by A. L. Bird
‘Shampoo,’ he says, holding out a bottle. ‘Looks like you’re washing your hair.’
I stare at him for a moment, my heart beating fast, in heightened threat mode. I wonder if I can surprise him, push past him, or strangle him with the shower cord. But my hands are frozen across my breasts and genitals in defence, while the water runs on.
He waves the bottle at me again. ‘You can’t use soap. Makes the scalp itchy.’
I reach out a hand and take the bottle. Then he shuts the shower door.
Yet he is obviously watching. Because he knew I was washing my hair. I want to curl up in the corner of the shower enclosure and cry. Become invisible. But he would see my tears. Each one would probably arouse him. Give him a sense of pleasure in defeating me. However vulnerable I feel I cannot let him see me that vulnerable. I must remain calm. The tears must wait until I get back to my room. Just focus on the fact that Cara, too, must have survived this experience. Or is about to have it. Use the shampoo then place it on a ledge, at head height, so Cara will not have the indignity of having the shower door opened on her. Or having to bend over to pick up the bottle, observed by the Captor. I want to scream at him, over the noise of the shower: perv on my daughter in this way and I will kill you. Somehow. But I can’t. Because he cannot know that I know she is here. That I have an ally. We each have an ally.
So, instead, I just perform a perfunctory wash of my hair and my body. I pretend I am one of those women in the bathroom commercials, advertising shower suites or shampoo. Except they always seem to have a towel in the shower with them. When my shower ends, I will have to emerge dripping, cold and naked. I will need to beg the Captor for a towel. While he watches me. I shiver, even though the water is still warm.
The shower door opens again. Not a surprise this time. But not a treat either. He reaches past me, turns off the shower.
‘Don’t want to run out of hot water,’ he says.
Why? Is that an acknowledgement of Cara being here? Or does he want a hot and steamy shower after me? Enjoy himself where I have been?
He moves back from the shower unit again.
Is he going to do this every time? Reach over me like this? Can I bite his arm, really hard? Will that get me past him, out of the unlocked bathroom, to freedom? Shall I practise, later, in my room, how hard I can bite?
I adopt my new customary hand-to-breasts-to-genitals and wait for him to tell me what to do next.
He beckons me out of the shower. ‘We need to get you dry,’ he says.
He picks up a towel from the towel rail. It is worn, faded-looking. Years of use on him? Years more to follow?
I put out a hand, expecting him to pass the towel to me.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he envelops me in it.
Then he is rubbing me, all over, through the towel. He pinions my arms to my sides so I cannot resist. If I squirm, he will surely break an arm, a rib. He is close enough for me to headbutt. Could I do it, suddenly? Perhaps I could. Perhaps this is my chance, one I won’t get again. I can headbutt him and then rescue Cara.
I stand on tiptoes and thrust my head forward. I come in contact only with the air next to his skull. Before I can try again, he has grabbed my hair, pulled back my head, and has the other hand round my neck. The towel falls away.
‘None of that,’ he says.
I feel the pressure of his hand on my neck. Any tighter, and I’d say I was being strangled. That I’d die here in this bathroom. That Cara would never know why I was silent. Or that the Captor would come and make her shower in the room with my dead body still in it.
He pins me against the door and leans down to pick up the towel.
I have no choice but to stand there while this man that I hate rubs me down. And he seems to hate me too, because there is no sexuality to this drying. He is drawing the towel over me in a way that one might wipe a cloth over a kitchen cabinet to clean it, when really you are only cleaning it to avoid talking, avoid having an argument that would happen as soon as you unclenched your hand from the cloth and your teeth from your jaw. There’s that restrained anger in every movement. All I can do is stand there silently, hoping his hand will not come back to my neck.
‘Back to your room,’ he says. Like I am some kind of naughty child. Like I can somehow make my own way back. But, of course, that is not allowed. I am led, naked, down the corridor. Past Cara’s room. I pray she is not looking under the door, cannot see my humiliation. We arrive at the threshold of my room. It’s like a strange date, the Captor escorting me home. Except this is not my home. And he is the one with the key.
