The Butterfly Effect (21 page)

I can’t let him know I suspect anything, so I carry on tidying up and then I apparently kick over the bin by mistake, so the contents spill out beside the bed and I have to pick them up. As I do, I pop the crackers under the duvet and hope this won’t have been noticed. If he says anything tomorrow, I will know for certain I am being watched. This is not a comfortable thought, but now I wonder if it was the same in my flat. I wonder if I have been watched for some time, and although Nat’s motives may have been laudable, suddenly I feel creepy all over again.

I finish tidying, then I go into the bathroom and wash and brush my teeth. Now I have another problem. Normally, I would remove at least some of my clothes, and there are even pyjamas in the wardrobe if I want them, but the prospect of undressing with hidden cameras trained upon me makes me think again, so I turn off the light, slip out of my jeans and jump into bed still wearing my T-shirt. If Nat is watching he will have had a brief glimpse of my pants, but I don’t think that is the object anyway. It is an obsessive and unhealthy interest in my safety, but I don’t think he is a voyeur.

I lie still for a moment, then I move one of the crackers up the bed with my foot, slowly, until it is in within reach of my hand. Now I can work on it, and I detach the foil from the cardboard tube at one end and carefully extricate the strip. I have no idea what makes it crack when it is pulled apart, but it might be useful at some point, so I reach down and tuck it inside the elasticated edge of the mattress cover. I post the paper and cardboard under the bed, from where I can retrieve it later, but keep the gift. It is round and hard, and I bring it up close to my chest so I can look down at it. I can just about see that it is a tiny mirror in a plastic case – the sort you might keep in a handbag – and I am delighted with this. Nat must have been unaware of the quality of the gifts inside these crackers, as I repeat the exercise with the second one, and that presents me with a miniature screwdriver set. There are four of them, and they are not big enough to be any use on the furniture in this room, but I have them now and I did not have them before. That is what being here is doing to me – I look at everything and wonder how it might help me.

I tuck them under my pillow. It’s pretty dark in here, so I doubt the camera will have picked anything up unless it’s infra-red. I’m hoping I won’t need to think like this for much longer. I’m hoping Nat will see sense and let me go, but I am a prisoner regardless of who my gaoler is, and I can’t help thinking like one.

It’s light outside and, incredibly, I appear to have slept quite well. I suppose exhaustion takes over, eventually. I’m beginning to get a sense of time without clocks or watches and my guess is that it has been light for at least an hour, so that would make it about 9 o’clock.

I can remember the change that seemed to happen over the Christmas holidays. In December, I’d leave the flat in darkness, it would still be dark when I arrived at school and dark by the time I got home. But once the new term started, I would see the grey light appearing over the rooftops as I pulled into the car park and it would be light by the time the students started to saunter in. I lie back and wonder if I will ever have those times back again, and then I get a huge rush of anxiety as it all comes flooding back. Nat, and what he has done. Nat’s mental health, which is clearly fragile and upon which everything depends. I resolve to do nothing to upset him today, to act as if I am some sort of a guest and happy to be here. That will not be easy, but I have to keep him on side.

Then I think of the cameras. I have no proof that I am correct, but today I will act as if every movement is being watched. If he is sitting at home monitoring me on his laptop, then I want him to see how sensible I am, how rounded, how unlikely to do anything dangerous or rash. I am not sure what such a person would look like, given the lack of opportunity to do anything other than stay within these four walls, but I will have to dredge up some method-acting skills from somewhere in my Drama A-level and do my best. Certainly I will have to eschew any ranting or hammering on the door today, however much I may feel like it.

On the other hand, I don’t want him to know that I know, so I will have to be careful. For example, it would be very tempting to get my clothes and dress under the duvet, but that would not look normal, so I have to think this through. I could be wrong, but I suspect the cameras are confined to this room, as there would be the constant risk of them steaming up in the bathroom and he didn’t go in there with his phone. That means that my only alternative is to take a shower, and the very prospect of that makes my heart thump. I have not summoned up the courage to return to that claustrophobic cubicle since the first day, and have managed with all-over washes, but I’m sure it would be a sensible idea in more ways than one. I haven’t been so long without a shower since the last time I went to Glastonbury, but that was different. It was all part of the experience.

So, I appear to have resolved to chance it. Nat won’t be at work, so he could arrive at any time, but I still have trouble thinking of him as a physical risk. No, the greatest risk I face is him going completely off the rails and disappearing. He has shown no sign of anything else. So I climb out of bed and choose some clean clothes from the wardrobe, taking the opportunity to hide the mirror and screwdrivers in a couple of socks as I do. Even the jeans will need changing today. My last link with my own life, my own flat, but if I am going to appear to be calm and matter of fact, wearing dirty clothes is not going to add to that impression.

