And he remembered, and he bought some, just like he bought the massage table…
I jump to my feet, pull off my shirt, losing a button in the process, and smell the inside of it: orange blossom. No, no, no. I reach over my shoulder and touch my back. It’s oily; my fingertips skid. He has given me a massage. That’s why there are sore patches across my shoulders. While I’ve been unconscious, he has been kneading and pressing my skin with his fingers. And… the itching on my chest. I look down. My bra is on the wrong way round: the semicircular lines of sewn-on pink roses have been rubbing against my skin.
I stifle a scream. I don’t want to wake him up. The darkness is still lifting outside, the milkman’s just been; it must be between 4 and 5 a.m. Which means he might well be asleep. If he doesn’t wake until, say, seven, that gives me two hours.
To do what?
Crying hard, I take off my bra and check the skin beneath for oil. I find none. Next I take off my trousers and run my hands up and down my legs, front and back, over the scabs and bruises on my knees. No sign of any oil, but… My knickers are also on the wrong way round. I press my clenched fist into my mouth so that no sound escapes. Tears drip over my fingers and down my arm. What has he done to me?
Eventually, I force myself to move. I put my clothes back on and start to walk up and down the room, try to clear my head. Nick is always accusing me of working myself into a state if I can’t solve the whole problem in one stroke. What would he do?
He would bring in the milk bottles one at a time.
I run to the window and pull back the yellow silk curtains. Nothing has changed.
I see no milk bottles, only the plant-pots, the thick hedges, the gate with the padlock on it, the elephant fountain. How would a milkman have got into the yard? Unless… maybe there’s access from the street to another part of the garden, round the corner, and the milkman walked round the house. On the concrete of the yard there are wet patches near the wall, a cloudy liquid that might be milk. The rest of the yard is dry. Opaque patches, then smaller drops leading to a point I can’t see because it’s right under the window.
Breathing hard, I grab one end of the massage table, drag it over to the far wall and climb up on to it. Holding the curtain pole with one hand to steady myself, I plant one knee on the massage table and the other on the narrow window sill, and press my face hard against the glass. ‘Yes,’ I hiss, seeing two semicircles of shiny red and silver. Semi-skimmed milk bottle tops. There must be some sort of hole or recess cut into the wall.
I climb down and start pacing again. Tomorrow. The milkman will come again tomorrow. If I could hear the bottles clinking, that must mean he would hear me if I screamed for help. All I have to do is make sure I’m not unconscious. I mustn’t swallow another pill…
I frown. If the man is using pills to knock me out, how did he do it the first time when I passed out on the street? I hadn’t taken any pill…
The room closes in on me as another detail clicks into place: the pill he gave me was a vitamin-that’s why it tasted like one, like something I’d tasted before. The drug was in the water he gave me to wash it down. ‘Rohypnol.’ I say the word aloud, a word I’ve heard on the news but never imagined would be part of my life.
I walk over to the door and stick my little finger into the lock. Only the tip goes in. I grab my bag, pull my Switch and credit cards out of my wallet. Neither is anywhere near thin enough to slot into the gap between the door and the wall. Idiot. It’s the wrong sort of lock anyway. Pathetic, Sally, trying things you know won’t work because you’re terrified of admitting there’s nothing you can do. Why don’t you try the handle while you’re at it? I slam my closed fist down on the metal. There’s a click, and the door opens with a protracted creak. I cover my mouth with my hands. He hasn’t locked it. I blink to check I’m not hallucinating, unable to believe something good has happened.
As quietly as I can, I leave the room and walk down the hall. The door to the porch is slightly ajar, though the front door is closed. If he forgot to lock me in, could he also have forgotten to lock the front door?
Is it a test? Is he waiting outside in the yard with the gun?
I look up and see that something is balanced on top of the door, a small grey object. Metal. The gun. No, it’s my mobile phone. Anger makes me shake. The sick bastard has booby-trapped the door to the porch. He deliberately left my cell door unlocked-he knew I’d try to get out. I bet he laughed at the idea of my phone falling on my head as I ran to the front door. Which is locked; it won’t budge.
I reach up for my phone. He’s removed the SIM card. Of course. Stupid. Ashamed of having believed I might free myself, I put my mobile back where I found it. If I can’t escape, I don’t want him to know I tried and failed.
I walk from room to room in search of another telephone, a land line. There isn’t one, at least not downstairs. I look in the lounge, dining room and hall for bills or envelopes that might have his name and address on. I find nothing. In the lounge there are some novels, and lots of books about plants and gardening. There’s a whole shelf devoted to cacti, the only one in the room that’s full. I pull out a few books at random, in case there’s a name written on the inside cover of one of them, but I find only blank pages.
The framed poster I saw yesterday but only half-remembered shows a map against a bright yellow background, with a country highlighted by a green line. Two cartoon-like arms are reaching out, as if trying to take the country away from its neighbours. ‘Hands off El Salvador ’ is printed in big red letters at the bottom. I assume the green-edged country is El Salvador; I was always hopeless at geography.
The shelves in the lounge make me think about the tiny study upstairs and what I saw in it. Something wrong. A row of Joseph Conrad novels, a row of serious-looking hardbacks with complicated titles, too complicated for me to take in in my panicked state, and then… empty shelves, lots of them. And the desk was completely bare. No computer on it, no pens, no coaster or roll of sellotape, nothing. Who has a desk without a computer on it?
The dining room… I race back down the hall. One whole wall is covered in shelves, good quality ones, probably oak. All empty. Feeling cold all over, I run to the kitchen, pull open the six narrow drawers beneath the work-surface. I find some cutlery in one, but apart from that, nothing. If someone opened my kitchen drawers at home they’d find crayons, unpaid parking tickets, string, aspirins-just about everything.
I force my mind back to the grand tour, as he called it. In the bedrooms upstairs: no lamps, no rugs, nothing on the window sill. No photographs, clocks, pictures on the walls, combs or hairbrushes, glasses for water.
Nobody lives here.
The man hasn’t brought me to his home. Maybe he lived here once, with his family, but not any more. He’s brought me to an immaculate deserted house and laid out a few objects here and there to make it look as if this is where he lives: that wrought-iron letter-stand in the hall… did he imagine it would be enough to fool me?
If he doesn’t live here, where does he live? Where are the rest of his possessions? Perhaps he’s not here now, asleep upstairs. Did he drug me and then go back to his wife and children? Maybe this is a second home, one his family don’t know about. One he bought to keep me locked up in for ever.
The recipe book that he used to make that disgusting meal with the grey sauce is still open on the kitchen counter, still with the bookmark laid across it. I look around for other cookery books but see none. The open pages are glossy, unstained by spillages. He bought the book in order to cook for me. That was the first time he used it.