by Karen Bell
Mila liked Adie immediately. She was Colombian and at twenty-three, she was a woman of the world, and in her third year of psychology at uni. She too, had fallen pregnant by mistake, and like Mila, had decided to marry the father of the baby. Unlike Mila, her life had not skipped a beat. She’d spent the first two years studying at night and then the next two full-time, which was only three days per week plus assignments.
Her husband Carlos was thrilled for her to be getting qualifications while he supported the family, and with his parents newly settled in Australia, the young couple were lucky to see their baby at all. Daniel had been sent to preschool once a week mainly to ensure his English was as forthcoming as his Spanish.
Mila had felt immediately inadequate, but to her surprise, Adie had seemed engaged and genuinely interested, sharing of her own experiences but also asking about Mila’s family, her pregnancy and her interests and dreams. Though they’d only met an hour earlier Mila had never felt such a sense of sympatico with anyone before.
Over the next few months the children had become inseparable and the weekly play-date had become a regular event. For Mila, it was the highlight of her week. Robert knew nothing of it and Mila was over the moon when he agreed to send Holly to the same local school that Daniel was going to attend.
Adie was gorgeous, sexy, confident and brilliant. It seemed that she couldn’t help from probing into Mila’s hidden psyche at any opportunity. But she was never judgmental and always managed to make Mila feel special. She knew by instinct, just the right thing to say to validate Mila’s parenting, just when she felt that she was a hopeless mother and usually when Robert had confirmed it by questioning her every action, and undermining her instincts.
Mila’s friend was all this and as if that wasn’t enough, she was also wickedly funny. Once, on a particularly steamy afternoon with their school-aged kids in the back of Adie’s car, they were stopped at some road works a few feet from a young heartthrob holding a Stop/Go sign. Wearing little more than a singlet, shorts and work-boots, he had been hard to ignore and Adie had rolled down her window. ‘ Honey, do I need a licence for that body or a road map?’ Mila had slid down in her seat, and covered her face, watching for a response from between her fingers. Grinning widely, he’d quickly countered, ‘I’d be happy to give you some lessons and directions m’am.’
Always the one to have the last word, Adie had growled back ‘Sweetheart, I could teach you a few new tricks with that lollypop of yours, just as long as I get the last lick.’ The poor guy had nearly fainted on the spot, the traffic waiting behind them, by then blowing their horns and yelling obscenities.
‘Go. Go!’ Mila had urged as he reluctantly spun his sign around.
Adie left Mila blushing every time but she secretly longed to have half her spunk. Men of course fell at her feet but Adie was staunchly loyal to her Carlos. ‘Well I have been known to get my appetite from a variety of places but I always eat at home. Besides, with a lover as long, strong and sexy as mine, why would I go elsewhere?’
Adie’s husband was certainly a good sort, but tall he was not, so Mila was left in no doubt as to which part was long. ‘Have you seen the way my Carlos moves on the dance floor? Well he has ten times the moves in the bedroom and that’s no exaggeration.’ Mila had seen Carlos as a matter of fact at a school fundraiser on one of the rare occasions that Robert had allowed them to attend an event that wasn’t church related. All the other couples had been dancing the way you would expect at such a function, arms length apart, with the occasional body part touching. And then, there was Adie and Carlos, pressed together from neck to knee, his one hand planted firmly on her butt cheek, the other cradling the back of her head, fingers laced passionately through her long hair.
Mila had sat watching with fascination as Robert, as usual, had refused to dance. Their dance could only be described as sex with clothes on. Conversation had stopped as Adie and Carlos’ bodies gyrated as one. The music was not slow but their dance had found half speed and every other beat was punctuated with thrust of the hip, or the pelvis, or her long, tanned leg wrapped around his as he dipped her low and she dropped her head sensuously so it swooped inches from the floor. A circle had formed around the pair as husbands, slack jawed, and wives swooning at the sight of his glistening biceps, figured out whether to cover their eyes or just enjoy the show. As a finale, he had lifted her easily into the air and twirled her around before sliding her slowly down the face of his body. Their lips brushed over each other’s and everyone in the room had wolf-whistled and cheered. Except Robert of course, ‘Disgusting,’ he’d spat. Can’t they get a room?’
That night Robert had been particularly ferocious in the bedroom and Mila was left feeling raw and unsatisfied. She’d crept into the bathroom after he’d passed out and looked at herself in the mirror. Her mouth was mashed, lips and chin grazed from his unwanted attention. Robert didn’t like kissing as a rule but on the occasion when his mouth found hers, it was not the romantic act Mila had envisioned as a child and tonight he’d actually pulled her head back by her hair and bitten her lips and neck to the point where some thirty minutes later, the teeth marks were still showing. In a loving marriage it might have made for an exciting departure from the norm, but in their lop-sided relationship it was just another angry gesture that made Mila seethe. Hearing him snoring, Mila had planned to find her own empty satisfaction, but upon seeing the bruising results of his aggression, she’d felt too angry and too pathetic to follow through.
