I notice for the first time that the fan is making something rustle on one of the bedside tables. I turn my head and I spot that Nina has left me a refill air freshener and a packet of wine gums. She must have put them there when I was in the bath earlier. I haven’t tasted sweets since my ordeal began and seeing them here excites me like a child. In my hurry to tear open the packet it splits and the contents spread across the duvet like an edible rainbow.
I am about to pop a red one into my mouth when I hesitate. I’ve fallen for this before, a random act of kindness that turns out to be anything but. I’m reminded of when she left me a beaker containing a strawberry and banana smoothie. It was as equally unexpected as the wine gums. By early evening, the chronic diarrhoea began and I realised she had laced the drink with a laxative. I still don’t know what I’d done to prompt it.
Regardless, I throw caution to the wind, sucking gently at first on the soft sweet in case she’s hidden a drawing pin or small piece of glass inside it. Then I can’t help but smile at how much pleasure such a simple treat is giving me. Perhaps Nina is taking a new approach in trying to break me, by showing me what I am missing, one small treat at a time. It won’t work. I have come to terms with this being my lot. And it’s pointless trying to second-guess her. Sometimes there is just no rhyme or reason to what motivates my daughter.
I recall how for my first two months in here, I was convinced that Nina was watching my every move through a camera attached to the coving. It was a small black box containing a glass lens and a tiny red light that flashed every couple of minutes. The thought of her being able to view and relish my misery whenever she liked wound me up like a coiled spring. But as much as I tried to remove the camera, my chain wouldn’t stretch far enough to allow me to reach it. I tried hurling a mug at it once, but it missed by inches. Nina’s punishment was to make me use the plastic lids of my hairspray and deodorant cans as drinking utensils instead. Then one day, the camera fell from the wall, just like that. It landed on the floor, its case breaking open. I picked up the pieces and saw that it wasn’t real. It was just a shell with room for a battery to operate the red light. More of her games.
Back then I questioned how long I was to remain in here and whether her threat to keep me locked up for the next twenty-one years was genuine. I’m sixty-eight now, so the chances of me living until I am eighty-nine are slim, especially with a minimal diet, lack of exercise, no access to fresh air or natural sunlight. I have very little chance of making it to a decade, let alone another thirteen years on top of that.
Of course I’ve considered suicide – who wouldn’t if they were me? But I am the only person in Nina’s life. No matter what hardships she puts me through, I can’t leave her alone. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight my way out of here if the opportunity presents itself. Then we can be together on my own terms after I find her the help she needs. She will always be my little girl, no matter how cruelly she treats me.
And there’s a part of me that knows I need to be punished for what I have taken away from her.
CHAPTER 11
MAGGIE
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER
It’s Monday morning and Nina has been crippled by stomach cramps since the early hours. I’ve already informed the school she won’t be coming in today and I phoned in sick myself at the surgery.
I’ve been padding around the house unable to settle in one place for more than a few minutes at a time. I hear her in tears behind the bathroom door and I’m in two minds over what to do. Eventually, the primal urge to comfort my poorly child becomes too much and I can take no more. I knock, half-expecting to be sworn at and told to go away. ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ I ask.
‘It hurts, Mum,’ she moans and immediately I want to be the one aching, not her.
I turn the door handle but it doesn’t open. ‘Unlock the door,’ I coax.
I hear her shuffle towards it before it opens. When I see her, I want to hold her and never let go. The heavy eyeliner she has taken to wearing is streaking down her face like ink stains. She is clutching her stomach and her knickers are still around her ankles. I can’t remember when I last saw her so vulnerable. I wrap my arms around her, bring her in to my shoulder and rub her back.
‘My baby girl,’ I say as my eyes well.
‘It’s never hurt like this before,’ she says, pitifully. ‘Why am I bleeding so much?’
I take a deep breath. ‘I think you’re having a miscarriage,’ I reply as softly as I can.
She stares at me, shocked that I am aware of her pregnancy. And in that instant, I know I wasn’t supposed to find out. Leaving the positive test in the bin wasn’t a cry for help as I’d told myself it was; it was a careless mistake.
I reassure her that I’m not here to lecture her but to help her through it. I take her by the arm and lead her back to the toilet but make the mistake of glancing into the bowl. It chills me. Some things you can never unsee. I quickly flush and hope that she didn’t see it either before I sit her back upon the seat.
Her face contorts as her cramps flare up again. I place my hand gently on her forehead as I would when taking her temperature as a child. She is burning up – it’s normal, one of the side effects. I dampen a cold flannel and dab her face with it, then hold it there. I’m taken back to when she was a five-year-old and caught measles during an outbreak at primary school. A year later it was chicken pox and I remember how Alistair and I took it in turns to take care of her, smother her in camomile lotion and make sure she didn’t scratch her pustules and scar. She may be a teenager, but to me she’s every bit as defenceless now as she was then.
The silence between us swells, only broken by her sobs and groans as we remain where we are – her in discomfort and me stroking her hair and kissing the back of her head – until nature has taken its course. I know that if I call one of the doctors at the surgery, they will offer to make a home visit. But I don’t want their help. I have let her down before; now I must prove to myself that I can be the mother she needs. We will get through this on our own. Lately, Nina may not have thought she needed me, but she does now and that’s all that matters. I cannot and will not let her down more than I have already.This is a fresh start for us, I tell myself. It has to be.
An hour passes before we move into her bedroom. And as I lay her down, her body folds in on itself like a fragile sheet of origami. I pull the duvet over her and up to her chin, then remove two painkillers from a packet, offering them to her with a glass of Lucozade. ‘Thank you,’ she mutters. It feels like so long since she last showed me gratitude for anything, so I cling to it. For the first time since her father disappeared from her life, I feel a bond between us. I love her more than anything I have ever loved or will ever love again. And nothing she does will ever change that.
But there’s something I have to tell her, while the memory of what is happening to her body is fresh and in case she is tempted to be careless again.
‘I need to explain something that’s not going to be easy to hear,’ I begin. ‘And I’m sorry because I should have told you a long time ago. But I’ve never known when to bring it up.’
‘What?’ she asks. ‘Is it about Dad?’
‘Yes, and no,’ I reply.
Her eyes widen, the whites still red. She is desperate for even a fragment of information as to his whereabouts. His silence has devastated her and I blame him for setting her on this self-destructive path just as much as I blame myself.
‘Do you know why I haven’t heard anything from him apart from the birthday card?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t,’ I lie. ‘This is about something that Dad carried inside of him and which he’s passed on to you.’ I pause to choose my words carefully. ‘Your dad was the carrier of something called estroprosencephaly. And it means that if he has a daughter and she falls pregnant, her baby would be very, very poorly if it managed to survive the full nine months.’ Nina looks at me, perplexed. I place my hand in hers and hold her fingers tight. ‘A baby with estroprosencephaly is likely to be born with a lot of problems, Nina. And I meana lotof problems.’
