‘You could get to know me, though,’ he says, ignoring the part about me liking Zeke. ‘We could spend time together. I’ve been dreaming about you. Every night.’
‘I’ve just got a lot on my plate,’ I say. ‘With school and everything. I don’t really have a lot of time.’ I’m making it sound like he’s asked me to take up a new hobby or something. Bloody hell, get it together Abbie.
‘You really take school seriously, don’t you?’
‘I try to.’
He shakes his head. ‘Wow, you’re just so different sometimes. It’s… it’s okay, though. I like it.’
Something flickers in my brain but I push it aside. ‘I actually have quite a bit of work to do tonight. I might have to get back to it in a minute.’
‘Okay, sure,’ he says. ‘I admire that about you. You’re so focused. Dedicated.’
‘I’m just trying not to fail,’ I say, and he laughs like I’ve made a great joke. It’s starting to creep me out.
‘Your mum was going to leave some money for me in an envelope in the laundry for the extra hours I did last week. Would you mind grabbing it for me? Zelda doesn’t seem to like me much.’
‘You noticed?’ I say.
He shrugs. ‘All that growling is a bit of a giveaway.’
‘No worries. I’ll just be a tick.’
Zelda looks up at me and whines when I open the door. I kneel beside her and give her a pat. Then I check the normal place where Mum leaves stuff, on top of the washing machine. There’s nothing. I run my hand over the ledge, have a quick look at the bench which is loaded up with clean washing waiting to be folded. I can’t see any envelope. I head back down to the kitchen.
‘Sorry, she must have forgotten.’
‘Ah, that’s okay. Confirmation that she’s human. She works hard doesn’t she, your mum?’
‘She does,’ I sit back down, take another sip of my tea and wonder how long this is going to go on for. I think about how Leah thought Andy was hot. I get what she saw, I even felt it the first moment that he kissed me, but I’m not seeing it right now. Right now, all I’m seeing is someone who I can’t figure out how to get to leave.
‘So, what are you working on?’ he asks.
I look blank.
‘You know. For school.’
‘Oh just… stuff. I have a major art project to finish. And a supporting essay. And a huge maths test coming up.’ As I list them out I feel like a giant weight is pressing down on me. I’ve hardly got anything done at all this past week.
‘I think about going to uni sometimes.’
‘Yeah? What would you study?’
‘Astronomy. Except that I failed maths. I love the stars though.’
‘Well maybe you could take year twelve maths again. Sometimes if you’ve got a good reason to do something, it comes to you easier.’
‘That is so true,’ he says, and grins.
There’s a long stretch of silence broken only by the sound of us sipping at our drinks.
‘Look, I’m sorry for bothering you, Abbie. It’s been really great seeing you but I’d better let you get back to it, hey.’
‘Thanks.’ I feel the relief through my whole body.
‘Here’s to next week being better than this one was –’
He leans across and clinks his cup against mine and I finish my tea.
Chapter fifty-seven
Once he’s finally gone, I sit down at my desk to work but I feel fuzzy and confused. Exhausted. My fingers fumble over the maths text book as I try to turn pages. I find the exercises I’m up to. Look at the equations. Something weird is happening to the numbers though, they’re zooming in and out, then fizzling as though the individual pin-points of ink that make up each digit are spreading out before my eyes. I can’t keep track of them my mouth feels dry, so dry, but when I try to get up to get a glass of water my legs don’t seem to work properly.
Something’s wrong. I should do something, feel something – panic, probably – but it’s like there’s a thick fog between me and the world. So heavy. I push the chair away and take a couple of steps then my legs are gone and I fall onto the bed. So heavy. Can’t move. I don’t feel anything when I hear, from a billion miles away, another galaxy, the front door opening, Zelda bark-bark-bark-echoey-bark I close my eyes and only blackness and suddenly the world is moving all around me though I am staying still
‘I’m not a bad person,’ is the first thing he says to me as I flicker into consciousness.
I close my eyes again and swallow and feel the fear: a hungry monster coming for me with jaws gaping.
