by Sibel Hodge
I see Jordan’s face in my head, and it makes me smile. At some point in the future, in my heart I see something happening between us. Maybe it’s because I need some hope. Some light at the end of the tunnel. The idea that I will have a future after all this. That I will still be alive. Or maybe it’s more than that.
I can’t afford to think about any of that now, though. At this moment, I can only think of survival. All I have to do is stay alive long enough to fight back.
I sit at the office desk, pull out a sheet of printer paper from the drawer, and grab a pen to write my second letter to Liam telling him I’m leaving.
Tapping the end of the pen against my teeth, I stare at the page, which is as blank as my mind. What do you write in these kinds of circumstances?
God knows.
I put the pen to the paper. Stop. Lift it up again. Stop. I don’t have a clue how to sum up my life and how I came to be here like this right now. I think about the letter I wrote the last time: I can’t go on like this anymore. I need to end it all. I’m sorry. Even though it was so ambiguous it could be used against me, I can’t think of anything truer. But this time I’ll make sure no one can misinterpret it.
Liam,
Our relationship is over.
I don’t want to see you or talk to you. You won’t be able to change my mind.
Please stay away from me.
Chloe
There. I can’t make it much clearer than that. Short and to the point. Some things just can’t be put into words.
I leave it propped up in front of the kettle and put on my sunglasses. I exit the house and head towards Sara’s as I wheel the suitcase behind me. It would be easier to catch a cab, but it could be what I did last time. You hear about dodgy cab drivers preying on women sometimes and I can’t take the risk, so I ignore my aching arm and carry on.
The spare key I kept for Sara in case of emergencies wasn’t in the drawer at home and must’ve been lost along with my other house keys, but I know there’s one hidden in her garden. Hopefully, it’s still there. I don’t fancy the thought of having to break a window to get in.
There’s a rockery at the front of her house. I say rockery, but there are no plants in it. Since Sara is away a lot, she’s made the garden as maintenance-free as possible. This rockery just consists of different sizes, colours, and texture of stone. The big granite lump is the one I want. I bend down, lift it up, and there’s the key.
As I open her front door, the first thing I notice is the smell. Stale, musty, and unlived in. The next thing I notice are my black wedged boots and ballet flats by the radiator in the hall. I close the door and lean against it, shutting my eyes for a moment to let things sink in.
So I did make it here. I really did leave Liam. I’ve followed my footsteps to the next place I went, but I don’t know what else I’m going to discover. I already feel a heightened sense of freedom, as if I’ve shed a dirty skin that’s been suffocating me. Finally, I’ve taken back control of my life. Not sure how long I’ll have a life, though, if my abductor finds me again, but at least for this precious moment it’s all mine.
I step over a pile of post that’s been pushed through the letterbox, put my suitcase next to my boots, and head into her small lounge. It’s stuffed with books and colourful throws in bright oranges, reds, and yellows. Turkish rugs, African wooden carvings, shells, a didgeridoo painted with bright tribal markings, Chinese scriptures. Things she’s brought back over the years from her travels. It radiates warmth and happiness, like a proper home should. Somewhere the owner has left the mark of her existence, instead of the soulless shell of bricks and mortar I shared with Liam.
The red light on her answerphone blinks wildly at me, so I listen to the messages. ‘Hi, it’s me.’ Sara’s voice. ‘Hope you’re settling in OK. I lost my bloody phone in a market this morning and had to get another one, so I’ve got a new number now.’ She rattles off the number. So that’s why I haven’t been able to get hold of her. ‘Call me on this one and let me know you’re all right. Forgot to tell you the instructions on how to get the boiler working. It can be a bit temperamental sometimes, especially if it’s been turned off. Help yourself to whatever. Just treat the place like home. I’m so glad you woke up and got away from that controlling wanker.’
She left the message on the sixth of May, the day Liam went to Scotland. The day I would’ve left him.
