Behind Closed Doors(52)

‘I’m sorry,’ she says apologetically, looking at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you. My mother will kill me if I’m late for lunch.’

‘We need to get going too,’ Jack says.

‘Can we go to hotel today, please?’ Millie asks eagerly.

Jack opens his mouth, but before he can tell us that he’s taking us somewhere else, Janice intervenes.

‘Millie has been telling me all about the hotel and how much she likes it there and she’s promised to tell us about it in class on Monday, haven’t you, Millie?’ Millie nods enthusiastically. ‘She’s already told us about the restaurant by the lake and the one that serves the pancakes so we’re looking forward to hearing about this one. And Mrs Goodrich is thinking of taking the staff to the hotel for the end-of-school-year dinner,’ she adds, ‘so she’s commissioned Millie to write a report on it.’

‘Need to go to hotel for Mrs Goodrich,’ Millie confirms.

‘Then the hotel it is,’ says Jack, hiding his annoyance by smiling indulgently at her.

Millie chats away happily during lunch and, when we’ve finished, she says she needs to go to the toilet.

‘Go on then,’ says Jack.

She stands up. ‘Grace come with me.’

‘There’s no need for Grace to go with you,’ Jack tells her firmly. ‘You’re perfectly able to go by yourself.’

‘I have period,’ Millie announces loudly. ‘Need Grace.’

‘Very well,’ says Jack, hiding his distaste. He pushes his chair back. ‘I’ll come too.’

‘Jack not allowed in Ladies’ toilet,’ Millie says belligerently.

‘I meant that I’ll come as far as the toilets with you.’

He leaves us at the end of the corridor, warning us not to be long. There are two ladies at the sinks chatting away happily as they wash their hands and Millie hops from foot to foot, impatient for them to leave. I rack my brains for something to tell her, something that will make her think I have a solution in mind and marvel at the way she contrived to get Jack to bring us here by drawing Janice and Mrs Goodrich into the equation.

‘That was clever of you, Millie,’ I tell her, as soon as the door closes behind the women.

‘Need to talk,’ she hisses.

‘What is it?’

‘Millie have something for Grace,’ she whispers. She slips her hand into her pocket and draws out a tissue. ‘Secret,’ she says, handing it to me. Puzzled, I unfold the tissue, expecting to find a bead or a flower and find myself looking at a handful of small white pills.

‘What are these?’ I frown.

‘For sleep. I not take them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t need them,’ she says, scowling.

‘But they’re to help you sleep better,’ I explain patiently.

‘I sleep fine.’

‘Yes, you do now, because of the pills,’ I insist. ‘Before, you didn’t, remember?’

She shakes her head. ‘I pretend.’

‘Pretend?’

‘Yes. I pretend can’t sleep.’

I look at her, perplexed. ‘Why?’

She closes my hand over the tissue. ‘For you, Grace.’

‘Well, it’s very kind of you, Millie, but I don’t need them.’

‘Yes, Grace need them. For Jorj Koony.’

‘George Clooney?’

‘Yes. Jorj Koony bad man, Jorj Koony push me down stairs, Jorj Koony make Grace sad. He bad man, very bad man.’

Now it’s my turn to shake my head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘Yes, you understand.’ Millie is adamant. ‘It simple, Grace. We kill Jorj Koony.’





PAST


The following month, we went back to Thailand, but I didn’t dare try to escape again. I knew that if I did, Jack was capable of arranging for me to die while we were there. We went to the same hotel and had the same room and were greeted by the same manager. Only Kiko was missing. I spent my days as I had spent them before, locked on the balcony or kept in the room, only being allowed out for photographs. My experience the second time round was made even worse by the knowledge that when Jack wasn’t with me, he was exhilarating in someone else’s fear. I didn’t know how he got his kicks, but I presumed it was by doing something he couldn’t do in England and, remembering the story he had told me about his mother, I wondered if he came to Thailand to beat up women. It seemed inconceivable that he would be able to get away with it but he once told me that in Thailand, as long as you had money, you could buy anything—even fear.

Maybe that was why, a week after we got back, I smashed him over the head with a bottle of wine in the kitchen, half an hour before Diane and Adam were due to arrive for dinner, hoping to stun him long enough to escape. But I didn’t hit him hard enough and, incandescent with rage, he controlled himself long enough to phone and cancel our guests, pleading a sudden migraine on my part. As he put the phone down and turned to me, I was afraid only for Millie, because there was nothing left he could deprive me of. Even when he told me that he was going to show me Millie’s room, I still wasn’t afraid for myself because all I presumed was that he had stripped it of its beautiful furnishings, as he had done mine. As he pushed me into the hall, my arms twisted painfully behind my back, I felt desperately sad for Millie because it was the room she had always dreamt of having. But, instead of taking me up to the first floor, he opened the door that led down to the basement.