Chapter Fifty-Three
STUART, SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
I wake up in a room I don’t recognize.
I’m not even sure I’m in Thornwood.
The first thing I’m aware of is the terrible clotted feeling of dulled pain and a slight deafness in my left ear.
I put my hand against it and flinch. It’s bandaged.
The bandage goes all the way under my chin and appears to be tied in a knot at the back of my head where I can feel it digging in slightly.
My vision on that side is blurred too, as if there is gauze over it.
I run a finger across my eyelid and flinch again.
It feels as though there is something in there.
Something sharp. My body aches all over, the way it does when I have the flu, but mostly it is the left side of my face that feels broken, unhuman.
I want to see it. I need a mirror. I look around this room that I don’t recognize and it’s only when I spy the chimney stack of the house on the other side of us through the low dormer window that I know that I am still here, at Thornwood.
I must be in the locked room on the attic floor.
I slowly swing my legs out from under the thin duvet and pull myself up to sitting.
Blood shifts from place to place in my head, clouding my vision, forcing a sudden rush of dull pain all through my sinuses and the back of my head.
I say a quiet “ow” to myself and then look around again.
A dresser with a bowl and a jug, a small armchair, some books on built-out skirting, a tiny fireplace with nothing in it, an old wooden mantel over it built into the wall, but no mirror above.
I see that someone has placed three plastic bottles of water on the floor next to my bed, and a box of tissues.
I recognize them as the brand I buy for the family when I do the big shop.
It takes me a minute or two to find the strength to stand, and when I do, I immediately sit down again, my head spinning, my legs weak.
I call out. “Hello?”
My voice is a puny rasp. I open a bottle of water and glug from it and then I try calling again. “Hello!”
The house seems silent, empty. I pull myself up again and this time I stay on my feet. I go to the door and lift the old-fashioned latch, pull the door toward me, pull again. It’s locked from the outside. I bang my fists against it and shout louder now. Louder and louder. My voice has found itself.
A moment later I hear soft, slow footsteps on wooden stairs. Then I hear something clicking, and a thin, fearsome face appears in a crack in the door followed by two small hands clutching a knife.
Then I hear the words: “Stuart, get away from the door and get back into bed, right now, or I’ll cut off your other fucking ear. OK?”