by Alison James
The gravel crunches again and the footsteps start to recede.
‘For God’s sake!’ Lucy shrieks, and then as the postman reaches the gates, she sees the wires coming from his ears, catches a distant, tinny beat. He’s wearing headphones.
Slumping against the wall, she sobs noisily for a few minutes. Then she splashes her face with water, fetches a jigsaw that she spotted in Lydia’s room and starts putting it together on the dining room table. The mindfulness of the activity soothes her a little, and eventually she becomes calm enough to think clearly. If she’s not going to break out of the house, then she has to find some other way to end this. Her only remaining option is to appeal to Marcus’s rational side and sense of fair play. To make him see what’s right. Perhaps if she can ensure he gets proper rest and can wean him off the sedatives, he will be more rational. The children are due to visit in a few days’ anyway, and Marcus can hardly keep the house in lockdown then. Something will have to change.
She finishes the jigsaw and watches daytime television with only part of her attention on the screen. By the time the sky outside the windows is darkening, she is so oppressed by the house and her own company that she’s almost looking forward to her husband’s return. But eight o’clock comes and he still isn’t back from work.
Eventually there’s a loud banging on the front door. Lucy hurries into the hall. Has he forgotten his key? But no, that’s not possible: he locked her in, and he knows she’s not able to answer the door to him anyway. Perhaps it’s Jane, come to check on her in person? Her pulse quickens.
The letter box flap is thrust open. ‘Oi, Blondie, you there?’
Denny.
Quelling a shiver of disappointment, she squats down on the hall floor so that he can see her face.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he demands. ‘Only, I’ve been trying to contact you and your phone’s out of service. The caretaker of the building said your stuff was gone from the flat. Get tired of being Joanne, did you? Didn’t suit you?’ There’s an acid note in his voice.
‘No!’ Lucy feels tears pricking at the back of her nose. ‘No, I did not. Marcus tricked me into coming back here by telling me my dad was about to die, then he locked me in.’
Denny makes a hissing sound. ‘I’m not gonna lie, I did think it was a little bit weird that the lights were on, but all the security grilles are closed. Fuck. What an arsehole.’
‘D’you think you can help me get down from one of the first-floor windows? Can you borrow a ladder or something? Only you’ll have to hurry: Marcus will be back any minute.’
Denny grins, and the sliver of him she can see through the letter box is all wolfish teeth. ‘Oh. I’m going to do something better than that, darling. I’m going to get this door open.’ His face disappears for a few seconds, then he rattles something metallic in front of her three-inch field of vision.
‘What’s that?’
‘Set of pick wires.’
Lucy is about to ask him whether he’s always equipped for burglary or just on this occasion, but she realises she can’t afford to annoy him. The depressing truth is that Denny is all she has.
He lets the letter box flap swing shut, and there is a lot of tweaking and scraping, first in the mortice lock and then the Yale cylinder lock.
The letter box is pushed open again. ‘Okay, try the door now.’
She twists the catch on the Yale lock and the door creaks open. Denny stands in front of her grinning. His hair is waxed to a crest, and he’s dressed in ripped, skintight jeans, a polo shirt buttoned at the neck and a Harrington jacket.
‘Oh God. Thank you. Thank you, Denny.’ She lunges forward and gives him an awkward half hug, filling her lungs with the clear, cold night air. ‘Let me just grab some stuff, and then we can go. Did you come here in your car?’
But Denny holds up a hand. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re going nowhere, Blondie.’
She frowns. ‘What d’you mean? I’ve been held here against my will. I’m going to go to the police.’
Denny is shaking his head, using one of his huge arms to propel her backwards into the building she’s just escaped.
‘No!’ she struggles against him, but it’s quite useless. He follows her into the hallway and shuts the door.
‘Look, don’t lose your shit, all right?’ He grins, revealing the big teeth. ‘I’m going to help you. But first let’s just have a little chat about what we need to do.’
Lucy stares at him.