He opens up the door and pushes me into the room. Then he closes it behind me, separating the two of us. I am left alone. Naked.
Chapter 14
I should knock on the door again, shouldn’t I? Demand some clothing. Say it’s against the Geneva Convention, the Human Rights Act, basic dignity, to keep a captive with no clothes on. But then, I suppose, none of them apply if you’re doing something illegal in the first place. If your prisoner isn’t a prisoner of state, or of law. Just a kidnappee. Alone, isolated, and now clotheless.
Maybe now it’s just a waiting game until he comes and defiles me.
Or maybe it’s another game. Like the bathroom game. To break me down. Maybe I’m meant to have my spirit destroyed. Maybe I’m meant to hammer on the door, demand some clothes from him. Cry, wail, plead, beg. So he can come back and ‘comfort’ me. Or laugh at me.
Well, I won’t. I won’t give him that satisfaction. I’ll just stay here, horribly, horribly alone and naked in a room in a house I know not where with my husband apart from me and my daughter separated from me – but there, thankfully still there – when what I should be doing is deciding whether Cynthia and Harriet and their hen party would prefer a Strawberry Frost or an Oreo Wonder as the centrepiece for their cookery class. I should be buying eggs, cleaning whisks, chiding Cara for stealing spoonfuls of icing sugar. Sitting daydreaming at the counter, wishing I could afford a separate studio rather than pretending that my kitchen is that studio. I should be wondering if I have time to go to the loo before the clients arrive, whether I should cook steak fajitas for Paul and Cara later or whether I should just have a glass of wine after the clients go, and schedule in staring mournfully into the bottom of the glass, wondering how I can appear on the lists of those free magazines, so that everyone in London will read about my business and want to order from me, so that I can start doing corporate events and set up shop in Soho. And then I should look up to see a picture of me, Cara and Paul together and realise that this is all that matters, and then hear the doorbell, heralding the arrival of my hen group clients, and snap out of my reverie and carry on, business as usual, happy happy happy, like we’re all meant to be.
I should be living my normal life.
I should not be standing shivering in the centre of this room. I should grab a sheet and wrap it round myself. I should definitely not be sinking to the ground, crying and crying and crying like that’s what I’ve been designed to do. It won’t help me. It won’t help Cara.
Pull yourself together. Don’t cry. The baby isn’t crying, is she?
I should supress the sobs, in case Cara hears me, and stops writing to me, because who would want to write to a sad old mum who bursts into tears simply because she has nothing to wear?
And yet here I am.
And here I still am.
Still.
Cara, Cara, Cara. I’m letting you down. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Pity me. Please send me another letter. Don’t make me just rely on those knocks. Beautiful, sweet and dangerous as they are. I want your words. I want your voice. Write to me, if you can bear to.
I don’t hear the door lock turn. I just see him there. Standing, in the doorway.
He is holding something.
‘Clean pyjamas,’ he says. ‘I forgot to give them to you.’
Forgot? How long did it take him to remember? How long have I been sitting here? Is it seconds
or days? My eyes have a sting that says hours at least. But my skin is still wet. Sweat? Or shower water? Hot, or cold?
I don’t know. I stand. I flick my eyes to the grate, just in case. As I always do when he is there. As I always do when I am here. Present.
There should be nothing. Cara should not have wanted to write to her broken mother. Yet there is. There is a letter coming through this very minute! Cara, my joy, she is writing to me. But the letter, waggling away, drawing attention to itself. He will see, he will see, he will see!
I do the only thing I can do that will distract him.
I stand up, walk towards him and press my naked body against him. And I kiss him.
Chapter 15
Flabby slippery lips on mine. I instinctively shut my eyes. Then I open them. His eyes are staring wide. Is that a hint of an alien tongue in my mouth? The touch of fingers on my hips?
I draw him into the room, towards the grate.
He pulls back. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks me.
I nod. Despite the grossness of being naked against the clothes of the Captor, despite the scratch from his cruel stubble on my cheek, the undesired of fact of his breath on my face, that I want to tear out his eyes for seeing Cara against her will, I nod. I pull him further towards the grate.
