The day crawls. He doesn’t bring any more food or water. My mouth is so dry, my lips are cracking. The typewriter stays inactive. I find myself longing for it to start up again. I am reminded of all the times I swapped illicit WhatsApp messages with whichever husband I was not with. If I was with Daan and saw Mark was “typing…” my stomach would squeeze with love and anxiety. I always anticipated a message detailing some sort of problem: a sick child, lost homework, a fracas with a teacher. When I was with Mark and saw that Daan was “typing…” my stomach would slosh and slide with love and a delicious anticipation. I long for the typewriter to clatter. Like a lab rat I’ve been trained to respond to the sound of its keys and I find I want to be challenged. I want to be held to account. It would almost be a relief.
Frustrated, I kick the wall opposite the door. It’s a hell of a kick. The pain of it shoots up my leg, into my hip and I instantly regret it. The last thing I need right now is more pain and further injury. But then I notice it, a dent in the wall. I have made a dent in the wall! I stare at it in surprise. After days of being so weak and powerless I feel a surge of invigoration carouse through my body. I made a dent in the plasterboard. I made a difference! I kick the wall again and again, with my toe and then I turn and kick with my heel. Then I lie on my back and stamp both my feet into the wall, because that seems more powerful still. After half a dozen blows, I hear the plaster crack. The wall starts to sort of crumble and cave in front of me. I laugh, surprised at how lightweight and fragile plasterboard is. I start to claw and grab at the pieces, tearing the wall away. There’s a cavity and then more plasterboard. I punch through that relatively easily and I find I can get my hands through to a new space. I start to pull at the board, bringing bigger pieces down until I have made a hole in the wall that is big enough so that I can easily see into the next room.
It’s a larger room than the one I’m in. I’d guess its original purpose is another bedroom. But, like the room I’m being kept in, while the walls are plastered and painted, the floor is concrete, and there is no furniture. A work in progress. Still, it is space, it is air that is less putrid than that which I’ve been breathing. I move as close to the new room as the chain will allow and breathe deeply. I sob with relief and delight, but I’m too dehydrated for there to be any actual tears. My chest lurches up and down, dry heaving. I am so relieved to have this progress. I can’t go anywhere, even if I make the hole bigger—I am still chained so can’t crawl through it—but it feels like I’ve done something, changed something. I feel some control and maybe even hope.
That feeling increases as I see past the hole I have made there is a small window and it is wide open. I stare at it amazed. I take a moment, a beat. Compute everything this means. I stand up and move about as much as I can. I see that I am high up.
Oh God.
I can see a river, houses, some blocks of flats. It’s dark in both the room I’m in and the one I’m looking through and I’m at a distance from the window but even so, I think I know where I am. I recognize the view. I may not be as high up, but I think I am in my own apartment building. I am almost certain.
Daan.
My head is fuzzy now. Memories, thoughts, reasons are loose, scattered. I’m losing my grip.
I freeze for a moment. Not sure if I am devastated or relieved. There couldn’t have been good news. Whichever one I discovered was responsible for this would have broken my heart. At least this way the boys are safe; their father is not a madman. Daan, of course. I understand. More than anyone probably.
I needed something of my own. I wanted someone to love me more than anyone else. It’s not an excuse, but it is my explanation. My mother loved my father most. When he left, she seemed to step out of the world. Or at least step away from me. My father loved his new wife and new sons more than he loved me. He didn’t even love me enough to disguise the fact. Mark loves his children most. My children love their dead mother. That is the hardest—dead people are easy to love and impossible to compete with.
Having a favorite child is frowned upon. Poor parenting. The goal is to love them equally, even if it is differently.
I love Seb because when I am around him, I can soften, I can be still, peaceful, complete. He makes me laugh out loud. I’m always throwing my hand over my mouth and erupting into the sort of laughter that ultimately makes my ribs ache. He’s funny, irreverent, fast.
I love Oli because he is a challenge. He doesn’t care whether he makes me laugh or not, but I care whether I can draw a smile from his handsome full lips, whether I can ease out a grunt of approval. If I can lessen his seemingly endless mistrust of the world, his pain.
I love both my boys equally. No favorites. Any right-thinking parent would rather die than admit to having a favorite.
And my men? My husbands? It is the same with them.
Thoughts whirl in and out of my head as my eyes rest on the chaos and rubble at my feet.
I wanted to be loved exclusively. Daan loves me more than he loves anyone else. Daan loves me so much, but what did I offer him? Not the same singularity, not exclusivity. Of course, it is Daan who brought me to this, Daan is not a man who would accept sharing.
Nor is he a man who will forgive.
At least my boys are safe. If Daan is the madman, not Mark.
My instinct is to yell for help, but I doubt I’ll be heard on the street even through an open window, not from this height. I’m more likely to be heard by Daan, who is presumably close by. I pick up a piece of plasterboard and throw it toward the window. My aim is off, it hits the wall. I bend, pick up another piece and try again, this time it falls short. However, the third piece of debris sails out of the window. The relief is enormous. It isn’t a big piece, but I imagine it falling to the ground, maybe even landing on or near a passerby. They’ll look up and wonder where it has come from. Excited, I reach for another piece of plasterboard. I throw that, it flies. The next doesn’t and I’m bitten by a sense of panic. I know I have to stay calm and focus. Systematically I hurl the pieces of debris out of the window. Eight, nine, ten scraps hit the mark and find freedom. I continue to break pieces of plaster from the wall and hurl them out the window. I imagine the debris collecting in a pile on the pavement below. Surely someone will notice that. Alfonso the concierge won’t like a mess around the building, he’ll want to investigate. The hole in the wall is now sizeable—I’ve snapped off every part I can reach. I’m getting tired and more of the debris is missing the target of the window and just coming to rest somewhere in the other room. My hands are cut, scratched, bleeding.
I need water.
I slump down against the radiator again and wait.
As the day leaks away, the cold night air comes through the window and hole in the wall and chills me. I try to wrap my arms around myself to keep warm, but it’s uncomfortable because of the chain and the injuries. I carefully tuck both hands between my thighs instead. My fingers are freezing but trying to warm them leaves them smelling of my shit. I sit in silence. And wait.
But waiting is not enough. I have to do more. My progress with the wall has given me some hope. I have to keep trying. I slam my chain against the radiator. It makes a clanking sound in the room. Maybe the sound will somehow reverberate through the pipes of the building. The sort of neighbors I have will not like being disturbed—they will investigate. I slam the chain again. Crash. And again. Clatter. And again. Clang.