On the wall and an inch or so below the ceiling is a photograph of my husband Alistair that has been glued to the wallpaper. He’s smiling at the camera. When I first ended up in here, it was as if his eyes were following me around the room. I couldn’t escape him. I hated it and I hated him. But the length of my chain makes it too far out of my reach to tear it down. I threw a glass of orange juice at it once, but all that did was give the photo a sepia effect, like it had been taken a hundred years ago. In fairness, that’s how long ago our marriage feels.
I cover my bucket with a towel to contain the odour of last night’s expulsions. Nina only empties it once every two days but I’ve got used to the smell. Soon after this all began, I lost my temper and tried to throw the contents over her. But because I hadn’t got used to the restriction of the chain, I tripped over it, lost my balance and covered the floor with my own waste instead. Nina laughed until the tears fell from her eyes and refused to bring me anything to clean it up with until the next day.
She also used to leave me a can of air freshener until I tried to spray it into her eyes and blind her. She dodged the stream just in time and I never saw another can again. Instead, she leaves me car air fresheners to hang around the room, making it smell like a showroom. And they’re citrusy, of course.
Nina alternates between two chains of differing length to keep me prisoner. I don’t know what they’re made of, but they’re a solid, toughened metal that I’ve tried and failed to break or prize apart countless times. They’re comprised of links attached to a cuff that is secured to my ankle with a padlock that only she has the key to. They’re almost medieval in appearance.
My daytime chain is affixed to a metal spike in the centre of the room that’s secured to what I assume to be a joist under the floorboards. It stretches exactly the same distance in both directions, to the window and to the door on the opposite wall. I suppose that’s why she doesn’t lock my bedroom door. She knows I’m not going anywhere.
The second chain is only used when I join her for dinner, every second evening. It reaches down the staircase, along a first-floor landing and into the dining room. It also allows me into the bathroom on my floor for my twice-weekly baths. However, it won’t go as far as the next staircase or the ground floor.
I open my door to find a book and two transparent Tupperware boxes on the carpet. ‘Hotel room service has been while I slept,’ I say to myself. Inside the smaller of the boxes is breakfast. Two slices of cold, buttered, toasted white bread, a tin of fruit cocktail and an apricot yoghurt. The larger box contains a green banana, a ham and cheese sandwich, a satsuma and a packet of cheddar-flavoured crackers. There is no cutlery. I take it inside and sit on the bed, nibbling at the toast first, before I pick the fruit out of the tin with my fingers and drink the yoghurt. Later, I’ll make the lunch last throughout the afternoon until dinner arrives.
The longer I spend at this window, the more I realise I’m becoming like Jeff, the wheelchair-bound character James Stewart plays in the film Rear Window. Like him, I have little choice but to spend my days spying on my neighbours. Jeff thinks he has witnessed the murder of one of his neighbours. But the only thing dying in this street is me. And nobody knows that but my daughter.
Where did it all go wrong for us? I think. I’m aware of the answer; I just don’t want to be reminded of it.
I turn to pick up today’s book. It’s Room, by Emma Donoghue. I read the dust-jacket synopsis and find it’s about a mother and son who live in a single locked room together. Very droll of you, Nina. Every now and again she amuses herself with book choices like this. In the past she has left me biographies on Anne Frank, Terry Waite, J. Paul Getty III and Nelson Mandela – she favours anyone who has been held against their will or locked in a confined space. I can tell which books talk about ways to escape because they’re the ones with pages ripped out.
As I make my way to the bed to begin reading, something on the floor underneath it catches my attention. I hesitate, unsure at first whether my tired eyes are imagining it. No, it’s definitely there. I move closer and recognise what it is – a wooden memory box that Alistair made Nina some thirty years ago. He even stencilled her name on the lid with gold lettering. I haven’t seen it in decades.
I crouch to pick it up and its contents shift as I place it on the bed. How long has it been under here? I’ve searched every square inch of this room looking for a means to escape, so I can’t have missed it. Nina must have put it under my bed one night when I was in the bath. Where did she get it? Then I remember – it was in the basement.
My stomach sinks. Already, I don’t like what this box represents: things that I’d rather forget and maybe my daughter doesn’t know. The hinges quietly creak as I lift open the lid. The first thing I spot among the contents is a reminder of the first time Nina broke my heart.
CHAPTER 8
MAGGIE
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER
I’m perched on the edge of the sofa, unaware the television channel has finished broadcasting for the night, until I catch a glimpse of coloured on-screen text pages offering last-minute holiday deals. I turn it off.
It’s an ugly habit but when I’m anxious, I bite at the skin around my fingernails. Tonight, I’ve gone too deep and the metallic taste of blood is on my lips. The room is now dim, so I can see out of the window and along the darkened road. Directing my eyes towards the streetlights, I spot someone. I spring to my feet and press my face up against the glass, then sigh. It’s not Nina.
The clock on the mantelpiece reads past 2 a.m., and my teenage daughter still isn’t home. She is somewhere out there in the dark and I don’t have the first clue where. The police won’t do anything until she has been missing for at least twenty-four hours and it’s only been six since I saw her go upstairs to bed. At some point, she must have crept back out and left the house. The policewoman I spoke to was sympathetic but deep down, I know she was judging me. I don’t blame her because I’m judging me too.
It’s already been an awful day filled with lies. I’ve had calls from Alistair’s credit-card company and his employers pursuing me for money owed and the repayment of wages he was given before he disappeared. I keep trying to tell them that I haven’t seen him in months and that he is no longer my responsibility. But when I contacted the Citizens Advice Bureau this afternoon, they advised that, legally, these parasites have every right to chase their money. I hate the mess he has left me and Nina in.
A few minutes pass before a car pulls up outside the house. I hurry to open the front door as a man I don’t recognise exits the passenger side. He pulls Nina out from one of the rear seats. When she can’t stand up unassisted, he leaves her slumped in a heap on the path like a bin bag.
‘What have you done to her?’ I yell, and dash towards her.
He shrugs. ‘Take a chill pill. She’s just drunk.’
‘But she’s only just turned fourteen!’
‘Don’t let her out then,’ shouts the driver from an open window as his friend rejoins him. The car pulls away, repetitive music blaring from the speakers.
Nina reeks of booze and cigarette smoke. I can smell vomit on her too. I reach down to grab her before the neighbours see.