He loves to put me on the spot, to see how I’ll cope with something he’s thrown nonchalantly into the conversation, hoping I’ll mess up so he can punish me. But I’m getting quite good at making it up as I go along. Personally, I’m hoping Esther and the others will ask me again about starting a sewing circle because it’ll be Jack who’ll have to get me out of that one. Perhaps he’ll start by breaking my arm or mangling my fingers in a door. So far, he has never harmed me physically, although there are times when I think that he’d like to.
Sometime in the afternoon, I hear a ring at the gate so I jump off the bed and press my ear to the door. It’s the first bit of excitement I’ve had in a long time, as people never drop in uninvited. I wait to hear if Jack is going to let whoever it is in, or at least enquire what they want, but when the house remains silent I know he’s pretending that we’re not at home—fortunately for him, it’s impossible to see the car parked in the driveway through the black gates. When whoever it is rings again, this time more impatiently, my thoughts turn immediately to Esther.
I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, mainly because of the way she repeated her mobile number in the restaurant last week. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced she understood that I needed to hear it again and I know that if there ever comes a time when I need to ask for help, it will be Esther I’ll turn to rather than Diane, who I’ve known for longer. I’ve lost all my own friends, even Kate and Emily, who I thought would always stand by me. But my irregular and very short emails to them—dictated by Jack—where I trilled about how wonderful married life was and said I was too busy to see them, ensured that theirs dried up quickly. I didn’t even get a birthday card from them this year.
Now that he’s got rid of my friends, Jack allows me to reply to other emails addressed specifically to me—from my parents or Diane, for example—rather than reply to them himself, but only to give them a more genuine flavour, although I’m not sure how genuine I manage to make them sound with him breathing down my neck as I write. On these occasions I am brought down to his study, and I welcome these moments where, with both a computer and a telephone within reach, the potential of alerting someone is greater than anywhere else.
My heart always starts beating faster as Jack sits me down, with the computer and telephone only inches away, because there is always the hope that he might be distracted long enough for me to be able to snatch up the phone, dial a quick 999 and scream my despair to the police. Or pound a quick plea for help on the keyboard to whoever I am writing to and press the send button before he can stop me. The temptation to do so is great, but Jack is always vigilant. He stands over me as I write and checks each message before he allows me to send it.
Once, I thought my chance had come when somebody rang at the gate as I was writing, but instead of going to the intercom to see who was there, Jack simply ignored it, as he does the telephone when it rings while I’m seated at the computer. Yet along with the frustration I feel when he escorts me back to my room, at another chance gone, there is also a feeling of near-contentment, especially after I’ve written to my parents. It’s almost as if I believe the lies I have told them, about weekends away that Jack and I have been on, or visits to beautiful gardens, to country houses, to places I have never been and where I will never go, yet am able to describe in such detail. But, as with all highs, the coming down is hard, and once the euphoria has gone I feel more depressed than ever.
There’s no third ring at the gate so I go back to the bed and lie down. I feel so restless that I decide to try a bit of meditation to relax me. I taught myself to meditate not long after Jack moved me into this room for fear I would go mad with nothing to do all day. I’ve become so good at it that sometimes I manage to drift off for what often seems like several hours but is probably a lot less. I usually start by picturing Millie and me sitting in a beautiful garden with a little dog at our feet. Not Molly though—to be able to lose myself, I need to think happy thoughts. Today, however, I’m unable to relax because the only picture I can bring to mind is that of Esther driving away from the house. In my isolation, I’ve become superstitious and I take it as a sign that I’ve got it all wrong, that Esther isn’t going to be the one to help me.
When I hear Jack coming up the stairs maybe an hour or so after the ring at the gate, I try to guess if he’s come to play some sort of game with me or if he’s simply bringing me a late lunch. He unlocks the door; there’s no tray in his hand so I prepare myself for one of his sadistic games, especially when I see that he is holding a book. The urge to pounce on it and snatch it out of his hand is powerful, but I keep my face impassive and do my best not to look at it, wondering what torment he has devised this time. He knows how I crave to have something to read—I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve pleaded with him to let me have a newspaper, just once a week even, to help me keep up-to-date with what is happening in the world so that I don’t appear a complete idiot when we go out to dinner. So I’m fully expecting him to offer me the book, only to withdraw his hand the moment I reach out to take it.