He kisses me this time. And this time, there is no doubt about the tongue, or the fingers. They are there. Does he taste the bile that rises in my throat? Does he detect the stiffness of my limbs? I force my own tongue into action. As it slides over his tongue, my insides crawl. It’s for Cara, I tell myself. It’s for Cara.
Are we at the grate yet? We must be. I break away and make as if I’m staring demurely at the floor. Yes. The grate. And there is Cara’s letter on the floor. I cover it with my foot.
And then I push. I push the Captor away from me. And I spit out the bile that has been gathering within me. I spit it out into his face.
I want to charge at him, to claw and to scratch and to tear. But I mustn’t, because that would reveal the letter to him. So I stay where I am, curling my toes round the edge of Cara’s letter. If he moves back towards me, if he tries to take me forcibly, then I will unleash my anger. It is the anger that makes me shake. The anger that this man, who has separated me from my beloved Cara, would think he has some kind of privileged access to my body. It is this anger, not fear.
But he doesn’t try.
When the bile hits, he just sighs. A big, weighty sigh that forces out his nostrils, raises his chest, closes his eyes. Then he scrunches up his lips in a kind of wry scowl-smile, nods his head, and turns to leave the room. He doesn’t even wipe himself clean.
‘That’s it?’ I shout after him. I want to taunt him, call him a coward. But I’m not that brave. He’s hit me before, after all.
As he gets to the door, he turns. His silhouette fills the doorway. He could obliterate me as easily as he obliterates the light.
‘One day, Susan,’ he says. Then he leaves and locks the door.
So. I am alone again. Except I am not alone. My skin crawls with a thousand little creatures. More than a thousand. Maybe a million. They’ve been waiting there since I began to kiss this man. Now suddenly they are released and, with them, the tears and the sobs that I have been suppressing. But still I must supress them, I must keep them quiet, for Cara. I am not allowed to be audibly unhappy. I must appear calm, composed. I press my hand across my mouth to stop the sobs. But they will not stop. I lean both palms against the wall and place my forehead in between them. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Bastard, bastard, bastard. Can I not push the wall down with my head? Can I not get to my Cara that way?
‘Mummy, Mummy,’ she is calling me, throwing caution to the wind. ‘What’s wrong? Are you crying?’
There, you see, I’ve failed. I’ve failed her. She can hear my anguish. Button it up. Keep cool. Reply. Keep voice level. Whisper.
‘Shh. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’ve got your letter. I’ll read it now.’
Sing my little baby a lullaby. Rock her into a peaceful sleep.
Because I am. I’m fine. Really. Her voice has calmed me. The deep breaths actually bring oxygen to me now. We will escape, we’ll be back with Paul in no time.
And the other feeling, apart from the bile, apart from the hate and the fear, that came when the Captor kissed me the second time – well, nobody need ever know.
Chapter 16
Mum,
I’m sorry I didn’t write for a little while. I felt so tired, so drained. And I just didn’t want to write again until … until I didn’t feel like it would rip me apart. The acknowledgement of where we are. How we are. It’s really sinking in now. Don’t you find?
But hey, let’s be positive.
The window sounds great. No, I don’t have one, just a skylight I can’t reach, so we’ll have to rely on yours. Has anything happened yet? Has the girl you saw come back? But yes, we can totally use the fact that he goes out. What if we just scream and scream as loud as we can. Or we ram all the furniture as hard as we can at the doors, so he won’t hear the noise? Or could we even somehow put a piece of paper between the lock and our door so that it doesn’t quite shut, then, when he is out, we can just escape? Or – maybe this is best – when you’re having a shower (never have I felt so dirty after getting so clean – I wanted to scrub myself again so I could wash away his eyes from all over me) I can start screaming really loudly and then you can run from the shower out into the open (put some clothes on first) and get the police or Dad and come back for me.
Or we can just stab him with the pencils. If you break one in two. Stick it right in his throat.
