‘We’re getting out,’ he says, like he knows the thoughts that creep around me.
‘I want to tell you again anyway.’
Another silence. His hand moves to cover mine against his chest. I try not to wince as the cold chain sits against my thigh.
‘I’ve loved you since I was eight years old,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know what to call it then. But I do now. And I’m not going to let him take this from us. We’re getting out, Kat. And I’m going to tell you every day for your very long life that you are loved.’
I close my eyes and press my face against his shoulder.
‘Deal,’ I say.
Mild delirium sets in later.
Despite the pain in my throat, I whisper about everything in my twenty-two years. The piano lessons I hated and the gym teacher I’d had a crush on at fourteen. The time Ellie and I got lost driving to Edinburgh and ended up in a field at two in the morning, eating crisps and laughing until we couldn’t breathe. How hard I’d wished for a sibling so my house wasn’t so fucking lonely. The name I’d picked out for a dog I’d never been allowedto have.
He listens to all of it quietly, his fingers trailing my thigh.
‘What are you calling the dog?’
‘Hamish,’ I say.
‘Is he Scottish?’
‘I don’t know, but he’d be a schnauzer with a tremendous moustache.’
‘Of course.’
‘Do we need to get a dog now that we have Reggie?’ he whispers.
Oh god, Reggie.
‘Are you sure he’s okay?’
‘The auto feeder lasts at least a week, and Sandra will likely be in topping my freezer with casseroles already. She’ll notice we’re gone and look after him.’
‘I would name an excellent dog Hamish,’ I say. ‘And he would be an excellent dog, and he would be very well-mannered because I would talk to him constantly, and dogs respond well to conversation, I’ve read that.’
‘When we get our own place, we’ll find your Hamish.’
I look at him in the dim light, promising things just to give me hope.
And when I put my head against his chest and sink into the knowledge that we’re never getting out, I’m thankful that I’m too dehydrated to cry.
THIRTY-SEVEN
LIAM
I hearthe door before I see it, and sit up when I hear footsteps. He’s fucking whistling again, and despite the weakness I feel, a renewed buzz of determination hits me.
Kat’s hand tightens around mine. I squeeze back once before letting go.
Sam stands in the middle of the floor and looks at us. He has a different knife in his hand, long and sharp and glinting.
‘We need to get him close to me,’ I whisper. ‘It’s a long shot, but we have to get him within my reach.’
‘You’ve blamed your whole life on those men,’ Kat says. ‘But maybe you’d have been a loser anyway.’
Her voice is wrecked. Three days of the drip and nothing else, and it comes out cracked and wan.
