The Argument

by Victoria Jenkins

  Olivia begins to cry again, overcome with the hopelessness of her situation. She had wanted to protect Rosie, to get them both out of this house unharmed, but now she fears that will never happen. Miss Johnson and Mr Lewis left here thinking everything is normal, presumably with the notion that she is a troubled, attention-seeking drama queen. If they don’t believe her, she fears that no one will. There is no one else who will come to their rescue.

  Olivia hears a noise at the door, and Rosie’s face appears around the door.

  ‘Get out,’ Olivia hisses.

  If their mother finds her in here, Rosie will end up chained to her bed too, and then between them they really won’t be able to do a thing to get themselves out of this place. Olivia knows that they do the same to Rosie sometimes too, punishing her for an escape she has never yet tried to make, yet Olivia knows that it happens to Rosie far more infrequently than it does to her.

  Ignoring her sister’s instruction, Rosie pushes open the bedroom door softly and tiptoes into the room, trying to avoid the creaky floorboards under the middle of the carpet. ‘Are you okay?’ she whispers.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Olivia lies, ‘but you won’t be if she catches you in here.’

  ‘Something weird is going on.’

  No shit, Olivia thinks, but she tries not to let Rosie see how frustrated she’s becoming. She doesn’t want Rosie to be scared, though there is plenty to fear all around them.

  Rosie sits on the bed and holds her phone out so that Olivia can see its screen. It has always seemed strange to Olivia that her parents permit them to have mobile phones, though internet access is restricted and their use is monitored by their father, yet it has occurred to Olivia that in some ways it is yet another form of torture that they can inflict upon them, allowing them occasional glimpses of a world that they have never truly been allowed to be a part of. Sometimes, when she has been permitted to access the internet to complete her homework, she has searched for images of beaches and mountains, losing herself to the thought of being there and not here, somewhere as far away from this place as possible. Every picture has made her sadder; every fantasy of freedom has made her more determined to escape. She thought those places were a world away, yet she knows now that the same freedom is just at the other side of the front door.

  Their father has always checked their phones daily, going through their internet history to see what they have looked at when they were allowed access. They are only permitted to have them when their parents have agreed it, and if they want to look at something specific, she and Rosie must ask permission from their mother or father first. She was careful to delete her call history after phoning around the local care homes, knowing that either her mother or father would see them and find out what she had been doing. Olivia wouldn’t usually dare look at anything that hadn’t been passed by one of them first; it isn’t worth the punishment that such a crime would be met with. Though she hates being around them, whole weekends of isolation while chained to her bed are far worse, and there is no doubt that if either Rosie or she was to break the rules then they would get found out. They always seem to get found out.

  She looks at the screen that Rosie is holding out in front of her. It is a news report with the headline Body on Beach Identified.

  ‘Have you heard about this?’

  ‘How have you got on to that?’

  ‘Homework. It came up on the homepage. Have you seen it?’

  ‘Funnily enough, no. I don’t get out much these days, I don’t know if you’d noticed.’

  ‘Everyone at school has been talking about it,’ Rosie says, ignoring her sister’s sarcasm. ‘A woman was found this morning – her body was washed up on the beach. It looked like she’d drowned at first, but people are saying now she was murdered. Look.’

  Rosie scrolls the page and a photograph of the woman appears on the screen. She is young, pretty, but there is something sad behind her eyes, something silently screaming at the camera or at whoever is behind it. And then Olivia realises who she is looking at. The woman with the young boy who was here, in their street on Monday. The woman who asked Olivia for the time.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ she asks, hoping her voice doesn’t betray her. She doesn’t want to make Rosie more afraid than she may already be.

  ‘Because she was here,’ Rosie says, glancing at the open bedroom door, and Olivia tastes sickness in her mouth, sour and sharp. ‘Yesterday, she was here, on the doorstep. Mum was talking to her and she got really weird with me when she saw me in the hall behind them, like she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’

  Olivia looks at the woman’s face again. Prior to Monday afternoon, she had never seen her before, and she doesn’t know why her mother might have been speaking to her or why any of this might be relevant to them. ‘It couldn’t have been the same woman.’

  ‘It was,’ Rosie says indignantly. ‘It definitely was, I saw her face.’

  ‘Okay, well she could have been here about anything,’ Olivia says, yet she hears the doubt in her own voice and her gut tells her that what she says probably isn’t true. No one comes to their house, especially not strangers, and her mother can’t be trusted, she has always known this. Why was that woman here on Monday, lingering at the end of their road? She had said that they were waiting for someone, but if that was true, then who were they waiting for?

  Rosie darts from the bed and heads towards the door, and it is only then that Olivia hears their mother’s footsteps on the stairs. Moments later, she hears her talking to Rosie, who has managed to make it back to her room without raising suspicion. Olivia needs to think, and fast. She can’t do anything while she is still chained to this bedframe, and she can’t think of any reason she could use to persuade her mother to let her go. More than ever, it seems that Rosie is their only lifeline.

