The Butterfly Effect

by Julie McLaren

  But still he doesn’t come. I am running out of things to do, and I can’t spend the whole day walking around looking shaky. I’m beginning to feel like the heroine in a silent movie, all dark eyeliner and silk, wafting around with a tragic look on my face. I have to be careful not to overdo this, so I make myself another slice of toast and a cup of tea, eat it as normally as I can, then wash up and clear away with more bounce in my step. There, the Amy on film is feeling better. She had a bit of a funny turn, but now she is back to her old self and she is very sensible. Look how sensible she is, Nat! Look how she has taken the almost-empty bread wrapper from the freezer to remind her to ask for more. Look how she is putting the dirty clothes in two neat piles in front of the wardrobe, so she will remember to talk about laundry.

  That kept me occupied for a while, and I have allowed myself another little rest on the bed, but now it is getting dark outside and I am still alone. Have I driven him away? Has he washed his hands of me completely? That doesn’t seem likely, and anyway, he could hardly sell the house with me locked in the attic bedroom, alive or dead. But there is the risk that he has done something stupid or lost the plot completely. Suppose he was so angry when he left, that he drove like a madman and crashed the car? He could be dead, or in a coma in hospital and no-one would ever find out about me. Or suppose he went completely mad and had to be locked up? They would think I was a figment of his fevered imagination.

  I don’t want to cry on camera, that is going to spoil the impression I’m trying to give, so I take a cup to the bathroom and drink some water, composing myself as I do. The Amy that looks back at me is pale and haggard, so I won’t have any trouble acting that part. But I must not look tearful, so I splash my face with water and dab it dry. I will do, but I don’t know how long I can keep this up.

  I’m back on the bed again, almost resigned to dying a slow death here in this room, when the lock clicks and I’m on my feet. I have to resist the urge to run to the door and hug him, my gaoler, the man I thought was my friend, as that will imply that I am not happy here in the peace and tranquillity of the haven he has made for me. Instead, I smile a friendly smile and ask if he would like a drink. I busy myself fetching the water, heating it, making up the dried milk and all the time trying to work out if he has been watching me.

  It doesn’t take long to confirm that I was right. Not only does he remark on my pallor and ask after my health, but I also catch him bending to feel the damp patch on the carpet where I spilled the water. It is visible, but I doubt he would have noticed it in normal circumstances.

  “What happened here?” he asks.

  “Oh, I’m sorry about that, but it’s only water. I dropped a cup this morning.”

  He doesn’t reply, but he looks different today, softer, more concerned.

  “Are you sure you’re OK?” he says later, as I reach across to take his cup. “No, let me do that. You stay there. I don’t think you can be eating enough. I’m going to make us some food and you are going to rest.”

  So, now I know. He has been recording me and he has been watching the footage. I don’t know whether he sits and observes my every move in real time, or whether he scans it later as we used to do at the flat, but at least I have that knowledge, that information. It means I can be careful not to give anything away, and it means I can plan and act out what I want him to see. I feel a small bud of excitement in my stomach, alongside the anxiety. I’m not giving up yet.

  Meanwhile, Nat is busying himself with the contents of his sports bag. I offer to help but he waves me away, insists I remain on the bed. He has various foil-wrapped packages which he brings to the desk and arranges in a line, then he sets about unwrapping them and putting the contents onto plastic plates. He is whistling a little tune as he works, and this is very heartening, as I did not know how to respond to the sullen and argumentative man who was here yesterday and this one is more like the Nat I know. Maybe he was just having a bad day, or maybe he needs me to be weak and vulnerable in order to be happy. Well, that’s a part I’m happy to play for as long as it takes, so I sit there looking vaguely pathetic and watch him getting everything ready with what I hope are big, grateful eyes.

