Authors: Ali Knight
‘Take your hands off her, for God’s sake.’
He threw Kelly into the back seat and slammed the door, then turned towards Lindsey. He came close to her as she began to back uncertainly away from him, and whispered something in her ear. Kelly had righted herself and saw Lindsey’s face freeze like a statue for a moment before it crumpled into sobs. Christos walked to the far door and got in to the car. ‘Go,’ he said.
Lindsey’s hands were shaking, tears coursing down her cheeks. ‘You sick fuck!’
‘What did you say to her? What did you do?’ Kelly tried to open the window, jabbing at the button.
The first car had driven away, crunching out of sight down the drive. Kelly howled in pure fear. Without her children, all she could feel was the fear. As the driver pulled away, Lindsey began to run along beside the car. Kelly splayed her fingers on the glass; Lindsey was saying something to her as they picked up speed. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ she was mouthing, and then Lindsey and the house disappeared from view.
She turned in the seat to Christos, who was calm, staring ahead. ‘How did you find me?’
‘It’s not like you have many friends, Kelly. She was the only one left, and I have a trace on your phone.’
‘I hate you. Every time I see you I hate your guts.’
‘I don’t care. It doesn’t matter if you hate me. You really think that love has to be returned? How naïve. You remember, Kelly, the rules I work to: nothing is impossible. What matters is that I chose you, and I work very hard in life to get what I want. We are a family, Kelly, no one breaks the bond of family. However far you run, I will always find you. I’ll never let you go.’ He pulled out a small black box that looked like a pencil case. He opened it with a click and pulled out a hypodermic syringe.
‘You’re not—’
She couldn’t finish what she’d started saying, because he’d jabbed the syringe hard into her thigh and was emptying the contents into her leg. The last thing she remembered before she blacked out was him stroking her hair, almost tenderly.
R
icky Welch was sitting in his armchair by the window that gave on to the back alley of a house in Southampton. He was trying to read the paper, but one of the dogs was trying to squirm into his lap, trying to nudge him to take him for his morning walk, and was knocking the pages around. It had been easier to read a big paper in prison; there were no distractions, no pets or wives or Dawn’s nieces and nephews to knock into you. It was the only advantage he could think of. He’d read a lot inside, it had changed him, given him perspective.
Dawn was on the phone to her sister, yak yak yakkety yak. It amazed him how much women could talk. She’d only seen her two days ago and they’d talked for six hours solid, the childcare for Sally’s kids hardly puncturing the flow back and forth. It always struck him how much she laughed, her voice pealing away upstairs, at the theatre, in the khazi even. Men just sat in silence together as a rule, compared betting slips. He knew this all too well, had lived it for eight years. He tried not to let his mind travel back there, tried to block it off before it made him bitter. Dawn had suffered too, had a capacity for forgiveness he knew he didn’t possess. She had stood by him, loyal till the end. Many would not have.
He pushed the dog off his lap and it started humping his leg. We were all beasts in the field in the end, programmed to procreate. He stood and shook him off as Dawn made a ‘down, boy’ motion with her hand and rang off from her sister. She bent down and picked up the dog, nestling her face in its stomach. His wife had a mass of blonde curls that were beginning to be flecked with grey. She’d put on weight over the years, rounding out from a buxom blonde into a less defined, more maternal shape. A shape that was deceptive. He felt the pity he had for her return with force. She put a brave face on it, but she was also sadder, her mouth turned down. We get the face we deserve, he’d read somewhere. That wasn’t true. Dawn hadn’t deserved her lot.
‘That was Sally,’ Dawn said, as if he couldn’t recognise her sister on the phone. ‘She wants to go to a show at the Mayflower in the New Year. I’ll get the tickets; we’ll all go.’ She walked over to the boxy computer on a table at the side of the room and switched it on. It made a sound like a helicopter taking off. ‘I’ll show you.’
She didn’t patronise him or get irritated at the things he couldn’t do or didn’t understand. The world had turned in eight years, leaving him reeling. His wife had always loved the theatre, but she used to go without him. Back then he would scoff, but he had changed. It was funny how years of incarceration could expand a person’s horizons. Now they went together. She brought up the website for the theatre and clicked on
The Day of the Dead
. ‘Have a read. I’ll get the dogs’ leads.’
