I can hear the overtone of criticism in her voice. I realise the missed calls must have been from Julie, not Nikki as I’d assumed.
‘I’m so sorry, Julie. I went out to buy Dad a present to let him know I was thinking of him. But there were hordes of people in town and in the end I gave up and came home.’
I’m gushing. The words are coming out of my mouth without me thinking about what I’m saying. The words in my head, though, are clear: ‘Rohypnol’ and ‘date rape drug’.
‘I thought I’d ring you back,’ Julie is saying when I manage to tune in again, ‘seeing as I didn’t have time to chat before work the other day.’
We talk for a while about Dad, my brief sentences punctuated with thoughts that have nothing to do with our conversation.
There must be an explanation.
I tell Julie that Alex and I will come down the first weekend in September.
‘The weekend of the 2nd and 3rd of September or the weekend after that?’ Julie asks.
Isn’t it mixed with alcohol when it’s used in sexual assaults?
‘The weekend of the 2nd, I think,’ I say, twisting around on the sofa and looking at the cupboard where Alex stocks his whisky. ‘I’ll check with Alex and send you a text.’
It must be prescribed for something. It must have a therapeutic effect.
‘You sound distracted.’
It doesn’t look like it was prescribed, though. There’s no patient information leaflet for one thing, although that might have been discarded. But there’s hardly anything written on the box, either. No laboratory name. Just the name of the drug.
‘Julie, can I ask you a question?’
‘Sure. Fire away.’
‘What would Flunitrazepam be taken for?’
‘Well, it’s better known as Rohypnol or the Date Rape Drug.’
Those words again. ‘I know that.’ There’s a pointed silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Sorry, Julie. I didn’t mean to snap. Could it be used in doping … for athletes, I mean?’
‘It might be a banned substance in sport, I don’t know about that, but it wouldn’t improve your performance if you took it, put it that way. No. It used to be prescribed for patients having difficulty sleeping.’
‘Used to be?’
‘Well, for all I know, it still is, but I expect there’s far better medication for insomnia. Flunitrazepam is horribly addictive and the withdrawal symptoms can be very unpleasant.’
‘I see,’ I say, although I’m still none the wiser as to what these tablets were doing in the drinks cupboard.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Um …’ I can’t come up with anything plausible off the top of my head. Why should I lie, anyway? ‘I found a packet of tablets in a cupboard and wondered if it was OK to take them for a headache.’ Not the full truth, but at least it’s true.
‘Well, I wouldn’t take them if I were you,’ Julie chuckles, ‘unless you want to knock yourself out.’
Julie and I say our goodbyes, and I promise to confirm the dates for our visit to Somerset. After I end the call, I think over everything my sister has told me about Flunitrazepam. Addictive. Withdrawal symptoms. She seemed certain it wouldn’t enhance an athlete’s performance. Prescribed for insomnia. Though the more I look at this discreet packaging, the more I’m convinced Alex didn’t get this from the doctor’s. I think he ordered this online. But the question remains: What for?
Surely not for insomnia. Alex has never had difficulty sleeping. He always sleeps like a baby. Even when we argue, he rolls over and he’s sound asleep in mere minutes. It doesn’t make sense.
I can hear Chloe making funny sighing and cooing noises in the hallway. She has woken up. I pick the tablets up from the floor where I dropped them when Julie rang. I put them away in the cupboard, pushing them out of sight behind Alex’s bottle of Glenfiddich, where I found them in the first place. Hopefully, Alex never noticed they were gone.
Making my way out to the hall, I decide to leave this for now. I need to have a think. I’m not sure why the Flunitrazepam seems important. But I don’t want to confront Alex just yet. I need answers, but I won’t get them from him.
It’s as I’m picking up Chloe that it suddenly comes to me. At first, I don’t believe it. Then I feel so dizzy that I have to put Chloe back in the pram and let myself sink down to the floor. My earlier thoughts echo in my head. Alex always sleeps like a baby. The linguist in me ponders that expression as I sit on the floor. I suppose the idea is a baby has no real worries and can rest easy.
