Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
ANNIE
I stood under the hot stream of the shower, rinsing the soil and sweat from my hair, the old pipes creaking deep inside the thick wall behind me.
I’d spent the morning in the garden, hoping the physical activity would trick me into feeling awake after the shocking night I’d just had, but it hadn’t worked.
I was unable to switch off the chatter in my mind, the memory of the sound of the front door opening in the dead of the night.
Jade had admitted to being out of bed, and I couldn’t deny that she had given a perfectly reasonable explanation for going downstairs, but it didn’t stop me from spiralling, turning over the worst possible explanations for the sounds I’d heard in my mind.
It was just like me to do this… to ignore the most simple answer: that the sound I’d heard outside my bedroom door was simply Jade passing, trying not to wake me, and the rest had just been my imagination telling stories.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I’d worked myself into a frenzy, imagined the sound of someone entering my home out of a heightened state of anxiety.
I had spent every waking moment since she’d arrived expecting Ryan to show his face.
It was hardly a surprise that I’d begun hearing things that weren’t really there.
I had to keep reminding myself of her words.
Her confusing confession. That she wasn’t connected to my ex at all.
I’d been angry, baffled when she’d told me, but the more I let it sink in, the more I realised I could breathe again.
It was clear that she was hiding from something – some one .
But not him. Not the man I’d feared. He wasn’t coming.
Jade would figure out a plan, and I would go on with my life, safe just as before. I tilted my head back under the hot water, my chest no longer tight and painful as I let out a long, slow sigh. I was going to be okay. I wouldn’t have to face him.
I climbed out of the shower, wrapping my wet hair in a towel and flinging the window wide.
I wiped the steam from the huge oval mirror, then slapped a dollop of thick moisturiser on my face, frowning at the pinkness of my nose and cheeks, noting the deepening sun damage and lines that had formed since leaving Ryan.
It had been a conscious decision to let my beauty fade.
I’d left the expensive make-up behind, the hair-styling products and gadgets, the beautiful clothes he’d liked to dress me up in when he took me out in public.
His trophy. His prize. Only he and I knew what bruises were hidden beneath the expensive silk and cashmere.
He’d controlled what I ate, weighed me every Sunday and adjusted my diet accordingly when I’d let him down by gaining even a pound.
He liked me to be underweight – said it was more feminine.
The freedom I’d felt at hacking my waist-length hair up to my shoulders, putting on an old pair of jeans I’d found in my teenage wardrobe, accompanied by a slobby long-sleeved striped T-shirt, a burn mark front and centre on the hem, had been exhilarating.
In the three years I’d spent here, I’d gained a stone and a half, I’d shunned heels and make-up.
I’d done my own hair, to my own preference.
And I’d let my face turn brown in the sun, the smile lines brought on from my growing sense of serenity deepening with each summer that passed.
He would hate what he saw now. Perhaps so much that he wouldn’t bother with me.
That thought had been with me with every choice.
Systematically making myself into the kind of woman I’d heard him talk about with disdain – invisible, no longer worth his time.
God, I hoped he would think that. That he’d be so disgusted by the steps I’d taken to leave him that he wouldn’t want me.
But I couldn’t let myself believe that he might give up so easily.
That he wouldn’t take me back, lock me up, starve the weight from me and set about restoring the woman he’d lost so that he could begin all over again.
So that it could be exactly as though I’d never left.
‘Stop it, you stupid woman,’ I muttered under my breath, meeting the frightened reflection of my eyes. ‘He isn’t coming. She’s not his wife! You’re perfectly safe!’
I pulled on a pair of worn cotton pyjamas, despite the sun still shining high in the sky, and opened my bedroom door. Jade was just coming out of her own room, and her eyes met mine, guilt flashing across her features for half a second before she offered a warm smile I tried to return.
‘You going down?’ she asked, shifting Amala into an upright position.
I nodded, walking ahead of her to the stairs, wishing I was better with people – that I knew what to say.
My parents, my grandmother, they’d all been so good at it: small talk, hosting, making people feel welcome.
It was a skill that had clearly passed me by, and despite the knowledge that Jade wasn’t here to hurt me, I still felt stiff with her, an issue that was wholly mine to defeat.
We made our way in silence to the kitchen, and she slumped down in the chair by the hearth as I went to the cupboard, pulling out a packet of pasta and a jar of pesto.
I tipped some into the pan on the stove, then, reminding myself to be more accommodating, added an extra portion for Jade, noting the way her eyes lit up.
‘You must be sore?’ she said.
‘Huh?’ I glanced over, frowning in confusion.
‘After all that digging, I mean. Is the hole going to be a pond?’
‘Oh… yes,’ I said, nodding.
‘It’s big,’ she commented.
‘Yes.’ I saw her look down at Amala and sighed, hating myself for being like this. Years living as a recluse certainly hadn’t helped.
She was struggling, trying to make conversation to dispel the awkward energy between us.
Maybe even trying to make a friend of me.
I could understand that – how alone she might be feeling right now, a new mother relying on a stranger for the roof over their heads.
Poor girl to land herself with a woman like me.
I waited for her to look back up, then smiled, though it felt unnatural. ‘Yes,’ I repeated, more softly this time. ‘I love being out there, working the soil. It’s the one place I feel truly at peace.’
‘What about the woodwork stuff?’
I tilted my head. ‘Yes, I suppose there’s that too. I do enjoy it, and I find myself in a state of flow sometimes, but it’s different when you earn a living from it. The garden, that’s just for me. No incentive other than seeing the bees and butterflies multiplying with each new plant I add.’
‘That makes sense. But do you need to sell the birdhouses? I mean, you’re hardly living in a slum here,’ she joked, glancing around the big stone kitchen.
I gave a wry smile and nodded. ‘You’re right.
