by Alex Lake
This time, though, she couldn’t focus. It seemed pointless. Why bother? It passed the time, but other than that it didn’t help. What was the point of keeping in shape? So she could live longer? Prolong the agony of being trapped?
She stopped and sat on her haunches, watching Max run from wall to wall. If he was taken from her she wouldn’t be able to go on. All of a sudden it was clear: if he was taken, she would kill herself. One way or another, she would take her own life. Not because she wanted to die; she didn’t. She believed she would get out of this, one day, and then she would, somehow, make up for all the years she’d been in here and her life would be full of family and friends and love and affection.
She would kill herself because she couldn’t go through it again. Couldn’t fall in love with another of her babies knowing that they would be taken from her.
After Max was gone the man would stop using condoms and she would get pregnant again and this sorry cycle would repeat itself. She didn’t know why he did it. She asked him, once, but he looked away, suddenly hurt. She thought it might be that he had some twisted fantasy that they could be a family, and, if she was here long enough and had enough children it would somehow come to pass.
It would never come to pass, because this was the last time. Either she saved Max, or she killed herself. She had thought about it before, but she had always pushed the idea away, thinking maybe, sometime in the future, but not now. This time was different. She could not repeat the cycle again.
She glanced at the calendar.
Whichever it was, this was the last time.
2
The hours spooled past with no sign of the man. Maggie was beginning to think he really wasn’t coming when, Max lying in her arms, she heard the scraping noise. Max was talking to himself; he did it more and more these days, disappearing into a world of his own making. He had nowhere else to go. Other kids might have run to their bedroom, or watched a TV show or played make-believe with a friend. Max had only the inside of his own head.
The door opened. The man stepped inside and closed it behind him. He was holding a tray.
So they would eat – or at least Max would, she wasn’t hungry – after all.
There was a bowl and a plate, both covered in foil, and a plastic jug of water.
He set the tray down on the floor.
Before she could stop him, Max jumped off her lap and toddled over to the man. He had never done it before. Ever since he was a baby, Maggie had held him on her lap when the man came. She hadn’t said anything to him, hadn’t told him to be wary of the man, but she hadn’t needed to. It was easy enough for him to pick up on his mother’s uneasiness.
When Max was awake the man rarely stayed longer than it took to drop off some food and pick up the plates from the day before, and he more or less ignored him. It was only at night, when Max was asleep, that the man stayed longer.
‘Hello,’ Max said. ‘Is this food?’
The man looked at him, a half-smile on his face.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Max said. Of course he was. He’d had no breakfast. He bent over and pointed to the bowl. ‘Is that for me?’
Again, the man smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s for you.’
Maggie watched, tensed on the edge of the bed. This was new. Part of her wanted to snatch Max up, keep him away from any contact with the man.
Part of her wanted it to carry on. He would, she was sure, fall in love with Max given the chance. He was, after all, his father, and there had to be some paternal instinct in there, somewhere. Moreover, there was the change in the man she’d noticed recently, the change that had led her to ask him to let them go.
The change that had led him to smile – half-smile – at Max.
And if he could do that, then … then …
She held the thought. She couldn’t bear the hope.
Max gripped a corner of the foil and pulled it up.
‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Sausages.’ He pulled the rest of the foil off and pointed at some broccoli. He looked at the man sternly. ‘I don’t like that though.’
‘I don’t suppose you do,’ the man said, a playfulness in his voice that Maggie had never heard before. ‘But then whoever heard of a little boy who liked vegetables?’
Max pulled the foil off entirely. He crunched it into a ball, listening to the sound it made. He dropped it on the floor, then picked it up and threw it across the room.
He laughed, and ran after it.
The man held out his hand to Max. ‘Can I have that, please?’
Max frowned. ‘I want it.’
The man’s smile faded.
‘Give it to me,’ he said.
Maggie leaned forward. ‘Give it to him, Max,’ she said.
‘But I like it,’ Max said. ‘I want to play with it.’ He looked up at the man. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please can I have it?’
There was a long pause, and then the man slowly nodded.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can keep it.’ He looked at Maggie. ‘I’ll be back later.’ He pointed at the bath. ‘With the hose.’
3
Bath day.
Once every three weeks they had a bath. Normally she looked forward to it; it was a rare treat. But today her mind had been on other things.
The bath in the corner had no water source. There was none in the room. All they had were the jugs that the man brought, which they used for drinking and washing and brushing their teeth.
On bath day, he fed in a hose. There was a nozzle on the end; he passed it to Maggie to fill up the bath and when she was done, he took it away. He stood by the door the whole time, unable to close it behind himself because of the hose blocking it.
The bath was an old rain barrel that the man had converted. It wasn’t long enough to lie down in, so she and Max had to stand or kneel. Still, it was a luxury, because when he left, the bath was full of hot, clean water and she and Max could sit in it and play and splash and close their eyes and pretend they were in a warm sea somewhere far, far away.
