Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I knew all along that Iris was the weak link in my escape. I knew she might notice her missing passport and connect me with it at some point. I never imagined, however, that she would rush out here and find me, nor that she would confide in Leon, a man she had never met, never seemed likely to meet, before she came.

Despite his promises, I am sure she has paid a horrific price for it. Like Guy, like Rachel, if Iris had never met me she would be alive and living a perfectly happy life, and all of this would have been entirely unimaginable for her. I could have changed this simply by warning her explicitly about him. By being scared to type his name, I have condemned her to … whatever he has done to her. Death.

‘And now,’ muses Leon. ‘Now, what, I wonder, shall we do?’

I stretch and yawn. The back-up plan was Food Street, Singapore. I need to try to get him to take me to Singapore, just in case she has escaped him, or in case she told the police or anyone else where she was going and why.

‘Let’s go to Bangkok.’ I tuck my legs up under myself. ‘I mean, we can’t stay here, can we?’

‘No indeed. We cannot possibly, enticing as it is in many ways.’

He walks over to me as I lie, pretending to relax, on the sofa. When he crouches in front of me, I try not to shrink away. I can smell his breath. I have loved this man, in a paternal way and as, I thought, the sole person in the world who had my best interests at heart, for my whole life. Leon was the person I went to when I sent Rachel to prison. Leon got me back on my feet: I remember him taking me to lunch, writing me emails, calling me at my parents’ house when I was spending days and nights staring at the wall and stewing in a rich broth of self-hatred. When I ran into a police station and demanded to be arrested, Leon was the one who made me retract everything. When, on his advice, I applied for jobs, he wrote me references and told me what to say in interviews.

Now I see that he was only doing it because he wanted to own me.

‘Here’s the thing,’ he is saying, inches from my face. I hope he cannot see how much I don’t want him to kiss me, because if he knew that, I am sure he would do it. ‘I’m not so sure about Bangkok. You’ve just come from there, you see. You know the place inside out. Lying low. I fear I might be at a disadvantage, were you to try to give me the runaround. It’s not a city I have ever visited, you see.’

The skin on my arm is standing up. I can see every little hair.

‘Oh.’ I bite my lip. ‘If I promise to be good?’

‘Lara, my dear. You are going to be good. I’m just covering all the bases.’

‘Don’t make me go to Singapore,’ I say suddenly, then close my eyes tight shut. ‘Please don’t.’

‘Open your eyes. Look at me.’

I do. How had I never been afraid of him for even half a second? I knew he was different from other people. I knew he was ruthless with his enemies, and I suspected that his business methods could be nasty, but I never cared because he was kind to me.

‘It is because of Rachel? The Singapore phobia? The last time you flew there your friend was thrown into a stinking prison?’ I nod. ‘So, I think you need to overcome that, darling girl. It’s something you have to face. You’re with me now. Those things are from the past.’

‘I’m not even allowed into Singapore. They sent me away and wrote something in my passport.’

‘No. They did that to Lara Finch. Lara Wilberforce, should I say. Not to Iris Roebuck. You’re the only Iris Roebuck who’s going to be walking through Singapore immigration any time soon, believe me. And our silly friend, the original Iris, has never been banned from anywhere, that is for sure, because the stupid bitch has never done a single thing in her tiny little life.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m going to book some tickets. You’ve never spent any time there. You don’t know the place. I know it fairly well. It’s where we’re going.’

‘Oh.’

He leans right up close to me. ‘Don’t worry, my Lara. It’s a wonderful place.’

As he taps at his laptop, looking up at me from time to time, I realise that I am too calm. I should be jumping through a window, yelling Iris’s name, calling the police and trying to save her. Yet I am just lying here. He has done something to me, and until it wears off, I am entirely under his control.

chapter thirty-one

Iris

I fought it until the last moment, struggling at my bonds, trying to break the twine. I felt I should have been able to, but, with all my strength, I could not do it. I was as far as I could possibly get from the water, but it was chasing me, inching its way up my body.

I pictured my parents, ostracised by me for five grief-stricken years, answering the door to a police officer. I imagined them rejecting the news at first. Iris? Tied up in some bizarre shed on a beach on a Thai island? No, that cannot possibly be true. And then, gradually, having to accept that, inexplicably, it was.

No one would know why I was here and what I was doing. Leon had caught Lara; for all I knew, he would hide out with her for ever, though (I made myself focus) he would be more likely to make her go along with what he wanted by holding the threat of the police over her head at every stage. Would he take her back to England and make her live with him as his plaything? Had he done this because he loved her or because he hated her?

The idea of him keeping her hidden and at his bidding for ever made me retch, and then I was sick, vomiting noisily into the water that was nearly at my neck. It was disgusting: with few currents, it floated, stagnant, around me until the fish started to notice it, and within a minute they were all around me, even quite big ones, feasting on the floating contents of my stomach. I saw the hole in the wooden wall that they were using as a door, and that made me try to push at the underwater parts of the walls near me. This was not a shack that was in good condition. It might have been rotten, and I might have been able to punch a hole in it.

I did. I kicked away and made a little hole in it. I bent around, my head just above water, and made the hole bigger with my hands. I pulled a whole section away. It made no difference whatsoever to anything, because I was tied on to a strong beam, and that was definitely not going to break. In any case, I was going to die from thirst before long. The heat was so stifling that there was almost no air to breathe.

I tried shouting again. I had done that before, but nothing had happened, and I had decided to conserve my strength for breaking the bonds. That had not worked. Now I yelled.

‘Help!’ I screamed. ‘Help!’

If I were going to die, I needed Laurie to come and help me. He knew what it was like, to feel the life force leaving your body. He had been through this, differently but the same, and I needed him. I yelled his name, screamed it over and over again. He did not come. I had said goodbye to him, to the real Laurie, in Bangkok, and I knew that his ghostly manifestation was over.

‘Laurie!’ I shouted, all the same. ‘Help me! Help me! Come and get me!’

I tried hard to believe in an afterlife. I told myself that when the water, which was at my mouth, reached my nose, I would walk through a long tunnel towards a light, and there at the end of it would be Laurie, and my grandparents; and my old dead pets, hamsters and cats and three rabbits, would be skitting and lolloping and running around at my feet, and everything would be gorgeous and magical and that would last for ever.

Even in my desperation, I could not make it happen. I could not believe in anything apart from annihilation. I was about to be wiped out for ever.

The warm water filled my mouth. I could not spit it out, so I swallowed it. For a horrible second I thought it was going to make me sick again. That would not work well: I pondered for a while what the logistics would be. Could you be sick straight into water without being able to gasp air in through your mouth? It would not be pleasant, and I used all my willpower to keep it down. I could no longer shout. If I tipped my head back, I would be able to breathe for a little while longer.