“How are we going to get in?” I asked. “We can’t break in.”
“I have a mate who works here. Remember Fletcher?”
I groaned. “You mean your weed dealer?”
“The very same. Anyway, he owed me, so he’s left the door open for me. Look, if anyone finds out, we say that we heard something inside and the thing was open anyway, so…”
“Just get it open, Rob. Careful of fingerprints, though.”
Rob pulled on a pair of leather gloves. “Way ahead of you.”
The garage door opened with a rumbling rattle that sounded uncannily like thunder. The pouring rain was cold, leaving a chill on my skin so that I was glad to duck under the doors and into the garage.
“What the hell?” Rob said.
I pulled my hood away to glimpse the filled garage. What I saw took my breath away. It wasn’t anything at all like I had expected, and I admit, I had already considered the worst. I had thought of a terrible soundproofed dungeon for nefarious activities. I’d thought of a place dedicated to a sex addict, covered in pornography with a dirty mattress pushed against a wall. I’d thought of it all, and yet I was still surprised.
There was one element that I had guessed correctly: The garage was filled with pictures, but they were not pornographic—at least, not all of them. Most of the pictures were paintings. There were dozens hanging from the walls, and in between the portraits were small photographs all with the same subject… me. In the middle of the garage was an easel with a desk stacked with paints. There was also a tall filing cabinet shoved against the wall.
I walked across the garage and stood close to the wall, taking in all the photographs of my face. There were pictures of me walking through Bishoptown, sitting on a park bench feeding the ducks, carrying shopping bags home, getting off the bus. None of them appeared to be in chronological order, they were all jumbled up along the walls. In some I had Aiden’s small hand in mine. Here we were throwing pebbles over the bridge into the Ouse. There we were sitting in the park eating sandwiches. Me standing at the bottom of a tree gazing into the branches at my monkey-like child. Me wandering through the streets of Bishoptown with my make-up spread halfway down my face, bags filled with bottles of Pinot Grigio. And then, the most disturbing of all: me getting on the school bus. Me dressed for the school prom, with Rob on my arm (though Rob’s face had been scratched out).
“Look.” Rob pointed to a large portrait in the centre of the back wall. “You’re wearing the school tie. That was before sixth form. We didn’t have a uniform in sixth form.”
And then it hit me. Partway through our argument the night before, Jake had admitted that he had fallen in love with methefirst time he had seen me. I was in school the first time he’d seen me. He was a teacher.
“Oh Jesus.”
“Emma, I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect any of this.”
“What did you expect?” I whispered.
Rob didn’t answer, and I was too distracted by the pictures to listen anyway. It was the paintings that disturbed me the most. He’d mostly painted my face. They were intricate portraits, almost photo-realist in style, with my features captured perfectly. In one of the paintings, I was clearly sleeping, with my hair flowing out behind me. On its own, I would have considered it a beautiful and flattering surprise, but as it was part of this disgusting invasion of my privacy, it was creepy and made my skin crawl.
“Don’t scratch your hands,” Rob said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of thin plastic gloves, the same sort that surgeons wear. “Put these on. We can’t leave any DNA. This is a crime scene.”
I was about to ask why, but of course, I was the crime. He stalked me. He took pictures of me when I was a minor. Some of them were definitely provocative. I might not be naked, but I was bending over wearing a short skirt, or spilling out of my school shirt. I wanted to run away from that garage and immerse myself in scalding water to get the stink off me. I’d been violated.
“Let’s see what’s in the filing cabinet,” Rob said.
He was gentle now. It wasn’t like Rob to keep from erupting in a stressful situation, so I knew it was for my benefit. He knew that things were more complicated than Jake being a ‘bad guy’. I was carrying his baby. We were linked, however disgusting that felt.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I said in a quiet voice. “If he was so obsessed with me, why was he sleeping around with all those women?”
“I’m not sure he was, Em,” Rob said. “I think he came here instead.”
“But why? He had me. I was married to him.”
Rob didn’t answer, so I began to look through the stacks of paintings piled along the floor, while Rob opened the filing cabinet. I gasped. These paintings were even worse than the ones on the wall. Jake had painted me in sadistic ways. In most of them, I was naked or scantily clad, with my hands tied up and a ball gag in my mouth. There wasn’t any hint of desire in my eyes. He’d painted me afraid. His fantasies saw me as a reluctant slave; an unwilling participant in his games. This was all about dominating me. But he hadn’t been like that in our relationship at all. He was… controlling, yes, I can look back on that and recognise it for what it was. He found me the job at the same school where he worked. He owned the house and the car. He was finicky about what was in our home. But he was never sadistic. He never hit me or even tried anything daring in the bedroom. Why did he need these bizarre pictures?
I was beginning to understand Jake’s true addiction. It wasn’t sex, it was fantasy. It was ownership. What was better than putting a child inside me? I thought back to the day I’d found out I was pregnant. I’d blamed it on a cold making my birth control pill less effective, but what if… what if Jake had tampered with it?
A cold stone of dread sank to the pit of my stomach.
“Emma, come and look at these.”
I left the paintings the same way I’d found them and walked over to the other side of the garage to see what Rob was looking at. He’d found a large binder inside the filing cabinet. He lowered it so I could see what was inside. At first I didn’t want to look, but then I forced myself to.
“It’s another girl,” said Rob. “Remember when the press got hold of that photo of Jake with a student? That’s the student. There are a ton of pictures of her in here.” He flipped the page and I gasped. The girl—pretty and dark-haired—was naked on the next page. “Fuck. He lied. He did have a relationship with her.” The pages flipped, showing more and more photographs of this young girl in shockingly vulnerable poses. I knew then that her slightly bemused expression would haunt me forever. The poses were brash and confident, but her expression was one of complete insecurity. “He took advantage of her. Fucking arsehole. Look, he has two or more copies of some of these. He kept them as leverage, I bet. To make sure she didn’t tell anyone. I bet the bastard threatened to show people.” Rob slammed the file shut and a USB stick fell onto the floor.
