One Way or Another(26)

In real life, which is what my own life used to be, I wondered whether Mehitabel would have been considered normal. Did she live in a regular apartment like a normal woman, maybe even in a grand apartment seeing how she was working for a billionaire? Did she have a family? It was hard even to believe some woman had given birth to her. Evil is born, it says so in the Bible. At least I think it does. And to me, Mehitabel personifies evil. I know that she will stop at nothing.

I swung my legs off the sofa, saw I was wearing shoes. Chanel, black with cream-color toes and kitten heels. I would never have bought those shoes, not in a million years; I wore stilettos for work and biker boots off duty, and my old pink fluffy slippers all the time at home. It was the memory of those slippers that finally reduced me to silent tears.

They had to be silent because I was afraid if Mehitabel heard me she would come swooping through that door, maybe this time with a knife in her hand or a gun, ready to finish me off. I told myself to stop the crying. I told myself to get up, go look out the window, find a way out. I was afraid to check the door and see if it was unlocked because she—or someone else—might be on guard, waiting for me.

It was so dark outside all I could see was myself reflected in the window, the new me because I certainly no longer resembled who I used to be. Bald, with bruised eyes and jaw, emaciated in the too-big silk dress and the Chanel shoes, I was so stunned by my appearance I no longer wanted to cry. I wanted to kill someone. I wanted revenge. I wanted to get my own back. But I was helpless, trapped in this lavish room with a door I dared not step through and a window that led only into the blackest night ever known to man.

The window was the old-fashioned type that lifted upward. I tried the latch and found it unlocked. Could my abductors have forgotten something this important? Or was it a trap? Were they allowing me to escape only to come after me, enjoying the chase again, with me as the prey and their hounds baying at my heels? I stared for several minutes at that latch. It was all that lay between me and freedom.

I took a deep breath, slid it back. The window moved easily under my hands. Again I stared suspiciously at it, then beyond, at that overwhelming blackness. There was no sound, not even of a small creature rustling through the grass. The night air slid into the room, so humid it brought drops of sweat onto my skin. I was on the ground floor. A small paved terrace lay immediately outside. Still, I hesitated, torn between the known and the unknown.

Of course I had no choice. If I was going to live, escape was my only chance.

It was easier than I’d thought and a moment later I was on that terrace, breathing the magical air of freedom. I pulled myself together, glanced right, then left. There was only the paved area fronting the house, which was in complete darkness. Before me I could just make out a flight of stone steps. I knew this must be the only way. Yet still I hesitated.





20





ANGIE


I had so wanted my freedom that now I was giddy with it. Unable to put one foot in front of the other, I stood frozen on that narrow terrace, surveying the night until gradually shapes began to form from it: a balustrade with stone urns balanced at each end; thin spears of weed poking between the pavers; a wavering path just a step or two down that led who knew where, only that it was away from here and could be my salvation.

I was suddenly filled with excited anticipation, I could already taste that freedom, almost see myself back with people again, real people who would listen to the story of my abduction, of attempted murder, of molestation and drugs; people who would look at my shorn scalp and the scar and wonder, as I did, that I was still alive to tell my tale.

Yet, “But why?” was what I knew they would, so rightly, ask. And would they believe me when I told them it was a sick man’s fantasy, a sociopath with power and money and a famous name they would all know, who had done this to me for his own enjoyment? I could never tell the true story because, after all, I would be seen as just another young woman on the make, out for a quick buck, and with no way to back up her silly lie.

I was on my own then. I shrugged, or was it a shiver that ran through me? Here I was, facing life or death on my own. Same as always. We lonely girls are like that; all smiles and sleek hair and high heels, except when we are alone, which is almost always how we end up anyway.

It was then, I swear, I heard my mother’s voice coming at me out of that blackness, saying she had not raised me to talk like that, to think like that, act like that. I was a fine young woman, working for a living, keeping hope alive for that fairy-tale ending. My mother had been so sure of that ending. I wished I was and that I had not been so foolish.

The empty grass meadow lay in front of me. My eyes had become more used to the dark and I could see here and there, the dips where water trickled endlessly. So, okay, I would avoid those areas, keep to the grassy bits.

With one hand over my heart, the other clutching the shoes, I took that first step forward. I held my breath, expecting my bare foot to sink into water, but no, there was a firmness there. I put my other foot forward, rested my weight on both feet, on the tuft of grass. It held. It was safe. It was not marsh after all, just a long meadow with here and there those strange tiny flickering lights.

A breeze sprang up out of nowhere. More of a rough wind, cold with a sighing edge to it, as though the earth itself was moaning. Or some person. I froze again. I told myself it could only be the wind, there was no one out there, no killer waiting with a knife, no Mehitabel.