‘That’s it, my beautiful darling. Now shut your eyes.’
I did, despite every instinct screaming at me to leave them open. They stayed shut as he leaned in and kissed me, kissed my eyelids, and drew back.
There was a faint rustling from the bag the nightdress had come in.
I could not endure it, despite the risk of his rage. My eyes flew open.
He had a ball-peen hammer in both hands and was about to bring it down on my skull.
On the velvet sofa, something that had been lying coiled within me suddenly sprang into life, as though it had been there all along, despite the cold and this crazy man and the sense that I was fractured into a thousand broken pieces, none of which bore any correlation to one another any more.
The thing within me was much more awake than I. It knew not to waste precious energy on trying to defend myself against the falling hammer with my weak arms, or to try pleading for my life against his watery blue eyes, his trembling lip.
I knew I was in the last few seconds of my existence, so instead I lunged upwards, despite the sharp stabbing in my ribs, and jabbed my fingers into his eyes.
There was a shocked curse of pain and surprise, followed by another yell as he dropped the raised hammer and it crashed down on top of his head, the wicked claw tearing against his ear as it fell, leaving him momentarily stunned.
And that was how, suddenly, the hammer – smeared in old, dried bloodstains – was in my hands.
I smacked him with it on the side of his head, and he howled.
You might be wondering why I didn’t go on and kill him with it, and I have to wonder that too. But I think I was wiser than I give myself credit for – he was merely dazed, and already grabbing for the hammer as I lay pinned beneath him, and once the element of surprise was exhausted there was no question of who would win a fight.
With all of my remaining strength, I twisted sideways beneath him, and as he tried to stop me hitting him again, he lost balance and fell off the sofa on to the heavy blue rug.
I leapt to my feet, my injuries forgotten, a creature of pure adrenaline, and made to sprint away.
He grabbed my ankle and yanked backwards. I was falling, and my face smacked down hard on to the black and white tiles where the carpet ended. Pain exploded across my nose, something crunching beneath the skin of my face between my eyes, and blood spattered outwards across the stone. The hammer flew out of my grip, skittered out of my hand over the flags, bouncing tinnily off a wall until it lay still.
With my uncaught foot, I kicked backwards, hard.
He yelled again and let go of my other foot. I scrabbled forward for the hammer, barely feeling the wetness of blood dripping down my nose, my mouth, out of my cut lip.
Get up, get up, get up!
It was back in my grasp. The swords of dead kings could not have had such a steely glitter to me. I gained my feet and snatched open the door to the hall.
He was after me in an instant.
I did not have time to try the front door, running instead for the back of the house, through the labyrinth of passages; the hall with the winding marble staircase, the corridor, the cavernous kitchen; while he, the monster at the centre, growling and bleeding and bellowing curses, came after, a mere second behind, so close I could feel his hot, fetid breath upon my neck, and when I did I whirled around with the hammer, screaming, and he would duck back, but only for an instant.
He’s going to catch me. He’s going to catch me and kill me.
I skidded into the kitchen, saw the knives.
No he isn’t.
It was in my other hand just as his arms seized tight around my waist, and I was stabbing him in the hand, reaching back to stab him in the thigh, in the belly, anywhere I could reach despite the awkward angle, while he screamed obscenities and let me go.
I had dropped the hammer, keeping hold of the knife, and the kitchen door was in front of me, on a simple latch lock.
I flung it open and was through.
My bare feet touched wet grass, iced with early evening dew. The breeze I had wept for and dreamed of stroked my body, but I had no time nor thought to savour it.
I ran.
I ran as I’d never run in my life. The field seemed endless. No matter how my legs pumped down into the damp green, the trees remained elusive, receding from me as quickly as I approached them.
I ran in utter silence, my hard breathing and the susurrus of the grass my only company. There was a sharp howl, an almost inarticulate cry of baffled rage, rising to an insistent baying.
It was drawing closer.
I hadn’t thought I could run any faster. I’d been wrong. I knew that if I looked back I would see him, tearing over the grass behind me, my death written on his face.
But I didn’t look back. You should never look back.
Then the trees came to meet me. The muddy ground was strewn with treacherous roots, painfully jarring and tripping my feet. My fate was upon me. I looked up at the twining branches in desperation. The wind whipped cold droplets over me; it was raining.
Something started out of the brush. It contrasted sharply with the dusk, and the brown-grey bracken. It was black and white. It burst into the air, soundlessly. I saw with the perfect clarity of terror what it was. It was a magpie. A meaningless detail. A root tripped me up. I put my hands out to steady my fall, one still grasping the knife.
They met nothing.
The riverbank sloped away, hidden from all eyes by the trees and bracken surrounding the edge of the stream. I rolled down the bank, my fall half-broken by stray plants and long grass. Alex poised on the lip of the bank, shouting in fury, as I plunged, grabbing futilely for purchase on the river’s banks, into the cold and swollen water.
And just like that I was out, as though I had been bodily evicted from my own memory.
I was Margot again and I was standing on the blue rug, facing that fucking velvet sofa with its stained upholstery, its extra decades of desolation and dust.
Katie.
I knew where Katie Browne was.
The rug was heavy, terribly heavy, but I heaved a corner of it back.
Set into the stone tiles was a trap door; such as I had seen in innumerable plays and films. Its edges were lined in black metal bolted to a wooden frame. A thick black ring lay flat in a depression made to fit it.
I seized this, pulled, pulled again. At first I thought it was just heavy, until I saw the keyhole just under the ring – made to fit some big, antiquated barrel key.
I swore.
Nothing happened, except that from below, there was the rat-tat-tat again.
‘Katie?’ I shouted, dropping to my knees. ‘Katie, is that you in there?’
There was silence. Then, very muffled but still audible, threaded with disbelief: ‘Mrs Lewis?’
‘Oh my God!’ And weird and inappropriate as it sounds, I wanted to laugh with joy. ‘Oh my God, you’re alive! Katie, where does he keep the key?’
‘The key?’
‘The trapdoor is locked. Do you know where he keeps the key?’ I shouted into the flush join between trapdoor and floor.
Her reply was inaudible.
‘I can’t hear you!’
‘I don’t know… I don’t know!’
‘Katie, look, listen, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to call the police and they’ll get you out, all right? I promise. Sit tight.’
‘OK,’ came the thin, muffled reply.
‘Good girl.’
I stood up, rubbing at the back of my neck. The phone. Bloody hell, the phone would be in the hallway.
The hallway – where the hell was that? There was a door in the wall next to the velvet sofa, and I pushed it open.
Bingo.
The handset was old and grubby, but it still let out a profound purring once I lifted the receiver to my ear.