The term lovemaking could not be assigned to their salacious interactions. Mila had longed to be held and caressed, to have a lover look into her eyes, explore her body, slowly reverently, inch by inch, but eventually the disappointment had given way to acceptance and numbness. She had borne it night after night as if a duty and punishment for having carelessly fallen pregnant. How she had envied Adie and Carlos that night and longed to one day be freed of this prison called marriage. In retrospect she could only laugh bitterly at just how far from her childish dreams, the reality of marriage had strayed.
So many times it had been on the tip of her tongue to share with Adie more of her secret life at home but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Mila was ashamed of how weak she was and didn’t want Adie to think less of her or worse still, to end their friendship. She also didn’t think she could justify to Adie all the reasons she stayed.
She knew that Adie thought Robert a bully and a bore and that in the early days she couldn’t understand why their friendship had never extended to double dates. Mila initially made lame excuses about Robert working long hours, but as their friendship cemented and Mila required a long-term excuse, she told Adie that Robert mixed only with their church congregation. Her astute friend had known better than to probe more deeply.
Every night, after Holly’s strict bedtime, Mila was called upon to fulfil his needs. It didn’t matter how tired or how soundly asleep she might have been, Robert’s needs were of the highest priority. Every day too, she would wake pre-dawn to the familiar pressure of his morning erection behind her and the lifting of her nightdress. She was not permitted underwear in bed.
But it was Saturday night that would punctuate every week for Mila. Regardless of anything that happened after Holly’s lights-out on other nights, for Mila, the simmering dread as each week marched closer to it’s end, became almost as unbearable as the night itself. It would never have occurred to Holly or her grandparents on either side, that the regular sleepover they treasured for fifteen years was orchestrated by Robert to give him carte blanche opportunity to act out his very darkest desires.
CHAPTER TEN
Their Saturday ‘date night’ took place with religious regularity, back home in the basement after Holly was delivered for her sleepover with either set of grandparents. First Robert would loosen them both up with a drink before taking Mila below. The smell, let alone the taste of Scotch whiskey, would forever turn her stomach.
The front part of the underground space resem
bled a storage facility, walls lined with folders and archive boxes, befitting an accountant, but as though from a movie, Robert had built a door into the continuous shelves along the back wall. When opened, it revealed the ‘games room’ as he liked to call it. Mila had been tied, gagged and blindfolded there more often and in more positions that she cared to remember. Year after year he installed improvements as the ‘games’ became increasingly twisted and terrifying.
In the centre of the room was a hanging rubber ‘bed’ on chains to which she could be cuffed; on one wall, an X shaped rack, and on another, assorted tools or as he called them, ‘toys’. Strategically placed mirrors allowed Mila to witness the play if not blindfolded. In a typically sadistic twist, Robert always purchased a new toy for Mila’s birthday.
Their routine was as rigid on those nights as all others. After plying her with alcohol, there followed porn movies set up on a large screen projector. The cast was varied but the storyline always involved bondage and punishment of some kind. Mila was instructed not to take her eyes of the screen. Initially she had been sickened and horrified by what she saw. How could anyone calling themselves human, inflict such pain and humiliation on another? Where did the lengths of male depravity end? Mila was confused to be shown movies where often the ‘victims’ too seemed to be getting-off on the abuse almost as much as their ‘captors’. It was a language that she couldn’t fathom.
As if she were the subject of some sick scientific experiment, Robert was keen to arouse her while she was watching. She would be spread eagled, shackled to the rack, facing the screen. He would kneel between her legs and use a vibrator to bring her close to orgasm. Then he would stop, leaving her precariously surfing just below the crest. She would be forced to watch some more, her desire waning before he began again. It was only at the most sadistic point of the film that he would finish what he’d started.
Mila was ashamed that after some months, as one poorly made film blurred into the next she began to feel numb to the brutality, and then, to her own revulsion, actually became turned-on by the scenes unfolding on the screen. Robert had succeeded in conditioning her to the point where she was no longer in control of her own moral code or physical reactions. He had taken her body long ago but Mila despised herself for her own mental weakness and the ease with which he’d broken her.
For many years, Robert was the sole producer of the discipline and bondage scenes that he re-enacted with Mila, but one night, when she was tightly secured, he disappeared for what felt like hours, before returning with a stranger. Robert had stood off to one side, watching, directing, masturbating while Mila was raped. A new Saturday night ritual had begun.
He had on occasion brought home two or more men. She never knew where he found them. Sometimes they would appear shocked to find her waiting for them in that room, bound and gagged, but Robert would use all his charm to convince them that she was a willing participant. The more terrified she appeared, the more he insisted it was pretence and part of their game.
In an ironic twist, Robert never allowed these men to leave lasting marks on Mila’s body. Once, when an older, heavily tattooed visitor backhanded Mila, causing her lip to split, Robert flew into a rage unlike any before and pummelled him senseless. Mila had closed her eyes, not opening them again until she’d heard the sickening clunk, clunk of her rapist being dragged up the stairs. She could only imagine the threats that would have accompanied the old guy’s release and secured his silence… assuming that he had still been alive.