The machine bleeps and starts the next message. Sara again. ‘Hey, where are you? Out having fun for a change, I bloody hope! I’m going to be on a yoga retreat for the next ten days so you won’t be able to get hold of me. No modern technology allowed here!’ She laughs. ‘Give me a ring when I get out. Ha, ha, that sounds like I’m going to prison, doesn’t it? Anyway, hope you managed to work the boiler. Speak soon. Hugs.’
The date on the second message is the eighth of May. Today is the fifteenth, so she won’t be back from her retreat yet. I’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if she can fill in anymore missing pieces of my life.
I go upstairs and open her bedroom door. No sheets are on the bed, and the room has an abandoned feel. In the spare bedroom, I find evidence of my existence. The duvet is turned back and the sheets in disarray, hanging half off the bed, as if I slept fitfully and got up in a hurry. My polka dot bra, leather jacket, and brown V-neck jumper hang over a director’s chair by the window. I don’t see any sleeping tablets on the small bedside table, just a red biro and a glass of water with dust floating on the surface. A plastic carrier bag sits by the side of the bed with some of my knickers inside it. Maybe I used it to transport my clothes here before.
There’s one toothbrush in the bathroom with a new tube of toothpaste I must’ve bought. Above the sink is a wooden cabinet with a mirror. I open the door and look through. Inside, I find a box of paracetamol, a bottle of cough medicine, a plastic container of cotton buds, an unopened tube of toothpaste, some Vick’s VapoRub, and a mostly empty box of Tampax.
I head downstairs and check all the windows and the back door that leads from the kitchen out into the postage-stamp sized garden. There’s no sign of forced entry or a struggle anywhere in the house.
I peer into the fridge to see if Sara’s left any bottled or tinned food that’s still edible. I don’t feel much like going food shopping at the moment, but I’m going to have to eat. I find a carton of semi-skimmed milk, a block of cheddar, six eggs, a packet of rocket, a few tomatoes, an onion, a bottle of sparkling white wine, butter, and a sliced loaf of wholemeal bread. They’re all in date, so I must’ve been shopping after I arrived the last time.
I’m just reaching for a glass from the cupboard above the cooker to get a drink of water when I spy my handbag on top of the microwave in the corner of the room. I put the glass down and rummage around inside it. My purse is there, complete with the bankcards Liam has now cancelled. The good news is I have two hundred and thirty-three pounds and fifty-four pence to my name now. That will keep me going for a bit.
The only other things in my bag are a packet of tissues, a biro, a broken toothpick, a can of deodorant, and a lot of fluff. The sleeping tablets aren’t inside, which doesn’t make sense. If they’re nowhere to be found, I couldn’t possibly have taken them. Yes, I could’ve lost them if I was having some kind of weird reaction, but if I didn’t have my bag with me, where would I put them? When I escaped from that place, all I had on was a thin red dress with no pockets. It’s unlikely I would’ve just had them in my hand. My keys aren’t there, either, and it gets me thinking. If my bag is here but the keys aren’t, I must’ve gone out somewhere. Somewhere close by I could walk to. Somewhere I didn’t think I’d need any money. But where?
Sod the water. I need alcohol now. I pour myself some icy cold wine and swallow, feeling an instant hit of mellowness hit my empty stomach. It’s probably not a good idea under the circumstances. I need to keep my wits about me. But I’m having a hard time keeping the fear at bay, and mellowness is exactly what I need.
After rummag
ing around in the cupboards, I find a packet of dried pasta, so I put together a veggie dish with the tomatoes and onion and some dried herbs, topping it with a thick grating of cheese. In between mouthfuls of food and wine, I think about what I should do next. Liam will guess I’m here, even though I’ve kept my ongoing friendship with Sara hidden from him as best as I can. Where else could I possibly be? Maybe I should check into a hotel. But I don’t have many funds and won’t be able to stay there indefinitely.
Or maybe I should ask Jordan if I can stay with him after all. I trust him. At least I think I do. But…well, you never really know someone. Especially if you can’t remember things. I thought I knew Liam, and look how that’s turned out.
