She gives him a weak smile that wavers only slightly, just at the corners. “No, Teddy. Of course not. Do you?”
“Suze,” his voice is soft, “I’d have followed you to the ends of the earth.”
7
Panic devours me like an inferno. At first, I’m confused.There must be some mistake, I think.The door blew closed, he’s joking.Unease slips an icy hand gently around my throat.
“Andrew? It’s not funny!”
A step or two toward the door. My heart begins to race.
“Andrew? Can you hear me?”
I wait, listening to a distant dripping sound and the scuttle of some industrious little rodent in the walls. But there are no footsteps, no panicked rattle as he tries to pull the door open. Now that icy hand is squeezing, squeezing.
“Andrew!”
After racing to the top of the stairs, I throw my weight against the closed door and yell his name until I’m hoarse. I kick and sob and rake clawed fingers against the wood. Splinters slide beneath my nails, but I don’t even notice the pain. I’m burning up, hysterical. Blind with fear and rage. I can’t believe I fell for it, what a dumb trick, what an idiot I am. I curse him, calling him a bastard. I hit the door with my fists. I get so dizzy I’m forced to sit down on the top step, my head hanging between my knees, eyes bright with tears.
Clump. Clump. Clump.
His footsteps are moving down the hall. I stumble down into the cellar and track them as they cross overhead, floorboards creaking under his dull, heavy tread. I kick off one of my trainers, sodden from the long trek through the forest, and throw it at the ceiling, right where I think he is standing. The footsteps pause. I wait, breathless, cheeks flushed.Come on back, you piece of shit, I think.
But then,clump, clump. The rattle of the front door opening, the slam of it swinging closed behind him. I run toward the barred, rectangular window set high into the wall, grabbing hold of the sill with my fingertips. I can only look out of it by standing on the very tips of my toes and so I do that, staring at ground level to the woods beyond. From this angle, all I can see are Andrew’s boots, unlaced, the leather old and battered, walking past me and away from the house. Back the way we had come, into the woods, toward the truck. I’m filled with a desperation so savage I howl until I taste metal at the back of my throat. If Andrew hears me, he doesn’t look back. He simply walks away from the old farmhouse sunk deep in the woods, a place where no one comes and no one can hear me.
I am alone.
I run up the stone steps to where the bulkhead doors are set into the wall, rattling at them hard enough to take the skin off my palms. This must have been how he got out. Climbed up through here and come right round the back of the house to creep up behind me. I’m stunned. In a stupor, I stand at the window a long time. I watch the way the trees move in the wind, bending toward each other like they are whispering secrets. I watch rooks pecking in a desultory way among the feverfew and nettles. A snail crawls along the sill. I let the adrenaline leak out of me as through a puncture. Then finally, I turn around to properly take in my surroundings.
I’d already spotted the mattress, of course, at first mistaking it for a pile of old clothes or dust sheets until my eyes had adjusted to the gloomy light. The door had closed just seconds after I’d made the connection, but by then terror was already carving a course through me. Because the mattress means only one thing really, doesn’t it? Andrew means to keep me here, imprison me. The thought of it makes me feel sick and dizzy, and a wave of unreality washes over me. I keep thinking of how we’d met just today, the series of connections that had seemed so random but which now, looking back at it with clearer vision, I see were probably staged. Perhaps he just saw a vulnerability in me, lying under that bench in the rain. Maybe I was just a lucky hit for him, hungover, tired, slightly lost looking. That familiarity still buzzes at me, like a bluebottle orbiting a room.HaveI seen him before?
I stand over the mattress. It is lumpy and water stained, pushed into the farthest corner where the two walls meet. The smell rising from it is like spoiled milk. On top of it is a pale blue cellular blanket, neatly folded. Seeing that blanket triggers more of that familiarity I can’t quite name.It looks like something you’d put in a cot, I think, lifting it up and examining it.Maybe I had one as a kid.Beneath the blanket is a pillow in a candy-striped case, flat with age.
