Silent Child(76)

I was about to ask why, but of course, I was the crime. He stalked me. He took pictures of me when I was a minor. Some of them were definitely provocative. I might not be naked, but I was bending over wearing a short skirt, or spilling out of my school shirt. I wanted to run away from that garage and immerse myself in scalding water to get the stink off me. I’d been violated.

“Let’s see what’s in the filing cabinet,” Rob said.

He was gentle now. It wasn’t like Rob to keep from erupting in a stressful situation, so I knew it was for my benefit. He knew that things were more complicated than Jake being a ‘bad guy’. I was carrying his baby. We were linked, however disgusting that felt.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said in a quiet voice. “If he was so obsessed with me why was he sleeping around with all those women?”

“I’m not sure he was, Em,” Rob said. “I think he came here instead.”

“But why? He had me. I was married to him.”

Rob didn’t answer so I began to look through the stacks of paintings piled along the floor, while Rob opened the filing cabinet. I gasped. These paintings were even worse than the ones on the wall. Jake had painted me in sadistic ways. In most of them I was naked or scantily clad, with my hands tied up and a ball gag in my mouth. There wasn’t any hint of desire in my eyes. He’d painted me afraid. His fantasies saw me as a reluctant slave; an unwilling participant in his games. This was all about dominating me. But he hadn’t been like that in our relationship at all. He was… controlling, yes, I can look back on that and recognise it for what it was. He found me the job at the same school where he worked. He owned the house and the car. He was finicky about what was in our home. But he was never sadistic. He never hit me or even tried anything daring in the bedroom. Why did he need these bizarre pictures?

I was beginning to understand Jake’s true addiction. It wasn’t sex, it was fantasy. It was ownership. What was better than putting a child inside me? I thought back to the day I’d found out I was pregnant. I’d blamed it on a cold making my birth control pill less effective, but what if… what if Jake had tampered with it?

A cold stone of dread sank to the pit of my stomach.

“Emma, come and look at these.”

I left the paintings the same way I’d found them and walked over to the other side of the garage to see what Rob was looking at. He’d found a large binder inside the filing cabinet. He lowered it so I could see what was inside. At first I didn’t want to look, but then I forced myself to.

“It’s another girl,” said Rob. “Remember when the press got hold of that Facebook photo of Jake with a student? That’s the student. There are a ton of pictures of her in here.” He flipped the page and I gasped. The girl—pretty and dark-haired—was naked on the next page. “Fuck. He lied. He did have a relationship with her.” The pages flipped, showing more and more photographs of this young girl in shockingly vulnerable poses. I knew then that her slightly bemused expression would haunt me forever. The poses were brash and confident, but her expression was one of complete insecurity. “He took advantage of her. Fucking arsehole. Look, he has two or more copies of some of these. He kept them as leverage, I bet. To make sure she didn’t tell anyone. I bet the bastard threatened to show people.” Rob slammed the file shut and a USB stick fell onto the floor.

I picked it up. “I don’t even want to know what’s on it.”

Rob shook his head, then dug out a bunch of letters held together with a rubber band. He pulled the top one out and began reading. “‘I miss you so much. Please call me back, Jake. I want to see you. I’m so frightened that people will find out what happened and we’ll get in trouble…’ Shit. It’s from the girl. And this is post-marked a week ago. He’s still in touch with her. I bet he keeps her as his little pet, hanging onto every word he says.”

I wanted to collapse onto the ground. I wanted to stop and let the weight of the world push me down until I was nothing. But I didn’t do any of that. I searched through the filing cabinet with Rob looking for more incriminating evidence against the man I had sworn to love in sickness and in health, until death do us part. Did this count as sickness? Was I supposed to remain in love with this man forever?

I straightened myself and took a deep breath. No, I wouldn’t collapse, and I wouldn’t throw up. I wouldn’t do any of the things I would do if this were a movie I would keep my head, and I would find out exactly what was going on.

“Emma.” There was a warning in Rob’s voice that tickled at my stomach and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “There are newspaper clippings in here… about your parents.”

“What?”

I took the scrapbook that Rob was holding and read through the pages. Every article about my parents’ death was documented within the book. He had meticulously cut out each page and glued it into the book, taking care not to fold over or crumple the corners.

“Why would he have this?”

“Emma, he was obsessed with you. Don’t you think he would have wanted your parents out of his way? Aiden was gone, I was gone—that left just two people in your life.”

My eyes burned with withheld tears. My arms lost all strength and I almost dropped the scrapbook. It was Rob who caught it before it fell.