When the water was cold, she would get out and dry Max and hold him until he fell asleep, which wasn’t long because he was exhausted by the novelty and excitement.
Then she would take out the plug and watch the water drain away, knowing that it would be another three weeks until they had another bath day to look forward to.
Because, even though there was no tap, there was a drain. There had to be. Short of removing the water in buckets, there was no other way of getting it out.
The water disappeared down a plug hole and into a pipe that came out of the base of the bath and crossed the two or three feet to the concrete wall. Maggie had tried to figure out where it went – maybe to a drain or a pump or on to some patch of earth floor on the other side of the wall. She had also tried to pull it out, hoping to make a hole in the wall that she could enlarge. But it was stuck fast.
It went somewhere, though, and watching the water drain away tortured her. She always wished that she and Max – or Seb or Leo – could somehow dissolve into the water and escape through the drain.
She heard the scraping sound and waited for the door to open. The man stood there, a hose in his hand. He passed it to her and she squeezed the trigger. Warm water sprayed on to the base of the bath. Max sat on the mattress, playing with the tinfoil ball. The man stared at him, with a look Maggie had not seen before. There was interest, but it was the dispassionate interest of a scientist. Her stomach felt loose and her thighs were weak. She wanted to throw the hose at the man and scream for him to get out, but she didn’t. She held the hose over the bath and let it run.
When the bath was full, the man took the hose from her. He looked at the water.
‘Have fun,’ he said.
4
When the man was gone, Maggie stripped naked and climbed into the bath. The base of the bath was higher than the floor of the room. It had to be – the pipes for the drain needed some space under the plug hole – and it meant she ha
d to bend extra low to pick up Max.
He was standing on the floor, in his underpants and a T-shirt, looking up at her. He gripped the bottom of the T-shirt and pulled it up, exposing the pale, smooth skin of his stomach. His belly button protruded about half an inch; she wondered whether it was because of the way she had cut the umbilical cord when he was born, or whether it would have been like that anyway.
He lifted his hands, stretching the cotton over his face. He wriggled his shoulders, bending at the waist and twisting his arms in a futile attempt to take the T-shirt off. She laughed; watching him try to undress but succeed only in wrapping himself even tighter in his clothes was one of the few sources of amusement she had.
‘Mummy,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘Can you help me?’
‘Of course,’ Maggie said. She straightened out the T-shirt – it was getting tight, he was growing so quickly – and pulled it off in one smooth movement.
He smiled up at her, his face red with the effort, then stepped out of his underpants and held up his arms to be lifted into the water.
As she picked him up she held him against her body. She loved the feeling of his skin against hers; it had been the same with Seb and Leo and it brought back memories of her other sons, of Max’s brothers.
It reminded her she had lost them.
And it reminded her she was going to lose Max.
She started to cry. She blinked away the tears. Max didn’t need to see her crying. She sank down and dipped her head under the surface, washing her face clean, then sprang out, water dripping from her face, and grinned at him.
‘Surprise! It’s the bath monster!’
He giggled, and started to splash water at her. ‘No! I’m the bath monster!’
‘You are,’ Maggie replied. ‘You’re my little bath monster.’
He splashed her again and she shrieked in mock terror. ‘Oh! Stop! Please, Bath Monster, please!’
He erupted in laughter and splashed harder. She remembered doing the same thing with her parents; for a child of Max’s age there was something irresistible about splashing or tickling or pushing your parents over. It was a kind of subversion of the natural order, and she remembered finding it delicious.
Max clearly did, too, and she let him throw and kick and push as much water at her as he wanted.
When he had had enough and the water was getting cold, she pulled the plug and climbed out of the bath. She reached for Max.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want to stay in.’
‘OK.’ She picked up the towel – the man left one by the door, a thinning, faded-pink scrap – and dried herself. ‘Let me know when you’re ready.’
She dressed, running her hands over the dark hairs on her thighs and lower legs. It had been a few months since the man brought her a safety razor and she had shaved her legs. She never asked for one, but from time to time he left one, along with a bar of soap, on the food tray.
The first time she had ignored it – God, it seemed so long ago, so much of her life had been spent between these four walls – but the next bath day it was there again.
The man gestured at it as he left the room, then caught her eye. His face was expressionless, but it looked like he was struggling to keep it that way. She got the impression that underneath it was a subdued rage.
He pointed at the light bulb.
Use the razor, he said. In fact, I’ll watch. I shouldn’t have left it with you. Never know what you might do. I wasn’t thinking.
And since then, every few bath days, he brought a razor and sat and watched as she spread soap on her legs and shaved them. It would probably be time again quite soon, judging by the hairs that had grown.
She became aware that the room was totally quiet.
She looked up, and her heart stopped.
There was no noise coming from the bath – no splashes, no dripping, no giggles.
No little boy peering over the side.
‘Max!’ she called. ‘Max!’
He was probably fine. The bath was deep, so he could easily be hidden, but it was the lack of noise that worried her, that made her picture his body, face down in the water.