‘I tested it first. On myself. I wanted to know what it would feel like for you, to make sure you’d be okay.’ He’s waving a small white container in front of me. Pills of some kind. Holding it close as my eyes focus in and out. I make out my mother’s name on the prescription label. Dr Anna Fray.
‘You might want some water. I know I did.’
I try to say something, I don’t know what, but my mouth is so dry and my tongue is so heavy, nothing comes out at all. He presses a bottle to my lips and tips it. I feel the water flowing into my mouth.
He drugged me. In my own home. With drugs my mother prescribed him. Well fuck. For a moment, anger buries the fear. I spit the water out aiming for him but there’s no force to the movement, it just dribbles down my front. And then I feel how utterly helpless I am. Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck –
‘It’s okay. I know you’re upset right now. But it’s going to be okay, I promise. I’ve got it all figured out.’
I close my eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Open my eyes. Try to take in my surroundings. Where am I? What has he done to me?
Darkness broken by a single source of light that is just out of range of my vision. My hands are tied behind my back. I’m sitting on a hard-backed chair. The air is cool and smells stale and damp.
Where am I?
‘Let’s try that again, Abbie. Here. Watch.’
He picks up a bottle of Mount Franklin spring water. Holds it in front of me. Show’s me that it’s unopened. I hear the seal break as he unscrews the lid.
‘Pure H20. No additives. All yours.’
He presses it against my lips, tips it up, and the water rushes in. I swallow a little, then a lot, taking big gulps. I’m thirsty, so thirsty.
‘Good girl, that’s more like it.’
I want to throw up.
‘This isn’t the way I wanted it to be, Abbie, but I think it’s going to be okay. I’ve got it all worked out. You just need a little time away from everything and I’m sure you’ll see it too. Please don’t be frightened. I’d never hurt you. Never.’
He runs a finger down the skin of my cheek. I twist away from him but I’m bound, I can’t avoid his touch.
‘What have you done?’ I say, the words coming out crumpled and shapeless like clothes that have been shoved in the bottom of a bag for too long.
‘What have I done?’ He sits back and looks at me, his eyes wide. ‘I’ve saved you, sweet girl.’
Chapter fifty-eight
I refuse to cry. I will not cry. Every cell in my body is screaming but I will not show him I’m scared. He sits beside me and talks. I guess he likes a captive audience, I think, and almost begin to laugh hysterically. I’m shaking.
He’s talking about the stars. About clarity. About how useful darkness is because then all you can see is the light. How the light from the stars we see comes from so far away they might already be dead, a whole ghost universe spread out above us, deep space and distant time, too big for our small human minds to comprehend. Everything he says sounds like some crappy pseudo-science faux-inspirational Facebook meme.
I have no idea what any of this has got to do with why he’s drugged me and taken me from my home and tied me to a chair in a dark room. I say something along those lines, my tongue is starting to work for me again. And he laughs like I’ve made an actual joke and tells me we’re getting to know each other.
Eventually he say
s he’s stayed longer than he should and he won’t be able to spend much time with me over the next few days, but by the end of the week he’ll be here more. How much he’s looking forward to it. And then he unties my hands and rubs my wrists to help the circulation. He shows me there’s a mattress and a sleeping bag on the floor, a bucket if I need to ‘relieve myself’, a crate with food in it and a dozen two litre bottles of water. He tells me he’ll bring a thermos when he comes back, because he knows how much I like tea. He says he hopes I’ll be comfortable. That’s when I start to scream.
He takes the light with him when he goes and leaves me in the darkness. There’s a heavy thud as the door closes and a clunk as he pushes the padlock shut that secures me here and as he does it I know exactly where I am. Knowledge like a spark. It’s the place he showed me when he took me and Tom to see the meteor shower: a concrete bunker leftover from an ancient war. The bunker is designed not to be seen. Everyone has forgotten it exists. Oh god oh god nobody will ever find me –
I hug my arms around myself and sink to the ground and start to rock. I hear an engine starting outside, then tyres on the dirt road and then all sound recedes. There’s nothing but darkness and silence, other than the noises that come from me. Whimpering sobs, teeth chattering, groans, I don’t seem to be able to stop making noise. Think Abbie think. You know where you are, that’s good. I stand up and stagger in the direction of the door. I make contact with something solid, feel the shape of the door with my fingertips, start to bang it, to shake it, it doesn’t budge. There’s no way out. Nobody will ever find me.
