Page 26 of Behind Closed Doors
‘Yes, Millie. She fits all my requirements perfectly. In another sixteen months, she’ll be mine and I’ll finally be able to have what I’ve had to deny myself for so long. Nobody, only you, will ever miss her. Not that I intend to kill her—I made that mistake once before.’
I leapt to my feet. ‘Do you honestly think I’ll let you harm a hair on Millie’s head?’
‘If I really wanted to, do you honestly think you’d be able to stop me?’ I ran towards the door. ‘It’s locked,’ he said, sounding bored.
‘Help!’ I yelled, hammering on the door with my fist. ‘Help!’
‘Do that one more time and you’ll never see Millie again!’ he barked. ‘Come back and sit down.’
Beside myself with fear, I carried on hammering on the door, screaming for help.
‘I’m warning you, Grace. Remember what I told you about putting Millie in an asylum? Do you know how easily I can arrange it?’ He snapped his fingers together. ‘This fast.’
I spun round to face him. ‘My parents would never let that happen!’
‘Do you really see them rushing over from their cosy lives in New Zealand to rescue her and take her back to live with them? I think not. There is no one, Grace, no one to save Millie, not even you.’
‘I’m her legal guardian!’ I cried.
‘So am I, and I have the paper to prove it.’
‘I would never agree for her to be put away!’
‘But what if you were also proved to be of unsound mind? As your husband, I would then be responsible for both you and Millie and could do as I wished.’ He indicated the door. ‘Be my guest—carry on banging on the door and screaming for help. It lays the foundation for your madness.’
‘You’re the one who’s mad,’ I hissed.
‘Obviously.’ He stood up, walked over to the bedside table, yanked the phone from its socket, took a penknife from his pocket and cut through the cord. ‘I’m going to give you a little time by yourself to mull over what I’ve said and, when I come back, we’ll talk again. Come and sit on the bed.’
‘No.’
‘Don’t be tiresome.’
‘You’re not keeping me locked up in here!’
He walked over to where I was standing. ‘I don’t want to have to hurt you, for the simple reason that I might not be able to stop. But I will if I have to.’ He raised his arms and, thinking he was going to hit me, I flinched. ‘And if you were to die, where would that leave Millie?’
I felt his hands on my shoulders and went rigid with fear, expecting them to move to my neck. Instead, he manoeuvred me roughly to the bed and pushed me onto it. As relief washed over me that he hadn’t strangled me, that I was still alive, the sound of the door opening spurred me from the bed. But, before I could get there, he slipped through it and, as it closed behind him, I beat my fists against it, calling for him to let me out. Hearing his footsteps disappearing down the corridor, I yelled for help over and over again. But nobody came and, distraught, I sank to the floor and wept.
It took me a while to pull myself together. I got to my feet and went over to the sliding doors that led onto the balcony, but no matter how hard I tugged on them I couldn’t get them to open. Craning my neck, I looked out over the balcony, but all I could see was blue sky and the roofs of some buildings. Our room was on the sixth floor at the end of a long corridor, which meant there was no neighbouring room on one side. Going over to the other wall, I knocked on it hard several times, but, when there was no corresponding knock back, I guessed that most people were out sightseeing, because it was mid-afternoon.
Needing to do something, I turned my attention to our cases on the bed and began to rummage through them, looking for anything that would help me get out of the room. But there was nothing. Both my tweezers and nail scissors had disappeared. I had no idea how Jack had managed to get them out of my wash bag without me seeing but as it had been in the hold, in my case, I could only presume he had removed them before we left England, probably at the hotel while I’d been in the bathroom. Fresh tears sprang to my eyes at the thought that less than twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been looking forward to starting married life with no inkling of the horror ahead.
Fighting down the panic that threatened to overwhelm me, I forced myself to think rationally about what I could do. Until I heard someone coming back to the room next door, there was little point trying to attract their attention by knocking on the wall. I thought about pushing a note under the door and out into the hall in the hope that someone coming back to a room further down the corridor would see it and be curious enough to come and read it. But my pen had gone from my bag, as had my eye pencils and lipsticks. Jack had pre-empted my every move.
I began to search the room frantically, looking for something—anything—that could help. But there was nothing. Defeated, I sat down on the bed. If I hadn’t been able to hear the sounds of doors opening and closing elsewhere in the hotel, I would have thought it deserted, yet comforting though those sounds were, the sense of disorientation I felt was frightening. I found it hard to believe that what was happening to me was real and it crossed my mind that maybe I was caught up in some warped television show where people were put into terrible situations while the world watched to see how they coped.
For some reason, imagining that I was watching myself on screen, and that millions of people were also watching me, allowed me to take a step back and look at my options objectively. I knew that if I thought about the terrible story Jack had told me I wouldn’t be able to hang on to the relative calm I had managed to achieve. So, instead, I lay down on the bed and channelled my thoughts towards what I would do when Jack came back, what I would say to him, how I would act. I could feel myself falling asleep and, although I tried to fight it, the next time I opened my eyes it was already dark and I realised I had slept for some time. The noise of the busy nightlife from the streets below told me it was the evening and I got up from the bed and went over to the door.
I don’t know why—maybe because I was still drowsy—but I found myself instinctively turning the handle. When I realised that it turned easily, and that the door wasn’t locked, I was so shocked it took me a while to react. As I stood there, trying to work it out, it dawned on me that I hadn’t actually heard him lock the door. I had simply presumed that he had so I hadn’t tried to open it. Nor, I realised, had he said that he was going to lock me in; I had come to that conclusion all on my own. When I remembered how I had panicked, how I had hammered on the door and knocked on the wall, I felt both stupid and ashamed, imagining Jack laughing as he walked away.
Tears of fury pricked my eyelids. Blinking them back angrily, I reminded myself that as he had my passport and purse, I was still, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner. But at least I could get out of the room.
Opening the door quietly, terrified that I might find Jack standing outside waiting to pounce, I forced myself to look out into the corridor. Finding it empty, I turned back into the room, found my shoes, retrieved my handbag from the floor and left. As I ran towards the lift, the thought that I might find Jack standing there when the lift doors opened made me decide to take the stairs. I ran down them two at a time, hardly able to believe that I had wasted precious hours thinking I was locked in. When I got to the lobby and found it busy with people, the sense of relief was incredible. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I walked quickly over to the reception desk, where Jack and I had checked in only hours before, glad that my nightmare was over.
‘Good evening, can I help you?’ The young girl behind the desk smiled at me.
‘Yes, please, I would like you to telephone the British Embassy,’ I said, forcing myself to speak calmly. ‘I need to get back to England and I’ve lost my passport and money.’
