Author: B. A. Paris
Category: Suspense
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Afterwards, once it was all over and I was back in the room I had thought never to see again, the fact that he had so readily agreed for me to accompany him on the shopping trip confirmed what I had already worked out in Thailand, which was that he derived enormous pleasure from allowing me to think I had won, then snatching my victory away from me. He enjoyed preparing the ground for my downfall, rejoiced in his role as my loving but harassed husband, delighted in my crushing disappointment and, when it was all over, took pleasure in punishing me. Not only that, his ability to predict what I was going to do meant that I was doomed to failure from the start.
It was another three weeks before I saw Millie again and Jack’s explanation—that I had been too busy with friends to visit—hurt and confused her, especially as I couldn’t tell her otherwise with Jack constantly at our sides. Determined not to let her down again, I began to toe the line so that I could see her regularly. But, rather than please Jack, my subservience seemed to annoy him. I thought I had got him wrong, however, when he told me that because of my good behaviour he was going to allow me to paint again. Suspicious of his intentions, I hid my delight from him and gave him a list of what I needed half-heartedly, not daring to believe he would actually bring me what I was asking for. The next day, however, he duly arrived with pastels and oils in a variety of colours, as well as my easel and a new canvas.
‘There’s only one stipulation,’ he said, as I rejoiced over them like old friends. ‘I get to choose the subject matter.’
‘What do you mean?’ I frowned.
‘You paint what I want you to paint, nothing more, nothing less.’
I looked at him warily, trying to weigh him up, wondering if it was another of his games. ‘It depends what you want me to paint,’ I said.
‘A portrait.’
‘A portrait?’
‘Yes. You have painted some before, haven’t you?’
‘A few.’
‘Good. So, I’d like you to paint a portrait.’
‘Of you?’
‘Yes or no, Grace?’
All my instincts told me to refuse. But I was desperate to paint again, desperate to have something to fill my days besides reading. Although the thought of painting Jack revolted me, I told myself he was hardly going to stand and pose for me hour after hour. At least, I hoped not.
‘Only if I can work from a photograph,’ I said, relieved to have found a solution.
‘Done.’ He fished in his pocket. ‘Would you like to start now?’
‘Why not?’ I shrugged.
He drew out a photograph and held it in front of my face. ‘She was one of my clients. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?’
With a cry of alarm, I backed away from him, from it, but he followed me relentlessly, grinning inanely. ‘Come on, Grace, don’t be shy, take a good look. After all, you’re going to be seeing a lot of her over the next couple of weeks.’
‘Never,’ I spat. ‘I’ll never paint her!’
‘Of course you will. You agreed, remember? And you know what happens if you go back on your word?’ I stared at him. ‘That’s right—Millie. You do want to see her, don’t you?’
‘Not if this is the price I have to pay,’ I said, my voice tight.
‘I’m sorry—I should have said, “You do want to see her again, don’t you?” I’m sure you don’t want Millie to be left to rot in some asylum, do you?’
‘You’d better not lay a finger on her!’ I yelled.
‘Then you had better get painting. If you destroy this photograph, or deface it in any way, Millie will pay. If you don’t reproduce it on canvas, or pretend that you are unable to, Millie will pay. I will check daily to see how you’re progressing and, if I decide you are working too slowly, Millie will pay. And, when you’ve finished, you will paint another, and another, and another, until I decide I have enough.’
‘Enough for what?’ I sobbed, knowing I was beaten.
‘I’ll show you one day. I promise, Grace, I’ll show you one day.’
I cried and cried over that first painting. To have to look at a bruised and bloodied face hour after hour, day after day, to have to examine a broken nose, a cut lip, a black eye in minute detail and reproduce it on canvas was more than I could stomach and I was often violently sick. I knew that if I was to keep hold of my sanity I had to find a way of dealing with the trauma of painting something so grotesque, and I found that by giving the women in subsequent paintings names, and looking beyond the damage that had been done to them, imagining them as they were before, I was able to cope better. It also helped that Jack had never lost a case, as it meant that the women in the photographs—all ex-clients of his—had managed to get away from their abusive partners, and it made me all the more determined to get away from him. If they could do it, so could I.