  After a while, when everything appears to be ready and the microwave is whirring, he goes back to his sports bag and takes out a present. I can tell it is a present, as it is wrapped in red and gold Christmas paper and decorated with a golden ribbon, split and pulled into a multitude of spirals. Somebody has taken a lot of care with this, but I cannot help feeling sad. Who wants to receive a gift in these circumstances? Still, receive it I must, so I fake an excited smile as he walks towards me, holding it out.

  “This is what I have been wanting to give you since Christmas Day,” he says. A little cloud of disapproval of my previously unreasonable behaviour dulls his smile for a moment. “But that’s all behind us now, isn’t it? I hope you like it.”

  Actually, it is beautiful, and I do like it. Even here, even in this most bizarre scenario, I cannot help but recognise the quality of this gift. It is a pure silk dressing gown or robe, in the softest, palest dove grey that looks silver as the light hits it in one way and then blue, and then silver again. I hold it up, feel how the fabric hangs in ripples and waves, as if someone had fashioned it from a twinkling stream on a summer’s day. Every seam is over-stitched in silver, and I don’t have to act at all as I hold its softness to my face.

  “Oh, Nat, it’s wonderful! Fantastic! Thank you so much! It must have cost a fortune, and I love it.”

  He tells me to try it on – over my clothes of course – so I do, and it fits perfectly. I suppose there’s no surprise there, given his intimate knowledge of my wardrobe, but I do not dwell on that thought. Maybe I was panicking too soon as I imagined all those dreadful endings. He must be very fond of me to spend so much and to choose so well. Surely there is something to build on here.

  I decide to wear the robe whilst we eat. I can’t bear to take it off, I tell him, and he smiles.

  “I want you to be comfortable,” he says and I don’t say a word about how much more comfortable I would be in my own flat – I have learned my lesson in that respect. So I tell him how well he has anticipated all my needs, ask for another loaf, and even raise the issue of my laundry with nothing but a positive response.

  The meal is very good, despite having been transported from wherever he prepared it. We start with olives, sun-dried tomatoes and ciabatta bread with oil and balsamic vinegar, and then there is his home-made lasagne, which he knows I love. It occurs to me that it would benefit from the addition of a little salad, and there is a lettuce in the fridge, so I get up and open the fridge door to see if it is fresh enough to eat.

  “What are you doing?” asks Nat.

  “I’m just having a look at this lettuce,” I say, taking it out of the crisper, “but actually I think it’s had it. Never mind.”

  I sit down again, but then my heart begins to thump and the blood sings in my ears as there is a very different look on Nat’s face.

  “You are unbelievable,” he says, and I know better than to ask why. “I have never known anyone as unappreciative as you. I go to all this trouble, spend the whole morning making this lasagne for you, knowing it’s your favourite, and this is how you repay me! Lettuce! Fucking lettuce! You wouldn’t see an Italian fussing about lettuce if somebody served this up for them. It’s just typical of you, Amy, nothing is ever good enough for you. Whatever I do, however much time I spend choosing things, you always throw it back in my face.”

  There is more, much more. He is raving, there is no other word for it, and it is as if he has had all this stored up inside him for months, years even, and the mention of lettuce has broken the dam. I can’t imagine what I’ve done to deserve it, and I can only assume it is part of his illness, but I am genuinely scared as I sit there and look at his face, red with rage, eyes narrowed, spit flying from his mouth. He is a man possessed and I can only sit and wait for this to end, as I am afraid of what might
happen if I attempt to move.

  Eventually, he calms down, but only after he has swept the lasagne into a carrier bag. I find myself thinking what a waste that is, but really I am more worried about how this will end, as now he has turned his attention to the gown.

  “You’d better give that back to me too,” he growls, grabbing hold of one sleeve. But I beg him, tell him how much I love it, tell him how sorry I am about the food.

  “It wasn’t a criticism, honestly,” I say. “I know it was thoughtless, but ...”