But it always seemed to me that Chloe slept deeply rather than peacefully. I thought she must be exhausted from the wailing she kept up for most of her waking hours and that she just conked out. She used to wake up screaming again. She wouldn’t breastfeed and we had to give her the bottle.
Chloe was calm for Alex. She wasn’t calm for me until I took her to Somerset. And she has been calm ever since.
I make a vain effort to push my thoughts out of my head before they are fully formulated. Alex is an excellent father. He wouldn’t hurt Chloe, would he? But the more I tell myself I’m jumping to conclusions, the more I convince myself that I’m right.
Alex has been drugging our baby.
Did Chloe refuse to breastfeed because she was addicted to the drug Alex was spiking her milk with? Did she get distressed because she was experiencing withdrawal symptoms?
She’s been calm ever since we went to Somerset. How odd she didn’t start wailing again when we got back. But as that goes through my mind, I realise I already have the counterargument. Since we’ve been back at the Old Vicarage, the tablets have been on my bedside table.
Why would Alex do that? Why would he drug Chloe?
Chloe starts to whimper in the pram. I leave her there while I go to make up a bottle, not trusting myself to stay upright. My legs are heavy and unresponsive as I walk through the hallway, as if they’re sinking in quicksand. In the kitchen, I lean over the sink, feeling both dizzy and sick.
As I straighten up again, I look through the barred windows and fix my gaze on the damson tree. I marvel that it’s still standing there, not because it’s leaning at such an improbable angle, but because my world is falling down and my marriage is falling apart, and somehow it seems like the house, the tree and the swing should all collapse, too. I can’t quite comprehend how everything looks the same when everything has changed.
While I feed and bath Chloe, I turn the radio on to try and drown out the voices in my head. But then I think I should pay attention to them, so I switch off the meaningless background noise. The silence in the large house unnerves me, however, and I find myself pacing up and down the hallway with Chloe in my arms as I wait for Alex to come home. I feel as if my world has been twisted inside out. I’ve never wanted to be wrong so much in my life.
After a while, I bring down Chloe’s playmat and leave her lying on it in the living room while I go into the kitchen and pour myself a large glass of white wine. I down it without tasting it, as if I were parched and the wine were water. Without thinking, I pour myself another glass and take several huge gulps of that before topping up the glass and taking it and the bottle into the living room. Watching over Chloe, I force myself to take sips, although the temptation to knock it all back is very strong.
I’ve just drained the last drop of wine when I hear Alex’s car on the gravel outside. My heart pounding, I pick Chloe up and carry her upstairs. It’s not her bedtime, but I lay her in her cot, drawing the curtains and leaving on a light. I put some toys in her cot and admonish myself for breaking her mobile the other day. She seems happy enough, though.
When I turn around, Alex is standing in the doorway of Chloe’s bedroom. I didn’t hear him come up the stairs and he startles me.
‘Is she asleep already?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I answer curtly, brushing past him. He follows me down the stairs and into the living room.
‘Something wrong?’
I whirl round, m
y fists clenching and unclenching at my sides. ‘Alex, did you …? Alex, why did you drug Chloe?’
I expect him to deny it, but he says, ‘You won’t be able to prove it.’ His mouth twists into an ugly snarl. ‘I’ll say you did it. I’ll say you needed to sleep because of your post-natal depression.’
His words render me speechless. It’s several seconds before I find my tongue. ‘Alex, I’m not suffering from depression and I never have been,’ I hiss at him.
‘Ah, but everyone thinks you are. Doctor Irving, your sister, my mother.’ He counts them off on his fingers and laughs cruelly.
‘You bastard, Alex. Why? Why did you give our daughter sleeping tablets?’
He plops down onto the sofa and runs his hands through his hair. The fact he has sat down enrages me. He’s not fazed by this in the slightest.
‘Well, initially so she’d sleep,’ he says.
I wait for Alex to say more, but he seems to have clammed up. I’ve worked it out for myself though. When I fed her, the milk wasn’t spiked. It made him look like a great father when she was calm for him, and it made me feel like an incompetent mother when she was agitated with me. I had no confidence in myself and I felt worthless. This made me dependent on Alex. Alex needs to feel needed. He has to be idealised and idolised.
