Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I actually fell asleep. I don’t know if it was the motion of the van, or the fear, or just the jetlag, but when I opened my eyes we weren’t in Auckland anymore.
We had pulled up and I was staring at what was possibly the most beautiful view that I had ever seen. It was as if the mountains, the ocean and countryside were all rolled into one. Everything was so green, so blue, so clean. Una had texted me asking if I was dead and in the cupboard, but I hadn’t texted back, just to make her think.
‘Where are we?’ I turned to Eve who was tapping her hands on the steering wheel to imaginary music.
‘Te Aroha.’
‘But I’m going to Te Puke.’
‘Don’t panic.’ Eve laughed. ‘I thought you might like to see a cool view before you get there? It’s a mountain. It means The Mountain of Love.’
Eve unclipped her seatbelt and reached down into the side of her door. When she turned around she had a penknife open and she was pointing it straight at me. She was about to kill me. I had always wondered what I would do in this kind of scenario – whether I would freeze or fight. I froze. Una was right, I would be cut into little pieces, in the middle of nowhere and there was no way Una would find me, even if I was in the cupboard.
Eve had a wide grin on her face. She was definitely a serial killer. Were there more victims in the cupboard? More cats?
‘What about your cat?’ I said to distract her.
‘She’s fine.’
‘Won’t she need a wee and some fresh air? Where does she wee by the way?’ I tried to keep Eve talking because that’s what they say, isn’t it: keep your abductor talking, build a rapport so that it makes it harder for them to kill you? And I know it wasn’t like she’d actually abducted me. I’d got into her van willingly, like the fool that I was, but that was all part of her plan, wasn’t it? She’d made me feel safe, like she was helping me. She’d probably been planning it for weeks.
‘Would you like a tea? I’ve got mint or chai? Or coffee?’
She was going to poison me.
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
‘Are you hungry?’
Did she have no shame?
‘Not too bad at the moment.’
I was bloody starving.
‘Can I see your cat?’
‘If you want to?’
I nodded desperately.
‘I probably should have said beforehand,’ she said with the penknife still in her hand. ‘But I’m adjusting, really.’
‘Adjusting to what?’ I followed Eve’s gaze.
Eve turned and reached towards the cupboard above her head and for a moment I wondered what I was going to see – a severed head like in that film Seven (Una made me watch it and promised me it wasn’t that bad. It really was), a distressed cat about to make a bid for freedom, a toy cat that she believed to be real because she was a deranged psycho.
She lifted something ginger and fluffy (not a human head, thank God) out and into her arms then paused for a moment, placed the penknife down between us, and then stroked the cat. I kept my eyes on the knife not the cat because it was close enough for me to grab if I needed to.
‘I just couldn’t bear to part with her,’ she said as she turned around and held up the cat, and it took me a moment to focus on what I was seeing. ‘It’s not like I could have left her somewhere and I didn’t want to burn her. I wouldn’t do that.’
But I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak at all. I was too stunned by the cat.
Because it was stuffed.