  “There is always a ‘but,’ isn’t there, Amy?” he replies, and then it is just like yesterday. He is gathering everything up, preparing to go, but this time I don’t try to stop him. Although the thought of being left here is terrifying, the thought of being with him in this mood is equally bad, so I retreat to the bed and wrap the gown around me, hoping he will change his mind about taking it. It has symbolic value, and if he takes it home it will prey on his mind, allowing him to feel angrier and angrier, whereas if I wear it here, wear it continuously, he will see me enjoying it and maybe mellow a little. It is a forlorn hope, but the only one I have right now.

  I’m on my own again. The room is a mess, with the ruins of the meal spread over the desk and wrapping paper and ribbons on the floor. He has taken the uneaten lasagne away with him, but there are balls of crumpled foil on the microwave and a little plastic bowl of oil has been spilled and is trickling down the side of it. Part of me is thinking about what I could glean here. What use might there be for foil? Is it worth keeping the wrapping paper? But everything I do will be recorded, so what is the point? Gone are the days of barricade building, of inventing ways to escape. My only hope now is psychological manipulation, and I appear to be spectacularly bad where that is concerned. I decide that a few tears might be understandable, and I’m not sure I can stem them anyway, so I throw myself on the bed and sob.

  I’m spent. This is how I felt on the first day, when I’d been hammering on the door and screaming for an hour, but things are so much more desperate now. Can I stop shaking and focus again? Is it worthwhile anyway? I decide to get up and tidy away the debris in the hope that it will help to clear my head, but just as I’m on my feet, the lights go out.

  It’s very dark, as only a weak glow comes in through the small, frosted window at the best of times, and I’ve had at least one light on since the day I woke up and found myself here. Even at night I have slept with the microwave door open, as it gives me enough security to allow sleep, but it’s closed now. I slip off the bed and feel my way over to the desk then across to where it stands, on the little bedside cabinet. I open the door, but nothing happens and I realise that it isn’t just the lights, it is the sockets too.

  This is my punishment. This is what you get for having the audacity to fancy a bit of lettuce with your lasagne. Of course there might be a power cut, but I don’t think so. I think he has everything controlled by his phone, and he is sitting at home now feeling some kind of righteous justification at leaving me in the dark. Presumably the heating will go off soon too, but I don’t suppose he will care about that.

  I get back into bed. Strangely, although I would never have believed this, I find the dark is quite comforting. For a start, he can’t see me, so that is a bonus and I know this room so intimately now that I am certain there is nothing to fear within these walls. There isn’t even a spider hiding in a corner that I don’t know about. That, and the knowledge that nobody, apart from Nat, even knows I am here, means that I am quite safe until morning at least. So I take off the silk gown and wriggle under the covers fully dressed, thinking that a good night’s sleep will do me no harm.

  Unfortunately, sleep does not come, even though I lie still and try to empty my head. Something is troubling me, a worrying, nebulous little thought that dances around the periphery of my consciousness like a sprite, teasing me with its proximity, with its transparency. It’s something Nat said, a word or a phrase, something that jolted me at the time but then got pushed to one side by his anger, by the crackling tension and the fear. What was it? If only I could see the camera footage like he can, but I doubt he would find that section very easy viewing. No-one likes to see themselves out of control.

  I try to imagine I am watching us. I pretend I have a laptop, and I can see us sitting at the desk, in the slightly blurred monochrome that became such a familiar part of my life. What happened? I am sitting on the chair and he has pulled the desk close so he can sit on the bed. I see myself rising and going to the fridge. I find the lettuce, the lettuce looks limp, so I sit back down. He stares at me, his eyes cold and hard, and asks me what I was doing so I tell him and his face darkens and he says ... he says I am ungrateful. No, that’s not right. That’s it! That’s what I’ve been trying to remember! He didn’t say ungrateful, he said I was unappreciative, and I thought at the time, briefly, that’s an odd word to use. But now I’m getting a shivery feeling creeping over me as I know where I’ve heard that word before, and it wasn’t Nat who used it. It was Greg.