‘You’re looking at this problem totally arse about face. You’ve got it the wrong way round. You’ve tried running away from your old man, but it hasn’t worked. The geezer outwitted you. So. You need to switch things.’ He flips a meaty hand to his face, palm up. ‘And that way you don’t lose all this, either.’ He gestures around the spacious hall, at the antique oak settle dotted with bright contemporary cushions and the tasteful framed lithographs.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘What I mean is that instead of you getting away from him, you need to get him away from you. Permanently.’
Lucy’s eyes widen, as he makes a slitting gesture across his throat.
‘And, guess what: Uncle Denny here’s going to help you.’
Twenty
Denny’s pale green eyes glitter under the hall light.
‘You mean?’
‘We’re going to kill him.’
‘We’re going to kill him,’ Lucy repeats stupidly, feeling as though she has been teleported to an episode of EastEnders. ‘You and me?’
‘That’s it. Keep up.’
‘How?’
‘Have you got something that will knock him out. Sedative or something?’
‘Yes…’
Denny nods, pleased. ‘What, exactly?’
She thinks of the tablets she took from the bottle by Marcus’s bed. ‘He has temazepam. I’ve taken some of the tablets out of the bottle. But—’
‘All you need to do is make sure he takes them, get him well out of it. Then I come over, we shove him in his car, pipe the exhaust in, leave the engine running and job’s a good’un. He’s an NHS doctor, so he overworks, right?’
‘Yes. Of course.’ And lately to an insane extent, she thinks.
‘And his marriage is in trouble. That must be common knowledge by now. So no one would be that surprised if he topped himself. Meanwhile, if you’re still locked in here, then no one can point the finger at you.’
Lucy hesitates, but only for a second. ‘No, look… this is crazy. However much I might want my marriage to be over, I’m not doing that. I don’t want Marcus dead.’
Denny advances slightly nearer, grinning. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Okay, there have been moments when it’s a case of “God, I wish he was dead.” But thinking it and doing it are two completely different things.’
He shrugs. ‘Suit yourself, sweetheart. But at least take some time to think about what I’ve said. The door’s open now, right? So if you want, you can go and tell the police. And…’ He reaches in his pocket and pulls out an unfamiliar mobile handset. ‘Only one number programmed into this: mine. So if you change your mind, at least you’ve got some way of letting me know.’ He places the phone in her palm and gives her shoulder a lingering squeeze, before lumbering back through the front door. ‘Speak soon, yeah?’
If she’s to go to the police station, she’ll have to leave the door on the latch, Lucy thinks, pulling on her jacket and applying some lipstick to counteract her deathly pallor.
But then, one hand on the front door, she hesitates. What exactly will she tell the police. That she’s a prisoner in her own home? Appearing in person at the police station will give the lie to this: she will clearly have left the house under her own steam. No longer locked in. Free to come and go. How could the police take her claim seriously, or do anything but dismiss the incident as a marital spat: a domestic? Taking temporary refuge at the Standishes is a much better idea, and in the morning she will visit her father and plead wi
th him to give her the money for her legal bill.
Lucy looks down in distaste at the phone Denny has left for her, then – because, with no other option, she can’t contemplate leaving it behind – thrusts it to the bottom of her bag. She runs up to the bedroom and grabs clean underwear and a few other essentials, then leaves the house, slamming the front door behind her with an overwhelming sense of relief.
Car headlights temporarily blind her and she stands on the spot, motionless as a hunted animal. The crunch of gravel under tyres sends a shiver of despair through her.
Marcus cuts the engine and jumps out of his car. ‘How the hell did you get out?’
‘You can’t do this!’ Lucy shouts in his face, her saliva landing on his cheek. Her bag clutched to her chest, she swerves round him. Marcus tries to rugby-tackle her, but the element of surprise and her fight-or-flight reflex work in her favour and she dodges him, slipping out onto the pavement and starting to half walk, half run away.
‘Lucinda, please.’ He flaps his arms by his aide in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I’m sorry. Can we please just talk?’
Now several metres away from him, she turns round and shakes her head firmly. ‘Oh no. I’m not going to fall for your tricks again, Marcus. There’s no way I’m going to get locked in again. Never.’
