Arrietty v25, p.21
ARRIETTY v25, page 21
Desperate to be free of them, I stalked away.
‘What about dessert? I made Alec’s favourite – blackberry and apple crumble.’ Rose’s voice floated after me, but I’d already made it to the stairs.
Dad followed two steps behind.
I pretended I didn’t know he was there. Once I got to my room, I slammed the door in his face.
Through the wood, he said, ‘You can come downstairs and spend the rest of the evening with us if you like. Despite what you may think, I’m glad you’re giving hypnosis another try.’
‘No thanks,’ I said, hoping he’d leave quickly. I wanted to try to break the child lock off the window. From there, I’d find a safe way to lower myself to the ground. I thought I might have a skipping rope somewhere. Maybe, if I could tie it to my bedpost, I could climb through the window and down the side of the house.
I could feel him lingering on the other side of the door. I raised my voice. ‘I’d rather rot in hell.’
There was a long silence. I imagined his scowl. Felt a spark of satisfaction.
At last, he said, ‘Fair enough. Rose would rather I didn’t lock you in, but I’m afraid your recent actions have scared me a great deal, so I’d prefer to play it safe. I’ll bring you some dessert and a cup of tea and take Knightley out to do his business at nine. If you want to come out, just knock on the door. I’ll come up.’
‘This isn’t going to work, you know,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Acting all nice. I know what you’ve done.’
He sighed. ‘Once Rose has worked her magic, we’ll be able to scavenge something out of this mess. Maybe, one day, we’ll even carve out some sort of happiness again.’
I bit back a million responses and waited for him to leave, but no footsteps sounded.
‘The quicker you accept this new situation, the better for everyone. I’m locking you in for your own good. I only hope you’ll realize it soon.’
‘And if I don’t? What will you do? Hurt me like you hurt Mum? Or maybe you haven’t actually hurt her yourself – maybe you’ve got someone else doing the dirty work for you.’ Someone likes James.
‘If I could trust you, I wouldn’t need to lock you in,’ he barked.
He bolted the door. The landing shuddered as he stormed away.
I spun around and raced to the window. Froze. Stared, unable to believe what he’d done.
A rectangle of metal had been hammered over the window frame, straight across the centre where I’d hoped to pry out the screws with the nail scissors. He’d even used several nails to make it doubly secure.
I grabbed the scissors out of my pocket and attacked a nail, which only served to bend the metal blades of the scissors out of shape. Through tears of frustration, I tried and tried, but there was nothing I could do to prise them out.
Although I’d known the window was a long shot, the fact that Dad had caught on before I’d had a chance to do any damage hit me like a fist. Dad was five steps ahead. Determined to do whatever it cost to keep me here against my will - while I was struggling uphill against a raging avalanche, slipping backwards…falling.
Every bit of energy left my body.
With Mum’s fearful face in my mind, I sank to my knees and stared at my only eye to the outside world, more desperate and hopeless than ever.
Chapter 56
I’m not dead. Or am I? No. I feel the same – blind but aware, just. I can breathe again.
Relief makes me want to weep. I may as well be a ghost, but I’m not one yet.
I begin to wonder what happened. Maybe he decided to kill me then changed his mind at the last minute. Maybe he did it on purpose to make me suffer. To punish me. No. If it’s him, he wouldn’t do that, which makes me think it’s someone else. The more I think about it, the more I think it has to be. There’s no way he could do this to me. Suddenly, the idea seems insane. Absurd. He hates me for what I did, but he wouldn’t take matters into his own hands like this. At least, I don’t think he would. It’s hard to say. I don’t think I ever knew him at all. The way he exploded…I was terrified. And the way he looked at me, like I was something he wanted to rip apart.
Maybe it is him.
No. He loved you once.
I loved him too. Now I don’t know what to think.
Is there anyone else who might do this to me?
I think of my friends, people I know. There’s no one I can think of who hates me this much.
Or is it even a case of hatred? Couldn’t it be madness?