We must have been about four months into our marriage when Jack decided that we’d spent enough time wrapped up in each other and that if people weren’t to become suspicious, we would have to begin socialising as we had before. One of the first dinners we went to was at Moira and Giles’s, but as they were primarily Jack’s friends, I behaved exactly as he told me I should and played the loving wife. It made me sick to the stomach to do so, but I realised that if he didn’t start trusting me, I’d be confined to my room indefinitely, and my chances of escaping would be drastically reduced.
I knew I’d done the right thing when, not long after, he told me that we’d be dining with colleagues of his. The rush of adrenalin I felt on hearing that they were colleagues and not friends was enough to convince me that it would be the perfect opportunity to get away from him, as they were more likely to believe my story than friends who had already had the wool pulled over their eyes by Jack. And, with a bit of luck, Jack’s success in the firm might mean there was somebody just waiting for the opportunity to stab him in the back. I knew I would have to be ingenious; Jack had already drummed into me how I was to act when other people were present—no going off on my own, not even to the toilet, no following anybody into another room, even if it was only to carry plates through, no having a private conversation with anybody, no looking anything but wonderfully happy and content.
It took me a while to work out what to do. Rather than try to get help in front of Jack, who was so very good at dismissing my accusations, I decided it would be better to try to get a letter to someone, because there was less chance of me being dismissed as a hysterical madwoman if I put everything in writing. Indeed, in view of Jack’s threats, it seemed the safest way forward. But getting my hands on even a small piece of paper proved impossible. I couldn’t ask Jack outright because he would have been immediately suspicious and not only would he have refused, he would have watched me like a hawk from then on.
The idea of cutting relevant words out of the books he had thoughtfully supplied me with came to me in the middle of the night. Using a pair of small nail scissors from my toilet bag, I cut out ‘please’, ‘help’, ‘me’, ‘I’, ‘am’, ‘being’, ‘held’, ‘captive’, ‘get’, ‘police’. I looked for a way of putting them in some kind of order. In the end, I put one on top of the other, starting with ‘please’ and finishing with ‘police’. They made such a tiny pile that the possibility of them being mistaken for just a screw of paper and being thrown away made me decide to secure them with one of my hairgrips, which I had in my make-up bag. Surely, I reasoned, anyone who found a hairgrip holding a bundle of little pieces of paper together would be curious enough to look at them.
After a lot of thought, because I couldn’t afford to have it opened in Jack’s presence, I decided to leave my cry for help somewhere on the table once dinner was over so it could be found after we’d left. I had no idea where we were having dinner, but I prayed it would be in someone’s house and not in a restaurant where the danger of the clip being scooped up in the tablecloth along with other debris was higher.
In the event, my careful planning came to nothing. I had been so concerned as to where I should leave my pr
ecious bundle of words that I forgot I had to get it past Jack first. I wasn’t overly worried until he came to fetch me and, after watching me for a moment as I slipped on my shoes and picked up my bag, asked why I was so nervous. Although I pretended it was because I would be meeting his colleagues, he didn’t believe me, especially as I had already met most of them at our wedding. He searched my clothes, getting me to turn out my pockets and then demanded that I give him my bag. His anger when he found the hairclip was predictable, his punishment exactly as he had promised. He moved me into the box room, which he had stripped of every comfort and began to starve me.
PRESENT
Waking in the basement, my mind instantly craves sunlight to anchor my internal clock. Or something to make me feel I haven’t, finally, lost my mind. I can’t hear Jack, but I sense he’s near, listening. Suddenly, the door swings open.
‘You’re going to have to move quicker than that if we’re to be in time to take Millie for lunch,’ he remarks, as I get slowly to my feet.
