“Lloyd- get inside,” Ronnie instructed, “Flo- what the hell are you doing, girl? We need to go.”
At the sound of her father’s voice, Flo rolled her eyes and hopped up off of the chair. “We’ve still not got Stella,” she said, glancing around the otherwise empty space; wise suspicion dancing in her iris.
“What?”
“I’m keeping watch, in case she comes back…” Flo sighed and frowned grimly, “Mum suspects she’s in trouble. Got one of those gypsies in the RV. He’s got a gun. She was waiting for you to go with her to find her.”
Ronnie’s mouth fell open, an unpleasantly familiar pang of dread hitting him straight in the stomach.
“Trouble?” he repeated faintly.
Flo nodded and gestured towards the RV. “I think you’d better go inside.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Winter, 1999
It was impossible to know exactly how much time had passed. All that the teenage Ronnie and Minnie knew was that their misery was being dragged out as agonisingly slowly as possible. They stayed contained in that tiny, dark box room, living off of plastic bottles filled with stale water; and pitiful scraps of rancid food that were often tossed straight onto the floor where they were forced to shit and piss.
He’d never dare to say it out loud and even began to despise himself for thinking it privately, but Ronnie soon began to think that maybe Minnie had the better end of the deal after all. At least once every couple of days, she was forced out of the room. They’d wash her and ply her with drugs and alcohol so that she’d be compliant.
For at least a small, fleeting scrap of time, she could be numb to it all.
Although they were raping her, gradually stealing and breaking down her soul, bit by bit, at least she could temporarily escape from their hellish prison.
On one occasion, Minnie told Ronnie that she had learned to simply lay back, stare up at the ceiling, and float up, up and out of her own body. It was, she said hazily, a bit like alien abduction movies, where the flying saucer sends down a brilliant white beam and sucks you up out of your body.
Ronnie didn’t know whether she just said this to make him feel better.
Soon, it was as though they’d beaten the fear out of her entirely.
She’d no longer cry when she was brought back to their dingy, foul-smelling cell where they were imprisoned. Instead, she’d simply curl up into a ball and let Ronnie hold her tightly in his arms whilst she let her body succumb to unconsciousness.
He, on the other hand, had to stay stone-cold sober.
Every waking minute, he was alert, his brain frantically whirring as he deciphered the horrors that surrounded them and fought a constant battle not to rip apart the veins in his wrists with his own teeth.
He was confined; his vision now fully adjusted to the dark so that even the dull sliver of light that occasionally crept into the room burned his eyes.
Hunger pains induced fitful insomnia so that for hours on end, the young boy was forced to just sit there, painfully aware of the torment that Minnie, the love of his life, was being made to endure, whilst he stood helplessly by.
Life was no longer living. It was an endless nightmare from which neither of them could escape.
From her trips out of the house, Minnie knew it was wintertime. Sometimes she talked to Ronnie about the weather outside, what it was like to feel splatters of rain on her skin, or an icy chill ripping goose flesh up and down her arms.
A few times, Ronnie wanted to know why she didn’t get up and run when she was on a public street. She said it was because whatever drugs they’d filled her up with made her impossibly dizzy so that she couldn’t carry her head or even make a coherent noise.
It was the skinny, skin-headed man who came one day.
This time, for Ronnie.
He was gaunt, almost skeletal, and normally Ronnie was certain he’d have overpowered him with ease. But the teenager was so malnourished and so weak, rendered powerless by his festering wounds and dehydrated organs, he could do nothing but allow himself to be dragged away. Filthy fingernails pierced the flesh around his neck as he was pinched and roughly coerced out of the dark shadows of the cage, clammy skin on his legs grazing against grimy floorboards.
As he went, he desperately focused his eyes to catch a final glance of Minnie somewhere within the darkness. But the girl remained curled up inside herself, her face still buried deeply in the empty cradle she made with her forearms.
Her refusal to meet his eye left him feeling cold and alone, a feeling that made his bones quiver as his body was hauled out into the blinding brightness of the corridor outside. He flinched at the sound of the familiar door being closed, followed by the snap of a key turning in the lock.
“Get up,” the man demanded gruffly.
Ronnie obeyed. He briefly contemplated the idea of trying to run or trying to fight back, but it was quickly flushed away. He knew it would be a fucking stupid idea. He’d be caught, and they’d probably kill him.
Then Minnie would be all alone.
The young man got to his feet and followed his captor’s gestures to follow him down a bitty carpet that was coated in dust and grime. Beneath his bare feet, the fabric felt bewildering; it made his skin prickle and his knees wobble unsteadily with every uncertain step. But he forced one foot in front of the other, continuously aware of the rough man leading him down the passage and then down a curved staircase.
Downstairs, Ronnie recognised his surroundings almost immediately, despite months having passed
