‘Why did you do it?’
I shake my head but I don’t reply.
‘Why?’ she spits, but I can’t explain. My lips remain sealed and I turn my head to look away from her.
My lack of response is all it takes for Nina to lose control. Without warning she lunges towards me and there’s nothing I can do to stop her.
CHAPTER 55
NINA
TWO YEARS EARLIER
The culmination of everything I have learned about Maggie in the last five weeks is released in one swift action which I can’t contain.
I grab her by the neck, push her back on to the mattress and straddle her. Her arms remain weak so she is easy to pin down. My fingers wrap themselves ever tighter around her throat.
I don’t know who I’ve become but I am no longer myself. It’s as if the real Nina is standing in the corner of the room watching someone resembling me strangling my mother. My hands are tightening and her windpipe is contracting and not allowing any new air to enter her lungs. Her mouth opens and she attempts to speak but her words are hard to make out. One of her legs flails behind me, kicking in all directions, but it falls short of making contact. The other shakes and rattles the chain attached to her ankle. ‘I hate you I hate you I hate you,’ I repeat in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own.
At first I don’t think I have ever felt a rage like this before, until a flash of déjà vu strikes. It’s a blur of fast-moving, dimly lit, black-and-red-tainted images that suggests this isn’t the first time I’ve been overcome by a need to lash out and hurt. However, I can’t pinpoint when or why. As quickly as it appears, it vanishes and I’m back in the present. And I’m aware that if I don’t release my grip on Maggie’s throat soon, it’s unlikely I ever will. I’ll end up killing the woman who gave me life but who went on to take so much of it away from me.
Bit by bit, my fingers slacken until my hands are still around her neck, but I’m no longer putting undue pressure on it. I climb off her but continue to loom over her. She gasps for the air I’ve starved her of while I am drawing my first breaths as a new woman. I take advantage of her frailty, remove a key from my pocket, unlock the padlock, and swiftly replace the chain on her ankle with a much longer one stored under the bed.
Now I’m upright again and, grabbing her arm, I pull her from the bed and to her feet. I have never seen Maggie as weak and petrified as this and I’m surprised at how much satisfaction it brings me. I maintain enough self-awareness to recognise this isn’t how normal people behave, but Maggie is no normal mother and she has given me no choice; she has turned me into this monster. I am an extension of her.
I haul her across the bedroom and on to the landing. This second chain allows me to pull her down the staircase until we reach the dining room. I push past the sideboard and table until we reach the window that offers a view of the back garden. I clamp my hand upon the back of her neck and direct her line of vision towards the flower bed Dad is buried beneath, hidden behind the trees.
‘You let me spend my entire adult life believing Dad abandoned me,’ I yell. ‘You stood over my shoulder watching me write him letters, begging him to come back to us. You wiped away my tears and promised that I’d hear from him. And all the time you knew that he was out there because you killed him.’
‘I had no choice,’ Maggie sobs.
‘Of course you did! I was the one who had no choice because you made those decisions for me. And later, what were you thinking when you watched me sitting by what I thought was my child’s grave? Did you ever feel remorse?’
‘Yes, of course I did. I have spent every day of my life since feeling guilty about everything that’s happened to you.’
I can’t tell if she’s crying because she’s telling the truth or because I have finally unravelled her lies and she’s getting her comeuppance.
‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘You must believe me, Nina, it’s much more complicated than you understand.’
‘Then tell me. Why did you kill my dad? Did he cheat on you? Did he hit you? Did he gamble your money away? I need to know, I need to understand. Surely you must see that?’
Maggie opens her mouth as if she is ready to reply, then hesitates. ‘It’s not what you think,’ she says quietly and shakes her head, defeated and resigned to her fate.
And now we are crying together. ‘I have seen him, Maggie,’ I say, trying to appeal to her better nature. ‘I have held my dad’s bones in my hands and wiped the dirt from his skull. I have lost him twice now. I have lost everyone I have ever loved and the common denominator in all of this is you.’
‘But I’m still here,’ she says. And for a moment, I believe Maggie thinks she is all I need; that her presence as a constant in my life makes up for all she’s done. ‘Despite everything, I’ve never left you, I have never deserted you, I’ve always been here for you even when you didn’t want me to be.’
‘And you have never been enough,’ I reply, deliberately trying to hurt her. ‘I have had five weeks to try and get my head around a lifetime of your lies. For more than twenty years I have been kept away from my dad and my son and now I’m going to take that same time from you. This is going to be your prison in the same way you have imprisoned me. You won’t see your friends, go outside or speak to anyone other than me, ever again. For all intents and purposes, you are frozen in time like you have frozen me.’
‘Please,’ Maggie weeps, ‘Nina, darling, please don’t do this. You know that it’s wrong.’
I take her by the arm again and frogmarch her back upstairs. Once in her bedroom, I make her turn around and lift her foot while I replace her long chain for the shorter one that won’t stretch beyond the doorway. And then I leave her alone to adjust to her new life. Her cries gradually fade away and by the time I have closed the soundproofed door behind me, the house is silent again.
CHAPTER 56
NINA
That lump. That bloody lump in Maggie’s breast. It’s all I can think about.