Feeling as though I will explode with rage, I turn on my heels and make my way upstairs. I expect him to follow me again, but he doesn’t. I’m not really aware of what I’m doing as I pull my bags and suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe and out from under the bed and start to pack my clothes. Blinded by tears, I keep throwing in underwear, T-shirts, pairs of jeans and cardigans. I’m feeling a little unsteady and very sick and I’m not sure if it’s the shock or the alcohol.
I realise I haven’t planned my next move at all. I know I need to be one step ahead of Alex at all times, but I haven’t thought this through. Deep down I was hoping so hard that I was wrong. I didn’t think further than confronting Alex. Here I am, packing my bags, but I can’t go anywhere. Not tonight. I scold myself for being so stupid. I’ve drunk almost a whole bottle of wine. I’m well over the limit and I have nowhere to go unless I drive all the way to Somerset. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
But that doesn’t stop me. When I’ve filled one suitcase and a big holdall, I tiptoe into Chloe’s bedroom. She has fallen asleep. I look around the room, at the two single beds that Poppy and Violet used to sleep in. Alex promised to make this into a nursery and take out those beds to let in some light. But he never got round to it. There won’t be any point now.
I take some clothes out of Chloe’s chest of drawers and carry them back into my bedroom. As I’m zipping up the second case, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I haven’t heard a sound, but I can sense Alex behind me. Standing up, I turn round to face him.
‘Don’t go,’ he says. He’s pleading. ‘I fucked up. I only wanted to look good in your eyes.’
‘Alex, I can’t stay. Not after this.’
‘You promised you’d never leave me. You can’t leave me.’ This time his voice has hardened. It’s not a plea. It’s an order. An interdiction.
I should have taken that as a warning sign. At the very least, I should have moved away from him. But when he does it, I’m caught completely off-guard. Ironically, I’ve often thought he was about to hit me but he never did. And this time, he does strike me and I didn’t see it coming.
His blow has knocked me to the floor. I can taste blood and realise that my lip is split. It’s the first time he has ever hit me and I think he’s as shocked as I am.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says, kneeling on the carpet next to me. ‘Oh, Kaitlyn, I’m sorry. I promise you, it won’t ever happen again.’
On that at least, we agree, but we’re not on the same page. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think this might be the first time he has ever apologised properly, and apart from on the day of our wedding, when he pronounced his vows, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him call me by my full first name. I hated his abbreviation. Katie. It sounded truncated, as if he were belittling me by undermining my identity. But now he has used my full first name, I don’t want that either. I no longer want that intimacy.
I’m in a daze, my head spinning from the pain. I let him help me to my feet and sit me down on the bed, where I wait for him as he runs downstairs and comes back with frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel. Gently, he presses the ice to my face. All trace of the angry monster he turned into a few minutes ago has gone.
‘Stay here tonight,’ he says. ‘We can discuss this tomorrow.’
I nod. I have no choice but to stay. But I have no intention of discussing this with him. I’ll be gone first thing tomorrow morning with Chloe. I don’t feel in any immediate danger anymore. The storm in Alex has blown over. Knowing Alex, he’ll be contrite and loving now.
‘As soon as I get back from Bassenthwaite tomorrow, we’ll work this out.’
He’s still planning on doing his bloody race. Unbelievable! Some people climb mountains to see the world. Alex runs and cycles up hills so the world can see him.
I try hard not to shudder as he pulls my sweater off over my head and tugs at my jeans. My heart starts thumping inside my chest. Surely he doesn’t expect me to make love to him? He wouldn’t rape me, would he? But he leaves my underwear on and dresses me in my pyjamas, then helps me into bed and tucks me in like a little girl before leaving the room.
I lie there, wide awake, for a few hours. It’s strange to think that this is my last night here. The last time I will sleep in this bed, in this house. This is the second time I’ve decided to walk out on my life, but I haven’t really been living it. Instead, I’ve been trapped in a life that has never felt like my own.
There’s no way I can stay now. My husband has drugged my daughter and struck me. There’s no getting past that. But Alex must realise this, and that troubles me. So, I think about trying to get away now, in the middle of the night. If Chloe wakes up when I take her from her cot, she might wake Alex. I have no idea how he’ll react if he catches me leaving. But I don’t want to wait until the morning. I have to get out of here.
