by B. A. Paris
Stepping into the room, I slid to the floor behind one of the doors, drew my knees up around my chest and curled myself into a ball, expecting his hands to reach down and grab me at any moment. The suspense was terrible and the thought that he might decide not to find me until it suited him made me regret ever having left the relative safety of the bedroom.
‘Where are you, Grace?’ His voice came from somewhere out in the hall and his soft sing-song tone only added to my terror. In the silence, I heard him sniffing the air. ‘Hmm, I do so love the smell of fear,’ he breathed. His feet padded across the hall and, when they got nearer, I shrank back against the wall. They stopped and, as I strained my ears, trying to work out where he was, I felt his breath on my cheek.
‘Boo!’ he whispered.
As I burst into tears of relief that my ordeal was over, he roared with laughter. A whirring sound heralded the beginnings of daylight filtering into the room and, raising my head, I saw Jack holding a remote control in his hand.
‘Steel shutters,’ he explained. ‘Every window on the ground floor has been fitted with them. Even if you happen, by some miracle, to find a way out of your room while I’m at work, you certainly won’t find a way out of the house.’
‘Let me go, Jack,’ I begged. ‘Please, just let me go.’
‘Why would I do that? In fact, I think I’m going to enjoy having you here, especially if you continue trying to escape. At least you’ll keep me amused until Millie comes to live with us.’ He paused. ‘You know, I was almost beginning to regret not arranging for her to move in as soon as we came back from our honeymoon. Just think—she could have been arriving at any moment.’
I drew in my breath sharply.
‘Do you really think I’m going to let Millie come anywhere near this house?’ I cried. ‘Or you anywhere near her?’
‘I seem to remember having this conversation with you in Thailand,’ he said, sounding bored. ‘The sooner you accept that the wheels are already in motion and that there is nothing you can do to stop them the better it will be for you. There is no escape—you’re mine now.’
‘I can’t believe you think you’re going to get away with it! You can’t keep me hidden away forever, you know. What about my friends, our friends? Aren’t we meant to be having dinner with Moira and Giles when we return the car to them?’
‘I shall tell them exactly what I intend to tell Millie’s school—it will now be four weeks until you see her, by the way—which is that you picked up a nasty bug in Thailand and are indisposed. And, when I do eventually allow you to see Millie again, I will watch your every move and listen to every word. Should you try to inform anyone of what is going on, you and Millie will both pay. As for your friends, well, you’re not really going to have time for them now that you’re so happily married and, when you no longer reply to their emails, they’ll forget all about you. It will be a gradual thing, of course. I’ll let you maintain contact for a while, but I’ll vet your emails before you send them just in case you try to alert anyone to your situation.’ He paused. ‘But I can’t imagine you would be so foolish.’
Until that point, I had never doubted that I would be able to escape from him, or at least tell someone that I was being held prisoner, but there was something about the matter-of-fact way he spoke that was chilling. His absolute certainty that everything would pan out exactly as he had planned made me, for the first time, doubt my ability to outwit him. As he escorted me back to my bedroom, telling me that I would get no food until the following day, all I could think about was what he had done to Molly and what he would do to me if I tried to get away from him again. I couldn’t afford to risk not seeing Millie for yet another week and the thought of her disappointment when I didn’t turn up for the next few Sundays made me feel even more wretched than I already felt.
It was the hunger pains I was experiencing that gave me the idea of pretending I had appendicitis so that Jack would have no choice but to take me to hospital, where I felt I’d be able to get someone to listen to me. When he eventually brought me food the next day, as he had promised he would, it was already late evening, so I hadn’t had anything to eat for over forty-eight hours. It was hard not to eat much of what he’d brought me and, as I clutched my stomach and moaned that it hurt, I was grateful for the cramps that made my pain more genuine.
