I lie on the bed in what I hope looks like a relaxed pose, and try to rehearse a conversation with Nat. I need to tell him that I have been thinking very seriously whilst he has been away and that I have realised he is right. Of course I need to stay here for a while, so I can be completely safe. Greg does not know I am here, so none of his efforts will be rewarded and there will be the double benefit of me having a complete break from the stress of it. If I carry on like this I will almost convince myself, but really all I want to do is close my own front door behind me. The vision of that is so intense that it brings a lump to my throat.
I don’t know why I suddenly remember the envelope hidden away in the wardrobe. I was thinking about something completely different, but it just popped into my head. I can’t go and get it, not now, but that does not stop me exploring it and the link with this house. Am I in London? How could I tell? If only I knew the place better, but I have only ever been to Oxford Street and Covent Garden for the shops and to Leicester Square for the theatre. I think about how silly that is, when I live within such an easy distance, and I think about Nat, whose work takes him all over the country. He is so well-travelled. He even had a house here once, didn’t he?
That’s when it hits me. For someone who is supposed to be reasonably intelligent, I have been very slow on the uptake. Of course, this is Nat’s house! The one he inherited from his aunt. I remember him telling me about his Great Aunt Ellen, and what was the name on the envelope? Mrs E Bellingham, that’s what it was. I can see it, see the faded blue handwriting, old-fashioned and curly.
It’s all so obvious now! How else would he be able to keep me here without anyone knowing? How else could he fit it out with all these things? He must have had some help getting the fridge-freezer up the stairs, but it would be easy enough to hire a man with a van and tell him some story about a student let. So he never sold the house after all and, it seems, there are no tenants living here either, or they would have heard me shouting and crying. That means he has been keeping it empty for some time, and I can’t see why he would do that. Maybe he had trouble selling it, but that does not seem likely. A house in Camden? It would sell in no time, and that makes me worry, as it could be that he kept it empty for a reason. Did he foresee the day when he would have to take me away for my own safety, as he saw it? Is this madness of his longer term?
This is all too unsettling, so I rise and make myself a cheese sandwich. There are no more cartons of soup, and he obviously does not trust me to have tins, with their sharp-edged lids, so I force myself to sit there and eat it as if it is a nice little deli sandwich I have popped out to buy. It’s amazing the pleasure you can get from a fantasy and this miserable offering has also generated a little more washing up, a few crumbs to wipe away, a few more aimless minutes used up in this pretence that my life has become.
It is actually a relief when I hear the lock turn, although I nearly jump out of my skin and hope Nat doesn’t spend too long reviewing this footage when he gets home. That was hardly the action of the chilled-out friend and visitor I am trying to portray. However, I manage to calm myself by the time the door opens, and there he is. Casual but smart, looking exactly like my old Nat, the one I could rely on, the one who was the most sane and sensible person I knew. Could this all be a mistake? Have I somehow got it wrong? But I don’t think so, as he has already locked the door and put the key away in his pocket, and that is not the action of a man in full possession of his senses. Not when it’s his friend he is locking in, and she wants to go home.
I switch on my smile. I must not show any of the tension I feel, so I talk at the same time, but I’m rushing it, I can tell. There is no cool box today, instead he is carrying a sports bag, and he looks around for somewhere to put it, deciding on the space between the wardrobe and the door. He sees my eyes looking at it but he says nothing, takes off his coat and lays it on the bed, at the bottom. By that time, my speech has dried up. Whatever I was saying, he wasn’t listening properly anyway, and I am conscious of appearing like a puppy desperate for some attention from its owner when he or she returns to the house. If I had a tail, it would be tucked between my legs but twitching hopefully and this is not how I want to appear. So I stop hovering around him and go to sit on the bed.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks. I don’t have to lie on this occasion and I tell him I did.
