Behind Closed Doors(37)

‘You can’t do that!’ I cried.

‘Of course I can—what’s more, I warned you that I would.’ He reached down and hauled me to my feet. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He opened the door and pushed me out into the corridor. ‘It was well worth paying for the extra room,’ he said, closing the door behind him. ‘Mr Ho—the manager—quite understood why I might need a separate room for myself, given your mental state. How does it feel to know that I was watching you the whole time?’

‘Not as good as it’ll feel the day I see you go to prison,’ I snarled.

‘That, Grace, is never going to happen,’ he said, bundling me back into our room. ‘And do you know why? Because I’m squeaky clean.’

It was the lowest point of my two weeks in Thailand. It wasn’t so much that I’d failed to escape, it was more that, once again, I’d fallen into the trap Jack had so carefully laid for me. I tried to work out why he had gone to such lengths to set me up when I wouldn’t otherwise have tried to escape. Maybe it was simply that my acquiescence bored him or maybe it was something more sinister, in that by denying himself the pleasure of breaking me physically, he wanted the pleasure of breaking me mentally. The thought that he was going to turn my imprisonment into some sort of psychological game made my blood run cold. Even if another opportunity to escape presented itself, there would always be the fear that he was orchestrating the whole thing, and I realised that if I didn’t get away from him as soon as we arrived in England, before we had even left the airport, it would be much, much harder once we were installed in a house.

Battling despair, I forced myself to think about what I could do, both on the plane and when we arrived at Heathrow. If I told one of the air hostesses, once we had taken off, that Jack was keeping me prisoner, would I be able to remain calm when he maintained that I was delusional? What if he brought out the report from the hotel manager to back up his claim? What would I do then? And, if I managed to remain calm and told them that he meant great harm to me and my sister, would I be able to persuade them to run checks on him while we were still in the air? And, if they did, would they find that he was an imposter or would they find that Jack Angel was a successful lawyer who championed battered women? I didn’t know, but I was determined to make myself heard and equally determined that if nobody listened, I would kick up such a fuss once we arrived at Heathrow that I would be taken to a hospital or a police station.

I didn’t think too much about it when I began to feel sleepy shortly after our evening flight had taken off. But, by the time we landed the next morning, I was so groggy that a wheelchair had to be brought so that I could get off the plane, and my words were so slurred I could barely speak. Although I couldn’t hear what Jack was saying to the doctor who came to check on me, because of the fog that had permeated my brain, I could see that he was holding a bottle of pills in his hand. Aware that my chances of getting away from him were slipping through my fingers, I made a valiant effort to call for help as we were escorted through passport control, but all that came out of my mouth were unintelligible sounds.

In the car, Jack strapped me into my seat and I slumped against the door, unable to fight the drowsiness that rendered me helpless. The next time I came to, it was to find Jack force-feeding me strong black coffee he had bought from a machine at a service station. It cleared my head a little, but I still felt confused and disorientated.

‘Where are we?’ I slurred, making an effort to sit upright.

‘Nearly home,’ he replied, and there was such excitement in his voice that I felt afraid.

He got back in the car and as we drove along, I tried to work out where we were, but I didn’t recognise the names of any of the villages we passed. After about half an hour, he turned into a lane.

‘Well, here it is, my darling wife,’ he said, slowing the car down. ‘I hope you’re going to like it.’

We stopped beside a pair of huge black gates. A little further along there was a smaller single black gate with a bell set into the wall beside it. He took a remote control from his pocket, pressed a button and the double gates swung open. ‘The house that I promised you as your wedding present. Now, what do you think of it?’

At first I thought that whatever he had drugged me with was making me hallucinate. But then I realised that I really was looking at the house we had drawn together on a piece of paper in the bar of the Connaught Hotel, the house he promised he would find for me, right down to the little round window in the roof.

‘I see that you’re lost for words,’ he laughed, as he drove in through the gates.

After drawing to a stop near the front door, he got out of the car and came round to open my door for me. When I just sat there, he put his hands under my arms, hauled me unceremoniously from the car and dragged me onto the porch. He unlocked the front door and pushed me into the hall, slamming the door behind him.

‘Welcome home,’ he said mockingly. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy here.’

The hall was beautiful, with its high ceiling and magnificent staircase. The doors to the right were closed, as were the huge double doors to the left.

‘I’m sure you’d like me to show you around,’ he went on. ‘But first, wouldn’t you like to see Molly?’

I stared at him. ‘Molly?’

‘Yes, Molly. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten all about her?’