It's always hard to see what isn't there; to notice absence. But the alarm clock was gone from my side of the bed. My wooden box of jewellery was gone too, from the top of the chest of drawers. There wasn't anything valuable in it -just a few earrings, bangles, a couple of necklaces, things given to me over the years but they were mementoes and gifts and could never be replaced.
I opened the drawers. My underwear was gone, except for an old pair of black knickers stuffed at the back. Several of my T-shirts were missing, a couple of pairs of jeans and smarter trousers and at least three of my jumpers, including the expensive one I'd succumbed to in the January sales. I pulled open the wardrobe doors. All of Terry's things were in there, as far as I could see, but some of the hangers on my side were empty. A couple of dresses were missing. My black coat wasn't in the cupboard, or my leather jacket. Neither were most of my shoes just a couple of pairs of sandals and some scuffed trainers remained on the wardrobe floor. Most of my work clothes seemed to be still there, though. I looked around, bewildered, and I saw that some of the missing clothes had been stuffed into a bulging bin-bag at the base of our bed.
'Terry,' I said aloud. 'You bastard.'
I went into the bathroom. The lavatory seat was up and I banged it down. No Tampax, no makeup, no moisturizing cream, no perfume, no body spray, no deodorant. I'd been cleared away. Even my toothbrush was gone. I opened the cabinet. All the first-aid stuff was still there. I unscrewed the bottle of paracetamol and poured two into my palm. I swallowed them without water. My head banged.
This was a dream, I thought. A nightmare, in which I was being rubbed out of my own life. I'd wake up soon. But that was the difficulty where had the nightmare begun, and at which point would I wake? Back in my old life, and nothing had happened and everything was just a feverish concoction inside my head? Back on the ledge, a rag stuffed into my mouth, my mind clouding over, waiting to die? Back in hospital, still thinking the doctors were going to cure me and the police were going to save me?
I went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. While I was waiting for it to boil, I rooted around in the fridge for I was suddenly dizzy with hunger. There wasn't much in there, apart from several bottles of beer and three or four oven-ready meals stacked on top of each other. I made myself a Marmite and lettuce sandwich on white bread, plast icky like the hospital bread, and poured boiling water over a tea bag.
But mid-bite, still standing by the fridge and with a strip of lettuce dangling from my lower lip, a thought came to me. Where was my bag, with my purse, my money, my cards and my keys? I picked up cushions, looked behind coats on hooks, opened drawers. I looked in places it wouldn't be and places I had already searched.
I must have been carrying it when I'd been snatched. Which meant that he had my address, keys, everything, while I had nothing at all. Nothing. I didn't have a single penny. I had been so furious and so ashamed when Dr. Beddoes told me about the 'treatment regime' she was going to begin that would help me to 'move on', I shouted something incoherent at her and said that if she wanted me to listen to a single further word from her or anybody connected with the hospital she would have to have me strapped down and sedated. Then I had marched out of the hospital in the clothes I'd been found in, trying not to let my knees buckle under me, trying not to weep, rant, beg. I'd refused all offers of a lift, some money,
proper explanations, a follow-up session with a psychiatrist, help. I didn't need help. I needed them to catch him and make me safe. And I needed to punch Dr. Beddoes in her smug face. I didn't say any more. There was no point. Words had become like vicious traps, springing shut on me. Everything I had said to the police, the doctors and to that fucking Irene Beddoes had been turned against me. I should have taken the money, though.
I didn't want my sandwich any more. I chucked it into the bin, which looked as if it hadn't been emptied since I was last here, and took a sip of cooling tea. I walked over to the window and looked out, pressing my forehead against the icy pane and almost expecting to see him standing there on the pavement below, looking up at me, laughing.
Except I wouldn't know that it was him. He could be anyone. He could be that old man dragging a resistant dachshund with stiff legs, or that young guy with a pony-tail, or that nice-looking father in a bobble hat with a red- cheeked child beside him. There was a thin layer of snow on the trees and on the roofs of houses and cars, and the people who passed were muffled up in thick coats and scarves, and had their heads bent against the cold.