  Olivia listens. She waits to hear her mother go back downstairs, and then she waits for Rosie to return to her bedroom. ‘You need to get out of here,’ she tells her. ‘Tonight, okay? I need you to get out of the house, but you can’t mess it up all right?’

  * * *

  Rosie is nodding, but she looks terrified. Her eyes are damp with the start of tears and her attention doesn’t leave her sister, focused on her as though she is the only person in the world. The look makes Olivia feel even guiltier. She is the only sane person in Rosie’s world; the only person who might have been able to help her, at least. Now, she can do nothing, and she hates herself for having failed Rosie so spectacularly.

  ‘You know this isn’t normal, don’t you? What they do to us…you know it doesn’t happen to everyone else, don’t you?’

  Rosie nods again, still muted by fear. Olivia tilts her head towards her, unable to embrace her in a hug, and Rosie lies down next to her, wrapping her arms around her. They stay like this briefly, knowing the moment must be ended.

  ‘How am I going to do it?’ Rosie asks in a whisper.

  ‘We need to distract them. I’ll do it. I don’t know how yet, but when it happens, you’ll just know, okay? We’ll have to do it when Dad gets back. It’ll be easier for you to get his keys.’

  She stops for a moment, trying to formulate a plan. Their father is meticulous in everything he does, but she has noticed a change in him recently. There has been a change in them both. Her parents like to think themselves in control, but from what Olivia has seen, it is slipping from them. Their castle has been infiltrated, their perfect life rocked from the inside out, and all Olivia needs to do is exploit their weaknesses while they’re still available. Their fortress is not as impenetrable as they had hoped.

  Rosie just needs is a moment of carelessness from her father, something overlooked while he’s distracted.

  Rosie’s face has paled. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘You can,’ Olivia says, pulling free from her sister’s arms. ‘Listen to me, you can do this. You have to do it. Wait for him to come home, okay – you need to be looking out for him. As soon as he comes through the door, tell hi
m I’ve kicked you. Say you came in here earlier asking to borrow something and when you came near the bed, I lashed out at you. Make it sound really bad.’

  Rosie is shaking her head, silent tears now slipping down her cheeks. ‘You’ll get in so much trouble.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Olivia says, though in truth the thought of what her father might do to her makes her feel sick. It can’t get any worse, she thinks. He can beat her if he wants; what does it matter now? If it means she gets to escape this place, the temporary pain will be worth it. ‘You need to do your best acting for me, okay? Be hysterical. But whatever you do, keep an eye on those keys, all right? Make sure you see what he does with them. And don’t take your phone, okay. Just take you.’

  ‘Where do I go?’

  ‘Anywhere. Ask someone to take you to the police. But not anyone in this street – try to get further away.’

  Rosie wipes the back of a hand over each eye in turn before taking a deep breath. She nods, though the gesture isn’t convincing to either of them. Olivia wishes she didn’t have to ask for her sister’s help. She wishes that she’d spoken to someone sooner, someone who could have come to the house and seen things for what they really were, but there was never a right time, there were never the right words, and she was always too scared of the consequences to confide in anyone about what her life was really like. The fear of the care system – a fear her father had instilled in her and had preyed upon regularly over the years – was enough to deter her from every speaking out, with the thought of what she and Rosie might face there sufficient to silence Olivia into an almost muted state that for years had made her feel suffocated within her own skin. She hadn’t wanted to be separated from Rosie, which had always been the motivation for everything she had and hadn’t done.

  ‘You’d better go,’ Olivia tells her sister now, and she watches Rosie leave the room without another word, not knowing whether she has just helped them or just made things even worse.

  18

  Twenty-Three

  * * *

  Hannah

  * * *

  When Michael comes home from work that evening, he is in a terrible mood. Hannah doesn’t need to set eyes upon him; she can hear it in the slamming of the front door and his heavy steps upon the stairs when he goes straight to the bedroom to change. When Hannah follows him up, her attempt at a cheery welcome home is greeted by a steely silence.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ she asks tentatively. She knows why his mood is so dark. Things with Olivia have escalated far quicker than either of them had anticipated. They knew this day would come, that she would push them to a point at which she believes she has her parents broken, and though they had both discussed its arrival, neither of them has been prepared for it. Olivia needs to be dealt with, and they should have put a plan in place sooner, she realises that now.

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘The teachers? I told them there’s no truth in any of it, obviously. I said we’d been having trouble with her behaviour recently, that she’s looking for attention.’

  Michael still has his back to her, but he turns now and steps towards her. His face softens and he smiles, though the look is steeped in a curious kind of sadness, almost disappointment, the kind of look a parent might give an unruly child.

  Then his arm is raised and his hand, palm outstretched, is swung towards her. When he slaps her, the shock manages to make a harder blow than the hit itself. Hannah’s hand flies to her face, her palm shielding the point of impact. In all the years they have been together, he has never raised a hand to her. She has seen him angry – mostly with Olivia - though his anger usually manifests itself in bouts of silence that have at their worst gone on for days. These times have been rare, but Hannah can recall each. Even at his moodiest, she has never have thought him capable of hitting her.