If I stay here, though, anything could happen.
After finishing my food and drink, I wash my plate and glass, and leave it on the draining board. Then I phone the bank on my new mobile and go through an annoying automated system, pressing one key then another until I finally get to talk to a real person and not a robot.
‘Hi, my husband cancelled my debit card the other day because I lost my purse, and I just wanted to update you with a new address to send it to instead.’
The woman on the other end asks for my name and my previous address then for my telephone banking PIN. I hear her tapping away and fiddle with my earring as I wait.
‘Oh, it looks like you’ve already updated us with that address, Mrs Benson.’
‘Really?’ I gasp. ‘When?’
‘On the sixth of May.’
The same day I left Liam and came here.
‘We don’t have any record of your husband cancelling your bankcards, and even if he did call, we couldn’t have cancelled them because they’re in your name. Although it’s a joint account, we always need to talk to the card holder for security reasons.’
Well, well, well, Liam’s lies were just stacking up on top of each other. I couldn’t trust anything that came out of his mouth. ‘You’re absolutely sure he didn’t call you?’
‘Yes, definitely.’
I’m speechless. If he didn’t cancel them like he said, why not? I told him my bag and purse was missing, and surely, he wouldn’t have wanted anyone to find them and use them. I can come up with only two possible scenarios. One, he knew where my purse was all along. Here, safe and sound in Sara’s house. Which would mean he’d already been here and found me once before. Or two, he genuinely thought I’d made up the whole thing about being abducted and didn’t believe they were really missing at all.
I think back to one Saturday about six months ago. Liam was taking me food shopping, and I couldn’t find my handbag. He got increasingly annoyed with me as I searched the house for it, opening drawers, checking in the cupboards, and even under the bed. I looked everywhere and still couldn’t find it.
‘For fuck’s sake, I’m not waiting any longer. You can bloody well meet me at the supermarket. I’m not messing around on my day off because you’ve got a brain like a sieve.’ He stormed out of the house and drove off.
By the time I walked the twenty minutes to the supermarket, I was flustered, trying hard to keep the hurt in check. I saw him in the café at the front, having a Danish pastry and a latte and calmly reading the newspaper.
The next day, when I was vacuuming, I found my bag behind the small gap between the wall and the sofa. God knows how it had got there, and I could’ve sworn I’d already checked.
The woman’s voice jolts me back to earth. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you today, Mrs Benson?’
Yes. Find out who’s trying to kill me?
‘Er… no, thank you.’ I hang up and stare at my mobile. If I phoned them on the day I left Liam and came here, what did I do next?
Something flashes in my head. A blurred picture. A distant memory. Something about my mobile phone. I try to hang onto it, but it’s gone, retreating just out of reach. I know I didn’t call them from my old mobile phone, because it was smashed in the bin at home, and when I checked the call log on the SIM card, the last call was from Sara to me. So that means I must’ve used Sara’s landline to call the bank. Perhaps I made some other calls, too. I go into her lounge, pick up her receiver, and press the call button. It rings in my ear before I get my bank’s automated system again. Damn. Now I have no way of knowing whether I called someone else, since it only stores the last number dialled.
I’m replacing the phone back into the base unit when the memory hits me fully…
I was rushing along the upstairs hallway in my house, clothes clutched in my hands, mobile phone tucked under my arm, preparing to leave. Liam had already left to go to Scotland. At the top of the stairs, my phone rang. The sudden loud sound in my panicked state made me jump and drop it with fright. The phone bounced down each step until it reached the bottom with a clattering smash. When I picked it up and examined it, the screen was cracked and completely unreadable. But I thought maybe it was a good thing. I didn’t want Liam to be able to call me, anyway. I threw it in the kitchen bin and quickly scribbled the letter to him, which I left on the kitchen worktop. Then I shoved my few clothes in a heavy-duty plastic bag and rushed out of the front door.
