What Lies Between Us(14)

If I’d stayed, I’d have been expected to behave like the others and coo over the baby and patiently await my turn to hold him and tell Suzanne how beautiful her son was. I couldn’t put myself through that. If I held him in my arms I might never be able to let go.

Without so much as a warning sniffle, this child in the pushchair lets out a huge sneeze and a large string of green snot shoots out of her nose and hangs from her nostril like a stalactite. It’s disgusting but funny at the same time and she’s oblivious to it. Her mother is too lost in an article about the Kardashians to notice, so I take a paper tissue from my pocket and wipe her daughter’s nose clean.

‘What are you doing?’ The girl has turned around and she sounds angry.

‘She had a snotty nose,’ I reply. ‘I was just giving it a quick wipe.’

‘Back off,’ she says loudly. It gets the attention of other users. ‘I don’t want you touching her without my permission.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I reply, taken aback by her aggression. My face reddens and I fight a sudden urge to cry. She waits for a moment until I leave, humiliated.

I take a handful of deep breaths until I am back in control of my emotions. Instead of shame, I’m now annoyed by that poor excuse for a mother. How dare she speak to me like that? What is it with women who, once they have a child, automatically think they’re superior to the rest of us? If she’d kept her eye on her daughter’s well-being then I wouldn’t have needed to step in. Well, she’s going to regret that.

My opportunity arrives much sooner than I anticipated when a few minutes later, the child is alone again. I pick two random books from a shelf and, checking that nobody is watching, I slip them into the shopping pouch under the pushchair by her daughter’s feet.

When the girl is ready to leave, I’ll make sure to watch as the barcoded books set off the electronic alarm. I doubt the police will be called, but she will feel as humiliated as she made me.





CHAPTER 10





MAGGIE


The bedroom is uncomfortably stuffy. The windows are triple glazed and the locks are glued shut, so the only way to allow new air to circulate is to open the door between my room and the landing. But even that makes little difference tonight.

I lift an electric fan that’s been sitting unused on top of the wardrobe for months and place it lower down on the dressing table. Months ago, I prized the safety guard from the front so I already know the blades are plastic and of little use to me as a weapon. Neither are the exposed floorboards. It’s impossible to prize up the nails, so I can’t use them or the wood to my advantage. I plug it in and point it in the direction of the bed and I watch as specks of dust dance inside the current of air it creates. It dawns on me that perhaps I’m using my preoccupation with the room’s ventilation as an excuse for feeling restless, and it’s Nina’s memory box that is really the cause.

Dinner with her earlier this evening passed without concern. But neither of us mentioned the box and I wonder which one of us will break first. I did ache to ask her why she had left it for me because her actions always have a reason. I try and read between the lines but I can’t imagine the box’s purpose. I keep trying to pluck up the courage to take another look, if only to dip in and out of it, but I haven’t managed it yet.

I fan my face. I can’t ask her to lower the heating temperature, because about an hour ago I saw her leave the house. Every other week, albeit on different days, she goes somewhere but never mentions it. I think that she enjoys having this little secret to herself, so I don’t ask what it is. I’m usually asleep by the time she returns.

Even if she was downstairs, she wouldn’t hear me if I yelled because the door and partition wall separating the second floor from the first have been professionally insulated and soundproofed. And for good measure, she’s even stuck cardboard egg boxes to the walls. I have yet to hear a peep from downstairs, and I assume it’s the same for her with me. If I’m away from the window, the first I’ll know of her arrival home is when the first-floor door unlocks and she appears.

I take off my top so I’m sitting in just my bra and wraparound skirt and think of how well I’ve adapted to my imprisonment. I wonder if I’ve surpassed Nina’s expectations. Spending so much time alone has given me the opportunity to learn a lot about myself. I want for little, which is fortunate, as it’s exactly what I’m given. I don’t have many luxuries, but I appreciate those in my possession more than I did when I was living a normal life.

Sometimes I wonder if Nina hasn’t stripped me of absolutely everything so that when she decides I need punishing, she still has objects to remove. It’s what happened with my perfumes, hairspray, transistor radio, shoes, pillows, some make-up and jewellery. One by one they all went to ‘teach me a lesson’. But I no longer allow her to witness how her cruelty upsets me. Maybe I’ve been taking the wrong approach. Perhaps she needs to believe she has broken me before this all ends. Exactly how it will end, though, remains unclear.

I think back to the box again and what else, aside from a twenty-five-year-old pregnancy test, might lie inside it. As soon as I saw that, I closed the lid and slid the box back under the bed. I both do and don’t want to know what else is in there. I have to take my mind off it.

I notice for the first time that the fan is making something rustle on one of the bedside tables. I turn my head and I spot that Nina has left me a refill air freshener and a packet of wine gums. She must have put them there when I was in the bath earlier. I haven’t tasted sweets since my ordeal began and seeing them here excites me like a child. In my hurry to tear open the packet it splits and the contents spread across the duvet like an edible rainbow.