I fall asleep there, on the ground next to the door. I don’t expect to, but there are enough drugs still in my system and the fear and horror have drained me. I wake with my head pounding and a sense of disbelief. It’s daytime. I couldn’t see it during the night but there’s a grille at the top of the door that lets in light and air. I blink, and my eyelids feel like they’re scraping a desert-worth of sand on my eyeballs. Everything hurts. I look around. Mattress. Bucket. Crate of food. Palette of water bottles. My god how long does he plan to keep me here? There’s enough food and water for a week, easily. I shudder. My mind is racing now, trying to figure out why I’m here, what’s going on, how I might escape. I think of the book Leah gave me – for every situation that seems almost impossible to survive, there has been a survivor. If you think clearly, stay calm, act rationally, you will increase your chances from nil to something better.
Then I notice something. The dress. Becky’s dress. I’m wearing it. I’m wearing it. I wasn’t before he drugged me. Oh my god, he undressed me and put this onto me. And I have no idea what else he might have done while I was unconscious— my stomach clenches and I dry retch. I feel sick: a horrible, skin-crawling, nausea. And then the horror of everything that has happened unfolds before me like I’m watching a movie and I start to scream. I scream until my throat is raw and my voice is almost gone. I scream fear and outrage and cold hard white-hot fury. How could he have done this to me? To my family? What right –
And eventually, abruptly, I stop. There’s nobody to hear.
Here’s a thing Leah would find interesting. Normalisation. I’m pretty sure she’s talked to me about it before, stuff from her dad’s research maybe. What it means is: no matter how completely bonkers your external situation is, it is only a matter of time before you begin to normalise it. That’s how people end up in abusive relationships. That’s how countries slowly succumb to mad dictators. That’s how cruel teachers warp the culture of their classrooms. That’s how lots of bad things happen in the world. I decide it’s also, probably, often how people survive.
The first day I’m a mess. Then Andy doesn’t come and nothing happens and I hear the twilight ruckus of birds looking for roosts and I cry and shout and cower in a corner and eventually I get up and start to pay attention to my surroundings.
I spend the last hour of daylight working methodically through every single thing in the food-crate. I haven’t been hungry all day, but now I make a conscious choice that I will eat. I figure the food isn’t likely to be drugged. Andy wouldn’t have much purpose in drugging me a second time. And I’m going to survive, which means I’m going to escape, which means I need energy to think and energy to act, when my chance comes.
I take out every single item of food, examine it, and put it back in the crate again. No tins. There’s nothing that I could conceivably make a weapon out of. But there is a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a blunt plastic knife. There’s a packet of dried apricots. A packet of sultanas. Fresh apples, bananas, grapes. Some deep-fried spicy chick peas. Beef jerky. There’s a small esky inside the larger crate that contains cheese, a Tupperware container full of something that looks like cous-cous, and some sliced salami. There are some small containers of long-life milk and a variety pack of cereal and a plastic bowl and spoon. There’s even a packet of iced Vo-Vos. Seriously. Iced Vo-Vos. He’s gone to some effort. If it was a picnic or a camping trip, I’d be impressed. As it is I’m horrified. But I’ve made the decision to eat, and so I do. Not much, but enough to feel the spike in my blood-sugar. Then I pack it all away, carefully, methodically. Lay down on the mattress and close my eyes and think.
Why am I here?
I can only think of one reason: because I rejected Andy.
But who takes someone who rejects them and drugs them and locks them away in a World War Two bunker?
A surge of bile fills my mouth. For a second, it takes all my power of concentration to avoid vomiting up the food I so dutifully ate. The hope I felt that I will get out of here alive seems ridiculous. I’m trapped, and nobody knows where I am except Andy.
