsteps coming down the hallway.

  THIRTY

  I tensed in terror as the footsteps grew louder, rooted to the spot in fear.

  When Aaron appeared in the bedroom doorway, I wasn’t surprised. I gasped and staggered backwards, the backs of my knees connecting with the edge of the bed. He was standing there with his arms folded and his legs spread.

  ‘Looking for something?’

  He brandished the three passports in front of him, making my heart thump hard and fast.

  I didn’t like the smirk on his handsome face. No, I didn’t like it one little bit.

  ‘Aaron?’ I said slowly. ‘What are you doing up here? Where did you find the passports?’

  ‘Why, they were in the glove compartment of the car, of course,’ he said with a nasty smile that made my guts squirm coldly.

  I did my upmost to keep my voice level, to not betray my fear. If I acted like nothing was wrong, then maybe nothing would be wrong. On some level I knew it was foolish, but at that point I was still desperate for this to be okay.

  But in my heart of hearts, I knew.

  ‘And you came up here to tell me that you found them, I suppose?’

  I was still playing the game, keeping up the pretence that this was normal. Aaron, however, refused to play along any longer.

  ‘I climbed up the tree outside Becky’s bedroom window. It’s an amazing tree; nature’s very own ladder.’

  ‘Aaron what are you talking about?’

  But I knew. I bloody knew.

  ‘If you scream, I’ll kill Becky, you know I will.’

  He may have used that threat countless times now, but it in no way diminished its impact.

  ‘I’m going back to the car,’ I said, striding over towards the door.

  The only problem was, he was blocking it. The assertiveness of my actions completely belying the state I was inside. I was a quivering wreck, a mass of jellied nerves, the adrenalin coursing through me, emboldening me.

  ‘No, you’re not going anywhere.’

  Before I had a chance to react, yet alone draw breath to scream, he had grabbed me from behind. With one hand clamped over my mouth, and the other around my waist, he walked us sideways towards the bed, where he violently threw us both down.

  I screamed into his hand, my hot breath blasting damp heat back into my face.

  ‘Get off me,’ I cried, but it came out a muffled groan.

  ‘How could you be so fucking stupid? About fucking everything? Are you really that pathetic?’

  His breath blasted hotly on the side of my face, bringing with it a gust of stale coffee and something else; a hint of something foul and rotten wrenched up from his guts.

  I squirmed and bucked beneath him, doing my best to shake him off, but he kept me pinned to the bed with his entire body. He bore down on top of me, grinding me into the mattress. Panic assailed me and I could feel my nostrils flaring above his hand, desperately trying to draw oxygen into my crushed lungs.

  Above me, he chuckled and my stomach roiled in disgust.

  ‘You sicken me, you have no idea how much. How could you ever have thought that a man like me would even look at a woman like you?’

  I groaned in terror, but ceased struggling quite as much. The more I struggled, the less I could breathe, so I forced myself to remain calm, to control my breathing. He wasn’t saying anything new, particularly, but this level of venom felt new. I could sense that something bad was about to happen, or some horrendous revelation was coming.

  ‘You actually thought that you could repair my broken heart? You thought that you could save my damaged soul with your love? Why do all women think that? It’s pathetic!’

  He roared that last part in my ear, and I flinched beneath him, my ear ringing.

  The window cleaner, I suddenly thought. I closed my eyes and whimpered, hardly daring to allow myself to hope that he might have heard. The man outside was my only hope. If I could just scream loud enough, he would help me. I would be saved.

  Shit, I thought. It’s what I should’ve done from the start. I should’ve bloody screamed blue murder.

  Above me, Aaron was nowhere near finished with his little lecture. ‘I’ve been watching you for so long, Joyce. Ever since I first read your column. And when I found out that you were pregnant, I knew it had to be you. I knew it had to be your child.’

  His words twisted in my heart as surely as a turning knife, even though I didn’t understand what he was saying.

  Although perhaps, on some level, I did.

  ‘I want Becky, Joyce. I can’t have children of my own, but I want a child. I need someone to pass my legacy onto. It’s what we all want, isn’t it? To create someone in our own image? I want to pass down my ideologies, I want to mould Becky’s mind into the shape of my own. I want to break her, then build her up again as I wish her to be. She’s so young, she won’t even remember you. She belongs to me now. I didn’t know when you were pregnant if you were carrying a boy or a girl, and I didn’t care. But mostly, I’m glad that Becky’s a girl. It will make the monster I turn her into so much more satisfying for me. No one could ever suspect that a girl could have such a pitch-black soul.’

  The devastating words washed over me, leaving utter carnage in their wake. Shakily, I closed my eyes, trying – and failing – to blink back the tears.

  ‘Cry all you want, you dumb bitch, this is the end of the line for you.’

  The truth of everything hit me with all the subtlety of an eighteen-wheeler careering into a motorway barrier.

  ‘James,’ I croaked.

  ‘Yes, dear, sweet, dumb James. You’re right, I killed him. Or rather, I paid an obscene amount of money for someone to do it for me by tampering with his brakes.’

