My throat is dry and scratchy. It hurts but not as much as the thought: he used to make me feel safe. Is that why Santa is shaking his head? Is he sad too?
I crawl around the room to see if anything has been delivered. Close to the door, there is a tray with a chicken sandwich, an apple, water. When did that arrive? I don’t know. I hate myself for not checking sooner. It might have been there for a while, maybe even before I started pulling down the wall. I could have helped myself sooner. Or have I been asleep again, did it just come? I don’t know. I’m scared about how many things I have no idea about. I drink the water. Sips. Sips. I know that now. Three trays in a week? Careful. Careful. Slowly, I start to eat. Chewing every mouthful as if it were my last. Because it might be.
I am alone. It should be a relief. I suppose I have some chance of escaping if I’m not guarded. If I can work my way free of the chain, if I can break down the door, if I can stand by the window and call for help. But I’ve had those ideas for days now. It is impossible. I am not getting out of here unless someone gets me out. So somehow the aloneness is terrifying. What if he never comes back? What if there is no more water or food? I stop eating. I have to ration. The thought makes me want to cry. I’m so hungry I could die.
I might very well die.
36
Fiona
Fiona rings the bell. Mark almost instantly flings open the door—he must have been waiting for her. She imagines him crouched in the hall, ready to pounce. Not on her exactly, but on the information she brings. He has a near-empty wineglass in his hand and a sharp, shrill energy about him.
Not standing on ceremony, she steps inside, slips off her jacket, slings it over the banister. She doesn’t want to be the first to speak because, despite grappling with the problem all the way over here, she still isn’t sure what she’s going to tell him, so she gets her question in first. “Any news?”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard anything from the police?”
Mark shakes his head impatiently, not bothering to conceal his need to know what she has discovered. “So? Did you go to see him?”
“I did.”
“What’s he like?”
She doubts she can tell him. But then, can she afford to lie to him? It’s likely to come out at some point anyway, now she’s spoken to that officer. It is best he hears it from her.
“He’s everything you might imagine him to be,” she admits with a sigh.
“How do I know we imagine the same thing of him? I imagine him to be arrogant, slick, supercilious.”
Fiona nods. “Yes, he’s those things. To an extent.” She glances about her, buying time. “Where are the boys?”
Mark looks a little surprised to be asked, as though he hasn’t thought about them for a while. “They are staying overnight at their aunt’s house. She’s going to drive them home tomorrow. She didn’t give a time.”
“You’ve been on your own all afternoon?”
Mark shrugs. “Where am I going to go?” Suddenly, he seems to remember that they are hovering awkwardly in the hallway and that he is holding a wineglass. “I’ve a bottle open, join me?”
“Yes, please.”
Fiona follows Mark into the kitchen. She takes advantage of the fact he is busy finding her a glass and filling it, therefore not staring at her intently as he was when he first opened the door. She garbles, “Look, Mark, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“About Daan Janssen?”
“Yes.”
“Do you suspect him of hurting her?” He immediately sets down the bottle, glares at her. The brief liberation from his intense need to know what she is struggling to tell sputters and dies.
Fiona reaches for the wine bottle, fills up both glasses, takes a sip and a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
Mark looks something approaching excited. “But maybe and you’ve only just met him, yet you have your suspicions of him. That’s something. That’s huge.”
“Well, that’s just it. I haven’t only just met him. I’ve actually dated him. I knew him before.”
“What?” Confusion floods Mark’s face.
Fiona rushes on. “Obviously, I didn’t know he was married and even if I suspected he was, I certainly did not think it was to Leigh. How would I know that?”
Mark, normally so tanned and robust-looking, turns pale, she thinks she can see through him to the wall behind where the kitchen knives are displayed on a magnetic block. “I don’t understand. When did you date him? I don’t remember you ever talking about dating a Dutch millionaire.”
“Well, I don’t tell you all about everyone I date. I do have a private life.” Fiona knows she sounds defensive and more importantly she is not being honest with him or herself. She sighs and gestures toward the sitting room. “It’s a long story, can we sit somewhere comfortable?” She feels she might collapse.
They sit at either end of the couch and she tells him about the dates she had with Daan Janssen. It’s humiliating, far from her finest hour, so she is vague. So vague Mark is eventually compelled to ask, “So did you have sex with him? Look, I don’t want to be indelicate here, Fiona, but I need to know what sort of bloke Leigh was mixed up with.”
Fiona blushes, it feels very close to the conversation she had with the police officer. Why is everyone so obsessed with whether they had sex? She knows she is being disingenuous. Sex is nothing. Sex is everything. Sex disrupts.
Detonates.
“Yeah, we are adults, we had adult dates. For God’s sake, Mark, what do you want me to say?”
“So, this man was betraying her? He’s not to be trusted.”
Even though she has just called the police, pointing out the same, she wants to appear composed, reasonable in front of Mark. “Well, he wasn’t faithful, but that doesn’t mean he’s responsible for her disappearance. It’s dangerous to jump to conclusions.”
Fiona can’t quite read Mark’s face. He seems to be calculating something. Piecing things together. He swallows back the rest of the wine in his glass, bounces out of his seat, goes into the kitchen. Returns with the bottle. Fiona senses he’d like to swill the lot down from the neck, but he shows restraint, shares what’s left between their glasses. “And you knew this straightaway, the moment the police mentioned his name? You knew who he was? You knew it all the time we were looking at his profile and social media accounts?”
Fiona nods, embarrassed. “I didn’t know how to tell you.” She pulls her eyes to meet his. “You needed me. You’ve been hurt so badly by Leigh. I thought I would be twisting a knife.”
“By admitting that not only my wife, but my friend too had been seduced by this Daan Janssen?”
Fiona nods again, contrite. “I am so sorry.”
Mark’s face softens. He realizes that she was simply trying to protect him, trying to be a friend to him. He’s grateful to have someone on his team. “You have to go to the police with this. It will help them understand what sort of man they are dealing with.”
“I’ve already spoken to them.”
This at least pleases him. He nods, allows a smile to slide to parts of his mouth, not a full commitment but some level of grim satisfaction. “Good. Good.”