‘Okay, look…’ He selects a key from the bunch on his keyring and unlocks the metal window grilles at the front of the house. Then he tosses the whole bunch in her direction. They land at her feet, gleaming under the street lamp. ‘Have the keys. You can keep hold of them while we talk. And once we’ve talked, if you still want to leave, then go. I won’t try and stop you.’
Lucy narrows her eyes, trying to read his facial expression, but he’s too far away and it’s too dark. She simply doesn’t know if she can trust him any longer. She should just keep going. But she aches with emotional exhaustion and the excess adrenaline is making her legs wobbly. She bends down and picks up the keys. The keyring is shaped like a silver Eiffel Tower, bearing the legend ‘I love Paris’, only with a red enamel heart in place of the word ‘love’. She bought it for Marcus in a touristy shop in the Latin Quarter on that fateful weekend trip to the city. It was several years ago; years that now stretch like decades.
‘Please, Lucy.’
He almost never calls her Lucy, even though he knows she prefers it. She steps a few paces closer and she sees for the first time how terrible he looks. His hair is dirty and unkempt, and the cuffs of his shirt look grimy.
‘All right then,’ she says quietly. ‘But I keep hold of the keys.’
He nods, and they walk into the house together. She has the mobile from Denny in her bag, she tells herself, and even with outgoing calls blocked, it will still make an emergency call.
‘We’ll feel better if we eat something,’ she says, once they’re inside. Marcus’s house keys are pushed deep into her trouser pocket, but she keeps her fingertips on them as a talisman of safety. ‘I could get something out of the freezer. Or we could order in.’
But Marcus ignores her, striding into the kitchen and opening a bottle of Barolo. He drinks deeply from his glass as though he’s a marathon runner at a water stop.
‘Is it really so bad being married to me?’ he asks Lucy. His gaze, over the rim of his wine glass, is steady, curious. ‘I mean, look,’ he gestures around him at the beautifully finished kitchen, the double doors out into the pretty garden, ‘you’re well provided for. I let you go to college and mess about getting a degree you didn’t really need. Paid the fees without complaint. I take you—’
‘You “let” me,’ says Lucy as calmly as she can muster, though her heart is still racing. She fingers the keys again. ‘That’s the problem, Marcus. That word. It’s not in your gift to allow me to do things. I’m a grown woman.’
‘It is if I’m paying for it.’ Marcus empties a third of the bottle into his emptied glass and slumps down onto one of the kitchen chairs.
‘When you’re married, your money is shared: that’s a given. It still doesn’t give you the right to track my movements. To monitor who I speak to and who I see.’ Heat rises in Lucy’s chest, as she experiences a rush of anger so intense it makes her shake. ‘Can’t you see? I’d rather not have your money – any money – and be able to live my life without your constant control. You’re an intelligent man: surely you understand that?’
Marcus ignores this. ‘You know, Lucinda, people told me I shouldn’t marry you. Nobody was in favour of it. They thought you were just a silly bit of a girl. A pretty airhead.’ He’s slurring his words slightly now, taking frequent mouthfuls of the red wine. ‘Okay, Amber could be a bit of a nightmare, and things weren’t perfect on that front, I grant you. But at least she was a grown woman. A woman of substance.’ He glances up at Lucy, but she stands stock-still, her hands clenched. She parts her lips to speak, then decides against it. ‘You were just an overprotected child. No substance at all. So. Whole thing: a mistake.’
‘If it was a mistake, then shouldn’t we just bring it to an end? Can’t we find a way to do it amicably? I’m happy to sign anything you like saying I won’t take half your money from you—’
‘Amber’s already had most of it anyway,’ Marcus snorts, draining the remains of the bottle into his glass.
‘And I would still like to see Tom and Lydia occasionally.’ She was fond of her stepchildren, enough to want to maintain some sort of contact.
Marcus’s face darkens. Lucy notices for the first time that his hands are shaking. Mr Marcus Wheedon, FRCS, the steadiest hand in the business, is shaking like a long-time alcoholic. ‘Leave my children out of it,’ he mumbles.