It was funny: losing your child in a supermarket or park or outside school was every parent’s worst nightmare. The moment, even if it only lasted for a split-second, when you couldn’t see them, was heart-stopping. Even she, trapped in a place where there was nowhere he could have gone, had that feeling. It was something primal, instinctive.
And she was panicking now.
Then there was a noise. A hollow thump, like a bass drum. There was a pause, and then it came again. Maggie breathed out, her lips pursed. He was there. Safe and making noise. She walked over to the bath. Max was sitting on the floor, banging his heel against the wood. The noise reverberated around the room, amplified by the space between the floor and the base of the bath.
Maggie smiled. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘Quite the musician, aren’t you?’
‘Bang!’ Max thumped the wood. ‘Bang!’
Maggie leaned over and tapped out the knock that everyone learned – dum dum duh-dum dum – dum, dum – then ruffled his hair.
‘Try that.’
Max banged a random series. Maggie did the knock again. He frowned in concentration, then tried to copy her. It wasn’t much better, but she clapped her hands together.
‘Well done! I think you might be a pop star when you grow up.’
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘Someone who sings songs.’
‘I like singing.’
‘Me too. And you never know. Maybe you’ll be famous.’
He would be, if he ever got out of here, but not as a pop star. As the boy who had been born in a basement. The problem was he wouldn’t get out. In four days he’d be three, and the man would come for him.
There’d be no more baths. No more laughter and splashing. No more anything.
She wanted this moment to never end. She wanted him to stay in the bath, happy and clean and naked and perfect, forever.
Twelve Years Earlier, 29 July 2006
1
Martin stirred milk into his tea and stared out of the kitchen window. It had been three weeks since she had gone. He looked at the orange pill container in his hand. Only a few left.
There should have been more. At a rate of one a day there should have been a lot more.
But one a day wasn’t enough to quiet the voices in his head. Not nearly enough. Two muted them; three turned them into background noise.
For a while. And then the volume slowly turned up again.
Sometimes the voices blamed him. Told him he was useless. He should have protected her, taken her to Anne’s house, made sure she got there safely.
Sometimes it was Sandra’s voice saying those things. Even though she’d never said it in real life, she probably thought it. She must do. He did, after all.
Other times it was Maggie’s voice. That was when it was the worst. That was when he took more of the pills, took as many as he needed to quiet her voice.
Hi, Dad. Door slamming. What’s for tea? Can I have a lift to Kevin’s house?
Can I have a lift to Anne’s house?
And he’d turn and look but she wouldn’t be there and it would all come back. The loss, the pain, the terror.
And she would speak again.
Help me, Daddy. Why can’t you help me? Why can’t you find me? I’m your daughter? Why can’t you find me?
And he would clap his hands to his head and try to shake the voices loose but it was impossible. There were reminders of her everywhere. Her bedroom door was closed; Martin didn’t want to see inside it, didn’t want to be slapped in the face with a reminder of the fact she was gone, but he was anyway, she was everywhere in the house. It wasn’t the objects, the photos of her, the shoes she had left on the mat in the hall and her coats in the closet, ready for her return, it wasn’t the things themselves which bothered him.
They were just objects. They could be ig
nored or hidden or put away.
It was the memories that haunted him, and they were everywhere.
When he went up the stairs he saw her sitting on the top step, back to the wall, phone to her ear. When he sat in the armchair he saw her lying on the couch, feet dangling over one arm, a hole in the toe of her socks. When he switched on the hallway light he remembered installing the dimmer switch with her, watching as she screwed the wires into place, her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated.
The house was full of her, but she was nowhere to be found.
And so he would take a pill, or two.
Or three.
And now there weren’t many left. He’d explain it to Doctor Chalmers. She’d understand. She’d known Maggie since she was a baby; when she’d come to the house to see him and Sandra and given them the prescription she’d been in tears herself.
He unscrewed the lid and emptied the contents on to his palm. Three left. He felt a rising panic. He’d call Dr Chalmers later and get some more.
‘Hey.’
He turned. Sandra was in the doorway. She was wearing jogging pants and a sweatshirt. Her hair was scraped back in a bun and her face was lean.
Gaunt, nearly. She’d lost weight.
They both had. For the first time in years – decades, maybe – he had a flat stomach.
‘Tea?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘Have you got any more of those?’
He showed her the pills in his hand. ‘This is it.’
‘Share?’
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to at all, but he nodded and handed her a pill. Her eyes rested on the two he still had in his palm, the two to her one, but she said nothing. He lifted them to his mouth and swallowed, then took a sip of tea.
‘You’ve not got any left?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I thought I had more. But they’re gone.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘We can get more.’ He looked at her, his lip quivering. ‘When will this get better, Sandy? When will it stop hurting so much?’
‘When she’s back.’
For a second he didn’t reply. When he did, the words were ash in his mouth. ‘When she’s back.’