I know I should feel pleased that we’re going but the truth is, seeing Millie gets harder with each visit we make. Ever since she told me that Jack had pushed her down the stairs, she’s been waiting for me to do something about it. I’m beginning to dread the day she’ll actually manage to persuade Jack to take us to the hotel because I don’t want to have to tell her I still haven’t found a solution. Back then, it never occurred to me that I would still be a prisoner a year on. I had known that it would be difficult to get away from him but not that it would be impossible. And now, there is so little time left. Seventy-four days. The thought of Jack counting down the days until Millie comes to live with us like a child waiting impatiently for Christmas makes me feel sick.
As usual, Millie and Janice are waiting on the bench for us. We chat for a while—Janice asks us if we enjoyed the wedding the previous weekend and our visit to friends the weekend before that and Jack leaves it to me to invent that the wedding was in Devon, and very lovely, and that we enjoyed the Peak District, where our friends live, very much. Jack, ever charming, tells Janice that she’s a treasure for allowing us to take advantage of the short time we have left together before Millie comes to live with us and Janice replies that she doesn’t mind at all, that she adores Millie and is happy to step in for us whenever we need her to. She adds that she’s going to miss her when she leaves and reiterates her promise to come and visit us often, which Jack will make sure that she never does. We talk about how Millie has been and Janice tells us that thanks to the sleeping pills the doctor prescribed, she’s getting a good night’s sleep, which means that she’s back to her normal self during the day.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says apologetically, looking at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you. My mother will kill me if I’m late for lunch.’
‘We need to get going too,’ Jack says.
‘Can we go to hotel today, please?’ Millie asks eagerly.
Jack opens his mouth, but before he can tell us that he’s taking us somewhere else, Janice intervenes.
‘Millie has been telling me all about the hotel and how much she likes it there and she’s promised to tell us about it in class on Monday, haven’t you, Millie?’ Millie nods enthusiastically. ‘She’s already told us about the restaurant by the lake and the one that serves the pancakes so we’re looking forward to hearing about this one. And Mrs Goodrich is thinking of taking the staff to the hotel for the end-of-school-year dinner,’ she adds, ‘so she’s commissioned Millie to write a report on it.’
‘Need to go to hotel for Mrs Goodrich,’ Millie confirms.
‘Then the hotel it is,’ says Jack, hiding his annoyance by smiling indulgently at her.
Millie chats away happily during lunch and, when we’ve finished, she says she needs to go to the toilet.
‘Go on then,’ says Jack.
She stands up. ‘Grace come with me.’
‘There’s no need for Grace to go with you,’ Jack tells her firmly. ‘You’re perfectly able to go by yourself.’
‘I have period,’ Millie announces loudly. ‘Need Grace.’
‘Very well,’ says Jack, hiding his distaste. He pushes his chair back. ‘I’ll come too.’
‘Jack not allowed in Ladies’ toilet,’ Millie says belligerently.
‘I meant that I’ll come as far as the toilets with you.’
He leaves us at the end of the corridor, warning us not to be long. There are two ladies at the sinks chatting away happily as they wash their hands and Millie hops from foot to foot, impatient for them to leave. I rack my brains for something to tell her, something that will make her think I have a solution in mind and marvel at the way she contrived to get Jack to bring us here by drawing Janice and Mrs Goodrich into the equation.
‘That was clever of you, Millie,’ I tell her, as soon as the door closes behind the women.
‘Need to talk,’ she hisses.
‘What is it?’
‘Millie have something for Grace,’ she whispers. She slips her hand into her pocket and draws out a tissue. ‘Secret,’ she says, handing it to me. Puzzled, I unfold the tissue, expecting to find a bead or a flower and find myself looking at a handful of small white pills.
‘What are these?’ I frown.
‘For sleep. I not take them.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t need them,’ she says, scowling.
‘But they’re to help you sleep better,’ I explain patiently.
‘I sleep fine.’
