I’ve imagined every feasible scenario, from him coming in all guns blazing, accusing me of leading him on, to saying hello, sitting down on the couch and pretending it never happened. In an ideal world, I’d like somewhere in between.
We need to address what happened if I’m to continue seeing him, but it needs to be done in a calm and mature manner. It would have helped if he’d returned my call—even if he’d just left a message, as I’d have been able to gauge his tone and read the gaps between the words. But I’ve not heard from him and I’m beginning to panic that something has happened.
It’s that thought I battle with all day as I sit at the dining room table, attempting to do some admin. Despite the sun shining through the window and Motown Gold on the radio, I still can’t shake off the horrific image of Vanessa handcuffing Jacob to a bed and torturing him until he begs for mercy and promises that he’ll go back to her.
I wonder how much he’ll be able to take before he bows to her demands. Will he succumb at the first physical blow? Or will the months of therapy have taught him that he’s so much stronger than he gives himself credit for?
With my fifth coffee of the day in hand, I take myself down to the office and watch the minutes tick ever closer to six p.m. Jacob’s always on time, if not early, and he’s got about thirty seconds until I start pacing the floor, wondering what to do if he doesn’t show. I absently thumb my necklace as I check the garden path, believing that if I pretend everything’s all right, everything will be all right.
But by ten past, the storm clouds are beginning to gather in my head, their ominous presence darkening any prospect of Jacob being alive, let alone feeling comfortable enough to come and see me.
I try to remain calm, forcing myself to acknowledge that he could be late for a variety of reasons, none of which involve Vanessa, or me. He might have forgotten (though he remembered the night before last). He might have had an unforeseen event happen at school. I go so far as imagining him being lumbered with detention duties or an unscheduled meeting with a concerned parent.
At half past, I call his mobile and it goes straight to voicemail. I wonder if my garbled message from yesterday is still lying unheard, banked up with those from everyone else wondering where he is.
I chastise myself for being overdramatic; he’s probably gone straight to the pub with his colleagues, drinking to his newfound freedom and having fun.
I smile, warming to the version I like best, but none of it accounts for the fact that a dangerous woman had threatened him the night before last, claiming to know where the safehouse was that he had tried so hard to make a home.
At quarter to seven, unable to keep the worst-case scenario from whirring around and around in my head, I call the hotel I’d left him at.
“Royal Garden, how may I assist you?”
“Hello, could you put me through to Jacob Mackenzie’s room, please?”
There’s a deafening silence at the other end of the line. “Hello?” I ask, checking I haven’t been cut off.
“One moment, please,” says a voice that wouldn’t sound out of place in an automated lift. “I’m just trying to locate that for you.”
I chew the inside of my cheek as I wait.
“I can’t seem to find a guest with that name,” she says eventually.
“Well, he’s definitely staying with you,” I say, knowing that Jacob wouldn’t risk going back to the apartment. “He checked in the night before last.”
I wonder if saying he was one half of the couple having a heated moment in the bar might jog her memory. It would almost certainly have been talked about. The barman would have told the restaurant manager who would have told the concierge, who would have told housekeeping, each version being embellished with every mouth that spoke and every ear that heard, like an elaborate game of telephone.
I’d learned pretty quickly from working in that very same hotel when I first came to the UK that that’s how it works. As a receptionist, I knew who was stashing their complimentary toiletries, who had a drinking problem, whose “wife” was really a prostitute, and who’d left their vibrator behind.
“How are you spelling that?” asks the woman.
I sigh. “M-A-C-K-E-N-Z-I-E.”
“Ah, that’s where I’m going wrong,” she says, tapping noisily on a keyboard. “I’ve dropped the A.”
“That’ll be it,” I say, hoping she’s right.
“Nope,” she says, a few seconds later. “There’s still no one coming up with that name, I’m afraid. Can I try another for you?”
I’m sure that’s in the client services manual, but she’d do well to tweak it in this instance, as looking up another guest entirely is of no use to either of us. I make a mental note to mention it to Andy when I next speak to him.
“No,” I say, more abruptly than I intended. “Thank you.”
There’s a sickening thud in my chest. Something doesn’t feel right and with every passing minute, I’m becoming more and more convinced that Jacob’s wife has got something to do with it.
I feel compelled to try harder to find him—call up his work, go around to the flat—but then I’m hit by the thought: what if he doesn’t want to be found? What if he’d realized, after finally escaping his wife’s abuse, that he was more miserable without her?
He’d certainly displayed classic symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome in our early sessions; showing empathy when she mistreated him, and defending her when I dared to suggest that their relationship was one of captor and captive.
Perhaps what we’d both initially perceived as a threat was actually her tracking him down to promise that things would be different from now on; that she’d get help and change, if only he came back to her. So maybe he did just that, because he believed she was telling the truth. And who am I to tell him he can’t? Maybe Leon’s right. I can’t save everyone, especially those who don’t want to be saved.
But if I knew deep down that Jacob didn’t want to be rescued, why is that niggle at the back of my mind turning into an itch under my skin that I just can’t scratch?
Am I honestly prepared to be the one person who knows the danger he’s in—the one person he reached out to—and not do anything about it?
I’m in my car before I have a chance to question myself any further. I have to do what my conscience tells me, otherwise I’ll never be able to sleep soundly again.
I call Jacob’s mobile as I drive along the harbor road, the ringing on the car speaker drowning out the cacophony of seagulls and halyards as they clank against the masts of the fishing boats moored up for the night.
“Pick up, pick up,” I plead out loud.
It rings a couple of times, and I dare to hope that he’ll answer and tell me that he’s sorry but he’s had a hell of a day at work and our appointment totally slipped his mind. That’s how simple the explanation could be. That’s how simple I desperately want it to be, but it goes to voicemail, again.
I pull up on the tree-lined avenue, just opposite the Victorian house where Leon and I own the flat. The flat I’m renting to Jacob without Leon’s knowledge.
The front bay window, where the living room is, has curtains drawn, and my mind instantly conjures up the image of a rotting corpse being hidden from view behind them.
“For God’s sake, get a grip, Ni,” I remonstrate with myself out loud, remembering that we, too, used to close the curtains at this time of day, as the sun was so bright that we weren’t able to see the TV.
My insides relax and I let out the deep breath that my clenched muscles had prevented me from releasing. I’d had no idea how uptight I’d been; though it’s no surprise that my body is reacting to the stress my mind is under.
I take a moment, after unplugging my seat belt, to gather my thoughts. This is still going to be awkward, not least because of how it was left the other night, but because I’m knocking on his door at seven o’clock in the evening.