The Argument (ARC)

by Victoria Jenkins

  Yet now Hannah wonders if everything she has seen in front of her has been a lie, and that this has always been the truth. She knows that there must be some truth in that letter – there are things Carly couldn’t possibly have known unless she had some sort of contact with Michael – and yet Hannah doesn’t want to believe it, even now. She won’t believe it. Her husband is a good man, he always has been. He saved her when she was at her most vulnerable, when her life would have led her down a path that would have given her with nothing but further misery. If it wasn’t for Michael, Hannah hates to think what would have become of her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again, though the word seems to be having no effect. ‘I’ve been so tired recently and Olivia’s behaviour has been so difficult, I just…I let things slip, I know that. It won’t happen again, I promise.’

  He is silent, and Hannah would rather that he shouted at her than let her stew in the terrible quietness that suffocates her.

  ‘Why are you visiting that woman?’

  The question is the last one Hannah expects to hear, and yet it makes sense that he knows. Her mouth opens but she says nothing, knowing that further lies would be futile. Michael knows her better than she knows herself, he always has done. It was one of the things that drew her to him the most when they first met, this way in which he seemed to know what she needed far better than she did. He made decisions for her at times when she didn’t want to have to, and she has forever been grateful for it. But this knowing her so well means that he knows when she is lying; he understands so much more than she has ever realised.

  He has always referred to her mother as ‘that woman’. They never saw eye to eye, not from the first day they met, though it was always obvious why Eleanor took such a strong objection to Michael. That hideous man – as she had once referred to him during one particularly heated row - was going to take Hannah away. Eleanor had moulded her daughter to her liking, always keeping her close, shaping her into little more than a slave. She cooked, she cleaned, she did the shopping, and when her mother got sicker, she tended to her physical needs and personal care, receiving nothing but ingratitude and insult along the way, forever reminded of how worthless she was and how her mother could have had so much more from her life had Hannah not been born. No matter how much she did, Hannah’s efforts were met with nothing but criticism from her mother. Michael was the first and only person to make Hannah realise that the thankless existence she was enduring wasn’t normal and that her mother was controlling her life.

  ‘She’s dying.’

  Michael tuts. It is a cold sound, devoid of any empathy, stripped of anything that Hannah might consider human. ‘So why bother now? After everything she did to you, you’re willing to risk everything for her?’

  ‘She’s still my mother.’

  ‘She was a useless one, the same as you are now. Do you really think you’re any different? You had one job, Hannah – to keep the girls safe. What if something had happened to Olivia on Friday night? What if she’d got herself into trouble? Whose fault would it be?’

  Hannah closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to hear the words; she doesn’t want to go back there. She knows exactly what he means when he refers to ‘trouble’. She has been stupid and foolish - she knows all this. If she could go back and change everything that had happened that day she would, but she can’t, and her life is forever tainted by it. She is no better now than she was back then, all those years ago when she was little more than a child, one with still so much to learn.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘Then why are you only saying something now?’

  Michael sighs and folds his arms across his chest. ‘I wanted to see how long you’d keep the pretence up. You’ve shown just how disloyal you really are.’

  Hannah looks away, not wanting to maintain eye contact. Lying has felt wrong – the secret of her visits to her mother has made her uncomfortable – but at no point had she considered that the act may be disloyal. She has only been trying to do her best, for everyone.

  ‘Haven’t you learned anything?’ he asks, his voice deadened of any emotion.

  Hannah looks for her husband in this man: he looks the same, but this can’t be him. Michael is the one who was there for her that night, who found her when she didn’t answer his calls. He is the one who dressed the wounds that stranger had inflicted upon her body, the one who held her hand and promised her that everything was going to be okay. But that man was nothing like the one who stands in front of Hannah now.

  ‘I can’t trust you to protect the girls,’ he continues. ‘You leave the keys in the door. What’s the point in having rules if you’re just going to flout them? What sort of example is that setting to the girls?’

  Hannah narrows her eyes. ‘You?’

  ‘It’s just as well I popped home on Monday to take them out, wasn’t it? Someone needs to keep you from that woman. Don’t you remember what a poisonous old cow she is? I saved you from her once, Hannah…I won’t do it a second time.’

  He looks as though he is going to say something else, but instead Michael turns and leaves the room. She hears him go downstairs and she lies back on the bed, trying to keep her thoughts from what happened that night. But she can’t. Every time she closes her eyes, she is dragged back there. The soft mud beneath her that caked her bare legs, the black outlines of the trees against the blue-black of the night sky; the tinny ringing in her head that filled her ears. It all comes back to her, as out of focus now as it was then.

  Hours after she was attacked, she woke up in Michael’s bed, in the room he rented in a friend’s house. She opened her eyes to an artexed ceiling and a swirl of patterns that made her head hurt and her eyes sting. She was lying beneath a thin sheet that covered the torn and muddied dress she was still wearing, a makeshift dressing on her head. She was safe. He had rescued her. He had told her not to go to that party – he had tried to reason that she had him now, she didn’t need to go - but she hadn’t listened and had gone anyway. Their relationship – the secrecy, the thrill and promise of it all - had given her a taste of freedom, and like a glutton who hadn’t known when she’d had enough to fill her, she had greedily wanted to devour more.

