Walking over to the window, he stares out onto the private Kensington Road, taking it all in.
Alex’s new fake life.
The small handful of houses on the expensive private road, all lined with pristine front lawns and expensive cars on the driveways.
So perfect and picturesque.
Alex hadn’t suffered, not nearly enough.
It made him want to throw up, knowing that she’d almost managed to escape her punishment completely. That she’d almost managed to get away with her sins.
Almost. But he was here now, and he was going to put that right.
‘I never lost faith, Alex. I knew that you’d slip up eventually. No matter how hard you tried to hide, I knew that I’d eventually find some crumbs. Unintentionally. Of course. Left by other people, perhaps. But there all the same. Little clues that led me to you.’
He takes a deep breath then. His words loaded.
‘You were good, I’ll give you that. Careful not to leave any trace of your new life online. But there’s always someone else who will, Alex. Someone unsuspecting. Someone who doesn’t realise the inevitable fallout for you.’
He pauses, watching her reaction as he relishes in the details of how he finally found her.
‘And in the end, that’s all it took. One click of the mouse and there you were. I have to say, I almost missed you. Staring back at me from that row of frumpy women, all proudly standing in line, displaying their new babies at some generic antenatal group. It was the kid that threw me the most! I really hadn’t been expecting that. Fuck, I admit, that one hit me hard.’ He shakes his head, incredulously. ‘But there you were, different name, different look. A baby in your arms. Sweet little Ella. Completely different. But just the same.’
Rebecca doesn’t speak.
She doesn’t dare, acutely aware of the danger she’s in. Now she knows the lengths he must have gone to find her. Now she can see and hear the venom that seeps from his every pore.
‘And you love her so dearly, don’t you?’ he says, his soothing words mocking her. ‘Your precious little Ella but you don’t deserve her, do you?’ His voice is almost a whisper as he leans down, close now. She twists her face around from his to avoid his sour breath as it fills her nose and makes her feel sick.
‘In some ways, she’s made you almost human.’ His laughter is full of malice. ‘I see it, when I’m watching you with her. How she’s opened up that ice-cold heart of yours. It’s funny how kids can do that, huh? How they make you vulnerable and weak. How you live in fear that someday something awful might happen to them. That someone might hurt them. That they might take them from you.’
He understood that more than anyone.
‘This place looks different in the daylight.’
He watches her intently as she registers what he’s saying. This wasn’t the first time he’d been here, to her home.
She hadn’t been imagining it. It had been real. He had been here, in her home. In Ella’s nursery.
‘Bigger off camera too.’
A small noise escapes from the back of Rebecca’s throat as she registers what she’s being told.
He has been watching her. All this time. It was him.
‘I don’t… I can’t…’ Rebecca tries to speak, to make sense of what’s happening, only she can’t find any words. Her breath is trapped inside her lungs and all she can do is shake her head, the dull throbbing returning instantly, every nerve on edge.
Her hands and feet are tied.
She has no way of escape. No way of letting anyone know that she’s in trouble.
The cameras? She stares up to the one that’s placed in the corner of the lounge, but Mark follows her stare.
‘You really think I’d get this far and forget something so obvious as to fix the security tapes? If anyone’s watching, all they’ll see is an empty room. I’m playing them an old recording.’ He laughs. ‘Oh, I’m a lot smarter than you give me credit for, Alex. A lot smarter. Like last night; it wasn’t difficult you know, to tap into the security footage and delete any evidence of me being here. To loop earlier footage and change the timings on the camera. To make it look like you were crazy. And you really did do a stellar performance, Alex. Running around the garden in your nightdress with a knife in your hand! Oh, you played the role perfectly. It couldn’t have gone any better!’
He comes closer. His voice is quieter. His words sincere.
‘See, I want them to think you’re losing it, Alex. I want them to think that you’ve lost your mind. That will make my plan so much easier. Because, that’s what all this is about, Alex. Me, watching you, making you feel as if you were going crazy. Fucking with your perfect little life. But it wasn’t enough for me. It will never be enough for me. I was going to take Ella, you know. That’s what I came here to do. And I came so close, standing there, looking down at her in her crib. All I had to do was reach down and take her. It would have been so easy. Your child for my child. Only I couldn’t…’
He shakes his head, full of regret. Having a child around him now would be too painful.
‘I wanted you to suffer as much as I suffered. I wanted to take from you the only thing you’ve ever given a shit about. But it still didn’t feel enough. And there was a chance that someone would find her eventually, or they’d find me. And that you’d get her back then. You’d win again.’
He smirks then.
‘So, I had a change of plan. Last night, I decided that another innocent life wasn’t going to pay for your sins. You were. Because it eats away at you, you know. All that rage, all that hate. It dissolves away every part of your insides, until all that’s left is a hollow, empty shell.’
And he is merely just a shell now, he knows it. His body is so thin that the pointy bones jut out from beneath his clothing. His features sharp and chiselled, making him appear gaunt, the black, sunken eyes making his face look almost skull like.
‘Why should I be the only one to pay the price for what you did? Why should I be the only one to lose everything? Why should you get away scot-free?’ Screaming at her. He gets up again, taking the photo frame of Ella and placing it on the table in front of her, so she could see the stakes of exactly what she was about to lose.
‘You get it now, don’t you? How having a child can change you. How you love them fiercely. How you’ll do anything to protect them.’
Reaching out, he grabs her chin, yanking her head upwards, forcing her to look him dead in the eye.
‘Only, what if protecting them isn’t an option, Alex? What if they’re taken from you in the worst possible way? What if all that’s left was a black hole of nothingness? What would you do then?’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Clenching her fists tightly, Rebecca yanks at her wrists, grimacing as she tries to release her hands from the tight cable ties but they just won’t budge. They were rigid, digging into the bandaged wound from last night and sending shooting pains radiating up through her arm.
She’s stuck here, she knows, inside her own house with this lunatic.
And a small part of her is glad that Jamie and Ella aren’t here. That they are somewhere else. Safe.
She can hear him now, moving around in the kitchen. A chink of a glass hits the kitchen worktop, a drawer slides open.
The one where she keeps the knives?