Or so she had thought.
When she came to after that first time, Abbi realised she must have been drugged. Enough to make her fully compliant, to enable him to remove her from her flat and bring her elsewhere; a narcotic sufficient to render her unconscious, leaving her with no memory of what took place from the time her eyelids grew heavy until the moment they fluttered open again.
Returning to consciousness naked and trapped inside a room about a dozen feet square, she had no way of knowing how many days had passed since. The only furnishing was a thin mattress laid on the rough concrete floor, a duvet providing meagre covering for both warmth and modesty. The room was windowless, brick-built and solid. A wall light encased in a metal cage provided feeble illumination from a bulb dulled by a thick crust of grime. When it was not switched on, she could barely see her hands in front of her face.
A routine, of sorts, had since been established. Every so often Des entered the room, tore the duvet from her grasp, led her outside, barefoot, along a short, narrow corridor and into some kind of caged wet room in which he hosed her down. The water was seldom warm, and often brutally cold. He gave Abbi no soap, no shampoo. He ordered her to scrub herself down from head to toe with a nylon-bristled brush which hung from a hook by the coil of hose. She was allowed no deodorant, no moisturiser, no makeup, nor even a toothbrush. Other than being allowed occasional use of the toilet facilities adjacent to the wet room, she hadn’t been permitted to go anywhere else. At no point since her capture had she seen daylight. He fed her greasy bacon rolls, washed down with milky tea. This had become her life.
During the lowest moments of her incarceration, Abbi fought her misery for as long as she had the strength; she hoped that keeping it at bay might also keep her sane. But as time passed in fearful solitude, and her mind chipped away at already fragile defences, the fissures expanded and tears began to leak through. As swiftly as the trickle became a torrent, so the torrent turned into huge convulsing sobs, causing her bones to ache.
Weeping forced her to confront every one of the demons clawing their way through her soul. Sure, she was clean at the moment, but the needle had already won its skirmish with her. Hardly a day went by that Abbi did not miss it, but the difference was she no longer craved the high. Her drug of choice had initially released her from a nightmare – at least, that’s how it had felt at the time. In the clean period since, she had come to realise that all she had fought to escape from was normality: a clingy sister who adored her so fiercely that she demanded too much attention, and devoted parents whose ‘savagely brutal dictatorship’ was in fact nothing more than a mother and father wanting the best both for and from their elder daughter. Hers had not been a life of beatings and abuse, yet for reasons she was unable to fathom, their love had choked the life from her, to the point where she needed to escape its clutches in order to breathe.
What followed had been the true misery.
Until she’d met Des Knowles, whom she had truly believed was capable of leading her back out towards the light.
The last time he’d visited, his demeanour was very different. Since taking her and locking her away in the room, he’d barely spoken to her at all; his face had been a set mask of determination, as if he were on a mission that needed completing. This time, however, she’d seen something approaching the man she had grown to know and have feelings for. Abbi decided to have one last stab at re-establishing communication between them.
‘Why are you doing this to me, Des?’
At first it seemed as if he would ignore her desperate pleas. But he looked down at her as she sat on the mattress and his face softened. ‘I need to break you,’ he told her. ‘Completely. I must make you fully compliant.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, warm tears stinging her eyes. ‘I always did everything you wanted of me.’
‘Everything but the one thing I really need.’
‘Which is? I’ll do anything, Des. Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. All you have to do is name it.’
He nodded. ‘I know. And that’s the problem. You’ll do it willingly, which is not how it’s supposed to be now I have you here. Because for me to make this right, I have to break your spirit. I have to make you fear me. Hate me, even.’
‘But why? I don’t understand.’ Abbi reached up towards him. The duvet slipped from her body, revealing her naked form in its entirety. She gave herself to him willingly.
He slapped her hands away. ‘Of course you don’t. How could you? The truth is, I have to make you desperate, to want to do anything to escape. To do anything you can to get away from here. From me. It’s that fight, that desperate struggle, that makes it all worthwhile.’
Abbi wept, her features strained. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Des. Please tell me. Make me understand. Why is this happening to me?’
He leaned forward. In that instant, his eyes went cold and flat, as if all life had fled from them in a single blink. He ran his fingers through her hair and said, ‘Because next time somebody puts their hands around your throat, I need you to fear for your life. To resist them, to fight them off for real. As if your life depended on it. Because next time, it will be for real. Next time, you will be fighting for your life.’