“I’ve also had quite a long time to think,” I add, hoping that he will say something about all the domestic duties I’ve been engaged in, and thus confirm my fears about hidden cameras. But he sits on the single chair and says nothing, merely arching one eyebrow, so I continue.
“Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, and I know I must have appeared a bit negative, but now I see you are right. If I stay here, not only will I be safe and Greg will be isolated, but I will also have a complete break from the stress of it. It will be like a holiday. I was thinking about planning one, but this is even better, as I don’t have to worry about whether he will follow me.”
“Exactly,” he says, in that voice that says ‘why did it take you so long’. My antennae are up, feeling the air, sensing the atmosphere. Is it working? Does he believe me?
Of course it is far too early to say. It will take a lot longer before he will completely trust me again, and then goodness knows how long to persuade him, one tiny step at a time. I have to work hard not to be discouraged, as in my waking dreams he was practically ready to release me there and then, but I imagine I am on a frozen pond, trying to get to the other side. The ice is very thin in places, so I have to choose each step with care and sometimes I have to stop, go back, or slither forward on my stomach, testing out the ice with my hands in front of me. That is how careful I need to be.
There is a space between us. Not much of a physical space – that’s only a matter of a metre or so – but a yawning great chasm in our conversation. We used to chat away for hours, but then I remember that the subject was either Greg or how we could defeat him. Now, with me here, we don’t need to talk about that with such urgency. However, we can’t sit here like this, like two people who met once at some function and have been thrown together by circumstance, neither with any desire to talk to the other. There is a danger that he will give up and go, and then I don’t know how long it might be before he comes back. I can’t persuade him that I have changed if he’s not here, so I ask him about the house.
He doesn’t seem to mind that I have guessed whose house it was and remembered roughly where it is. Of course I don’t tell him about the envelope, but I appear to have developed a sudden and intense interest in property development and try to engage him in telling me his plans. Then I remember the sad and awkward conversation we had when I first heard about the house, when he was talking about buying locally, and I have an idea. It is not a very nice idea, as it involves playing upon his loneliness and his desire to look after me, but in the circumstances, that is the least of my worries.
“Have you ever thought of converting this place into flats?” I ask.
He tells me it is already converted into a ground floor and first floor flat and that both are empty, so I make my eyes grow wide and try to sound excited.
“Really? That’s interesting. It’s just that I had an idea – tell me if it’s crazy – but I was thinking, why don’t I move here permanently? We could do up the flats – if they need it, of course – and live in one each, like you suggested before.”
I stop, trying to read his face for a clue to his reaction, but Nat can hide his feelings very well, and he isn’t giving anything away, so I feel I have no choice but to continue.
“How big are they?” I ask. “Maybe you could show me around sometime, not now of course, but are they two-bedroom flats? What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out, renovating them that is,” he says. “I have always intended to sell them, as I told you, but I never got round to it, what with all the time I’ve spent round at yours.”
“Oh, Nat, I’m so
sorry! I know it’s been such a tie for you, and I must seem like such an idiot, throwing it all away for no reason, but I am serious about it now. I am going to listen to everything you say. Will you think about my idea?”
He says he will. Not with a great deal of enthusiasm, but I do sense a slight thaw in the atmosphere, so I make us both a drink and we sit there in a slightly less difficult silence until I have another idea. I need to make the option of returning to my flat seem more appealing than sitting here, so I ask if he has watched any good films recently, ask about the Christmas TV programmes, talk about films we have watched together. I am trying to conjure up the picture of the two of us snuggled up together on my sofa – not cuddling, we never did that – but both in the same space. It actually makes me sad to remember it, as I know it can never be like that again, even when he is better. How can I ever feel the same about a man who waited for me in my own back yard, who held a cloth impregnated with what I assume must have been chloroform over my nose and mouth, then further sedated me so that I slept long enough to be transported here? No, those days are gone, regardless of what happens with Greg, but he must not know that.