  Yet she is lying to herself, a voice in the back of her head that won’t be silenced tells her. She has been lying to herself for years. Perhaps she has always known that the potential for violence was there, rooted in him, and she just never wanted to admit to it.

  ‘Is it really Olivia who’s the problem?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she says, her hand still raised to her face.

  He smirks at her, a cruel look that she hates so much. She has rarely witnessed him like this, her usually so kind and so patient husband. He loves her, that much she has never doubted. Theirs is a good marriage. They are a team. She is safe here, safe with him; safer than she has ever been anywhere else.

  ‘This is all your fault. You’re supposed to look after them.’

  Hannah falters on a response. She does look after them, that’s all she does. She is here all the time, isn’t she, and so are they. She keeps their home immaculate and she ensures that the girls obey the house rules. She has done everything he has asked of her, and yet she can tell from the look on Michael’s face that he knows more than he is saying.

  ‘Friday,’ he says, as though he needs to prompt her memory. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’

  She feels sick with the suggestion he is making. He knows, she thinks. He knows that Olivia managed to get out of the house at the weekend, and that she didn’t tell him what had happened.

  ‘How…?’ she begins, but the question gets stuck in her throat.

  Michael smiles, but there is no kindness in the look he gives her. ‘You texted me and you told me that everything was fine, even after I’d asked whether everything was okay. You didn’t mention that Olivia had managed to get out of the house, did you?’

  Hannah thinks she might be sick. There is a throbbing at her temples and an emptiness in her stomach that burns her from the inside. She thinks of that letter, of everything Carly wrote. She ignored it, not wanting to believe a word of it could possibly have any basis in reality, and yet now she fears that everything that was written there may be true.

  ‘How did she get out, Hannah?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, giving the only honest answer she has. The truth of it is, she still isn’t sure. She is always so meticulous with the keys, just as he has taught her to be, but she has been so tired recently, so run down all the time. He has hardly been there to help her and it’s exhausting doing everything by herself, having to deal with the constant drama and the tension that has settled over the house like a suffocating layer of ash. But she can’t tell him any of this; he doesn’t want to hear it. He will only accuse her of being careless. It will be her fault.

  It is her fault.

  He is looking at her intently, still waiting for a better answer.

  ‘I went outside to put something in the bin,’ she confesses. ‘I was gone for seconds, I swear. She must have snuck around the side and waited until I’d gone back in.’

  She hates the way he is looking at her, his hazel eyes studying her with such unflinching attention. It was a look she once loved, this long, intense stare, one that said he loved her with the conviction he always so vehemently claimed, but it no longer feels the way it once did, when she was young enough to believe in a happy-ever-after. The way Michael looked at her, in that way that no one had ever looked at her before, had once felt like a gift, bestowed upon her and no one else, his unflinching attention wrapping her with the comfort of a security blanket, and yet now, restricted within its confines, she finds she is no longer able to breathe.

  And yet he is her Prince Charming, Hannah reminds her, forgetting the sting that lingers beneath the delicate flesh of her cheek. Hasn’t he given her the life she craved, a life that before him had seemed an impossible dream of escape? She is ungrateful. She has let him down, again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she tells him, knowing the words will fall on deaf ears. He doesn’t want apologies, he wants explanations, but she doesn’t have a justifiable one for him no matter how much she wishes this wasn’t the case. She was careless, and there is no excuse for what happened. She should have done better. No matter what she does, she could always have done better.

/>   ‘So am I. I trusted you to protect the girls, but you don’t seem to be able to do that, do you?’

  ‘How did you know she was gone?’ Hannah asks, her voice wobbling on the question. She fears the answer, dreading what else she might find out about him. He knows everything, so what else does he know that he hasn’t yet mentioned?

  Michael laughs and shakes his head. ‘You really are an idiot, aren’t you? There are trackers on the girls’ mobile phones. There’s one on yours as well. Do you seriously think I’d let any of you have a phone for any other reason than to keep a check on what you’re up to? Just as well I have been, too. You weren’t going to tell me a thing, were you?’

  He steps closer and leans towards her, his face just inches from hers. ‘Liar.’

  Hannah gasps involuntarily, the word knocking her sideways. She thinks of the letter taped to the inside of the lid of one of her shoeboxes inside the wardrobe, wondering whether it is still there. Has he already been back to the house today and managed to find that as well?

  She knows it is loaded; the single word sentence packed with far more meaning that it can speak. Guilt sinks like lead in her stomach, weighing down her guts. She feels sick with the notion of just how wrong she has got things, and for everything she thought Olivia to be capable of. It is a feeling Hannah is familiar with, this awful feeling of regret, but it has never afflicted her in relation to her daughters before. Everything she has done for them she has done with the belief that it has been for the best. Her regrets have only ever applied to her husband, about letting him down when he has done so much for her. Everything has been about him: keeping him, loving him, pleasing him.