I mean don’t get me wrong, Mum – I’m not a sicko or a psycho or anything. But we’d be justified in killing him, right? Whoever the hell he is. Who is he? Why us?
Really. Why us?
Let me know what you think of my ideas. We’ll get out of here by tea and you can make us cupcakes (mine’s a sugar plum fairy one)! Or something.
OK.
I think I’ll try to sleep again now. I haven’t quite managed that yet.
C. xxx
I could weep. But I mustn’t. Mustn’t get all misty and mumsy. Must just focus on her ideas. Such as they are. Because the furniture one won’t work, will it? No. And nor will the paper between the lock and the door. Otherwise the whole of the security industry may as well just retire now. The screaming maybe. Heaven knows, I would happily just spend my entire time screaming. But the house is semi-detached at the very least, so the view from my window tells me. If it’s detached, no one will hear us. Or, even if they do, it will take a lot of screams to make them stop ignoring what is going on in their own backyard. Much more likely to ignore the screams with classic British non-interventionism, letting the man do whatever he likes in his own castle. ‘Oh, probably just someone having fun and screaming in jest,’ they’ll decide, too easily.
But maybe there is something in the shower plan. I can’t let her be the one to cause the diversion though, can I? I can’t leave my daughter, my Cara, in the house by herself once I’ve fled, to face the consequences of my actions. No. She must shower and run and I must scream. But what if he gets wise to what she’s doing before she’s out of the house? What if there is a chase along the corridor, her running as fast as she can, him behind her? What if the towel she has hastily clutched round herself falls away and, as she bends to pull it up, he catches her, grabs her and strangles? punches? rapes? Floors her in some way? She would be defenceless against him, she would—
And breathe. Susan. Breathe.
Stop imagining the worst.
It is a viable plan. The bathroom door has no lock. We know this. She could easily make a run for it, if I give her a chance to prove herself, prove her plan. And I must, mustn’t I? Let her prove herself. She’s at that age now where I don’t own her. I can’t just bend her to my will like I used to (or did I – she seemed to know what she wanted when she was even a day old).
Because the other option is th
e murder option. And there is something horrible about your daughter wanting to kill. Yes, I would gladly kill the Captor. The bile is rising in me even now. But could I love her again if I knew she had pierced someone’s jugular? Been covered in their blood? Perhaps had an animalistic glint in her eye while she did it? I would have to do it, of course. And I will, if I need to. Of course I will. For me, for Cara. But I’d rather not. I’d rather he was locked up, away from everyone, like we are. I’d like him to suffer, in a way he won’t in death. Although he’d have to wait until he bled out from the pencil wound – slower than a knife wound, I guess. So he would suffer. And then he’d go to hell.
But perhaps we should try to run first, before we kill. It’s not that I’m reluctant. Although what if we need to convince a court we’d done all we could before we tried to kill him? And if he were the one on trial, we’d understand more about what is going on in his sick mind. And know who he actually is. Because as Cara rightly asks, who is he? Does it matter even? He is the bastard who brought us here, to this situation. Does it matter which bastard he is?
Possibly. But not right now.
Cara would need a weapon if she were to flee. Could she smash the mirror in the bathroom, get a shard of glass to use as a dagger if he catches her up? But what if she cuts that precious skin of hers while she is trying? No. If anyone is to do that it must be me.
Of course, none of this will matter if the window girl has seen the sign.
I go to the window and climb onto the chair. I look through the crack of available window left by my sign.
There!
She is skipping, the girl, outside. Facing away from me. But there nonetheless.
Turn! Come on, girl, turn! She’s doing an ordinary jump skip at the moment. Surely she must soon begin the more complex steps. The whirling, twisting ones she was doing last time that make her face towards me. Surely this is just her warm-up act. I ready myself with the sign.
And yes, here we go. The footwork becomes fancier. She does kind of a mid-air trot then swings the rope to the side. Then, then, here it is, she turns in a circle while holding the rope. And she is facing me. I wriggle the sign as much as I can and bang on the window. Nothing. I wriggle and bang again. Come on, please. For me. For Cara.