Lucy sighs, taking the empty wine bottle and carrying it over to the recycling bin. As she does so, she takes in the face of the vintage kitchen clock. It’s after 10 p.m. After only a few snatched hours on the sofa the night before, she is dizzy with fatigue. It’s not just physical tiredness but a profound emotional torment that makes rational thought painful and constructive argument impossible. Now that her agitation has receded, she’s simply too drained to think of leaving. ‘Look, Marcus, we’re both worn out… we’re not going to get anywhere like this. Why don’t we just go to bed and talk some more tomorrow? I’ll sleep in the spare room.’
‘But you’ll just leave,’ Marcus says, wiping his hand back and forth across his chin as though he’s surprised to find stubble there. ‘You’ll wait until I’m asleep and you’ll just piss off again.’
Lucy shrugs, taking two glasses from the cupboard and filling them both with water. ‘I won’t. But for once, you’re just going to have to take a chance and trust me on that.’
He sighs, and pulls himself up unsteadily from his chair. ‘Fair enough. You win.’ He stumbles to the stairs and mounts them slowly, using the banister to haul his weight.
Lucy follows him with a glass of water in her hand. ‘Here – you’ll need this.’
He takes it from her and, placing it on his nightstand, unscrews the cap on the temazepam bottle. Lucy hurries into the bedroom after him, but before she can stop him, he has tipped three of the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the water. She opens her mouth to query whether this is a good idea, then thinks better of it and retreats to the spare room. After placing the keys under the pillow, she tugs off her trousers and shirt and sinks onto the bed, giving way within seconds to a bone-deep exhaustion.
When Lucy wakes, the room is still in darkness and a phone is ringing somewhere.
She glances at the clock, and realises with a sinking sensation that far from being pre-dawn, it’s only five to midnight. Behind the closed door, cracks of light appear and she hears Marcus’s voice speaking in a low, urgent tone.
‘Marcus?’ She opens the door and looks out onto the landing. Through the open bedroom door, she can see that he’s out of bed and getting dressed. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m on call,’ he mutters, bending over and fumbling under the bed for his shoes. ‘Need you to drive me to th
e hospital.’
‘But you can’t go in now! It’s out of the question.’
He raises an eyebrow at her, swaying slightly with one shoe in his hand.
‘Marcus, you’ve drunk a whole bottle of wine and taken several temazepam. Which you’re not supposed to have with alcohol. Even if I were to drive you, you’re not in a fit state to operate.’
‘Try telling that to the patient who needs corra— coronary revascularisation.’ He stumbles over the words. ‘I’m the only surgeon this side of Birmingham who can do it.’
He straightens up, and Lucy sees that he has buttoned his shirt all wrong. For the first time, she sees that middle age has well and truly caught up with him. He always seemed Peter Pan-like, with his vital energy and full head of glossy hair. Now he looks all of his forty-eight years and more.
‘Keys. I’ll need my keys back.’ He holds out a hand, wiggling his fingers impatiently.
‘I’m not giving them to you,’ Lucy says firmly, crossing her arms and blocking the bedroom doorway. ‘No way. You’re not in a fit state.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He pushes past her roughly, stumbling against the door frame. ‘I’ve got a spare car key.’
He stamps into his study and comes back holding the key aloft, a smile of triumph on his face that would have been ridiculous if it weren’t so alarming.
‘Marcus, you can’t!’
Lucy tries once more to block his path to the stairs, but he thrusts both hands at her shoulders, knocking her against the wall. She loses her footing on the top step and tumbles down the stairs, winding herself and cracking her head against the wall. Marcus runs down after her, but rather than checking that she is unharmed, he steps over her and heads for the front door, swinging it wide open.
A rush of cold, night air hits Lucy’s face. Disorientated, she struggles to her feet, as the Range Rover engine roars to life. She runs out onto the drive, temporarily blinded by the headlights. As her eyes adjust, she catches a glimpse of Marcus’s face, skin pale, eyes opaque and unfocused.