‘Yes, you do now, because of the pills,’ I insist. ‘Before, you didn’t, remember?’
She shakes her head. ‘I pretend.’
‘Pretend?’
‘Yes. I pretend can’t sleep.’
I look at her, perplexed. ‘Why?’
She closes my hand over the tissue. ‘For you, Grace.’
‘Well, it’s very kind of you, Millie, but I don’t need them.’
‘Yes, Grace need them. For Jorj Koony.’
‘George Clooney?’
‘Yes. Jorj Koony bad man, Jorj Koony push me down stairs, Jorj Koony make Grace sad. He bad man, very bad man.’
Now it’s my turn to shake my head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
‘Yes, you understand.’ Millie is adamant. ‘It simple, Grace. We kill Jorj Koony.’
PAST
The following month, we went back to Thailand, but I didn’t dare try to escape again. I knew that if I did, Jack was capable of arranging for me to die while we were there. We went to the same hotel and had the same room and were greeted by the same manager. Only Kiko was missing. I spent my days as I had spent them before, locked on the balcony or kept in the room, only being allowed out for photographs. My experience the second time round was made even worse by the knowledge that when Jack wasn’t with me, he was exhilarating in someone else’s fear. I didn’t know how he got his kicks, but I presumed it was by doing something he couldn’t do in England and, remembering the story he had told me about his mother, I wondered if he came to Thailand to beat up women. It seemed inconceivable that he would be able to get away with it but he once told me that in Thailand, as long as you had money, you could buy anything—even fear.
Maybe that was why, a week after we got back, I smashed him over the head with a bottle of wine in the kitchen, half an hour before Diane and Adam were due to arrive for dinner, hoping to stun him long enough to escape. But I didn’t hit him hard enough and, incandescent with rage, he controlled himself long enough to phone and cancel our guests, pleading a sudden migraine on my part. As he put the phone down and turned to me, I was afraid only for Millie, because there was nothing left he could deprive me of. Even when he told me that he was going to show me Millie’s room, I still wasn’t afraid for myself because all I presumed was that he had stripped it of its beautiful furnishings, as he had done mine. As he pushed me into the hall, my arms twisted painfully behind my back, I felt desperately sad for Millie because it was the room she had always
dreamt of having. But, instead of taking me up to the first floor, he opened the door that led down to the basement.
I fought like mad not to go down the stairs but I was no match for Jack, his already powerful strength inflamed by fury. Even then, I had no idea what was waiting for me. It was only when he dragged me past the utility room where he had kept Molly, through what seemed to be a storeroom and came to a stop in front of a steel door cleverly hidden behind a stack of shelves that I began to feel real fear.
It wasn’t some sort of torture chamber, as I’d first feared, because there were no instruments of torture as such. Devoid of furniture, the whole of the room, including the floor and ceilings, had been painted blood red. It was terrible, chilling, but it wasn’t the only thing that caused me to cry out in distress.
‘Take a good look,’ he snarled. ‘I hope Millie will appreciate it as much as I do because this is the room where she’s going to stay, not the pretty yellow bedroom upstairs.’ He shook me hard. ‘Look at it and tell me how scared you think she’s going to be.’
I could feel my eyes rolling in my head as I tried to look anywhere but at the walls, where the portraits he had forced me to paint for him hung.
‘Do you think Millie is going to like the paintings you’ve done specially for her? Which one do you think will be her favourite? This one?’ His hand on the back of my head, he pushed my face hard up against one of the portraits. ‘Or this one?’ He dragged me over to one of the other walls. ‘Such beautiful handiwork, don’t you think?’ Moaning, I screwed my eyes shut tight. ‘I hadn’t intended to show you this room just yet,’ he went on, ‘but now you can try it for size. You really shouldn’t have hit me with that bottle.’
After giving me a final shove, he went out of the room, leaving the door to slam shut behind him. I scrambled to my feet and ran to the door. When I saw that there was no handle, I began hammering on it with my fists, screaming at him to let me out.