Unfortunately, Jack remained unmoved, but when he found me doubled up the next morning, he agreed to bring me the aspirin that I asked for, although he made me swallow it in front of him. By the evening, I’d progressed to writhing around on the bed, and during the night, I hammered on the door until he came to see what all the noise was about. Telling him that I was in agony, I asked him to call an ambulance. He refused, saying that if I was still in pain the next day he would call a doctor. It wasn’t the result I had wanted but it was better than nothing and I planned carefully what I would say to the doctor when he came, knowing—after my experience in Thailand—that I couldn’t afford to sound hysterical.
I hadn’t foreseen that Jack would stay with me while the doctor examined me and, as I acted out being in pain every time he probed my stomach, my mind raced frantically ahead, aware that if I didn’t seize the moment, all my play-acting and depriving myself of food would have been for nothing. When I asked the doctor if I could speak to him alone, insinuating that the pain I was experiencing might be due to a gynaecological problem, I felt victorious when he asked Jack if he would mind stepping out of the room.
After, I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me that Jack’s willingness to leave the room meant that he wasn’t worried about the outcome of my tête-à-tête with the doctor. Neither did the doctor’s sympathetic smile, as I told him urgently that I was being held prisoner, make me suspicious. It was only when he began questioning me about what he called my suicide attempt and a supposed history of depression that I understood Jack had covered all angles before the doctor had even set foot in my bedroom. Appalled, I begged him to believe that Jack wasn’t who he said he was and repeated what he had told me, that he had beaten his mother to death when he was little more than a child and had let his father take the blame. But, even while I was speaking, I could hear how unbelievable it sounded and, as he wrote out a prescription for Prozac, I became so hysterical that it gave weight to what Jack had told him, that I was an attention-seeking manic-depressive. He even had the paperwork to prove it—a copy of my medical reports from the time of my overdose and a letter from the manager of the hotel in Thailand detailing my behaviour the night we arrived.
Devastated by my failure to convince the doctor that I was speaking the truth, the enormity of the task before me seemed once again insurmountable. If I couldn’t persuade a professional to consider what I had told him, how was I going to be able to get anyone else to understand what was going on? Even more pertinent, how was I ever going to be able to talk to anyone freely when Jack wouldn’t allow me any communication with the outside world unless it was controlled by him?
He began to monitor the emails I received and, if he didn’t dictate my reply word for word, he stood over me and read every word I wrote. As I was locked in my room day and night, people were forced to leave a message on the answerphone, unless Jack was around to take their calls. If they asked to speak to me personally, he would tell them that I was in the shower or out shopping and would call them back. And, if he did allow me to call them back, he would listen to what I said. But I didn’t dare object as my conversation with the doctor had cost me another week’s visit to Millie, as well as the right to have tea and coffee in my room. I knew that if I wanted to see her again in the near future I’d have to behave exactly as Jack wanted, at least for a while. So I submitted, without complaint, to the restraints he placed on me. When he came to bring me food—he brought it morning and evening back then—I made sure he found me sitting impassively on my bed, subservient, docile.
My parents, with their move to New Zealand imminent, were suspicious of the mysterious bug I had apparently pic
ked up in Thailand and which prevented me from visiting Millie. To discourage them from visiting, Jack had told them it was potentially contagious, but I could tell from their anxious phone calls that they were worried my interest in Millie had waned now that I was married.
I only saw them once before they left, when they came to say a hurried goodbye, and it was then, during a quick tour of the house, that I finally saw the rest of the rooms on the first floor. I had to hand it to Jack; not only had he made me tidy away all my belongings so that he could pass my bedroom off as one of the guest rooms, he had strewn my clothes around his bedroom to make it look as if I slept there too. I longed to tell my parents the truth, to beg them to help me, but with Jack’s arm heavy on my shoulder, the courage to say anything at all never came.
I still might have said something if it hadn’t been for Millie’s room. As my parents exclaimed over the pale-yellow walls, the beautiful furnishings and the four-poster bed piled high with cushions, I couldn’t believe that Jack would have gone to so much trouble if he really had evil intentions towards her. It gave me hope, hope that buried somewhere deep down inside him there remained a small pocket of decency. That he’d control me, but leave Millie free.