I’ve met my share of crazy people, but this crazy? No. Then again, you never know what’s going on inside someone’s head. Everyone has secrets, things they’re too ashamed to tell anyone. Everybody wears a disguise. A mask. There’s a sort of inner duality to people. A cave-man instinct crushed day in day out by modern social norms. For some, there must be a constant battle: to conform or to rebel. I think about ‘The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. Picasso’s distorted faces. Van Gogh cutting off his ear. Everyone has a beast inside them. Most people keep it locked up for ever. A few don’t.
All that’s needed is a trigger.
Maybe it is him. Maybe he’s deeply disturbed and he’s been hiding it for years. What I did drew out the beast that had been hibernating all this time. It’s my fault he’s doing this, my fault he’s snapped.
A door’s opening. There’s a smell. It’s sweet. Sweeter than normal.
There’s a voice.
Chapter 57
Dad brought breakfast to my room and set the tray on my dressing table whistling a jaunty tune I recognized but couldn’t place. He seemed happier this morning, which annoyed the hell out of me. Was it because he and Rose had christened their relationship in my mum’s bed? The thought made me feel like smashing my fists into his face. Accusations whizzed around my brain like fireworks, fizzling out once they reached their climax; I had a plan now and I needed to stick to it. Riling him would be a bad idea. While stoking the flames was tempting, this man held Mum’s – and possibly Eddie’s – life in his hands. If I went too far, he might explode and turn his wrath on them instead of me.
Still, when he spoke, my words came out acrid and cutting.
‘Sleep OK?’ he said, leaning casually against the wall.
‘I’ve been dying for a wee all night, so no.’
‘You could’ve woken me up.’
‘By screaming my lungs out?’
He held my eye for a few moments. A muscle in his cheek twitched.
I longed to drive a spade into his mind and dig out the secrets buried there. If only I was telepathic…
‘Well, you can go now,’ he said, standing aside to let me pass.
I took my clothes with me and locked the bathroom door. I went to the toilet and brushed my teeth, then unlocked the door and peeked out. Dad’s broad back was all I saw. He was guarding the exit in case I made a run for it.
Shaking my head bitterly, I showered and dressed then took Knightley out for a play in the garden. Dad stood in the kitchen watching us. Forever watching, making sure I was being a good girl.
Rose was nowhere to be seen. Her Figaro was parked by the side of the house next to Dad’s Mercedes. A match made in Heaven. Or Hell. Or Purgatory. The seventh terrace: lust. We’d learned about that in English. I wondered if she was still upstairs asleep in Mum’s bed on Mum’s sheets. I wondered if they’d slept together and felt sick.
Knightley did his business then headed for the cliff. I followed, gaze trained on the patchwork hills that stretched into the distance. I stopped inches from the edge. I could feel eyes on me but didn’t care. Looking down, I imagined falling and the freedom of weightlessly dropping through thin air with nothing to hold me down or pull me back, before the sudden crash of soft skin against jagged rocks and the inevitable shattering of bone and brain matter ended everything. There would be a strange sort of release in that. And not much pain. It would be over quickly.
I looked up. My cheeks were wet with tears. Morning sun pushed through the clouds and warmed my face. I turned my back on the cliff edge, throat thick with emotion. Would Mum ever see another morning sun? Would Eddie?
The thought that they wouldn’t was unthinkable. I steeled my heart and picked up Knightley. Whispering my plan in his ear, I strode back up the garden towards the glass house.
*
My muscles tied themselves in knots. It was two in the afternoon. Sunny and smouldering outside. The rain clouds had wept themselves dry and the sun had begun to suck moisture from the earth once more. But there was smog on the horizon; any second now, Rose would arrive for our ‘session’.
The room was tidy, bed made, charcoal away, clothes hung up or folded in drawers. I was dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and trainers, my hair smoothed into a ponytail at the nape of my neck. No makeup because there was no point. The hairs on my arms were alert, my ears trained on the slightest sound. I wanted to hear her coming.
