Chapter 53
SCARLETT
I wait, listening in case Justin is lurking outside the stables. When I think it’s safe, I whisper, ‘Phoebe. Can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘Are you tied up?’
I whisper that I am, fearing he’s still in here, or at the door listening to every word.
‘Can you move?’ Her voice sounds very different to when she was speaking to Justin. It’s lower now. Broken.
‘Just about.’
‘Make your way to the partition wall nearest me and look towards the base, about twenty centimetres from the back wall,’ she says. ‘There’s a tiny hole. Lie down and look through. You should be able to see me.’
I’m not far away, having shuffled nearer to listen to the conversation between her and Justin.
I roll over, following Phoebe’s voice. It’s a struggle.
Pieces of hay poke and stroke my face, but I manage to prop myself up against the heavy wooden partition.
I find the hole and look through, straining.
It’s far from easy. A low beam of light allows me to just about make out her eyes circled with black, but little else. ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘He’s a monster.’ Her voice speeds up as if she needs to get her words out quickly in case he comes back again.
‘He doesn’t untie you for the first few days.
You must earn your privileges. I have a bed, and I’m free to move around my stall.
And I have a torch. But if I piss him off, he randomly removes these privileges as punishment. ’
‘You’re more comfortable than me.’
‘Give it time.’
The thought of her having been planted here to catch me out crosses my mind. He could be threatening her. ‘How old are you, Phoebe?’
‘Nineteen.’
My heart hurts a little more for her. ‘You sounded happy when you were talking to him.’
‘Hell no.’ Another pause. ‘Imogen.’
I pause, contemplating telling her my real name. But I still don’t know if I can trust her. ‘Call me Immy.’
‘Immy, you really need to play the game with Justin. You heard me. It’s all a sham. Don’t antagonise him. He doesn’t like questions. I was chewing my knuckle listening to you. There was another girl. She…’
I butt in. ‘What happened?’
‘She was defiant. Fought back. Not a good idea. We made this little spy hole between us. Scratched for hours until our fingers were red raw to produce this opening. So we could see each other, light permitting, of course.’
My chest tightens. She could be talking about my sister. ‘How long was she here for?’
‘Not long. Days, not weeks. Eventually, I think he’d had enough of her. His project wasn’t working on her for some reason. He couldn’t guide her towards his spiritual enlightenment, so he got rid of her.’
‘How?’
‘I’m not sure. One evening, I think, though it’s often difficult to tell day from night in here.
Anyway, I think it was evening. We’d had our meal, and I fell asleep straight away.
With hindsight, I think he put something in my drink or my food.
When I woke up in the morning, I had one hell of a sore head, and she was gone. ’
‘Gone?’
‘Yep. It felt like the stall was empty. The stall you’re in now.’
‘Daisy,’ I say. ‘Was her name Daisy?’
‘Hell, yes. That’s right. How do you know?’
I want to scream in frustration. I want to cry. But a niggling doubt tells me to hold off divulging that Daisy is my sister – was my sister. ‘Was she scared?’
‘Very. I tried to coach her. Told her to bide her time. Go along with Justin’s demands.’
‘Demands?’ I hold my breath, waiting for the answer. The thought of my sister being drugged and murdered is one thing. The thought that she was sexually abused by this pervert would break me.
‘Not physically. No. Nothing like that. He’s never done anything like that.
I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in that fucked-up brain of his, but I think he’s carrying out some sort of study.
Some kind of experiment. Mind games.’ She huffs.
‘I don’t know. Fuelling his ego. Trying to make us wholly dependent on him.
He’ll starve you. Leave you in the dark.
That sort of stuff. I don’t think Daisy met the profile of what he was looking for. ’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘There was another girl before Daisy. Zita. She and I had very similar backgrounds. No parents. Both homeless. Lost souls, you could say. No one gave a damn about us. We never even had any real friends. If we’d vanished, no one would’ve looked.
She was here for ages, longer than me, but she disappeared one night, too.
I often wonder if he let her go free. Daisy, on the other hand.
She had a family. A boyfriend. People would be looking for her.
He read her wrong. She went quickly. She was too much of a risk for him. ’
‘How did you end up here?’
‘That’s what we all have in common. A Meeting of Minds. It’s his organisation, a force of goodness open to the masses. It becomes an obsession. Justin seeks out a chosen few and invites them to his private sessions. That’s where he makes his choices.’
‘So he must’ve made a mistake with this Daisy girl,’ I suggest.
‘See, that’s the thing. Daisy was never meant to be at that private session, she told me. She took a friend’s place.’
Layla.
It’s all falling into place. Daisy took Layla’s invite to one of Justin’s private sessions. That woman selling merchandise at the festival told me. That’s how my sister ended up here.
Justin royally screwed up there.
There’s a pause before I ask, ‘So how do we get out of here?’
‘I have a plan.’ She clambers close to the eyehole. ‘You be a good girl. That’s what he wants. Go with his wishes. And then he’ll untie you. Once he disappears, we carry on digging. We’ll make this hole big enough to climb through. When he comes back, we attack the bastard and kill him.’
My heart goes out to this poor girl. There’s no way we can dig our way through this wall. And there’s no way the two of us could overcome that monster of a man.