I take the clothes through into the tiny bathroom and shower quickly. I know that I would not normally choose to dress in such a confined space, but I hope Nat will not think anything of it. Now I am safely back in the room, feeling better for being clean. I make some toast and coffee, sit at the desk as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and eat every last crumb. So far, so good, but now there is another problem. Apart from rinsing out my plate and mug and stowing them away in the cupboard, there is nothing left for me to do. How can I demonstrate my acceptance of this situation by sitting on the bed?

I think about what I would do if I was back at the flat. That makes me sad, but I force myself to concentrate. Apart from trawling through stalking websites on my laptop, or following the online lives of my ex-friends, how would I fill my time? Well, for a start, there would be washing to do, and Nat will know that if he has been watching me in the flat. So I go to the wardrobe and pull the pile of dirty clothes onto the floor, where I separate it into lights and darks, just as I would at home. I don’t have a washing machine, but I can talk to Nat about that later, as the basin is too small for anything other than underwear. I put the two piles back into the wardrobe and sit down again. That must have taken all of five minutes and I am going to be hard-pressed to fill much of the day in this way, but I go to the bathroom and clean the basin and shower, then I wipe every available surface in the room. I suppose about an hour has passed. Nothing looks especially different, as it was perfectly clean before, but if Nat has been watching, this can’t have failed to impress.

I lie on the bed in what I hope looks like a relaxed pose, and try to rehearse a conversation with Nat. I need to tell him that I have been thinking very seriously whilst he has been away and that I have realised he is right. Of course I need to stay here for a while, so I can be completely safe. Greg does not know I am here, so none of his efforts will be rewarded and there will be the double benefit of me having a complete break from the stress of it. If I carry on like this I will almost convince myself, but really all I want to do is close my own front door behind me. The vision of that is so intense that it brings a lump to my throat.

I don’t know why I suddenly remember the envelope hidden away in the wardrobe. I was thinking about something completely different, but it just popped into my head. I can’t go and get it, not now, but that does not stop me exploring it and the link with this house. Am I in London? How could I tell? If only I knew the place better, but I have only ever been to Oxford Street and Covent Garden for the shops and to Leicester Square for the theatre. I think about how silly that is, when I live within such an easy distance, and I think about Nat, whose work takes him all over the country. He is so well-travelled. He even had a house here once, didn’t he?

That’s when it hits me. For someone who is supposed to be reasonably intelligent, I have been very slow on the uptake. Of course, this is Nat’s house! The one he inherited from his aunt. I remember him telling me about his Great Aunt Ellen, and what was the name on the envelope? Mrs E Bellingham, that’s what it was. I can see it, see the faded blue handwriting, old-fashioned and curly.

It’s all so obvious now! How else would he be able to keep me here without anyone knowing? How else could he fit it out with all these things? He must have had some help getting the fridge-freezer up the stairs, but it would be easy enough to hire a man with a van and tell him some story about a student let. So he never sold the house after all and, it seems, there are no tenants living here either, or they would have heard me shouting and crying. That means he has been keeping it empty for some time, and I can’t see why he would do that. Maybe he had trouble selling it, but that does not seem likely. A house in Camden? It would sell in no time, and that makes me worry, as it could be that he kept it empty for a reason. Did he foresee the day when he would have to take me away for my own safety, as he saw it? Is this madness of his longer term?

This is all too unsettling, so I rise and make myself a cheese sandwich. There are no more cartons of soup, and he obviously does not trust me to have tins, with their sharp-edged lids, so I force myself to sit there and eat it as if it is a nice little deli sandwich I have popped out to buy. It’s amazing the pleasure you can get from a fantasy and this miserable offering has also generated a little more washing up, a few crumbs to wipe away, a few more aimless minutes used up in this pretence that my life has become.

It is actually a relief when I hear the lock turn, although I nearly jump out of my skin and hope Nat doesn’t spend too long reviewing this footage when he gets home. That was hardly the action of the chilled-out friend and visitor I am trying to portray. However, I manage to calm myself by the time the door opens, and there he is. Casual but smart, looking exactly like my old Nat, the one I could rely on, the one who was the most sane and sensible person I knew. Could this all be a mistake? Have I somehow got it wrong? But I don’t think so, as he has already locked the door and put the key away in his pocket, and that is not the action of a man in full possession of his senses. Not when it’s his friend he is locking in, and she wants to go home.