Dad was supposedly taking Knightley for a check-up. I’d not bothered asking if I could go too. There was no way they were letting me out of here until Rose had bent my mind to her will and turned me into a puppet who would question nothing and agree with everything.
My nerve endings were electric. I couldn’t stop getting up from the bed and putting my ear to the door. I looked at the time. It was five minutes past two. The waiting was torture. When was she going to come?
I tried to busy myself by rearranging my books into colour order, from darkest to lightest. My fingers hovered above the Harry Potter collection. I remembered reading them aloud to Mum – or was it the other way around? My memory was so distorted, it was hard to say. All I knew for certain was that our love of the series was another thing we shared.
My chest ached with longing as I looked out of the window at the back garden, at Mum’s studio. I thought about the strange sketches she’d drawn of Eddie and me, how they’d grown darker and darker. What had been tormenting her? Dad’s affair? Or more – was it the realisation that he wasn’t the person he’d always made himself out to be? I wondered what had set Dad off. Perhaps Mum had confronted him about the affair and he’d seen red and acted without thinking. Maybe he’d attacked her and hurt her so badly he’d taken measures to hide the damage, keep her out of sight until he could come up with a plan to dispose of her. That made some sort of sense. It explained why he didn’t seem to want to get rid of me too. Perhaps, somewhere deep down in his twisted mind, he still cared about me and wanted us to move on together and pretend nothing bad had ever happened.
It all sounded so unreal, but this was my reality. If only the journal entry hadn’t been destroyed…
But there was no point crying over spilled milk. Dad could be spilling more of Mum’s blood this very second; that was worth crying about. No. More than that. That was worth risking everything for.
The thud of footsteps drew my ears. I moved away from the door and perched on the bed. My heart rate soared, and my palms sweated as I waited. Rose’s steps grew louder and closer. A phone sang, and she stopped walking and answered.
‘How is she? ... But I thought … Really? ... Oh. I see. Yeah … OK ... Yeah. I’m just about to go in … I will … OK, see you soon. Bye. Oh, and Alec, I’m sorry about last night...Are you sure...Phew. Great. Because I was worried that...oh, oh, OK, yes. Bye.’
Was that about Mum?
Yes. It had to be.
I exhaled. If they were talking about Mum like that, it meant she was alive.
The bolt screeched. My body stiffened and my hands clenched on my lap.
Rose opened the door and smiled down at me. Falseness radiated off her in a syrupy swell of perfume and pretence. Today, she resembled a 1950s housewife. Bright red lipstick stained her lips and, I was pleased to see, her teeth. As always, her feet were bare. Another sign she was making herself at home in my house.
Anger frothed my blood. My adrenaline fired up.
She stood in the doorway for a few moments. ‘I see you’ve tidied up. Looks lovely. Alec will be pleased.’
I faked a smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’re so good for agreeing to this. We’re both so relieved.’
I bet you are.
She entered the room and sat on my desk chair. After crossing her legs and arranging her dress, she said, ‘Ready?’
I braced myself, then said, ‘Are you in love with my dad?’
She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and laughed. ‘Really? This again?’
‘I’m serious. I want to know.’
She ran her tongue around her gums as if considering what to say, and then, to my astonishment, she said, ‘We’re very fond of one another.’
I stared at her open-mouthed.
‘There’s no need to look so horrified about it.’
‘You’re admitting it - you and Dad are together. You’ve both done something to Mum.’
She rolled her eyes again and snorted. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. That’s absurd. Alec wouldn’t hurt a fly, and anyway it’s impossible. It’s all in your head. That’s why I’m trying to help you. Look, you’ve been through a terrible experience that’s made you repress certain memories. As I’ve told you before, with hypnotherapy I can help to bring those memories to the surface safely. That’s all we’re trying to do here.’
‘And the affair? How can you so casually admit that to me? And isn’t that a, a -’
‘Breach of professional conduct? Well, yes, but when you find the man of your dreams what are you supposed to do?’
‘You’re disgusting.’
‘I’m sorry, but sometimes you must be cruel to be kind. Often the truth is a bitter pill to swallow but it’s best you know, don’t you think? I really don’t know why Alec insists on keeping it a big secret.’ She looked genuinely confused, hurt even.
