Perhaps that was the dynamic that Simon always wanted.
Anna knows to play nice, stay soft, loving—that is her only value here, the only thing keeping her alive.
She listens attentively when he talks to her, she lets him kiss her, fuck her; and she kisses him back as if she means it.
She has become very good at dissociating, playing her role. There are no visible seams in her performance. She has tried fighting him and the situation, and it always, always ends badly for her.
Melissa’sfate, what he did toher,is no longer a secret between him and Anna. He talks about Melissa openly now. And Anna knows what her fate will be ifshechooses to “end” their relationship.
Sometimes Simon does not talk to her when he comes, he merely dumps a bag of supplies, and leaves; this scares her more than when he stays, because she knows he will eventually get bored of dropping off supplies and she will no longer be required.
But that time has not come yet.
Sometimes he stays for hours, to talk, or cry, in long, rambling, apologetic speeches. She listens and holds him through it because that is her function, trapped forever in this confessional booth where she can’t ever judge or leave.
She knows no one is looking for her by now, apart from whoever owns the cat, and that to everyone she knew she has already slipped off the face of the earth; the next step into oblivion would simply be a question of logistics for Simon.
She knows, because he reminds her, how easily she disappeared and that all she has is him.
She fantasizes about ways to kill Simon. The edge of a can, ground glass in a drink. But the last attempt didn’t work, when she waited until he fell asleep after fucking her and hit him hard in the skull with the cistern lid. Head bleeding, he broke her leg and her collarbone, split her lip, and disappeared for a week.
It was very hard to convince him she was sorry, that it was a moment of madness, that she still loved him. Very, very hard.
She knows there will only ever be one more chance. She won’t survive another “almost.”
After last time she couldn’t stand properly for two months, her leg broken or fractured—without an X-ray, there was no way to know. But she healed, even if she walks with a limp.
She tried everything to escape in the early days: every method, every loophole, the door, the window, him; she screamed herself hoarse. When she smashed the window, he threatened to brick it up but she knew she’d go mad without being able to see outside. Her only view of the world was through that thin strip of glass that looked out onto a beautiful sheltered garden. No one heard her screams, anyway. She’s stayed alive this long by knowing how to read the room.
And now she knows she was right: if she had kept trying the window, she wouldn’t have one now for a cat to get in.
Simon doesn’t appear to have any suspicion, or if he does, then he’s gotten very good at hiding it.
His recent visits have been blessedly uneventful. He has not been intimate with her, though he has been in high spirits. Anna can’t help but wonder if he knows about the cat or if he has met someone else and if either means her time is nearly up and someone else will be brought down here.
Anna doesn’t know where this basement room is; all she knows is that this is definitely not Simon’s basement, that was a brick-lined wine cellar—besides, the garden view here is different.
If her three-day estimate is still correct, Simon is due here today. Sometimes he comes in the daytime, sometimes late into the night, waking her. She never knows.
The cat has not come back, even though she recorded the video two days ago now. She tells herself they are coming, they are trying to track her down, combing the surrounding streets and basements. She can only hope Simon doesn’t notice, doesn’t hear, or ask, or find out what is happening, but worries surface, as the hours bleed on, that no one is looking, no one is coming.
Someone must have seen the recording, she tells herself.
But the police are not smashing down her door, they are not spilling into her room, to wrap her in blankets, and tell her it’s all going to be okay as they lead her up to the daylight.
There is a chance that no one has even seen what she recorded. There’s a chance no one will watch back the cat’s footage unless he goes missing and they need to find him.
If the cat returns, then she needs to keep him here, she realizes, because then someone will come looking for him, and they will find her.
Anna thinks of the cat: his soft blue-gray fur, his round face and warm amber eyes, how he fearlessly jumped down into the basement. She fed him a precious can of her tuna so he would stay and keep her company. His warmth, his trust, the living, breathing presence of him were enough to give her fresh hope.
She’d scratched her plea for help into his collar, with the bent edge of a tin lid, a desperate afterthought, before shooing him away, terrified of Simon arriving and finding him.
She knew, of course, what an incredible long shot it was—but it wassomethingto do in a world of very limited options.
And then, like a miracle, the beautiful cat returned a day later and she had needed to shoo him away to save being caught. Then he returned again on the fifth day and she had found the camera around his neck.The live camera.
Someone saw her words, she knew it; someone was trying to help her.