  I just lay there, absorbing this devastating information. Aaron had been playing me for four whole years. It defied belief.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering why I waited so long to make my move, why I didn’t claim you earlier. The thing is, I don’t like babies, Joyce. I thought I’d leave all the dirty nappies to you. Plus, you needed time to grieve for your prick of a husband, because you’re such a nice person. I needed you to fall in love with me and that wouldn’t have happened if you were still pining for a dead man.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘I liked your column. You were pregnant. Being a semi-celebrity, you were easy to watch, to stalk. You were just perfect.’ He let out a harsh laugh. ‘Lucky you.’

  Slowly, through my haze of misery, I became aware that his weight had shifted slightly on top of me. There was empty space where the side of his hip had been pressed into mine, grinding me into the mattress.

  I grabbed at this chance to move, snatching at the relative, newfound freedom like a woman possessed. I squirmed with renewed vigour, doing my best to buck him off me. Above the roaring blood in my ears, I heard him laugh.

  In my haste to wriggle free, I hadn’t noticed that I was still pinned into place as surely as a worm on a hook. I was just in a different position, that was all. He was lying behind me now with both of us on our sides, one of his hands still clamped over my mouth, and his solid thigh slung on top of mine, as sturdy as a felled tree.

  And his other hand. Oh, dear God his other hand… It had snaked its way under m
y dress, stopping at my ribcage to dig in its fingers. My head swam and I let out a loud moan of protest into his palm, just the feel of him on my bare flesh leaving me reeling.

  ‘I don’t think that you appreciate the restraint that I’ve shown around you. You have no idea how much I want to hurt you. It’s what I do, Joyce, but I think you know that. It’s such a shame that I can’t. I used to hurt my first wife all the time. She grew to like it Joyce, in fact, she loved it. But I got bored of her, and when I found out that she couldn’t carry my child, I burnt the bitch down in her own home like a rat in a trap.’

  The view I had of the wall was blurring with my tears. His hand gripped me all the tighter, as if he were trying to insert his hateful fingers into a gap between my ribs to prise them apart like a carcass on a butcher’s slab.

  Then just like that, he let go, leaving a blast of searing pain in the wake of his fingers. I felt his weight shift on top of me and suddenly my back felt light and free where he was no longer crushing me. I went to roll away from him but he fisted my hair and yanked my head back so hard I thought that my neck might snap. I yelped in surprised pain, but he just pulled all the harder.

  ‘On your feet, bitch.’

  I scrambled onto all fours, then reared up onto my knees, shuffling awkwardly on my knees on the mattress until I was able to step off the bed. Aaron, still fisting my hair, walked me over to the door and then out into the hallway.

  ‘Let go,’ I gasped, clawing at my hair. ‘I’m not going to run.’

  Aaron did let go, but only so that he could pull my back against his front with one arm clamped across my chest and his other hand over my mouth. In this manner, he walked me to the top of the staircase where we stopped.

  I felt him shove something in the inner pocket of my denim jacket and when I glanced down, it was the passports and tickets.

  ‘There can be no signs of forced sexual entry in your post-mortem. Because you, you stupid clumsy cow, you went and fell down the stairs and broke your neck while I was waiting in the car.’

  I didn’t have time to react, to think, to do a single damn thing. One second I was standing there captive in his arms, the next I was flailing my arms and legs against nothing.

  The stairs rushed up to meet me, followed by the briefest blast of searing agony accompanied by a flash of brilliant white light, then there was nothing.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I was supposed to have died in the fall. In many ways, I wish that I had.

  The window cleaner heard me scream as I fell. I don’t remember screaming, but I suppose I must have done. He said he heard the scream, followed by the thump. Apparently, I broke the bottom part of the banister on my way down. He came rushing into the house to see me lying contorted at the foot of the stairs in a growing puddle of blood. He felt for a pulse; I still had one.

  Yes. Fuck you, Aaron, I still had one.

  He had his mobile in his pocket and he called for an ambulance. He stayed with me as I fought for my life, guided by the kindly voice on the other end of the line.

  This gave Aaron plenty of time to shimmy back down the tree, scuttle round the house like the reptile he is, sneak back round the hedge and slip back into his car through the passenger door, unnoticed.

  By the time the window cleaner came out to tell him, he was safely back in his car. And the window cleaner thought he had been in his car the entire time, thanks to the tinted windows.

  The perfect murder.

  Well, almost. The perfect murder, apart from the fact that I’m not dead.

  The doctors said it was a miracle that I survived. I broke my back in three places and had a concussion to end all concussions. I was in a coma for three weeks and I will never walk again. I’ll never forget when I came round to his smug face peering down at me.

  I remember opening my mouth to tell him to leave me alone, to ask where Becky was, but no sound came out.

  ‘Hush, Joyce,’ he had whispered in my ear as he lovingly stroked my hair. ‘I’ll take care of you.’

  I didn’t reply, and I never did reply. The fall down the stairs had paralysed my vocal chord muscles. I am told that severe physical trauma can cause this, that the nerve impulses of the larynx can be disrupted or permanently damaged, causing impaired speech. Or in my case, total voice loss.