It’s later now, and we are getting on quite well. He had some jacket potatoes in his bag, and a selection of meats and cheeses, so we microwaved the potatoes and spread everything out on the desk like some sort of buffet. Then we sat together on the bed and ate, and he started to relax, I could tell, and told me about something that had happened at work. It wasn’t that amusing to be fair, but I laughed and told him how funny he was. I even put a hand on his arm, briefly. I am playing my part, and it’s working.
I decide to go back to the idea of the conversion. Surely there is nothing more designed to show my commitment to him than the idea of living under the same roof, so I ask if he has any paper and a pen, but he has better than that. He has a tablet in his bag, and it has a drawing app that enables him to show me how the two flats are laid out. The room I’m in is not part of either of those, but is an attic room on the second floor.
“This could be a shared space,” I say, sounding excited. “We could make it comfortable, put a nice big screen in here, a big, squashy sofa ...”
I have to stop at that point, as this is all reminding me of Olga, and the days when we were planning our flat. Oh, if only I had gone ahead! If only I had moved in with her, I have a feeling that it all would have stopped. I don’t know why, but I can’t imagine Greg transferring all his energies to a different address. That is silly, of course, as stalkers routinely track their victims across much greater distances than the couple of miles we were thinking of, but I can’t help believing that was one of the most important mistakes I have ever made.
Still, we are getting somewhere, as now Nat is talking about the flats. He is wondering whether it would be better for me to have the one on the first floor, and I say I’d be happy with that. He thinks it would be better for me to use his address rather than have one of my own, and then we talk about my new name. Of course I will need a new name if I am going to disappear from Greg’s life, and we try some out. I would prefer to remain as Amy and to change only my surname, but he thinks we need to be more radical, and now he is deciding on the name, making it clear that he is the guiding force in this process. I’m not going to argue with that. It’s exactly what I want him to believe.
“I think Alice Wilson will do nicely,” he says, getting his tablet and typing it out so I can see how it looks. I agree to it, and it is quite difficult to keep a degree of detachment as the plans become more developed. I am throwing myself into this role, and I know he is convinced as I have not seen him this animated for some time. I almost see myself in one of these flats, choosing the paint, choosing the carpets.
But that is when it all starts to go wrong. I make the mistake of talking about teaching, about getting a job in London once we are settled in. I say I want to be able to pay my rent, but he looks at me sadly, as if I am a child he has just spent a whole lesson trying to help and none of it has worked.
“But Amy, you won’t be going out. Don’t you see, that’s the whole point of it? Elimination of risk. We can’t do that if you are travelling around London!”
Now I really blow it. What an idiot! I could easily say ‘oh, of course, silly me,’ and possibly get the conversation back on track, but I don’t. I’m too shocked by what he has said to go along with it, and the differentiation between the fake Amy who would agree to live with him and the real Amy who is acting a part becomes blurred. I start to ask him why it would be risky if I’m living in London under a different name. Surely the trail would be too cold for Greg to pick it up here? Even if he knew I was in London, how would he ever find me? But Nat is having none of it.
“You haven’t got a clue, have you?” he says, getting up. “I thought this could be the answer, but you are clearly no closer to understanding this situation than you were before. I’m very disappointed in you, Amy.”
He could hardly be more disappointed than I am with myself. All that work, all those hours carefully building up that picture, me and him in two nice flats, coming up here to watch a film together, and it’s all destroyed. He gets up to leave immediately, and refuses to say when he will be back. He ignores my apologies, my pleas, and with nothing more than a quick look around the room to make sure he has left nothing important behind, he is at the door.
“I have your Christmas present in this bag, Amy,” he says, waving the sports bag at me. “You didn’t deserve it yesterday, but today I thought you had really changed and I was looking forward to giving it to you. You’ve spoilt it all, and now I will have to take it home again.”