And I’m not ignorant of that privilege, though it’s good to be reminded of it every now and then.
It’s a beautiful place to live.’ I stirred the pasta, forcing myself to think of something else to say to show I was making the effort.
‘What about you? Do you have a job to go back to when Amala’s old enough? ’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Nothing at the moment. I did a law degree, but I never went on to do anything with it. Life sometimes has other plans, doesn’t it?
’ she said softly, and I nodded. It made sense.
Ryan had never let me work either. He hadn’t wanted me out of the house, influenced by other people, mixing with men.
A law firm would be the last place he would want his pretty young bride to spend her days, with all the vibrant, ambitious people surrounding her, showing her a different path available to her.
Only she wasn’t Ryan’s bride, was she? I had to keep reminding myself of that.
Every time I thought his name, I felt my muscles seize up in terror.
I let out a long, silent breath and waited for the tension to leave my shoulders, chanting a mantra in my head. You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe…
‘And,’ I continued once I could speak again, ‘what about living arrangements? Do you have somewhere you plan to go when you leave here?’
She glanced down, fiddling with Amala’s vest. ‘Not yet.’
I looked at her, waiting for her to tell me more, wondering if this might be the moment she confessed the real reason for coming here, but instead she said, ‘You never considered selling the house? I can’t imagine living in my childhood home. I think I’d feel like I never got away, never grew up.’
‘I liked my life here. I had a good childhood. Well, as good as the next person,’ I added.
Up until I’d escaped Ryan and finally dispelled my na?ve, rose-tinted illusions, I’d always been one to look on the bright side.
Brush aside people’s faults. The ways they let you down.
I shrugged. ‘Although if you asked my brother, he might have quite a different version of events.’ In fact, I knew he would.
He’d called our parents narcissists, and if I was willing to examine their behaviour closely enough, perhaps I might have agreed.
Thomas and I might have had a very different relationship now.
‘Really?’ Jade frowned. ‘How come?’
I shrugged, not keen to get into it. Families were complicated, and the last thing I wanted was to air my dirty laundry with her now.
I’d called my brother a few weeks after moving in here, hoping to find the words to ask for his help, to explain the dark place I’d found myself in, the horrors I’d been living through.
I’d never been more alone, more afraid, in my life.
I had needed him, needed someone to speak up for me, defend my character after the way I’d left Ryan, the consequences that I’d found myself facing.
I needed him to tell the police I wasn’t what they thought.
But the moment he saw the phone number I was calling from and learned that I’d moved back here, he’d shouted me down, refusing to let me get a word in.
He’d accused me of having no scruples, of caring only for what I could get from our parents.
He’d said it was clear I was just like them.
Of course, he hadn’t known the escape this place offered me.
The reason for my hurry to claim it, make it into my safe house.
I hadn’t felt I could trust him enough with the truth after his explosive accusations, and we hadn’t been close enough for me to confess any of the things I’d endured during my relationship with Ryan, so I supposed, from his perspective, it might indeed look as if I was out for all I could get.
It was clear that he didn’t know me at all. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d never bothered to check in on me while I was trapped living with a monster. Hadn’t cared enough to ask if I was okay. I had ended the call, let him believe what he wanted, and we had never spoken again.
I met Jade’s expectant expression and shook my head.
‘We were very different people, that’s all.
And he was quite unforgiving when it came to our mum and dad.
He cut them out of his life once he was old enough to leave home.
It’s hard for me to understand what went wrong between them, between us , because from everything I saw growing up, they treated us the same, despite the many challenges he gave them.
They were always fair, though he wouldn’t necessarily agree. ’
‘I don’t have siblings, but I imagine it’s a complicated relationship,’ Jade replied, a sadness lingering in her tone.
‘You can certainly say that.’
‘It must have been hard for your parents that he wouldn’t speak to them. Your mum especially.’
I nodded, though the truth was, she’d never said as much.
I’d assumed she was being stoic, having never been a particularly open book when it came to her emotions, but I’d sometimes wondered if I’d pushed my own feelings onto her, if maybe Thomas had been accurate in his view of their failings.
‘They weren’t perfect parents, but who is?
Everyone has their flaws. And even with all that going on, they never reciprocated, never closed the door.
They split everything equally between the two of us in their will.
I think they hoped that they’d have a chance to speak to him again one day – I just wish they’d got that opportunity. ’
Jade was looking at me as if she was stunned that I’d said so much after days of barely speaking a word, and I couldn’t blame her. Amala began to fuss, and she shifted in her seat, adjusting her top to let her latch on for a feed.
I swallowed, disgusted at myself for having given so much away.
I couldn’t seem to get the balance right – it was either rude one-word replies or this totally inappropriate oversharing.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment at having gone on about my life so much – as if she would care.
It was a credit to her manners that she hadn’t got up and walked out.
I stirred the pasta again and put a lid on the pot to let it simmer, feeling a strange sense of sadness at the thought of my brother, the hole his absence had left in my life.
We had been close as children. That much I remembered.
We’d played together. Shared toys and secrets.
Made dens in the bushes in the garden. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment we’d started to drift apart, but I was sure it was during the teen years, when I’d naturally been forced into the role of mediator between him and our parents as he had grown more abrasive towards them, making everything more difficult than it needed to be.
I wished I’d been able to rely on him when I needed him most.
Amala let out a cry, thrashing her head back, refusing to latch, and I averted my eyes from Jade’s bare breast. ‘I’ll give you some privacy,’ I said, dropping the wooden spoon on the counter and rushing out of the kitchen.
Amala let out an angry bellow that made my insides churn, and I strode briskly into the front garden, closing the door behind me, dulling the sound of her screams, squashing down the discomfort they brought with them. The memories I had sworn to myself I would never revisit.