‘Maybe he’s using you. Have you ever considered the fact that he might be keeping a secret from you? A secret about Mum? How can you be so sure he hasn’t done anything to her? I read his journal. He admitted he’s done something unforgivable to her. How well do you really know him anyway?’
She laughed weakly. ‘He’ll be referring to me of course, nothing else.’ A sliver of doubt darkened her eyes. ‘I’d do anything to protect him. Anything at all. He wouldn’t hide anything from me. He loves me. We love each other.’
‘How can you be so sure? Has he told you he loves you?’
She rubbed her throat. ‘Not yet. But I know he does. It’s obvious. He’s moved me in for God’s sake! And he’s entrusted your care to me. He doesn’t really know what to do with you. I’ve been guiding him, offering him daily advice, doing everything I can to support him. I’ve been helping you too. You ought to be thanking me not challenging me. I’ve been extremely patient up until now, but this resistance needs to stop. You’re upsetting Alec and that won’t do.’ She exhaled heavily and flapped her hand next to her cheek as if she was suddenly too hot. ‘Right. Enough talk. Onto business, yes?’
‘No. I don’t think so. Not now, not ever.’
I swallowed a crash of fear, stood up and raced to the door. To my surprise, she was quick, faster than I thought possible. She darted after me and grabbed my arm. I spun around and slashed at her with the nail scissors. She gasped and jerked away, letting go of me and darting backwards, her hand cupping her cheek, blood seeping through her fingers.
I whirled, ran out of the room, slammed the door behind me and slid the bolt through the lock. Fear rammed its knuckles into my stomach as I tossed the scissors aside and ran across the landing, trying to ignore Rose’s crazed screams at me to stop. Blood pounded in my ears as I tore down the stairs, turned and sprinted through the house.
From here, I had no clear plan. All I knew was that I had to get out and as far away from the house as possible before Dad came back. His car was gone but Rose’s wasn’t. Her keys had to be somewhere.
I checked the hooks next to the front door, but no new keys hung there.
I ran to the kitchen and scanned the surfaces – there, on the kitchen island - a set of keys. I ran over, picked them up and headed for the back door. It wasn’t locked, so I dashed out and around the side of the house, unlocked the Figaro and slid in behind the wheel. It was automatic like the Merc. I put the car in Drive and sped the Figaro up the pathway. I imagined Rose’s frustration and Dad’s outrage. A hysterical laugh burst out of my mouth and I looked ahead, horrified to see the Merc hurtling down the gravel towards me.
I hesitated then slammed the car into reverse. Dad kept coming. Pebbles clattered and smacked against the windows as I drove too fast on the uneven ground, desperate to get away.
If I could spin the car around and drive through the fence, I could escape through the fields then re-join the road at a later point, and surely Dad wouldn’t come after me if he thought I’d done something to Rose. He’d go inside to check she was OK first, especially if he loved her as much as she said he did.
I reached the back garden and swerved to the left, bringing the bonnet around to face the fence. Tensing every muscle, I gripped the steering wheel hard and slammed my foot down on the accelerator. Behind me, Dad stopped the Merc, got out of the car and waved his hands at me to stop.
There was no way I was stopping.
The Figaro smashed into the fence, but instead of breaking through it, the bonnet crumpled and the car refused to go any further. Bizarrely the words reinforced with concrete jittered across my brain as the airbag blew up in my face. Vicious arrows of pain shot down my neck. With a groan, I reached over and opened the door; and Dad yanked me out of the car. His hands were all over me, face blurry, coming and going in waves of black and grey. I tried to fight him off, but I was weak and so, so dizzy. Pain thwacked against my skull and I staggered to the right and fell over. He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. I battered my fists against his back to no effect.
He carried me back into the house in silence and I began to fear the worst. His rage was in the jerkiness of his strides and the tightness with which he held me. I stopped hitting him and told him I was sorry, that I’d been stupid, but he said nothing.