No one raised their heads to see me standing there. I was completely at a loss. I didn't even know what I was thinking. I didn't know what to do next, or whom to turn to for help. I didn't know what help I would be asking for: tell me what happened, tell me what to do, tell me who I am, tell me where to go from here, only tell me .. .
I shut my eyes and tried for the thousandth time to remember something, anything. Just a tiny chink of light in the darkness would do. There was no light, and when I opened my eyes again I was staring once more into the street, made unfamiliar by winter.
I went to the phone and dialled Terry's number at work. It rang and rang. I tried his mobile number and got voice mail
'Terry,' I said. 'Terry, it's me. Abbie. I urgently need to speak to you.'
I phoned Sadie's number next, but only got an answering-machine and I didn't want to leave a message. I thought about calling Sheila and Guy but then I would have to explain it all and I didn't want to do that, not now.
I had imagined coming home and telling my story. Friends would sit round me with wide eyes, listening. It would be a horror story with a happy ending, a story of despair, then hope; of ultimate triumph. I would be a kind of heroine, because I'd survived and was telling them the tale. The awfulness of what had happened would be redeemed by the ending. What could I say now? The police think I'm lying. They think I made it all up. I know about suspicion: it spreads. It is like an ugly stain.
What do you do when you're feeling lost, angry, depressed, scared, a bit ill and very cold? I ran a bath, very hot and deep, and took all my clothes off. I looked at myself in the mirror. There were hollows in my cheeks and my buttocks; my pelvic bones and my ribs jutted out sharply. I was a stranger to myself. I stood on the scales that were under the sink: I'd lost over a stone.
I lowered myself into the scalding water, held my nostrils together between finger and thumb, took a deep breath and disappeared under the surface completely. When I finally emerged, spluttering into the steamed-up air, someone was shouting. They were shouting at me. I blinked and a face came furiously into focus.
'Terry!' I said.
'What the fuck do you think you're doing in there? Have you gone mad?'
He was still in his thick jacket and his face was blotchy with cold. I pinched my nose and slid under the water again, to shut out the sight of him, to stop the voice that was calling me mad.
Two
I scrambled out of the bath with Terry glaring at me, wrapped myself in a towel, and went into the bedroom. I grabbed clothes from wherever I could find them a pair of old jeans from the bin-bag, an itchy, dark-blue sweater from the drawer, some scuffed trainers, that old pair of scrunched-up black knickers. At least they were clean. On the shelf above the bath I found a hair band so I was able to tie up my wet hair with trembling hands.
Terry was sitting in the wicker chair in the corner of the living room. In the wicker chair I'd bought in a second-hand shop in the high street one rainy Sunday morning. I'd even carried it back myself, using it as an umbrella. He leant forward and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. The ashtray I'd taken with me as a souvenir from a cafe where I'd once waitressed. He took another cigarette from the packet lying on the table and lit it. With his copper hair, his pale skin, he looked beautiful, the Terry I had first met. It was when he started to talk that problems began.
'Aren't you going to ask me if I'm all right?' I said. Though, of course, it was too late for that. If I had to ask him to ask me, it wasn't going to work as an expression of concern. Like when you ask someone if they love you if you have to ask them, they don't. Or not enough. Not the way you want them to.
'What?' he said. He made it sound more like a statement than a question.
'What's going on?'
'That's what I want to know. You look dreadful. And that cut .. . What's wrong with you?'
'You know I've been in hospital?'
He took a long slow drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke slowly, savouring it, as if it was of far more interest than I was. There were two bad-tempered Terrys. There was angry,
shouty Terry. The one I'd briefly glimpsed in the bathroom. And there was quiet, calm, sarcastic Terry, the one sitting in the wicker chair smoking his cigarette.
