What Lies Between Us(91)

The end goal of my other escape attempts was to leave my situation, not my daughter. Despite all that she’s done to me, I wouldn’t have cut her out of my life or have left her alone. Not until today. Now, that’s exactly what I want. She carries death around with the casualness of a handbag. It has taken me most of her adult life to understand that all she touches becomes fetid.

Through the gloom I stare towards the window. I’ve lost hope that I might see the flashing red-and-blue lights of an ambulance, which would indicate that Nina has awoken and realised what she has done. This time, she does not have me to cover up her actions or protect her from herself. She must face up to and live with what she has done. She may have the freedom to leave this house whenever she likes, but she is trapped with herself as much as I am trapped in this room.

I close my eyes and my brain rewinds and replays the crunch of the metal cuff against Dylan’s skull. It’s a sound that will haunt me to my grave, which I hope to reach soon. However, I know that despite my many other terrible decisions, I did the right thing in giving him away. The way he saw right from wrong and chose helping me over believing his mother assures me that he was raised with compassion. And that’s more than he could ever have received with Nina in charge of his welfare.

There is something else that weighs heavily on my mind. I remember where I’d seen the look in Nina’s eyes as she attacked her son. I caught it only once before; in the fraction of a second it appeared as she hit her father over the head with the golf club. Now I can see it’s different to what happens when her psychosis takes over. The psychosis completely absorbs her and acts for her. But with her dad and Dylan, she was present in the moment rather than being swallowed by it. I shudder to think what this means.

I shut my eyelids tight until they hurt. If I have my way, they will never open again.





PART THREE

TEN MONTHS LATER





CHAPTER 76





MAGGIE


The dining-room window is open and I hear the sound of birdsong coming from outside. Not so long ago, it would have been the highlight of my day. Now, highlights don’t exist. Every echo is white noise to me.

Nina unpeels plastic lids from the Tupperware, allowing the steam and aromas to rise and spread across the room. It makes me nauseous. I recognise the label on the plastic bag as the takeaway that Alistair and I regularly used on Saturday nights. After his death I refused to order from there again, needing no reminders of the life we shared. Given my time again, I’d have disposed of his body elsewhere so that Nina and I could have moved away from this cursed house and started again. I was wrong not to. I was wrong about so many things.

‘Help yourself to dinner,’ she says. I bypass the rice and beef in a black-bean sauce and take two thick triangles of prawn toast instead. I’m not hungry and I don’t really want them; however, my stomach is gurgling like a drain. Perhaps the toast might settle it a little.

Despite my four layers of clothing, I’m freezing. Nina has taken to leaving the heating on during the daytime since the weather turned. But because the weight has fallen off me, I have no fat reserves to protect me from any chill. Much of the time, I keep cocooned inside my duvet.

My days are mostly spent curled up in my bed, staring blankly at images on the television screen, the sound muted, as I’m completely uninterested by what is going on in the world. I’ve stopped measuring time by the comings and goings of the neighbours because it doesn’t matter if it’s 8 a.m. or 2 p.m., it’s all the same. It’s time I don’t need or want. I judged autumn by the leaves floating past the window and Halloween by the youngsters dressed in their ghoulish costumes roaming the streets. And when fireworks illuminated the horizon in bright colours I knew it was Bonfire Night. Soon I’ll be watching carollers singing songs I can’t hear as I spend my third Christmas locked up in here. But I know that I won’t see a fourth.

The balance of power between Nina and I has shifted and while she might control my present, my freedom, what I eat, when I’m allowed downstairs or when I might bathe, she cannot control my destiny. And my destiny is to die soon. My lumps have expanded and spread to the lymph nodes in my groin and armpits. I’m in constant pain and my lungs hurt when I take deep breaths. I’m often sick, exhausted and increasingly confused. There are abscesses on my ankles from the cuff that are infected and I’m always coughing. The only satisfaction to be had from this wretched life is knowing that when I’m dead, Nina will have no one left to hurt.

I often dream about Dylan and how I could have done more to save him from Nina’s brutality. It’s always the same scenario. He will appear at my bedroom door and I will try and scream ‘Run!’ at him. But a pair of hands I feel but cannot see constrict my throat. He can’t understand my warnings and by the time he reads my lips, it’s too late. Nina is behind him, wrapping a chain around his neck and dragging him down the stairs and out of sight. It’s her eyes that haunt me, full of darkness and purpose. She knows exactly what she is doing. When I awaken, I feel his loss as powerfully as I would have had I kept him close to me his whole life.

Nina rises and turns on the stereo behind me. The opening bars of ABBA’s ‘Ring Ring’ begin and after she sits, I feel the vibrations of her foot tapping against the leg of the table. ‘It’s been a while since we’ve listened to this, hasn’t it?’