He’s gone, and I throw myself onto the bed and cry. Now what can I do? I am probably further away from persuading him than I was yesterday, and I am also seriously worried about his thought processes. This is way beyond some kind of minor stress-related over-reaction. He really wants me to stay inside and never go out again, and that is a serious obsession with no hold on reality. It makes Greg’s actions pale into insignificance. What on earth am I dealing with here, and how am I ever going to get out?
December 27th
Oh, how different I feel this morning. Yesterday I had my strategy to work on and I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep, but today all my plans are in tatters and I have spent the night tossing and turning, dreaming of all sorts of secret routes out of here. In one dream, the house had expanded to some kind of labyrinth, with so many doors and corridors, hatches and tunnels. I had Nat’s tablet, and all I had to do was find the folder where the plans were saved and I would be able to follow the route, but I kept losing the tablet and finding it again, kept turning a corner to find I was in my own flat again only to realise it wasn’t really my flat at all, kept taking the wrong path and having to squeeze through dark, narrow spaces.
I feel as if I’ve been beaten up. My head is aching and heavy and my eyes are sore, but all that is nothing compared to the sickness. I don’t have a bug, the food was perfectly fine. No, I am sick with worry. It doesn’t seem possible, but I am beginning to think it is a long time since Nat had any intention of supporting me back into the outside world, and I’m afraid he is much more ill than I could ever have guessed.
Still, I have to do something. The alternative is to sit around and let events take their course, but I can’t do that. It seems I still have some reserves left, so I try to think of something that will either give me some control or provide me with information. Information is power, there is no doubt about that, so I turn my attention to the issue of the cameras. If I can establish their existence, without letting Nat know, that must lead to some kind of advantage. Maybe I can enact some little scenario that will provoke him into doing something I want. I don’t know, it may be pointless, but I think I know what I’m going to do.
I get up and sit on the edge of the bed. I really do have a headache, but I exaggerate its effect and massage my temples before standing up. Next, I get a cup and walk slowly into the bathroom, wobbl
e a little as I fill it with water, steadying myself on the basin. There could be a camera in here after all and I don’t want to waste any opportunities. Then I walk slowly towards the desk, but before I get there, I stagger again before falling to the ground and spilling the cup of water.
I lie there for a minute or two, possibly less, then I pull myself up on my hands and knees and crawl over to the bed, where I apparently manage to stand up long enough to almost fall onto it. I wriggle up until my head is on the pillows, then I close my eyes. I will lie very still so he will wonder whether I am unconscious, and then later, maybe he will be sufficiently concerned to take me to a walk-in centre where I will tell anyone who will listen what has been happening. Of course I know that won’t happen, he won’t take me anywhere, but it is a nice idea, and I allow myself to let it run, to imagine all the fuss the nurses would make when it all came tumbling out. Then they would need to check me over, but I could be back in the flat by this evening.
***
So, it seems my pleasant little daydream turned into a proper sleep and I feel better. My head is still a little muzzy but, although I am still anxious and tense, the worst of the sickness seems to have dissipated too and I think I will be able to function. However, I remember that I am still performing; everything I do from now on will have to be planned and considered. So I make a show of rising slowly and sitting up for a while, rubbing my temples. Next, I wash and dress – I can’t stand the thought of that shower cubicle – and eat a slice of toast. The bread is running out, and I think I must remember to ask Nat for some more. That would imply I am resigned to staying here for a while.
Now it must be about the time Nat arrived yesterday, so I start to prepare for him. I do everything slowly, sitting down frequently to rest, and I run my hand over my forehead at intervals. If I ever get out of here, I might take up amateur dramatics instead of singing, I think bitterly. I push aside the nasty, insidious thought that there is actually only a small chance that I will ever be able to make that choice. If only I hadn’t lost so many friends. If only I had a better relationship with my parents. It could be weeks before they begin to doubt whatever Nat has told them, or I wouldn’t be surprised if he is using my laptop to email them purportedly from some far away retreat where I am escaping the stress of the past two years. I could be dead by the time anyone begins to look.
The Butterfly Effect Page 17