The week after my parents left, Jack finally took me to see Millie. It was a long five weeks after our return from Thailand and, by that time, Millie’s leg had mended and we were able to take her out for lunch. But the Millie I found waiting for me was vastly different from the happy girl I’d left behind.
My parents had mentioned that Millie had been difficult while we’d been away and I’d put it down to her disappointment at not being our bridesmaid. I knew she also resented that I hadn’t gone to see her as soon as we’d got back from our honeymoon, because during my phone calls to her, where Jack had stood breathing down my neck, she’d been practically monosyllabic. Although I quickly won her over with the souvenirs Jack had allowed me to buy for her at the airport, as well as a new Agatha Christie audio book, she all but ignored him and I could tell that he was furious, especially as Janice was present. I tried to pretend that Millie was upset because we hadn’t brought Molly with us, but as she hadn’t made a fuss when I’d told her we’d left her digging up bulbs in the garden it hadn’t rung true. When Jack told her, in an effort to rescue the situation, that he was taking us to a new hotel for lunch, she replied that she didn’t want to go anywhere with him and that she didn’t want him to live with us either. Janice, in an attempt to defuse the situation, diplomatically took Millie off to fetch a coat, whereupon Jack lost no time in telling me that if she didn’t change her attitude, he’d make sure I never saw Millie again.
Searching again for something else to excuse Millie’s behaviour, I told him that, in view of what she’d said about him not living with us, she obviously hadn’t realised that once we were married he would be with me all the time and resented having to share me with him. I didn’t believe for a minute what I was saying—Millie understood very well that being married meant living together—and I knew I would have to get to the bottom of Millie’s attitude towards Jack before he lost his patience and carried out his threat of the asylum. But with him always at my side, watching my every move and gesture, I couldn’t see how I was going to be able to talk to her in private.
My chance came at the hotel Jack took us to for lunch. At the end of the meal, Millie asked me to go with her to the toilet. Realising it was my chance to talk to her, I got to my feet, only for Millie to be told by Jack that she was perfectly capable of going on her own. But she insisted, her voice getting louder and louder, forcing Jack to give way. So he came with us. When he saw that the Ladies’ toilets was down a short corridor where he wouldn’t be able to accompany us without it looking suspicious, he dragged me back and reminded me, in a whisper that sent a chill down my spine, that I wasn’t to tell Millie—or anyone else for that matter—anything, adding that he would wait for us at the end of the corridor and warning that we weren’t to take long.
‘Grace, Grace,’ Millie cried, as soon as we were on our own, ‘Jack bad man, very bad man. He push me, he push me down stairs!’
I put my finger against her mouth, warning her to be quiet, looking around me fearfully. The fact that the cubicles were empty was the first piece of luck I’d had for a very long time.
‘No, Millie,’ I whispered, terrified that Jack had come down the corridor anyway and was listening from outside the door. ‘Jack wouldn’t do that.’
‘He push me, Grace! At the wedding house, Jack push me hard, like this!’ She bumped me with her shoulder. ‘Jack hurt me, broke leg.’
‘No, Millie, no!’ I hushed. ‘Jack is a good man.’
‘No, not good.’ Millie was adamant. ‘Jack bad man, very bad man.’
‘You mustn’t say that, Millie! You haven’t told anybody, have you, Millie? You haven’t told anybody what you’ve just told me?’
She shook her head vigorously. ‘You say always tell Grace things first. But now I tell Janice that Jack bad man.’
‘No, Millie you mustn’t, you mustn’t tell anyone!’
‘Why? Grace not believe me.’
My mind raced, wondering what I could tell her. By now I knew what Jack was capable of and suddenly it made sense, especially when I remembered that he had never wanted her to be our bridesmaid. ‘Look, Millie.’ I took her hands in mine, knowing that Jack would be suspicious if we were too long. ‘Shall we play a game? A secret game for just you and me? Do you remember Rosie?’ I asked, referring to the imaginary friend she invented when she was younger to take the blame for her own wrongdoings.