  Hannah opens her eyes, unsure how long she has been lying there, lost to the past. The bedroom door is open again; Michael is standing in the doorway, silently watching her, his warm eyes burning to deliver fire.

  ‘Where the hell is Rosie?’

  * * *

  Twenty-Four

  * * *

  Olivia

  * * *

  Olivia cried when she heard her father come home from work and walk straight up the stairs. Where was Rosie? Why wasn’t she doing anything? She waited, but nothing happened. She heard her father go into her parents’ bedroom, closing the door after him. She lay in silence wondering what was going on, knowing that the most likely answer was the one she wanted to contemplate the least. There was nothing going on. Rosie had been too scared and had talked herself out of doing anything that could help them escape this place. Everything was exactly as it always was.

  She lay still until the room grew dark, until her tears had dried upon her face but the sheet beneath her stuck to her with the damp heat of urine. Now she lies in the darkness, her own stench thick in the air around her, and she can’t cry anymore; there isn’t enough fluid left inside her to produce any tears. She feels dizzy with dehydration, and she wonders how long she will survive if no one comes to her again. There have been so many times when Olivia has thought that dying would be preferable – the silence and solitude of death an appealing prospect against the never-ending regime of her life - but not like this, she thinks. She doesn’t want to die alone, not like this.

  She has no idea what time it might be when she hears her father call her sister’s name; the clock on the far wall of her room - one she knows was put there by her parents to torture her with during her long hours of solitary confinement –
has stopped, its battery dead. She has needed to find sleep, feeling herself exhausted by the strain of that past week, but she is too sad and too angry to close her eyes and allow herself to drift from the waking world. Rosie has let her down in the worst of ways. She knows her little sister is scared, but so is she. This was their chance – perhaps their only chance - but now it is gone, and she mourns it like a living thing, loved and lost.

  ‘Rosie!’

  There is a clattering of feet as one of her parents rushes downstairs. The other is on the landing, opening and closing doors, the increased banging suggesting panic and confirming what Olivia has begun to suspect. Rosie has gone. Her heart swells with a flood of anticipation. She hasn’t let her down at all; if anything, she has done the opposite. She didn’t want Olivia to get hurt, so she has made her own plan, one that hasn’t involved her sister. Olivia feels her heart push to burst with a love that is almost painful, and somehow her body finds itself able to produce tears once again.

  The relief that had washed over her at the knowledge of her sister’s absence is snatched from her by the appearance of her father, who crashes into the room with a face filled with the darkness of the night. He flicks the switch on the bedroom wall, throwing them both into a sudden and oppressive glow of artificial light. There is sweat on his top lip, dark patches beneath the arms of his shirt. The look on his face is one she has seen before but one her father tries his best to hide. It never ends well for any of them.

  Olivia wants to pretend she isn’t scared of him, but she is. She is frightened of both her parents.

  ‘Where’s your sister?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She pushes herself back on her elbows, struggling to get herself as far up the bed as she can go, but the cuffs around her ankles stop her. She feels her face flush with shame at the damp patch she is lying in, knowing that her mother will be furious with her for it.

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘I don’t know, I swear,’ she says, her words coming hurriedly, panicked. ‘I’ve been in here all day.’

  She hears her mother coming back up the stairs; a moment later, she is behind her father in the doorway. ‘She’s not in the garden,’ she says quietly.

  Her father hasn’t taken his eyes from Olivia, not even doing so to acknowledge the presence of her mother behind him. Her parents look at her accusingly, making Olivia feel smaller than they have ever been able to manage before now.

  ‘I won’t let you ruin everything,’ he says softly, his voice low and taunting. Yet there is something in his eyes, something that contradicts his words and the tone in which they are spoken. They are glassy and tired, an unspoken and inadvertent admission that Olivia has managed to unsettle him more than he would ever admit. He turns to Hannah and snaps his fingers. She fumbles in her pocket and passes him a set of keys. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  He reaches for Olivia’s ankle and unlocks the cuff. A flood of feeling rushes up her leg as the blood flows freely and she can move it properly, but all Olivia really wants to do is kick out, catch her father off-guard and run from this room and from this house. She knows she can’t, she would never make it. Even if she managed to get past him, her mother is right behind. Sometimes, she is more scared of her mother than she is of her father. There is something so unnatural about what she does, the way she treats her daughters, and her coldness manages to make her menacing. She is nothing like a mother should be, or what Olivia believes a mother should be, and all the niceness she has ever displayed, all those hours spent playing the role of the doting mother, has all been a pretence, as though Hannah has had to force herself to believe that she is happy here with this life they have built around them and barricaded themselves in.

  ‘Where are you taking her, Michael?’

  ‘Shut up. Isn’t this what you wanted?’