He wasn’t sure why he had to read it, his wife’s opinion and passions were good enough for him. He floated through culture, whether high or low. She’d insisted on framing his Open University degree certificate – Sociology and Social Sciences – but had then hung it in the toilet. He was never sure whether she was having a laugh at his expense. He glanced through the photos of the actors and the production staff, the mask makers …
It was her. Plain as day, it was the woman who had told the lie, the monstrous lie that had stolen years of his life. She was sandwiched between a skeleton and a table, in a room with pointed windows. He felt a rage well up like he hadn’t experienced since it first all happened, unstoppable. She had stolen Dawn’s life too. He looked at her name. Of course, she had changed it. But she hadn’t changed her face. It was an unusually fine face, a face many would covet.
Through the windows and down the inglenook, up from the floorboards and through the soles of his feet, came the deep drawn-out note of a ship’s horn in the harbour. He heard it ringing in his ears as it faded away. It was calling him, a siren call of danger, but maybe also of answers. Ships had been his life once, until he’d gone down for murder. He felt capable of it now. He picked up his jacket and walked out of the front door, the blustery morning wind trying to shove him back into the house, back to sanity and reasonable behaviour, back to the straight and narrow. He could hear Dawn talking to the dogs in the kitchen, her soft inviting voice not enough of a pull to keep him rooted to the spot.
K
elly woke disoriented, remembering in a flash her struggle in the car with Christos. She was in her own bed at home, the flat hollow with quiet. She ran her tongue over her teeth. None was missing or loose. She sat up tentatively, but no jarring pain from a fresh injury slowed her rise. She lifted a shaking hand and felt her face, her eyes. There was no swelling or bruising. She knew from the silence in the flat that the kids were not there. She picked up her mobile, charging by the side of the bed. There were no messages. She glanced at the date, confusion scratching at the inside of her skull. She’d been dragged into Christos’s car on the afternoon of Wednesday 23rd of October, now it was late morning on Thursday the 24th. Nearly an entire day had been erased from her memory.
She got out of bed fast, alarm beginning to pierce the fog of tiredness and confusion she felt. She was wearing her old jogging bottoms and a top. She headed for the kitchen, adopting her old habits as she had no better ones to replace them with. She dragged herself up the stairs, feeling a hundred years old. As she crossed the living room, she could hear the swishing, sliding sound of slippers on tile. Medea was in the kitchen, loading the fridge with her hermetically sealed dishes in clingfilm.
‘Sit down, I’ll get what you need,’ Medea said to Kelly, not bothering even to look at her, her face and neck buried in the refrigerator.
‘I don’t want anything,’ Kelly replied. The thought of pushing food past the great knot of disappointment in her throat was too much for her. Medea decided she didn’t like the dolmades on the middle shelf and moved them to the bottom shelf.
‘Are the kids at school?’
Medea nodded. ‘Just have a little plate. Sit down and have a little plate. It’ll settle your nerves.’
‘I should get ready to go and get them.’
‘Sylvie’s doing it. She’s taking them to the Trocadero as a treat.’
‘Sylvie?’ She hadn’t believed it was possible to feel worse, until she heard that name. ‘She doesn’t have to do that.’
‘Christos has to work, I am old, you were …’ She waved a hand as a substitute for airing something that was too despicable to mention. ‘You should be glad she stepped in and volunteered to take them after school.’
Kelly sank down on a chair, staring dully at the view of west London through the window. The city looked hung over, a long traffic jam clogging the flyover heading west. Still to be in this flat, with the same objects, the same restrictions, the same toxic relationships … Her heart couldn’t take the pain.
‘Here. Have something.’ Medea put a plate in front of her and pulled back the clingfilm. It made a squeaking sound as the food was revealed. There were four types of dessert – some deep-fried, others soaked in honey, cloying in their sweetness. She sensed Medea drawing a shawl round her shoulders and huffing. ‘You’re so suspicious all the time. I’m only trying to help. You need energy. Eat. You’re too thin.’
