Chapter 47
SCARLETT
I come round, heavy-headed and breathless.
Fear races through me. A thick piece of tape covers my mouth, allowing me to only breathe through my nose.
I panic. It’s suffocating. I try to move my arms but can’t.
They are tethered behind my back, and my ankles are tied together with thick rope.
My body is hollow as if I’ve just done a particularly hard training session.
At first I think I must be imagining this.
Then confusion sets in. I struggle from the foetal position onto my bum, gagging at a smell, earthy and pungent, almost eggy.
I can’t work out what it is at first but quickly realise it’s some kind of manure.
I look around. The light is poor, and it takes my eyes a while to adjust to the dark.
Damp straw covers the cobbled ground. It prickles through my shorts.
A shudder goes through me and my stomach recoils at the bloody awful smell.
I can’t be sick. The vomit would choke me.
I try to calm my breathing. It’s hard. But I must control myself.
Within seconds, I realise where I am. The old disused stables at the far end of the lake that I saw when I was sitting on that bench with Hattie.
It’s like I’m in a cage. One of the walls is stone or plaster, or something like that.
The other three are seven feet high – half wooden slats, half metal railings.
One of them has a full-length metal door.
I look upwards. Timbers rise to meet at the apex of the roof, secured by two sturdy beams running horizontally.
Faint light enters through a small high-placed window with metal bars above the stall next door.
In the corner opposite the door sits a blue bucket. I cringe to think what that’s for.
I strain my senses, trying to see, hear, smell something, anything. I want to cry for help, but the tape across my mouth prevents me from calling out, allowing only the sound of low, useless moans to escape. I pull at the rope to free my hands until my shoulders give out.
A voice whispers from the adjacent stall, halting my attempts to free myself.
I can’t make out if it’s a man or a woman.
Panicking, wide-eyed, I try to scream again.
But my efforts meet the tape and disintegrate into an airless grunt.
‘Ssh. Be quiet,’ they say, clearer this time. They are definitely female. ‘He’s—’
I shuffle to the side of the stall and prop my back up against the wall, straining to hear what they are saying.
A shard of light breaks through the gloom as a door opens with a creak. Then a metal-against-metal sound of another door opening. It must be the door of the stall next to mine, where the voice came from. I recoil at the sound of what’s surely Justin’s voice. ‘Come and take a seat.’
Pushing my head uncomfortably against the wall nearest the sound of voices, I listen intently as bodies appear to move. I think there are only two of them, but I could be wrong. Chair legs scrape across the ground somewhere to the right of where I’m being held.
‘Phoebe. How are you?’ It’s definitely Justin.
Who is Phoebe?
‘I’m good, thank you, Justin,’ a squeaky voice replies.
‘How have you been?’ he asks.
‘I mustn’t grumble. I have a roof over my head.’
It doesn’t make sense. If this Phoebe is being held in conditions similar to mine, then she would be grumbling quite a lot.
I shut my eyes and shake my head. This is more fucked-up than I could ever have imagined.
What have I done?