Just My Luck(93)

40


Emily


The men don’t rape me. They don’t touch me at all. Maybe because when I wet myself it disgusted them or maybe all they were going to do was move me from the chair to the mattress. I don’t know, but I lie still on the soiled, thin mattress and thank God I’m being left alone. Even though I’m hungry and thirsty, hideously uncomfortable, it’s better when I am left alone. I literally thank God; I pray. Something I’ve never done since junior school and I beg and I bargain. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I want my old life back. The life before the lottery win, when I didn’t have designer clothes, or a cool house or holidays, but I did have a boyfriend, a best friend and no one wanted to beat me up or kidnap me. My life is so fucked up. It might get worse. It might even end. I don’t want to die. I’m too young. I have too much I want to do, and see, and feel, and be. I want my mum. Where are my mum and dad? Why aren’t they here yet? Will they come? I don’t want to die. The thought ping pongs around my head, sending me mental with fear.

Eventually, I must fall asleep although it isn’t restful; my nightmares are so close to my reality I can’t tell when I am asleep or awake. My head aches with dehydration, my limbs ache because I’ve been tied up so long and because of them beating me when they captured me in the woods and flung me in the van. I can’t gauge how long I slept for. I only realise I’m definitely awake when I hear new voices. Different ones. English ones and I listen really carefully, maybe a woman? Is it my mum? Is it the police, has someone found me? The hope vanishes, almost the moment it bloomed. The voices stay outside the barn, no one comes to save me. Whoever it is, they are angry, rowing.

I close my eyes again, too weak to resist sleep. Someone lifts my head. Rough hands, fast and careless, cradle my head and then hold a cloth under my nose. I smell that funny smell again. The dentist. I realise I’m being drugged and I’m glad in a way, because unconscious I can’t feel pain or worry.

The next time I wake, the hands on me are much softer. A woman? If so, I wonder if she owns the voice I heard earlier. I don’t know because she doesn’t speak. She takes off my gag, she gently brings a plastic bottle to my lips and I sip. The water is cold and fresh. She then slips some chocolate in my mouth. I think I’m dreaming again but this time it’s not so. Yes, I am because I can smell her perfume and I can hear Megan too. She’s swearing, and upset, like when her mum won’t let her go to a party or something. I wish Ridley would come to me in my dreams. I wish my mum would, and Dad. I need them. Where are they? Where are the police? I will myself to stay in the dream, but I think I’m weeing myself again, and that wakes me. The wet stickiness between my legs.





41


Lexi


Sunday, 26th May

We have heard nothing more from the kidnappers. I watch as the sky turns from black to an early morning pink, the promises of a warm day. The light pulses its way into the kitchen, but it can’t bring any cheer. The glossy, perfect space is somehow exposed for what it really is: harsh and cold, impersonal, rather than reassuringly expensive. The place is pocked with tea and coffee cups, half full of forsaken slimy drinks that couldn’t warm or console. Jake puts on the lights but they can’t seem to chase the gloomy shadows. Logan’s laptop is droning quietly. I don’t know what else to google. I don’t know where to find answers.

At seven o’clock, the Heathcotes, who have slept, wake up because the sun is now fiercely shining in through the wall of windows. This was one of the features the estate agent pointed out to us; she said it was ‘very LA’. It’s hot as hell, and the heat combined with everything else makes me drowsy, cloudy, unfocused. I need to focus. I need to get my baby home. My pregnant baby. Not that this is my home. The house is something other. Without Emily it is not any sort of a home, it’s nowhere in particular. I look outside, the grass is wet from yesterday’s downpour and the early morning sun rays make it look as though it is dripping with diamonds. It is beautiful but I can’t feel the beauty. Until I get Emily back, I can’t feel beauty, taste or smell. I’m numb sitting in a glasshouse, waiting for people to throw stones.

Ridley and Logan are both being archetypal teenage boys and sleeping like the dead. I’m glad I could finally persuade Ridley to go to bed after he told me everything he knew about the pregnancy. I don’t want him around when I tell Jake. Our circumstances are extreme and peculiar, but this news is age-old and no father ever shakes the hand of the fifteen-year-old who impregnated his daughter.

I have nursed one cup of coffee after another all night. Making it, if not drinking it, is at least something to do and once we admitted to ourselves that we were awake and never going to find sleep, we needed things to do. I made coffee; Jake has been on his phone all night. When I asked him who he was messaging, he said he is sending texts to friends and family. Holding the pretence that the big news in our life was how the party went. He shouldn’t be wasting his time disseminating false news. He should be doing something real, although I’m not sure what. Certainly not comforting me, I don’t think he can do that. I imagine calling Gillian or Toma; I crave their sensibleness, their steadfast sympathy, but I know they’d both insist we call the police, so it’s impossible.

I suppose I could have told Jake about the pregnancy when the light first eked into the kitchen, when it was just the two of us. I could have made it our thing, about our daughter, but I know that’s not how he sees us anymore, otherwise the Heathcotes wouldn’t be here. Jennifer means a lot to him. She’s not just a fling, a dalliance. I see that now. I’m going to tell them about the pregnancy at the same time, not because I respect her position in his life but because I couldn’t bear the pain and humiliation of watching his first response be to look for her, hunting her out, wanting to share the news with her. This way I keep things on a more even keel. Anyway, this pregnancy is technically as much to do with her as it is to do with him.