‘If you need anything else,’ the girl muttered, still staring with disgust at the wine, ‘I’ll be outside.’
She stepped out and shut the door behind her, and Margaret, almost in tears now, slumped down on the bed. This was it, her only chance to escape trickling through her fingers like so many grains of sand.
‘It’s gone. It’s well and truly gone,’ she whispered to herself as the last few drops of the previous day’s optimism fell from her cupped hands and disappeared like water into desert sand. Even the dark dampness of their presence vanished soon enough, leaving behind nothing but crushing despair.
She had no appetite to speak of, so she pushed her plate of food away – the girl had brought this too, without it being ordered – and moved straight to the wine. She didn’t bother with a glass; instead, she put the first bottle to her lips, sucked back a hefty swig and then wiped off her mouth with the back of her hand. A little wine dribbled down her chin, but she didn’t care. She took a breath and then chugged as much as she could, stopping only when she was out of breath, and then slammed the bottle down on the table with a violence born of acidic frustration, after which she cradled her head in her hands.
‘You’ve won, General,’ she muttered sourly. ‘You crazy, murdering, warmongering, psychotic monster, you’ve won. I’m stuck here, at your mercy. Congratulations.’
She looked up, seeing only a sliver of the outside world through the gap between her palms, pressed as they were over her eyes and face, and noticed that the wine bottle was already half empty.
‘Well, there’s a problem I can solve at least,’ she muttered.
She reached out and snatched at the bottle, almost knocking it over in the process and having to fumble with clumsy fingers to prevent it from falling off the table.
‘Damn it! God fucking damn it!’ she suddenly shouted. She had an almost irresistible urge to fling the bottle across the room and see it shatter against the wall where the secret passage was. ‘And what a fat load of good that stupid secret passage did for me,’ she snarled. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere useful! Nothing in this godforsaken place is working for me! Everything is against me, everything!’
She slugged back another quarter of the bottle, knowing that when the alcohol hit it would hit hard and fast, but she didn’t care. Oblivion was what she sought now, and come hell or high water she would have it.
It was as she raised the bottle to her lips to finish the final quarter of the bottle that she heard a familiar knock on the door – a knock that caused her heart to leap into her mouth, both with surprise and with elation.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, stunned. ‘Tesla!’
A flame of hope flared up, burning with welcome brightness against the vast sea of black bleakness in her soul.
‘C-, come in! Come on in Tesla,’ she cried out.
However, as soon as the words had left her lips she realised she had made a terrible mistake; she had not yet prepared the wine for the boy. As if liquid nitrogen had been pumped intravenously into her body, a shock of bitter frigidity iced her entire system.
‘No!’ she yelled abruptly when the key started to turn in the lock. ‘Don’t come in yet!’
She was aware of the tone of harsh hysteria in her voice, but in this moment of panic she was unable to do anything about it.
‘Are you okay in there, Doctor?’
‘Y-, y-, yes, just, wait! I’m, I’m er, I haven’t got any clothes on, okay?! Wait!’
‘That’s fine. Tell me when you’re dressed.’
There did not seem to be any hint of suspicion in the boy’s voice; Margaret breathed out a protracted sigh of relief. Scrambling with urgent haste, she hurried over to her bedside table and picked up the book with the crushed Phenergan pills. She found herself breathing rapidly and shallowly with fear, and it took all of her powers of concentration to focus on getting the powder into the wine, for her hands were trembling with a new anxiety now; her bold and potentially disastrous plan for escape was about to be put into action.
After what felt like forever, and a lot of quiet cursing and fumbling, she managed to get most of the powder into the bottle, and what remained in the palm of her hand she wiped off on the side of her combat trousers. She then blocked the opening of the bottle with her thumb and shook it as vigorously as she could, trying to keep the sloshing sound of the liquid to a minimum. When she was satisfied that the powder had dissolved she set the bottle down as carefully as she could on the table and dabbed at her mouth with the corner of her sleeve, trying to neaten herself up and not look as much of a wreck as she felt herself to be.
‘All right Tesla, I’m dressed now,’ she announced.
As Tesla walked in, Margaret made a show of tucking her shirt into her pants, as if she had just pulled them up. The boy seemed convinced; he smiled a warm smile at her and stood with casual nonchalance next to the table.
‘I’m sorry for disturbing you at an inopportune moment,’ he said.
‘It’s fine!’ she replied, beaming a broad grin at him. ‘I missed you today, you know. I thought you weren’t gonna come.’
A look of pleasant surprise glowed on the boy’s face.
‘You missed me? Really?’
‘Of course, kiddo! We’re best buds, remember?’
Margaret could feel the heat of his joy from where she was standing, as if his cheeks were pouches filled with coals plucked from a still-burning fire. It was obvious that nobody had ever given Tesla a compliment like that before, and it seemed that he had no idea how to react to it.
‘I, um, wow Margaret,