  It was in the first nasty letter. I read that so many times I could practically recite it, and I know I am right. But I don’t think Nat read it more than once or twice, so I can’t see how he could have accidentally picked up on the language. In fact, now I think of it, Nat’s rant this evening was very like some of Greg’s later letters and that is even more worrying. What does it all mean? What did Nat mean about choosing things for me? My mind is spinning and I can’t make sense of anything. Nat and Greg seem to be getting muddled up in my head, so maybe it is me going mad after all, but then another memory hits me and my blood runs cold.

  When you read that in a book, you think it is a metaphor. It’s not even a very original metaphor, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find it in a Year 8 creative writing exercise on building tension. But what you don’t realise, until you have been very, very scared, is that it is much more than a metaphor. I actually feel as if there is ice-water in the veins of my arms and legs, and all the little hairs are standing up on end, because I can remember Greg’s letter, and I can remember the silk scarf he complained I never wore. It was a lovely scarf, in a deep bronze hue, and the edges were beautifully finished with gold over-stitching and I know – in the way that sometimes you know things, without any evidence but without any doubt – that my new robe and that scarf were made by the same people. Oh my God.

  Now that I have thought it, it can’t be unthought. Until a few moments ago I was dealing with a stalker who was certainly scary but tended to keep his distance, and a dear friend who had become a little unstable due to the stress of supporting me through that. Now I appear to be dealing with a friend who is way beyond unstable, and seems to have invented the stalker. Can this really be true? Surely he can’t have sent all those things, written all those letters?

  The more I think about it, the more likely it seems, and it resolves all the unanswered questions. Why were Greg’s parents and the police so sure it wasn’t Greg? Because it wasn’t. How did Greg appear to be leading a perfectly normal life despite being apparently obsessed by me? Because he wasn’t obsessed at all – at least, not after he was warned off. Why was Nat so keen on using technology to protect me? So he could watch my every move without even coming to the flat.

  If all that is true, and I’m certain it is, Nat must be suffering from a serious psychological disorder. I wonder if there is a name for it, this obsessive need to keep me safe? Then I think about Richie and the way he died, and I’m sure that was the trigger. The person he was closest to died in the most shocking circumstances and, having lost other people in his life, he resolved to stop anything bad happening to me. Obviously there is then a big jump from that thought to inventing a risk, but I can see how it happened. If he was going to be able to relax, he had to know I was safe. To know I was safe he could either live with me – and I rejected that – or he could watch me. Hence the cameras. To him, in this heightened state of anxiety about my safety, it would not be strange to pretend that Greg w
as still a risk. The world was risky and I needed to be protected from it; the end would justify the means.

  So now I understand. Everything that has happened to me, from the moment of Richie’s death, is crystal clear and there is some relief in that. At least I know what I am dealing with. However, the situation is even more serious and complicated than I thought, and I have no psychological background to help me, apart from a bit of child development which is unlikely to be helpful.

  What should I do? If I do nothing, merely submit to what he has planned for me, I will be here for the rest of my life, as this meets all his needs but none of mine. But if I do something and it turns out to be wrong, who knows what it might provoke? Is he capable of violence? His behaviour yesterday leads me to think he might be, but then there is the concern, the tenderness. I have to believe that the need to protect me will overcome everything else. If I don’t hang on to that, I may as well give up.

  It’s still dark. I suspect he will leave me without power all night, to demonstrate his disapproval and exert his control, but I can use this darkness. I need to get my treasures and hide them in a safer place, somewhere I can retrieve them without his knowledge, and the only place I can think of is the bathroom. Slowly, quietly, I inch towards the edge of the bed, still breathing deeply as if in sleep. It seems crazy to imagine that he has super-sensitive microphones installed, but nothing is impossible. Now I am lying as close to the edge of the bed as I can get without falling out, so I slip one leg out and let it fall, wriggle a little more, and then the other, so I am beside the bed, on all fours.