  Aaron thought it was hilarious. Ironic, he said. ‘Oh, this is fucking priceless,’ he whispered more than once in my ear, barely able to suppress his mirth.

  The doctors told me that my voice might repair itself, with time.

  But that will never happen because Aaron is making sure that it won’t. He regularly feeds me a concoction of drugs now that I am home with him, one of them being Botulinum Toxin which works to paralyse the vocal chords. I don’t know where he gets them from. Perhaps from the darknet that he is so fond of, or perhaps its through his old connections at the hospital. Who knows.

  What I do now know is that Aaron has long been privy to my medical records. He has always known about my stay in the mental asylum when I was sixteen, and now he is using that against me.

  Because now, I am officially crazy. The crazy, mute cripple, driven insane by her tragic accident.

  People trust Aaron, I never get visits from anyone government or hospital related, we are left alone because Aaron is such a trusted, upstanding figure in the medical industry.

  I am so lucky to have him looking after me.

  Another of the drugs he feeds me is LSD. He mainly does this when Becky is due to visit me. He makes sure to induce a bad trip by torturing me, mentally and physically, before she comes into the room. Sometimes when I trip, I say and do things that simply aren’t me. Twice now I have attacked my own daughter, thinking that she was something unspeakable, out to kill me.

  God only knows the poison he is dripping into my little girl’s head. Mummy is crazy. Mummy wants to hurt you.

  Mummy doesn’t love you anymore.

  Aaron mostly keeps me locked in this bedroom. I only come out to get some sun so I appear like I’m cared for to other people. We can’t have me too white now, can we? A little bit of colour in my cheeks is the doctor’s orders.

  It breaks my heart to think of what he is doing to my darling daughter. Crawling into her mind and twisting it into something awful and evil.

  Twisting her into his own image.

  I’m not sure why he is keeping me alive when he had intended to kill me. Maybe he enjoys having me around, silent and crippled, like some kind of sick trophy. Or maybe he is using me as some kind of bargaining tool with Becky. Whatever his reasons, I’m still here. I’m still alive.

  And all the while I am alive, there is still hope.

  Sadly, the same cannot be said for my mother. It breaks my heart to think of her. Turns out, she was right about being watched. Not long after my little accident, Aaron told me about what happened to her. How that piece of shit who had been watching her broke into her home, forced her to write out a suicide note and then to overdose on her antidepressants.

  I didn’t know that she had been on antidepressants, but she was far from crazy, my dear, sweet mother. I think she was amazing to even notice that someone was watching her, planning her death.

  I never did go to the funeral as I was still in a coma.

  This diary is the only thing that keeps me sane. Sane. Now that’s a laugh. When I requested to write down my thoughts, I was surprised that he agreed to it. But I think he enjoys reading it. I think it turns him on to crawl into my head and turn over and examine every last thought along with me.

  I hope to give this diary to someone, one day soon. Hopefully to Linda Flint. Gary and Linda have been to see us twice now, since I’ve been in this hell-house. Next time she comes, I plan to give her my diary. I will undoubtedly be on LSD when they visit, I just hope I can control the trip long enough to do what I have to do.

  She is, or was, the closest thing I have to a friend.

  I will get me and Becky out of here, somehow, someway.

  I
am not crazy.

  EPILOGUE

  Linda Flint sat with her husband Gary and Aaron on the patio at the exact same table they had sat around on Arron and Joyce’s wedding day.

  She reached across the table to pat Aaron’s hand. God, the poor man was still so utterly broken; it broke her heart for her to see him this way. It had been months since the accident, when poor old Joyce had tripped on the stairs. It was just so tragic. They had been seconds away from going on their honeymoon and Joyce had just nipped upstairs to retrieve their forgotten passports.

  ‘It’s really kind of you to check in on us,’ Aaron said. ‘I hope you understand why you can’t stay, but it really upsets Joyce when there are other people in the house.’

  ‘It’s all right, we understand,’ Gary said. ‘We’re perfectly fine at the hotel. I’m sorry we can only stay one night, but you know what it’s like with work.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Aaron said with a ghost of a smile. ‘Good job I gave it up because I’ve got my hands full here. Not that I’m complaining,’ he added quickly. ‘I love both my girls and wouldn’t be without either of them.’

  ‘It must be difficult, bringing up Becky alone.’

  ‘She’s a delight, I love her like my own. The rockiest patch came one week into Joyce’s coma when Margaret committed suicide. Poor Becky, she became so withdrawn. But she soldiered through, she’s such a strong little girl.’

  Linda flinched at his words. Her own grandmother committing suicide like that must have been such a wrench. That poor girl.

  ‘Yes, she’s quite remarkable,’ Gary agreed.

  ‘I’m doing my best to guide her,’ Aaron said.

  ‘And you’re doing an amazing job,’ Linda said. ‘She seems so happy right now.’

  She turned her attention to the little girl running around at the bottom of the garden with a dog – a little Yorkshire Terrier named Bertie.

  ‘It pleases me no end to see her blow off steam like that and playing like kids should. Getting Bertie was a good move I think. I just hope this one lasts a few more years than poor old Buster did.’