For a while, after the strangers began visiting, Mila expected that any day there’d be a knock on the door from the police, and that Robert’s game would be up. Eventually she came to realize that once they had become party to the act, there followed a men’s code of sorts. There would be no knight in shining armour.
Robert had been her only partner and Mila had never known a sexual relationship that didn’t involve rules and regulations. Part of her needed his approval, his permission to be aroused. From the outset, he’d led her to believe that like everything else, her sexual release was his to control and hers to earn. On the rare occasion that she found herself alone and aroused, she’d struggled to reach orgasm, doused with guilt and burning with dark thoughts that led her to believe she was as depraved as him. She found herself picturing anonymous men, or more usually women stripping her, restraining her, forcing objects inside her. She was always submissive, and always the recipient of pain before pleasure, the line blurring between the two as the years rolled on.
Mila had asked herself often enough why she hadn’t left Robert years before and questioned it even more once Holly reached her teens. The reality was complicated.
Firstly, she had no money of her own. Robert owned the house in which they lived, and Mila had no access to any of their bank accounts. She was kept on a tight leash only receiving a small weekly allowance for food and basic clothing. Robert demanded every receipt for his book keeping records, but still, over many years, she had managed to scrimp the pennies together to have a secret stash of just over four thousand dollars. It might have been enough to run away on, but where would she and Holly have gone? They would be prisoners in exile, separated from her only real family. How would she explain her actions to her parents? They had known nothing of what went on behind closed doors and Mila could never burden them with the pain of learning.
She recalled a defining moment, some years into their marriage, when she’d realised there would be no leaving, that her door had been permanently sealed. She had later come to think of it as Robert’s checkmate.
It had been a Tuesday – roast night and Mila had accidentally burned their dinner. She’d meant to turn down the oven after browning the meat but a phone call had distracted her and then she’d dashed straight out the door to pick up Holly from preschool. Adie had spotted them there and had talked Mila into detouring for a catch-up at her place.
Almost two hours later, Mila had rushed through her front door and been hit by wave of nausea that was not from the smell of their charred meal, but the dread of inevitable consequence. She would not only have to explain the disaster, but also her absence from the house for that extended period.
Robert was due home in under an hour and Mila had done what she could in the short space of time, flinging open doors and windows, double bagging the evidence before running it out to the big bins. The pan would take some soaking and steel wool and Mila had thrown it in the laundry tub with bi-carb soda and boiling water before closing the door. God, how the smell had lingered.
She’d scanned the fridge and found four eggs and a block of cheese then rushed to the pantry for a tin of salmon. She had looked at her watch with fifteen minutes to go, and in a fresh panic realised that the table was still not set. She was turning in circles, practically immobilised, when she saw Holly, standing in the kitchen doorway.
‘I’ll help you mummy. Then Daddy won’t be so mad.’
Mila had wanted to cry, but had instead swept Holly into a reassuring hug. ‘You know Daddy won’t be mad at you. It’s me who made the mistake.’
‘But Miss Amanda said you shouldn’t get in trouble for mistakes.’
‘Your teacher is a smart lady but sometimes people forget what’s important, so let’s try to fix this together before Daddy gets home shall we?’
She scanned her mental list for a suitable job for Holly. She could crack the eggs. No, that could be a disaster; four eggs were barely enough as it was. Grate the cheese? Open the salmon? No and no, both jobs had potential for serious injury and required adult dexterity.
‘Do you think you could you set the table for Mummy? It’s a very important job and you’ve helped me do it before. You can find everything in the sideboard.’
‘I think I can.’
Mila didn’t have time to supervise, she just had to hope that Holly had inherited the Korovin photographic memory. Robert would notice if the smallest utensil was out of place. With the omelette bubbling on the stove and the bread in the toaste
r, Mila had stuck her head into the dining room, catching sight of the fully laid table in the mirror over the sideboard. Holly had managed everything, right down to the salt and pepper and Robert’s wine glass. Perfect, she’d exclaimed, as the front door opened and Robert strode in. He took one look at the table and glared at her. ‘What’s gone on here?’
Mila looked down at the table and saw that it had been laid perfectly, except in mirror image, knives and glasses to the left and forks to the right. She tried to turn it into a positive.
‘Holly’s set the table all by herself.’
‘Clearly. That’s your job and what’s that smell?’ His rising ire was barely contained.
‘I accidentally burned the dinner, but I’ve made something else.’ Even as she said it, Mila heard it fall on deaf ears. Tuesdays were roast night…
‘Do I ask you to go to work?’ His voice was alarmingly calm. ‘Do you have any other engagements on a Tuesday that I should know about, any commitments other than a few chores? Do I hold down a job that puts a roof over your head, food in your mouth, and clothes on your back or is that all in my imagination?’ Mila didn’t know if she was expected make eye contact, let alone whether to answer, as he continued.
‘You’ve burnt our dinner. Holly clearly hasn’t had her bath and you’ve even made her do your job. There will be serious consequences.’ With that, he had turned on his heel and walked out, not returning until just before midnight. Mila hadn’t dared to go to bed. She’d spent hours scrubbing every surface to rid the house of the smell.