Chapter 42: NOW - The Safe Room

I fall asleep at some point. When I wake, it’s because I roll off the single mattress onto the cold floor. In a panic, I get up and check on the camera in Sophie’s bedroom, but she’s still sleeping. Light leaks in around her pink curtains. It’s early morning. I keep the blankets wrapped around me, shivering in the freezing cellar. The air is stuffy and scented with mildew. Condensation drips from the vent grill, an annoying plop, plop, plop that adds to the constant hum of the fridge.

When I flick through to the camera outside the safe room, I see Emily sitting on the chair, staring at her phone. A small smile creeps across her lips, and I wonder if she’s watching me watching her. Peter seemed to know I’d been searching for a way out. I’m convinced my every move is being recorded.

“You’re awake then?” She puts the phone away. “I can hear you in there.”

I move towards the door. “What do you want?”

“Just a chat.”

“About the weather?” I ask. “Sorry but I don’t have much to say about that. You see I have no windows.”

A violent thump shudders through the door and I recoil.

“You won’t have him, you know. Peter’s going to choose me, and we’re going to be a perfect family. Him, me and Sophie.”

My words come out like a hiss. “The hell you will.”

I hear her laboured breathing and sense her beady little eyes boring into the door.

“Do you really think he’s going to let me go?” I ask. “He’s been obsessed with me for years. Why would he give that up? Face it, Emily, you’re the disposable one. You’re much easier to throw away.”

Her fist slams into the door a second time. “You know nothing about us. We’re in love. Did you know Peter saved my life once?”

“He did? What a hero.”

She ignores the sarcasm. “He got me off the streets and got me clean. He didn’t need to do that, but he did.”

I’m not surprised. Peter targeted someone he could manipulate and turn into a loyal accomplice. At least I have an explanation for why Emily is doing this. But now I need to figure out how deep the connection between the two of them goes. This is going to be harder than I thought.

“How long have you known him?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Five or six years now. Met him at a petrol station.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Scrounging,” she says. “Getting men to buy me booze and fags.”

I can picture the scene in my mind. A young woman, about twenty, hardened by homelessness, maybe even prostitution, hanging around petrol stations for lonely long-distance drivers with money.

“He was kind to me,” she continues. “He put me in his lorry, and we went on adventures together. He takes no nonsense, Peter. I wasn’t allowed to use. He locked me in the cab until I stopped.”

“Then he kidnapped you,” I point out.

“No, it wasn’t like that.”

I change tactics. “Okay. I might be wrong. You know him better than me. You share a bed with him at night and talk to him.”

“That’s right.”

“You love him.”

She pauses. “Yes.”

“But are you really going to put up with him hitting you?”

This time a longer pause. “He doesn’t hit me.”

“What about those bruises on your face?”

She laughs. “God you’re so stupid. That was all a made-up story, so you’d let me in. I knew you wouldn’t be able to turn away an abuse victim. You’re too soft for that. I bet you think we bought that house, too. Nah, we just saw that as an opportunity to get you to trust a stranger. We’ve been in an Airbnb for like two weeks now waiting for the new owners to move in. Oh, and I’m not pregnant.”

Fucking bitch, I think. Lying about being pregnant. Lying about being a new wife. Even changing her voice.

But it also clears some things up for me. He’s been out there watching me for weeks. The blonde woman I saw on the cameras could have been Emily skulking around, or my actual new neighbour going about her business. There’s no way to know because all I saw was a glimpse of blonde hair.

“So that was the only time he’s hit you?” I ask.

She answers quickly and firmly. “Yes.”

Too quickly and too firmly, I think. She wants me to believe her. I don’t.

“That’s good. I was worried for you. I thought you were being coerced into this. Many victims of domestic violence are afraid to leave their abusers. But that isn’t you. If anything, you’re the one in control. As soon as he chooses you and gets rid of me, you’ll be the one calling all the shots. Isn’t that right?”

Emily doesn’t reply. She storms out of the cellar instead and I smile to myself. I hit a nerve. She’s insecure.

We’re going to be the perfect family.

It feels like a lie she’s telling herself over and over until she believes it. But the thought of those two raising my child… They will have to kill me before that happens. I would kill them rather than let it happen.

If I can kill. If I can actually take a life. Even after two decades of being stalked I’ve never even hit Peter, let alone tried to kill him. Only Honey had the guts to do that.

I pace back and forth, my thoughts fragmented. Peter tells me he wants to be a family—with me. Emily says she’s going to be a family with Peter. Both of them are broken and deluded in their own ways, no wonder they found each other.

Peter has been with a sad, homeless girl for several years, but what has he told her about me? How did he get her to go along with this? I think I understand why he finally snapped. His mum died. That makes sense to me. Mary was always loyal to him and a constant in his life. Without that constant he has become even more unhinged.

I start piecing together how all of this might have happened. Three weeks ago, Mary Harlow died. Two weeks ago he moved up here with his girlfriend and started watching me. Or maybe he’d been here before too. I don’t know for certain. All I know is that they waited for the perfect opportunity to confuse me into thinking Emily was a neighbour.

I think about what Sophie told me about the ghost. When did she see that ghostly woman? Could it have been Emily in some sort of disguise? Or even Mary, before she died, spying on me for her son? Or was it my own mum trying to reach out to me?

I push that thought away and try to get into Emily’s head, still convinced she’s the weak link in all of this. If she was on the streets she probably grew up in chaos and that’s all she knows. She wants Peter’s twisted version of a family. She’s still seeking chaos.

I check the screens again. Sophie is dressed and colouring in the living room with Peter watching her. Emily heads into the living room, sits on Peter’s lap and starts kissing him, running her hands through his hair. The thought of my daughter seeing that makes me sick to my stomach, but at least they’re distracted.

It’s time to find this camera.

I start with the door, checking the lintel above. Then the walls at the back of the room.

The camera can’t be too hard to find. Surely Peter didn’t have enough time to install anything too high-tech. I imagine the bulky, mug-sized cameras you can buy online and set up to watch pets.

I reach up onto the highest shelf and grope along the tins of soup and bags of crisps. Aha. There it is. My fingers find the smooth plastic surface of a camera lens. Quickly, I step onto the toilet seat to get a better look. Yep. There it is, watching me.

I feel violated.

But then it dawns on me. I can use this. I step down from the toilet and begin to formulate a plan.

The refrain I kept telling myself after Ed died pops back into my head: I am the only one who can save me, and I am the only one who can keep my daughter safe.