At 3 a.m., when I’m pretty sure Alex is asleep in the guestroom, I get up and get dressed. I’ve never felt so sober in my life. The pain in my face from Alex’s punch is excruciating, but I already know I have no painkillers in the house.
I hear a noise coming from a bedroom along the landing. Alex is awake. At first I can’t identify the noise. I open my bedroom door just a crack, enough to peep into the corridor and see that the light is on in the peach bedroom. Now I know what he’s doing. He’s ripping the tape off the cardboard box he keeps in the wardrobe.
I close the door and lean against it. My breaths are shallow. What is he looking for in the box? What should I do?
Suddenly, he bursts through the door into the bedroom and I’m sent sprawling across the room.
‘You can’t ever go,’ he says. His voice makes my blood run cold. ‘You won’t get custody of Chloe if you do. Not if they think you were the one who drugged her.’
His words have much the same effect on me as his punch earlier.
Then I see what he’s holding in his hand.
‘No, Alex, no,’ I beg. ‘We’ll talk this over tomorrow, like you said.’
But I can tell from the gleam in his cruel blue eyes and the object dangling from his hand that we’re beyond words now.
Chapter 21
~
I wake from one nightmare into another, shivering in a pool of sweat. My heart is pounding relentlessly just like the rain outside, which I can hear rather than see from my supine position. I feel every fibre in my being screaming out, but the sound is trapped deep inside me. The sock he has stuffed in my mouth and taped over doesn’t help. Why he felt it was necessary to gag me, I can’t imagine. I could scream myself hoarse and no one would hear me from here.
Alex has left me lying here. I’ve been here for three nights and thr
ee days. He comes in three times a day. And when he does, he doesn’t utter a single word. Over the last twenty-four hours, I’ve tried several times to remember the last words he has spoken to me. In case they turn out to be the last words I ever hear.
I can’t remember the words Louisa’s rapist said, either. It’s always the same. It’s a recurrent dream of mine, her nightmare, and every time I re-create it as if the whole incident happened to me and not to her. But, when it’s over, I can never recall the words her attacker whispered in her ear before he walked away. The words my twin sister told me would be etched in her mind forever.
Usually, when I wake up from this, my first thought is the realisation that this was Louisa’s ordeal, not mine. I’m just a helpless spectator, reliving her experience by proxy. While Louisa’s life was destroyed forever that day, I can get up, walk away and live my life. Usually.
But not today. Today I’m stuck in my own nightmare. Handcuffed to a bed. One of the single beds in the nursery. The bed on the right, the one my sister compared to a coffin targeted by poison arrows. I’m a prisoner in my own home. Breathe in. Breathe out. Easy to think, not so easy to do when I’m on the verge of another panic attack with a gag in my mouth. I can’t get enough air through my nostrils.
I turn towards Chloe. I can just make out her sleeping form through the bars of the cot. I watch her until she wakes up too, then listen to her as she chatters away in her baby language for a while, surprising herself with the new sounds she can make. After a few minutes, hunger sets in and she starts to whimper and then cry. Bound and gagged, I can’t get to her. I can’t even sing to her. Feeling utterly helpless, I start to whimper myself.
It seems like several hours pass before I hear the front door slam. Just as for the previous two evenings, it’s a while before Alex comes upstairs to the nursery. I imagine him pouring himself a whisky and making the meal first. Taking his time. I’m not going anywhere.
Every day, it’s the same routine. I wake up handcuffed to the bed. He feeds and changes Chloe here in the nursery and lays her back down in the cot before fetching me breakfast. I’m allowed to use the bathroom while he watches. He ties me to the bed again before leaving for work. At lunchtime, he pops home from work, but he doesn’t stay long. I don’t get fed, but Chloe does, thankfully. I do, however, get to go to the toilet and drink some water from the tap. In the evenings, he takes Chloe downstairs for a while and when it’s her bedtime, he brings her back to the nursery. Then he brings me dinner and finally he lets me take a shower and clean my teeth.
He Will Find You Page 21