Emily Barr - The Sleeper

Then it started to come in little waves, dancing up and filling my nose, and retreating, and doing it again, and retreating again. This was annoying. I wanted to succumb to it now, but something, some instinct to cling to life for as long as possible, made me keep my head tipped back, my nostrils above the water, for as long as I possibly could.

Then it was there, lapping at my nose. I filled my lungs with as much air as I possibly could, and just as I took what was, surely, my last breath, I thought I heard the sound of an engine, somewhere in the distance, and then a voice, and then a motor coming closer and closer.

chapter thirty-two

Lara

He is feeding me tranquillisers: as soon as I worked that out, everything made sense. A day ago I could focus and hold a conversation, of sorts. Now to move an arm or a leg demands a concentrated effort, a determined focusing of mental resources. To speak is a triumph, particularly if the words are to end up anywhere near distinct. All I do is sleep and lie around. I prefer sleeping: at least everything is blocked out. Whatever these tranquillisers are, they stop me thinking. They keep me here, turn me almost into a willing captive. My whole existence feels lazy, and I live within a rosy glow of there being no bigger issues to worry about.

Guy is dead, but that is all right, because everyone is heading in that direction, and it doesn’t matter whether it happens now or in thirty years. To the universe, those times are the same. Iris is gone too. That is also all right. Whatever he does to me, it doesn’t matter, because he is Leon, my godfather, and I will be all right with him.

He has bought me lovely clothes, and brushes my hair. He makes me put on make-up, which I do with a careful, heavy hand. I eat and drink what he puts in front of me, knowing that he will be judging it all just right, to keep me healthy and drugged, to keep me slim despite my life of lounging.

As far as I remember, he has not touched me. I am glad, because it would be unbearable. Yet it terrifies me, because it means he has a longer-term plan. If he had nowhere to go from here and was waiting for the police to show up, he would be leaping on me. He could do anything to me now – we both know that – and the fact that he is keeping me in a state of constant dread, that he is waiting, is almost worse than its alternative.

It is only when the effect starts to wear off, like now, that my heart rate increases, my mind suddenly sharpens and the horror starts rushing back. Now I try not to let him see that my powers are returning, and I desperately start to plot. I need to find my phone and call for help. Or his phone: that would do. I could call home, call my parents, and get them to raise the alarm.

That is ridiculous. The alarm is already raised, for me, and set to its highest possible alert level, yet only Iris found me. I could try to call her, but he took her phone and threw it into the sea. I saw him. And anyway, in spite of what he says, I am sure he has killed her. He probably just didn’t do it outright, so he could swear to me that he had left her alive. She will be dead by now, because she is the only one who knows it was him.

I could climb out of a window, but this villa is air-conditioned, and its owners are so confident of the system’s efficacy that the windows don’t even have the capacity to open. I found that out last time I was lucid, and he caught me trying to smash one, and gently sat me down and made me drink a cocktail that was full of alcohol and whatever those drugs are, and I accepted oblivion again. This time I will be more careful.

I can hear him in the bedroom on his laptop. I sit up on the sofa and look around. There is no phone within reach, naturally. He has his iPhone with him. He put my Thai phone into the safe; I have a fuzzy memory of having watched him do it. It is a smart phone I bought in Bangkok, one I top up with pay-as-you-go to make it untraceable (I have seen The Wire ; I have a vague idea of how these things work), but I have no idea of the combination for the safe.

All the same, I know where it is.

I stand up as quietly as I can and tiptoe across the polished wooden floor. Leon’s typing stops. I freeze, wondering whether to fling myself back on to the sofa. He starts typing again. Then his voice barks out, and for a second I am terrified, and then relieved.

‘Annie!’ he says. ‘’Tis I. Just checking in. How are things? … Oh yes, fine, thanks. But I just want to know whether the paperwork’s through from that Hitchens thing. I’ve got my eye on them and you can tell them that. No sob stories will be accepted.’

I pull the cupboard door open. It squeaks a tiny bit, but Leon’s bluster continues. The safe is right in front of me. It is one of those little ones you get in hotel rooms, and its door is smugly closed.

I press a number. It beeps loudly. Leon pauses for a second, and I run back to the sofa and lie down with my eyes closed.

‘Excuse me a second, Annie,’ he says, and then he is there. I feel him looming over me, but I do not open my eyes.

Some time later, my senses start to return again. I know there is no way I will ever escape like this. My lucid periods are so short, because he watches me constantly, and he knows my senses will sharpen between pills. I will never get away in those times.

I have tried pretending to eat, but he forces me. When I tried to shout and raise the alarm, he threatened to inject me instead.

‘I don’t want to,’ he said mildly. ‘But if it comes to it, I will. Don’t worry, darling. You’ll understand when you’re ready.’

‘I will not,’ I shouted. I lost control. It was a mistake, and I won’t be doing it again, because he slapped me across the face, hard, and then cried at what I had made him do until I apologised.

The only time he is not with me is when I go to the loo. The window in the bathroom is small, high up and frosted. He sometimes stands outside the door, possibly to make sure I’m not killing myself. Often, though, he doesn’t. I think he likes to be a gentleman and give me privacy in the bathroom.

I have no idea how long I have been here, or what day it is. It might not have been very long. I know I have been to sleep, and that he tucked me into the king-sized bed and took the single one in the corner of the huge master bedroom. He drugged me heavily before bed so that there was no chance of my escaping while he slept.

If I concentrate very hard, I might be able to try something out. However, it involves the lucid me making a plan that the drugged me will need to carry out. If I think about it now, very, very hard, then I might be able to implant it in my brain. I wish I could write myself a note, but I know that is impossible.

There is a knock on the villa’s front door. I try not to respond. Leon is there in a second.

‘Stay right where you are, sweetheart,’ he says, and I nod. He opens the door, hands some money over, and says, ‘That’s quite all right – I’ve got it from here.’ Then he takes a tray, kicks the door shut, and carries it into the second bedroom, the one he’s been using as an office.

He brings it back and puts it in front of me, doctored with drugs.

‘Darling,’ he says, sitting next to me and smiling. ‘It’s time for your lunch.’

So it’s lunchtime. I file that knowledge away.

‘Come. Sit at the table with me.’

My lunch is a bowl of tom yum pak, vegetable soup, a plate of chopped fruit and two drinks. He has a plate of pad thai, a beer and a bottle of water. We sit opposite each other at the shiny table, and he watches me carefully.

‘Now, we’re going to be leaving here tomorrow, darling,’ he says, checking my face for a reaction. ‘I don’t want any silly business. Is that understood? I’m doing this for you. You’ll realise it one day. You can’t go back home ever, not without far too many stupid questions being raised and ridiculous police officers popping up at every stage. I’m not letting them take you to one of their prisons. Not you. So I’ve organised something wonderful. Are you listening? Are you concentrating?’