Seven Days(26)

And then it shifted from a vision to a memory, first of Seb and then of Leo, her lost boys, her stolen chicks, the babies she had been unable to save.

The babies who had come before Max. The babies whose fate he was now facing.

She gasped, and turned from Max. She gripped her knees and squeezed and tried to bring herself back to some semblance of control, her breathing fast and shallow.

‘Mummy?’ Max said, his eyes narrow with concern. ‘MUMMY! Stop it, Mummy!’

Maggie blinked, staring at the wall and taking deep breaths, her heart gradually slowing.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m OK, darling. I had a – I just had some wind.’

Max was still, a Duplo brick in each hand, his eyes fixed on her. She – somehow – smiled and then scooped him up in her arms and pressed her face to his neck and kissed him and inhaled the smell of him and felt the panic starting all over again.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to think about something, anything, other than the man and Saturday and Max’s third birthday, and, slowly, she calmed down.

‘Mummy,’ Max said. ‘I think it’s time for exercises.’

‘Yes,’ Maggie said. ‘I think that sounds like a great idea. How about some running?’

Max nodded. The room was barely big enough for him to run in; Maggie was limited to jogging on the spot, which was, even when you were locked in a room with nothing to do, incredibly boring. She’d thought running on a treadmill was bad, but it had nothing on jogging for half an hour and not moving an inch. She could make it more interesting by throwing in some lunges and jumps and crouches, but it was a marginal improvement.

Other things held more appeal. She had become obsessed for a while with doing the perfect press-up: hands exactly shoulder-width apart, eyes slightly forward, back and legs a table, then a slow descent until her chest pressed to the floor followed by a clean, explosive return to the start, arms straight, elbows locked.

There was something satisfying about repeating it over and over, focusing on each small detail until the sweat was dripping off her nose, her body quivering, nearly unable to carry on, slowly adding more and more press-ups to the total she was capable of. She enjoyed the firmness in her stomach, the lean muscles in her thighs, the strength in her back and shoulders. If – when – she got out of here she was going to keep doing her exercises with Max.

Apart from running on the spot. She was never doing that again. She would only run in forests and by rivers and in the sunlight and fresh air.

This time, though, she couldn’t focus. It seemed pointless. Why bother? It passed the time, but other than that it didn’t help. What was the point of keeping in shape? So she could live longer? Prolong the agony of being trapped?

She stopped and sat on her haunches, watching Max run from wall to wall. If he was taken from her she wouldn’t be able to go on. All of a sudden it was clear: if he was taken, she would kill herself. One way or another, she would take her own life. Not because she wanted to die; she didn’t. She believed she would get out of this, one day, and then she would, somehow, make up for all the years she’d been in here and her life would be full of family and friends and love and affection.

She would kill herself because she couldn’t go through it again. Couldn’t fall in love with another of her babies knowing that they would be taken from her.

After Max was gone the man would stop using condoms and she would get pregnant again and this sorry cycle would repeat itself. She didn’t know why he did it. She asked him, once, but he looked away, suddenly hurt. She thought it might be that he had some twisted fantasy that they could be a family, and, if she was here long enough and had enough children it would somehow come to pass.

It would never come to pass, because this was the last time. Either she saved Max, or she killed herself. She had thought about it before, but she had always pushed the idea away, thinking maybe, sometime in the future, but not now. This time was different. She could not repeat the cycle again.

She glanced at the calendar.

Whichever it was, this was the last time.





2


The hours spooled past with no sign of the man. Maggie was beginning to think he really wasn’t coming when, Max lying in her arms, she heard the scraping noise. Max was talking to himself; he did it more and more these days, disappearing into a world of his own making. He had nowhere else to go. Other kids might have run to their bedroom, or watched a TV show or played make-believe with a friend. Max had only the inside of his own head.

The door opened. The man stepped inside and closed it behind him. He was holding a tray.

So they would eat – or at least Max would, she wasn’t hungry – after all.

There was a bowl and a plate, both covered in foil, and a plastic jug of water.

He set the tray down on the floor.

Before she could stop him, Max jumped off her lap and toddled over to the man. He had never done it before. Ever since he was a baby, Maggie had held him on her lap when the man came. She hadn’t said anything to him, hadn’t told him to be wary of the man, but she hadn’t needed to. It was easy enough for him to pick up on his mother’s uneasiness.

When Max was awake the man rarely stayed longer than it took to drop off some food and pick up the plates from the day before, and he more or less ignored him. It was only at night, when Max was asleep, that the man stayed longer.