My breath comes in hard pants. It’s the first memory that’s come back to me, and it’s vivid and sharp until I get to the door, where it fades away into blankness. I drop onto the sofa, forcing my brain to think. It’s useless, though. My mind is a black hole once more.
But this could mean there’s hope I’ll eventually remember the rest.
I clutch my arms around me, shaking, as I piece all the little bits I know together. I physically walked out of my house and came here. I called the bank to give them Sara’s address. I obviously went to the supermarket. To Waitrose, by the labels on the food. Then I came back and did what?
I go to the kitchen, get the notes I’ve written out of my bag, along with a biro, and update them.
21st March
Liam stayed in the Royal Lodge Hotel, but said he was in Scotland.
23rd March
Liam’s party. Was going to tell him about the baby.
25th March
Had miscarriage in early hours of morning. Became depressed.
10th April
Went to GP. Was prescribed antidepressants and sleeping tablets.
13th April
I’m sectioned. Liam told doctors he found me clawing at garden path.
In psychiatric wing having treatment. (Dr Drew and Dr Traynor told me I was paranoid and hallucinating. I thought a man was chasing me and I was trying to get away.)
20th April
Released from hospital. Still mildly depressed but otherwise OK.
22nd April
Liam bought locket that Julianne is wearing in the photo taken at the launch party for Exalin drug.
Around 26th April
I went to the Royal Lodge Hotel to check up on whether Liam stayed there with someone.
29th April
Jordan phoned me to see how I am. I told him about Liam’s affair with Julianne and said I was going to ask Sara if I could stay at her house.
I phoned Sara, and we spoke for over an hour.
6th April
Liam left for Scotland? (Did he really go there?)
Dropped and smashed mobile phone. Left it in the kitchen bin.
I packed clothes and left note for Liam.
Went to Sara’s house.
I phoned the bank from Sara’s and tell them of my new address.
Bought food from Waitrose.
Spent the night at Sara’s? (Her spare room was slept in, and my missing clothes were there).
Sara called me at her flat and left an answerphone message. Did I call her back?
8th May
Sara left another message on her answerphone saying she was on a yoga retreat and had a new phone number. (Most likely, that I was already missing then if Dr Traynor thought I hadn’t drunk for 1-2 days).
9th May
Rescued by a woman on the Great North Road. Ran t
hrough woods from an underground structure where I was being held. Lost memory of everything since the party.
Blood test showed I’d taken Silepine sleeping tablets. Dr Drew and Dr Traynor thought I’d had another reaction to them that made me hallucinate things.
I chew on the end of the pen, staring at the notes. Sometime between the sixth and eighth of May is when I went missing.
Something’s niggling at me, but I can’t work out what. The more I think, the more my brain feels blurry, and my memories are more unreachable. I make myself a coffee, pour in a splash of milk that I must’ve bought before, and take it back into the lounge. Curling up on the sofa, I stare at the floorboards.
Come on, Chloe, think logically!
So far, everything is pointing to Liam being involved in my abduction, but I wonder if there was any way he couldn’t have done it.
If Liam really did think the letter I left him was a suicide letter, that would mean he didn’t know I’d left him. If things happened as he said they did, he went to Scotland on the sixth of May and didn’t phone me because we’d had a row. Then on the ninth of May, he gets a call from the hospital saying I’d been admitted and had lost my memory. He then flew back to see me.
Is it possible he was in Scotland all that time and really didn’t know I’d gone at all? That he genuinely believed I was having some kind of break down or allergic reaction again?
But that doesn’t make sense for a few reasons. His version that we’d had a row about the plate and I’d thrown it at him, for starters. I didn’t believe that for a second, and there was no evidence of a smashed plate in the bin. It would be a perfect reason to give to the police as an excuse why he hadn’t contacted me while he’d been away, but in all the time we’ve been together, there hasn’t been a single day when he hasn’t called me. Not one. That points to him knowing my phone was already smashed and in the bin, or he knew I couldn’t answer the phone because he’d already abducted me. In which case, he must’ve really been here when he was supposed to be in Scotland.