Beside the mattress, a bucket with a towel draped over the top. I gingerly lift the edge to peer inside. It is empty. A shallow alcove is set into the wall as if an old fireplace has been bricked up and forgotten about. Inside it, a shopping bag has been placed. There is something inside the plastic bag, but I can’t bring myself to pick it up. Not yet. I’m in a strange state of disbelief, as surreal and dissociative as an out-of-body experience. How can this be happening? Hard to believe I did anything as normal as waking up in my own bed this morning. Now this.
My coat and rucksack are where I’d dropped them by the front door so the small collection of objects in my pocket are all I have. I empty them onto the mattress and take stock. There’s the packs of Wonderland gum I’d bought and a folded five-pound note I don’t remember putting in there. In the back pocket is my prescription, the one I’d intended to file this morning until I realized Suzie Trebath was behind the counter. I hadn’t been prepared for that. Like hell was I going to reveal to an old school friend the extent to which I was cracking up. Despite everything, I still havesomepride.
Still, though. Seeing this prescription worries me. There is a warning written under the name of the medication:Do not reduce dose without guidance from prescribing doctor. Do not stop taking suddenly.When did I run out of these pills? Yesterday? The day before? I’d intended to file it yesterday afternoon, but then I started drinking. It’s so easy to do—a glass of wine with lunch, then another, then another until the bottle was empty. Three cans of Guinness at the back of the fridge. Tequila, a bottle of which had been in my parents’ drinking cabinet since their last cruise to Mexico.
By the time I found the gin, I’d become maudlin, and Mum had taken it from me, her face frightened and sad. “Jesus, Hazel, will you take yourself to bed, you’re legless.” Me, asking her if we were a disappointment to her and her reply, stinging: “It’s just you, Hazel. Justyou.”
I’d taken my last dose yesterday morning. The pills have a long half-life. I remember the doctor telling me that, and the way his glasses had caught the afternoon sun like coins on a riverbed. How long is the half-life, though? Two days, three? How long until the medication leaves my system altogether? I’m panicking. I can’t think straight. I stand up, walking the room at a slower pace, forcing myself to take an inventory of my surroundings. Maybe there’s anotherway out, some broken latch or crawlspace. I find my trainer lying where I’d thrown it and slide it back on. The dark earthen floor is compacted, worn smooth as glass. It smells damp and humid, like leaf litter long rotted. The ceiling is strung with cobwebs, old and sagging and clotted with dead flies. There are four supporting pillars, so big I cannot wrap my arms around them. They might be useful for hiding behind when Andrew comes back.
IfAndrew comes back.
Don’t, I tell myself sternly,don’t frighten yourself, dickhead. God knows you don’t need it.
There is a cold draft seeping in through the cracks of the window frame, and in places the glass is misty and badly scratched. When I touch it, I discover those scratches form a word, raised beneath my fingertips like Braille. Someone has etched it onto the pane from the inside. It takes me a moment, tilting my head to stare at the crosshatching of white marks until the lines form a cohesive shape. It’s a word. A name.Diana.
“Fuck,” I say aloud. My heart sinks. Of course I don’t know who Diana is, and I could waste time trying to convince myself that maybe this was written by a lovestruck young boy or a grounded teenager making their mark with a furious hand—but the truth is much more bitter, filling my mouth with bile. Someone else was here before me. But when? And where is Diana now? What has he done with her?
Once more, my hand reaches for that place on my back where the skin is puckered and slightly inflamed. My fingertips brush the hairs that have started growing there, poking up through the scar like bristles on the back of a hog.
8
I start shaking just as the daylight is beginning to fade. It’s a tremor so forceful that my legs give way and I can only curl up at the base of one of those stone pillars and wait for my heart to stop racing. The rain has ceased, and now the sun is setting, turning the shadows beneath the trees to a deep, subterranean purple. The mist is rising, and white moths bat against the window. My bones rattle with cold.
Suction. There. Do you see?