Her irritation began to build. This wasn’t Medea’s home, yet she came and went as if it were. Kelly would eat what she wanted to, when she wanted to. ‘I don’t …’ Her voice died away as she heard a precise tread across the marble of the living room and Christos came in.
He looked at her and Kelly felt fear wash down her back. Their cat and mouse game was over, but all its deadly consequences were still to come.
‘So you’re awake.’ Fear had closed up her throat and she couldn’t speak.
‘She’s spurning my cooking,’ said Medea.
The old bitch, thought Kelly. She looked down at the pastries, picked one up, put it in her mouth and began to chew. She forced it down her throat. ‘It’s very nice.’
Christos took a step towards her and she speeded up her eating. Medea took the plate away. It was like she was in a mental institution, except the wall between the inmate and the jailer was invisible. Kelly felt the heavy sweets were ready to come back up again if she didn’t use iron will to keep them down. Panic began to sing through the fibres of her being. ‘I need to see the kids.’ She stood sharply, her desire to be with them rising in her like a wave cresting a sea wall.
‘They’ll come back later,’ Christos said.
She put a hand on the kitchen table to steady herself as dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. There was no mention of her escape attempt. It was being wiped clean from the family history, as if what she had done, what she had planned for so long, had never really happened. That was more terrifying than Christos flying into a rage. Kelly could feel the strength drain away from her legs as she sank back into a chair.
Christos was about to turn away but when he saw the look on her face, pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. She just managed to stop herself shrinking back as he reached out a hand for her shoulder. ‘Why is it always so difficult, eh? Things will all work out.’ She couldn’t control the shiver that ran down her arm. He reached forward for the zip on her old hooded sweatshirt and began to do it up. She could feel the fabric tightening over her breasts and up to her throat. It took all her reserves of self-control not to cry out. She felt that he was going to keep on zipping, right up over her mouth, nose and eyes, as if he were closing her up in a body bag, a cadaver to be wheeled away.
K
elly went to get dressed. She had to try to get through the day, be ready for the kids when they got home. She put on some make-up, staring at a face in the mirror she didn’t recognise. She looked different, yet she couldn’t understand how exactly. Fear? Fraying nerves? There were many reasons. She caught a glimpse of the bedroom light reflected in the mirror.
Medea was still in the kitchen, Christos had gone out. She dragged the stepladder from the cupboard next to the service lift and set it up under the lampshade. She unscrewed the light bulb and Sleepchecker camera, then picked up her bag. She left the flat and headed to an internet café, sat down at a computer, plugged in the SD card and began to watch, keen to see what had happened since she had installed it.
The recording was black and white and motion-sensitive, with no sound. She had three and a half days to look through, from Sunday afternoon to this morning. She fast-forwarded through the night she nearly stabbed Christos in the shower, barely able to watch. The twisted passion she showed then was beyond her now. The next night she was in bed alone, turning this way and that, hugging a pillow for company as though she were trying to find a place of refuge in the large bed. The next images captured were of Christos moving back and forth through the bedroom, often on the phone. That was the night she had run. She watched his body language for a moment, playing the tape backward and forward. He didn’t look stressed, he was in control.
Medea trudged through the film occasionally, a cloth slipping over surfaces as she cleaned and poked about in drawers and shelves. Then her husband was carrying Kelly to the bed, fireman-style over his shoulder. She was out cold from the drugs he had given her in the car. He laid her down on the sheets and Medea came in and covered her over.
Tears sprang to Kelly’s eyes for her comatose body, being carried and pushed about. She had lost her free will completely. She felt outraged on behalf of the woman on the screen. Mother and son were in the room, chatting calmly, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then Medea left the bedroom and Christos took a notebook from his pocket and bent down and examined the insteps and soles of Kelly’s shoes and began writing in the book. She frowned, not understanding what he was doing. He put the notebook away and came closer to her, fast asleep on the bed. He pulled something – a pair of scissors – out of his pocket, leaned over and cut off a lock of her hair.