‘Very. I tried to coach her. Told her to bide her time. Go along with Justin’s demands.’
‘Demands?’ I hold my breath, waiting for the answer. The thought of my sister being drugged and murdered is one thing. The thought that she was sexually abused by this pervert would break me.
‘Not physically. No. Nothing like that. He’s never done anything like that. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in that fucked-up brain of his, but I think he’s carrying out some sort of study. Some kind of experiment. Mind games.’ She huffs. ‘I don’t know. Fuelling his ego. Trying to make us wholly dependent on him. He’ll starve you. Leave you in the dark. That sort of stuff. I don’t think Daisy met the profile of what he was looking for.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘There was another girl before Daisy. Zita. She and I had very similar backgrounds. No parents. Both homeless. Lost souls, you could say. No one gave a damn about us. We never even had anyreal friends. If we’d vanished, no one would’ve looked. She was here for ages, longer than me, but she disappeared one night, too. I often wonder if he let her go free. Daisy, on the other hand. She had a family. A boyfriend. People would be looking for her. He read her wrong. She went quickly. She was too much of a risk for him.’
‘How did you end up here?’
‘That’s what we all have in common.A Meeting of Minds. It’s his organisation, a force of goodness open to the masses. It becomes an obsession. Justin seeks out a chosen few and invites them to his private sessions. That’s where he makes his choices.’
‘So he must’ve made a mistake with this Daisy girl,’ I suggest.
‘See, that’s the thing. Daisy was never meant to be at that private session, she told me. She took a friend’s place.’
Layla.
It’s all falling into place. Daisy took Layla’s invite to one of Justin’s private sessions. That woman selling merchandise at the festival told me. That’s how my sister ended up here.
Justin royally screwed up there.
There’s a pause before I ask, ‘So how do we get out of here?’
‘I have a plan.’ She clambers close to the eyehole. ‘You be a good girl. That’s what he wants. Go with his wishes. And then he’ll untie you. Once he disappears, we carry on digging. We’ll make this hole big enough to climb through. When he comes back, we attack the bastard and kill him.’
My heart goes out to this poor girl. There’s no way we can dig our way through this wall. And there’s no way the two of us could overcome that monster of a man.
54
BETH
Justin returns from the shower, his hair still damp. Droplets of water cling to the curve of his throat. I haven’t moved from my spot at the table. I’ve been contemplating my next move. How to extricate myself from this situation.
He walks past me to the fridge. The earthy scent of his aftershave I once found so alluring is cloying. It catches in my throat, making me cough. ‘We need to talk,’ I say.
‘Not now,’ he answers abruptly. ‘Later.’
‘No, Justin. Now. I mean it.’
He can barely give me the time of day. ‘I can’t.’ He opens the fridge, grabs a bottle of sparkling water and unscrews the top. ‘I have things to do.’ He takes a gulp of water, dismisses me with a flap of his hand and marches out of the room.
I follow him, limping, hating him for making me resort to begging him to spare me a minute. Shouting at him clearly hasn’t worked. He slips out of the back door. Blue follows us. ‘Justin. Please!’ I can’t keep up with him. I’m short of breath, and the pain in my leg is too much.
I surrender, withdrawing back indoors, out of the unbearable heat. Blue looks from me to Justin and back to me, as if unsure what to do. ‘Go,’ I encourage him. ‘Go with Daddy.’
The rage burning through me fires me enough to get upstairs. I head for the spare room, where I drag a cabin bag out from under the bed. It’s such an effort, but he has left me with no choice. It’s all over. I can’t stay here any longer.
I wheel the bag to our bedroom and lift it on to the bed. I unzip it and pack the essentials I need to get by until I can navigate my way out of this mess. I think of Hattie. Poor Hattie. I hate to leave her, but Justin has pushed me to the limits, and I must put myself first if I’m going to survive. I swear this illness and his ways are going to beat me if I don’t do something. I pick up a photo of Connor and me from my bedside cabinet. It’s my favourite one of us, taken in a park one summer afternoon when he was ten. I wrap it in a dress inside the bag. It’s the only photo I want to take with me.
Getting downstairs with the bag is a struggle. A pain in my chest now mirrors that in my leg. I’m getting weaker by the day. I stop every couple of steps to catch my breath, rasping. I’m making the right decision here. I should’ve done this years ago.
I find my phone in the kitchen and order an Uber to take me to the station. I don’t know where I’m heading. I have nowhere to go. Justin has made sure of that along the way. I’ll get on the first available train and see where it takes me. It doesn’t matter. I study the Uber app. Nine minutes, and I’m out of here.
‘Beth, Beth.’ The familiar sound of Hattie’s demands drift from the living room. I can’t deal with her right now. She appears at the kitchen door. ‘Come and watch a film with me. Please.’ Her voice is verging on a whine.
She won’t let up. The easiest thing for me to do here is to placate her and settle her with something she likes to watch. I glance out of the kitchen window. There’s no sign of Justin. Ipray he stays away until the Uber arrives, and I make my exit. ‘Sure. Sounds fun, Hattie. Let’s do it.’ I’ll slip out once she is engrossed in the film. I’ll be gone in a flash.
