What Lies Between Us(28)

I am a bag of nerves at this find, and I slip it inside the left cup of my bra. Nina removed the underwire from all my bras when she found one missing as she did my washing, evidence of a previous failed attempt to undo this padlock. However, that metal was not as strong as the one used to make this pin.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm myself, I glance around the room; it’s my equivalent of a prison’s exercise yard. If Nina gets her way, I’ll be trapped in this house for the rest of my life. But my spirit is too strong to give up hope: hope of an escape, hope someone might find me and hope she has a change of heart and accepts that what she is doing to me is so, so wrong. Without hope, I have nothing. And I am not there yet. I have not given up.

I’ve been housebound for two years now; at least that’s what Nina tells me. The days, weeks and months blur, so I can’t be sure. To mark my first anniversary, she ordered me a two-tier sponge cake and paid the baker to ice it with decorative prison bars and a lit candle. The second year, when I cut into it with a plastic knife, I found a nail file inside. Well, an emery board, because I can’t use that to my advantage. I wonder what she has planned if I make it to a third year. Perhaps this small hairclip is all I need to ensure I won’t be here that long.

When I look back at my other attempts to escape, they were reckless and born out of desperation. The first time wasn’t long after all this began. In a fit of frustration, I hurled a stool at the shutters. But it was no match for their strength. Two legs snapped off and fell to the floor. As much as it pained me to do it, when Nina opened the bedroom door later that night to change my chain and allow me out for dinner, I used one of the stool’s legs as a weapon. But as I swung it, she caught sight of my shadow and ducked so it hit the top of her arm and not her head. She wrestled the stool out of my hands and used it to beat my ribs black and blue. The rage in her eyes petrified me because I have witnessed first-hand what it can lead to. And that is much, much worse. However, instead of putting me off, it made me all the more determined to get away from her.

A spur-of-the-moment decision to throw my dinner plate and smash the dining-room window saw her retaliating by hitting me over the head with a wine bottle and knocking me out cold. I awoke to find myself with my chain not only attached to my ankle but wrapped around my body too, binding me like an Egyptian mummy. For two days I remained like that, lying in my own filth, until finally she decided to free me.

I’ve used everything at my disposal to get out of here, even smashing batteries with the cistern lid in the hope that the acid they contain might dissolve one of the chain’s links. Needless to say, it only blistered my skin. The one thing I haven’t tried is burning my way out of here and that’s only because I haven’t had access to anything flammable.

I’ve flooded the bathroom and blocked the toilet to force her to call someone out to repair them. When the plumber arrived, he had no idea he was working feet away from his client’s bound, chained and drugged mother.

On and on our dance has continued, me on the lookout for new opportunities for escape, and her thwarting me and dishing out a punishment to fit the crime. Perhaps the hairpin will shift the balance of power.

Finally, Nina appears with two plates of another mediocre hotpot. Dinner passes with polite, meaningless conversation about nothing. To my relief, there’s no mention again of Hunter or his death.

Despite the stilted awkwardness of it all, a part of me looks forward to these moments as they are my only means of human interaction. At sixty-eight, the thing I’m afraid of most is losing my faculties, and sometimes I feel I’m already missing some of the details of the past. Loneliness has been proven to exacerbate the advancement of dementia and Alzheimer’s, so keeping my brain active with conversation and books can only be a positive thing. I’d hate to end up a prisoner not only of Nina’s cruelty but of my own mind, too.

However, tonight is an exception as I can’t wait for our encounter to end. I decline dessert, claiming I have a headache and asking her if I can return to my room. In a rare moment of compassion, she disappears and returns with two headache tablets. They’re still in their blisterpack so I know they aren’t laxatives. She helps me upstairs, swaps the chain on my ankle for the smaller one, and wishes me a good night. I have two days to free myself with this hairpin.

I immediately set to work, unfolding it from its V shape and into a straight line, but bending one end ever so slightly into a hook. I wear my glasses with the missing arm and shine the LED bedside lamp into it so I can see what I am doing. Not that I actually have the first clue as to how to pick a lock, other than what I’ve seen in films. I start by simply wiggling it about and the result is, predictably, nothing. I’d be suspicious if it worked that quickly.

I try moving the pin in alternate directions; clockwise, anticlockwise, up and down, back to front, trying to catch something inside that might make the lock spring open. I’m not sure how long I’m at it for, but it’s dark outside when I look up. I’m just about to call it a night when something inside the cylinder makes a clicking sound. I take a sharp intake of breath. This is it!

My eyes widen and I pull at it but the lock holds firm. I wiggle the pin around a little more and it feels loose inside. Why hasn’t it opened? I remove the hairpin and examine it closely. The hooked end has snapped off and is still inside the padlock.

‘Oh no,’ I mutter, and clasp my fingers together in front of my face as if in prayer. I hold the lock upside down and shake it, hoping that the broken piece will fall out. It doesn’t budge. I bang it against the bed and then the wooden floor and it still doesn’t appear. Don’t panic, I tell myself. I still have two days to get it out, and then I can try again with the other end of the hairpin.