And in that instant, it hits me – the thing that Andy said. I can’t believe I didn’t register it at the time. When I was talking about school work he said: You’re so different.
Different to what? To who?
To Rebecca O’Reilley. Of course. Of course.
The police haven’t made a connection between Andy and Becky, so chances are they won’t make the connection between Andy and me either. Mum will tell them I’d been miserable and depressed, I’d been missing Sydney, and they’ll peg me for a runaway. There’ll be no signs of struggle, no signs of break and entry. Nothing to indicate that I didn’t leave of my own accord. For all I know Andy’s got my phone. He could send a text pretending to be me, saying I’m fine, saying I just need time away from Derrington.
I thought I felt alone when we first moved from Sydney, but now I realise I didn’t have a clue what loneliness was. I’ve never felt more alone than this moment. I can’t imagine it would be possible to be more alone than this. And for a second I see them all: Mum and Tom and Stacey and Leah and Dad and Zeke and Helena and Cara, poor Dave Hill, even my totally try-hard Australian history teacher with his terrible jokes and sad inland surfie style and genuine desire to help. I had no idea how much they meant to me. I would give anything to see them again. I roll over, turn away from the door and hug my knees to my chest. The world dissolves into tears.
He comes during the night. I don’t know what time it is and I don’t hear the door opening, but I wake up and I know he’s there. I can hear his breathing. I lay still, so still that soon my body aches. It’s hard not to move with buckets full of adrenalin pouring through my bloodstream. I force my breaths to stay deep and regular so it sounds like I’m still asleep. I don’t want to have to see him or talk to him. I wish more than anything that I could close my eyes and open them again and be safe at home in my own bed. I wish Mum and Stacey would wake me with the smell of baking bread. But home has never been further away.
I’m becoming uncomfortable. The urge to move my feet, to change how I’m lying, is almost unbearable. I tell myself it’s just nerve impulses, chemicals in my bloodstream. Surely my mind is strong enough to ignore all that stuff? But I find I can’t. When I really can’t hold it off any longer, I make a sighing noise and shift, trying to move clumsily as though I’m just stirring in my sleep.
I wait, heart banging. And then I almost stop breathing as I sense the movement of the air as he reaches towards me and, with one finger, brushes the hair back from my forehead. It’s physically agonizing but I keep breathing, I stay still, and I guess I must convince him I’m asleep. Before he goes, he places a single kiss on the top of my head, the way Dad used to when I was little.
I listen to the engine fading into the distance and wait until it’s silent and then wait another five minutes, another ten minutes, wait until I’m sure he’s gone before I let myself cry.
Chapter fifty-nine
Days are a blur. I use the bucket. There’s no choice. When I’m done, I place the plastic lid of the crate over the top to minimise the smell, which is hideous. It helps a little but still there are moments when I retch uncontrollably.
I try to keep track of the time. I have some sense from the colour and quality of the light that comes through the grille - the warm honeyed-hues of the early morning, the dazzling brightness of day, the soft smoky dusk. The sounds of the birds help too – I can tell before I even open my eyes that the sun has risen. I miss being able to check my phone and see a number indicating the exact time to the minute, to the second. I feel adrift in an endless expanse of untracked moments, though I’m not adrift, I’m stationary in a small concrete cave.
I create a routine for myself. Wake at dawn. Use toilet. Wash as best I can with a little bit of the water from the water bottles. Choose a small packet of cereal for breakfast. Lay on the mattress for half an hour after breakfast. Then exercises. Okay I know it’s stupid but I’ve seen all those films about people in prison who keep up their fitness by doing push ups and sit ups and that sort of stuff every day. I try to imagine a training montage, with music and me looking sweaty and powerful, and I fumble through some movements. Squats. Lunges. Push-ups. Sit-ups. It gives me something to do. It gives me a sense of control. I’ve made choices. Sure, they don’t help me much, they’re not particularly meaningful but still, choices. I’ve chosen to eat, chosen not to lie in a huddle crying. And I’ve chosen to use my body.
Mirror Me Page 24