I switch on my smile. I must not show any of the tension I feel, so I talk at the same time, but I’m rushing it, I can tell. There is no cool box today, instead he is carrying a sports bag, and he looks around for somewhere to put it, deciding on the space between the wardrobe and the door. He sees my eyes looking at it but he says nothing, takes off his coat and lays it on the bed, at the bottom. By that time, my speech has dried up. Whatever I was saying, he wasn’t listening properly anyway, and I am conscious of appearing like a puppy desperate for some attention from its owner when he or she returns to the house. If I had a tail, it would be tucked between my legs but twitching hopefully and this is not how I want to appear. So I stop hovering around him and go to sit on the bed.

“Did you sleep well?” he asks. I don’t have to lie on this occasion and I tell him I did.

“I’ve also had quite a long time to think,” I add, hoping that he will say something about all the domestic duties I’ve been engaged in, and thus confirm my fears about hidden cameras. But he sits on the single chair and says nothing, merely arching one eyebrow, so I continue.

“Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, and I know I must have appeared a bit negative, but now I see you are right. If I stay here, not only will I be safe and Greg will be isolated, but I will also have a complete break from the stress of it. It will be like a holiday. I was thinking about planning one, but this is even better, as I don’t have to worry about whether he will follow me.”

“Exactly,” he says, in that voice that says ‘why did it take you so long’. My antennae are up, feeling the air, sensing the atmosphere. Is it working? Does he believe me?

Of course it is far too early to say. It will take a lot longer before he will completely trust me again, and then goodness knows how long to persuade him, one tiny step at a time. I have to work hard not to be discouraged, as in my waking dreams he was practically ready to release me there and then, but I imagine I am on a frozen pond, trying to get to the other side. The ice is very thin in places, so I have to choose each step with care and sometimes I have to stop, go back, or slither forward on my stomach, testing out the ice with my hands in front of me. That is how careful I need to be.

There is a space between us. Not much of a physical space – that’s only a matter of a metre or so – but a yawning great chasm in our conversation. We used to chat away for hours, but then I remember that the subject was either Greg or how we could defeat him. Now, with me here, we don’t need to talk about that with such urgency. However, we can’t sit here like this, like two people who met once at some function and have been thrown together by circumstance, neither with any desire to talk to the other. There is a danger that he will give up and go, and then I don’t know how long it might be before he comes back. I can’t persuade him that I have changed if he’s not here, so I ask him about the house.

He doesn’t seem to mind that I have guessed whose house it was and remembered roughly where it is. Of course I don’t tell him about the envelope, but I appear to have developed a sudden and intense interest in property development and try to engage him in telling me his plans. Then I remember the sad and awkward conversation we had when I first heard about the house, when he was talking about buying locally, and I have an idea. It is not a very nice idea, as it involves playing upon his loneliness and his desire to look after me, but in the circumstances, that is the least of my worries.

“Have you ever thought of converting this place into flats?” I ask.

He tells me it is already converted into a ground floor and first floor flat and that both are empty, so I make my eyes grow wide and try to sound excited.

“Really? That’s interesting. It’s just that I had an idea – tell me if it’s crazy – but I was thinking, why don’t I move here permanently? We could do up the flats – if they need it, of course – and live in one each, like you suggested before.”

I stop, trying to read his face for a clue to his reaction, but Nat can hide his feelings very well, and he isn’t giving anything away, so I feel I have no choice but to continue.

“How big are they?” I ask. “Maybe you could show me around sometime, not now of course, but are they two-bedroom flats? What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out, renovating them that is,” he says. “I have always intended to sell them, as I told you, but I never got round to it, what with all the time I’ve spent round at yours.”

“Oh, Nat, I’m so sorry! I know it’s been such a tie for you, and I must seem like such an idiot, throwing it all away for no reason, but I am serious about it now. I am going to listen to everything you say. Will you think about my idea?”

He says he will. Not with a great deal of enthusiasm, but I do sense a slight thaw in the atmosphere, so I make us both a drink and we sit there in a slightly less difficult silence until I have another idea. I need to make the option of returning to my flat seem more appealing than sitting here, so I ask if he has watched any good films recently, ask about the Christmas TV programmes, talk about films we have watched together. I am trying to conjure up the picture of the two of us snuggled up together on my sofa – not cuddling, we never did that – but both in the same space. It actually makes me sad to remember it, as I know it can never be like that again, even when he is better. How can I ever feel the same about a man who waited for me in my own back yard, who held a cloth impregnated with what I assume must have been chloroform over my nose and mouth, then further sedated me so that I slept long enough to be transported here? No, those days are gone, regardless of what happens with Greg, but he must not know that.