She nodded vigorously. ‘Rosie do bad things, not Millie.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said solemnly. ‘She was very naughty.’ Millie looked so guilty that I couldn’t help smiling.
‘I not like Rosie, Rosie bad, like Jack.’
‘But it wasn’t Jack who pushed you down the stairs.’
‘Was,’ she said stubbornly.
‘No, it wasn’t. It was somebody else.’
She looked at me suspiciously. ‘Who?’
I cast desperately around for a name. ‘George Clooney.’
Millie stared at me for a moment. ‘Jorj Koony?’
‘Yes. You don’t like George Clooney, do you?’
‘No, don’t like Jorj Koony,’ she agreed.
‘He was the one who pushed you down the stairs, not Jack.’
A frown furrowed her brow. ‘Not Jack?’
‘No, not Jack. You like Jack, Millie, you like Jack very much.’ I gave her a little shake. ‘It’s very important that you like Jack. He didn’t push you down the stairs, George Clooney did. Do you understand? You have to like Jack, Millie, for me.’
She looked at me closely. ‘You scared.’
‘Yes, Millie, I’m scared. So please, tell me that you like Jack. It’s very important.’
‘I like Jack,’ she said obediently.
‘Good, Millie.’
‘But don’t like Jorj Koony.’
‘No, you don’t, you don’t like George Clooney at all.’
‘He bad, he push me down the stairs.’
‘Yes, he did. But you don’t have to tell people that. You mustn’t tell people that George Clooney pushed you down the stairs. That’s a secret, like Rosie. But you must tell people that you like Jack. That’s not a secret. And you must tell Jack that you like him. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’ She nodded. ‘Must tell Jack like him.’
‘Yes.’
‘I tell him I not like Jorj Koony?’
‘Yes, you can tell him that too.’
She leant in closer to me. ‘But Jack Jorj Koony, Jorj Koony Jack,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, Millie, Jack is George Clooney but only we know that,’ I whispered back. ‘Do you see what I mean? It’s a secret, our secret, like Rosie.’
‘Jack bad man, Grace.’
‘Yes, Jack bad man. But that’s our secret too. You mustn’t tell anyone.’
‘
I not live with him. I scared.’
‘I know.’
‘So what you do?’
‘I’m not sure yet, but I’ll find a solution.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
She looked closely at me. ‘Grace sad.’
‘Yes, Grace sad.’
‘Don’t worry, Millie here. Millie help Grace.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, hugging her. ‘Remember, Millie, you like Jack.’
‘I not forget.’
‘And you mustn’t say you don’t want to live with him.’
‘Won’t.’
‘Good, Millie.’
Outside, we found Jack waiting impatiently for us.
‘Why were you so long?’ he asked, giving me a long look.
‘I have period,’ said Millie importantly. ‘Need long time for period.’
‘Shall we go for a walk before we go back?’
‘Yes, I like walk.’
‘Maybe we can find an ice cream along the way.’
Remembering what I told her, she beamed at him. ‘Thank you, Jack.’
‘Well, she seems to have recovered some of her good humour,’ Jack remarked, as Millie skipped along in front of us.
‘When we were in the toilets, I explained that now that we are married, it is normal that you are always with me, and she’s understood that she has to share me with you.’
‘As long as that was all you said.’
‘Of course it was.’
Janice was waiting when we dropped her off at school an hour later. ‘You look as if you’ve had a nice time, Millie,’ she smiled.
‘Have,’ Millie agreed. She turned to Jack. ‘I like you, Jack, you nice.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ he nodded, looking over at Janice.
‘But don’t like Jorj Koony.’
‘That’s fine by me,’ he told her. ‘I don’t like him either.’
And Millie had howled with laughter.
PRESENT