Michael Robotham - Say You're sorry

In my dream a figure stands at the edge of the lake. He crouches. Waiting for her. He holds out a branch, wanting her to come, but she doesn’t take it. She won’t surrender. She will not save herself. The cold leaches into her bones. Her limbs cease to work. She cannot hold her head above the water.

In those final seconds of her life, a paralyzing certainty descends. There will be no later. Now is where it ends.

After that first time

Tash went up the ladder whenever George asked. He would come every three or four days to bring us food and water. Once or twice he left it a week and the longest was ten days.

We ran out of food and water, but the worst thing was the stink of the chamber pot, which made the cellar smell like a slum toilet in Mumbai. Not that I’ve been to Mumbai, but I’ve seen that movie, Slumdog Millionaire, where the little boy jumps into the pit toilet and is covered in diarrhea. That was truly gross, but it was a good movie.

Each time he came, we’d hear things being dragged across the floor. The trapdoor would open and he ordered Tash up the ladder. Each time she returned she would smell of perfume and powder. She brought back more gifts for me. Toothpaste. A hairbrush. Tweezers. She wore clean clothes. Wasn’t hungry.

“What did you eat?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Was it nice?”

“No.”

I grew more and more jealous. I wanted to go upstairs. I wanted to be spoiled… to eat nice food and wash my hair properly.

Sometimes we didn’t talk for hours I was so angry. I called her a skanky whore. She called me an uptight virgin, which seemed to hurt more.

She shared her new clothes, but that wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t tell me what happened up there.

“He gave you nice stuff to eat, didn’t he? He let you wash. You smell like a Body Shop.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Why? What did he do?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me.”

I didn’t give a rat’s arse about the gifts she brought back. She was keeping something secret from me. Holding out.

After a day of the silent treatment, we started talking again. Tash told me about the rooms upstairs. She said it was like an old factory full of rubbish and broken furniture. She said there was a yard outside with a shed on brick piers and metal drums against a high fence. She couldn’t see any other houses or hear any traffic.

“George said he might give us a radio and some more magazines,” she said. “And we can get more food, clean sheets and maybe a microwave.”

For everything George promised, only a fraction ever arrived. The clothes we wanted were little girl things-minuscule T-shirts and shorts. Instead of tampons, he gave us sanitary pads.

Slowly we collected more things. Pillows. A clock. Soap. New toothbrushes. Books. But whatever he gave us, he could take away. Tash didn’t like asking, because she wasn’t sure how he’d react. He could flip from being polite and caring to slamming his fist onto the table and telling her to “shut the fuck up!”

“Don’t you know how lucky you are?” he’d scream. “I could have killed you. I could have buried you.”

At other times, he’d wheedle and coax her, brushing her hair and fussing with her clothes. She kept him happy. She went upstairs when he asked and did what he asked, but I should have seen what was happening. I should have noticed the changes in Tash.

Whatever she ate upstairs made up for downstairs-where she ate nothing. She started biting her nails until they bled. She began losing weight. She stopped brushing her hair or cleaning her teeth.

When she cut up the magazines she created weird monsters, hybrids with animal heads and human bodies. And she stabbed out the eyes so they were empty.

Each time she climbed back down the ladder, there seemed to be less of her, as though George took a piece or she left it upstairs.

One night she wet the bed. I found her shivering in sodden clothes. Peeling them off, I heated water in a saucepan and washed her. She didn’t say a word. Didn’t cry. Didn’t whimper.

“I think it’s going to be a beautiful day,” I told her. “I can hear the birds.”

It was around that time that Tash came up with her plan. We were going to escape, she said, whispering because we couldn’t be sure if George was watching or listening.

Tash pulled me beneath the ladder. “I’m going to do it with this,” she said, reaching behind her back where she’d tucked something into her jeans. She unwrapped it carefully. “I found it upstairs when he wasn’t looking.”

It was an old screwdriver with a broken handle. Tash had bound the damaged end in an old rag so the sharp edges wouldn’t cut her hand. She plunged it through the air in a stabbing motion.

“How are you going to do it?” I asked.

“I’m going to creep up behind him and stab him in the neck.”

“What if he doesn’t turn his back?”

“I’ll pull him towards me and shove it into his guts… or in his eye.”

“When?”

“Next time.”

For hours she sat beneath the ladder and practiced, stabbing the metal tip into the wood, carving out her initials. At other times she lay on her bunk, listening. When the time comes, she said. When the time comes there will be no more time.

We waited, lying on our bunks, thinking our own thoughts.

“If something happens to me.”

“Nothing is going to happen.”

“If it does.”

“It won’t.”

“Don’t let him touch you, Piper.”

“I won’t.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

That’s when we heard the furniture shifting and we knew George had come back. The trapdoor opened and we went through the routine with the water and food. He lowered a bucket and we emptied the bedpan.

Then it was time for Tash.

I couldn’t see George’s face in the darkness above. He was just a voice, like Morgan Freeman playing God in all those movies.

“I want Piper this time.”

Tash looked at me. I was rocking from foot to foot, cold all over.

“Take me,” she said.

“It’s Piper’s turn.”

“No.” Tash thought quickly. “It’s her time of the month.”

George didn’t say anything for a while. Tash climbed the rough wooden ladder and raised her arms. Her cardigan rose up above the waistband of her jeans and I saw the screwdriver tucked against the small of her back.

I wanted to tell her not to do it. Don’t risk it.

I sat down on the bunk and huddled against the back wall. Every shadow held a withered body.

I prayed. I don’t pray very well. We’re not a very religious family. My dad says nine out of ten religions fail in their first year.

While I was praying, I was listening, trying to hear what was happening upstairs. I imagined the worst things. Holes being dug and bodies buried. Hideous screams. That’s what he always threatened to do: bury us deep where nobody would find us.

I don’t know how long I waited. Dozing. Waking. Listening. I shouted at the ceiling.

“Give her back, you bastard! Don’t you hurt her!”

I stood on the bench and looked out the crack in the window. There was a moon somewhere and I could just make out the trees and hear the wind moving the leaves.

I woke in the dark again, shivering violently. I sat up. Still alone. I reached across to her bunk. Felt her cold blankets. When I woke again it was almost light enough to see. I threw back the blankets and climbed the ladder, trying to balance, but I couldn’t reach the trapdoor.

I stood on the bench. Looked through the crack. I could just make out a wire fence and the edge of another building with a broken window. Rubbish. Weeds. Silence. Nothing moving.

All the next day I waited. Time meant nothing. I was hungry and cold, but I wouldn’t eat without Tash. I looked at the black eye on the ceiling. I begged him to give her back. I didn’t want to be alone. I needed Tash.