  Michael unlocks the cuffs that bind Olivia’s wrists. As with her legs, she feels a rush of sensation that sweeps back into her arms, offering her a momentary hope that she might be able to find some way out of here. When her father unlocks her left ankle, she stands slowly, not wanting to give the impression of an imminent attempt at escape. She would never risk it, she couldn’t do it; she feels sick and weak, her body drained of all its energy and reserves.

  ‘Try anything and you’ll only make things worse,’ her father warns her.

  Olivia wonders just how much worse things can possibly get, but she looks to her mother, passing a glance that pleads for help, desperately searching for a possible common ground between them somewhere. Her mother responds with nothing, seeming dead behind the eyes. She isn’t natural, Olivia thinks. Everything about her is wrong.

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ Olivia says, feeling a hot flush rise in waves through her. She glances to her mother before meeting Michael’s eye. ‘You’re not even my father.’

  He turns from Olivia to Hannah, the colour rushing to his face in a vivid burst of scarlet. ‘What have you told her?’

  She sees the flood of panic that washes over her mother’s face, draining her skin of colour. She must have known that he would find out that Olivia had discovered the truth; had she really wanted to, her mother could have kept it hidden for longer. She didn’t have to speak. She could have kept the secret from Olivia for the rest of her life if she had wanted to, and yet she had chosen not to, and now Olivia wonders why. Her mother must surely have known that he would only react in one way, so why did she do it? Has she finally realised that all this has gone too far?

  ‘She just found out,’ Hannah splutters, stumbling over her words.

  ‘Just found out. Just found out how?’

  Her father’s voice is low and controlled; everything Olivia knows they should both be fearful of. She has heard this voice enough times to know that nothing good ever follows it.

  Hannah’s eyes flit between Michael and Olivia. She isn’t going to mention the diary, Olivia thinks; she has managed to keep its existence a secret from him for this long, and even now she won’t bring herself to just tell the truth. She is protecting herself first, above all else.

  ‘Found out how?’ her father repeats, his voice louder now.

  Her mother glances at her again, sending Olivia an unspoken communication she is unable to read.

  ‘She…I…’

  But she has no answer, and even if she could find one, her response is too slow for her father’s liking. His arm is raised so suddenly, his hand flung forward so quickly, that neither Olivia nor Hannah has time to react. The back of his hand meets Hannah’s face with an awful crack and when she falls back, her head hits the corner of Olivia’s wooden chest of drawers. She falls to the floor, her left cheek pressed to the floor, where a small trail of blood appears from the back of her head, running a tiny river of red on the beige carpet.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Come on!’ Michael grabs Olivia by the arm, ignoring her protests.

  ‘You need to get her help!’

  ‘Shut up!’

  He pushes Olivia out onto the landing and down the stairs. She has been in her room, lying in that bed, for what has felt so long now that it is as though her legs have forgotten how they are supposed to work; she feels as though there is quicksand beneath her, pulling her down, and she wobbles and stumbles as she is bumped down each step.

  She screams as her father pulls her past the living room doorway and along the hallway. Her cries for help are met with a clip to the side of the head as he opens the door to the garage and takes her through to the car. Olivia can’t remember how long it has been since she was last in the garage. She and Rosie are banned from ever entering it, not that either of them would ever come to this place out of choice. They are only ever brought here when punishment is involved, and the hours she has spent locked in the boot of her father’s estate have been the longest and loneliest of Olivia’s life, a painful reminder of who is in charge and who they are to obey.

  The garage smells like petrol, and years of dust catch in her throat, choking her cries for he
lp.

  ‘I said, shut up!’

  Olivia feels the blow to the head, a sharp crack that sends her reeling. She watches the dark room fall to blackness as her vision leaves her. Her cries fall silent as her limp body is put into the boot of the car.

  19

  Twenty-Five

  Hannah

  * * *

  ‘Hannah! Hannah, can you hear me?’

  There is a white noise in her head and an awful searing pain that grips her skull. Hannah opens her eyes, trying to concentrate her vision on a single point, but everything is moving in front of her, shifting out of focus as though she is looking through water. She knows this feeling; she has been here before, years ago. She recognises the pain that swells in her brain and knows that she has been hit on the head, then everything comes rushing back to her with blinding accuracy. The girls, she thinks. Where are the girls?

  ‘Hannah, my name is Gary, okay? We’re going to get you on this stretcher.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says, knocking away the hand that rests on her arm. She is not okay, but she doesn’t need their help. She needs to find her daughters. She needs to find Michael. She knows what it is to feel fear for herself, but now she understands just how overpowering someone’s love for their children can be. Despite everything, she does love the girls, surely everyone will realise that. She has only ever wanted to protect them, to keep them safe from all the bad things that this world will try to throw at them.

  ‘No!’ she cries, as another paramedic tries to lift her from behind. ‘I said stop it!’

  She pushes herself up on an arm, trying to right herself and put her thoughts into order, all the while attempting to force back the searing pain that clutches her temples. Michael has taken Olivia. She never meant for this to happen, but it is all her fault, she knows that. She hasn’t wanted to accept what her husband is and just what he might be capable of, but now she is being forced to, and she knows that it will come at a price. They will all in some way pay for whatever it is he plans to do.