‘I have something for you,’ he begins.
‘What?’ I ask, as unenthusiastically as I can.
‘A book.’ He pauses. ‘Would you like it?’
Coming from Jack, it’s the question I hate most in the world as I’m damned if I say yes and damned if I say no. ‘It depends,’ I say, hating that I’m prolonging my agony by trying to keep him there as long as possible because at least he’s someone to talk to.
‘On what?’
‘Its title. If it’s called My Life with a Psychopath, I’m not interested.’
He smiles. ‘Actually, it’s the one that Esther recommended.’
‘And you decided to buy it for me?’
‘No, she dropped it off.’ He pauses again. ‘Under normal circumstances, I would have put it straight in the bin, but it came with a very charming invitation to dinner a week next Saturday, with a little post scriptum saying that she can’t wait to hear what you think of the book. So I suggest you make sure you’ve read it by then.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll have time, but I’ll do my best,’ I tell him.
‘Don’t get too smart,’ he warns. ‘You’ve become so adept at avoiding punishment that I only need the slightest excuse.’
He leaves, and unable to wait any longer, I open the book and read the first page to get an idea of what it’s about. I know instantly that I’m going to love it and I hate the thought that it’ll only take me a day or so to read it. I wonder if I should wait a while before starting it properly, and limit myself to a chapter a day, but because there’s always the possibility that Jack will take it back again before I’ve had a chance to finish it, I settle down on my bed, ready to spend the best few hours I’ve had for a long time. I’ve been reading for about an hour when I notice that one of the words I’ve just read, the word ‘alright’, stands out more than the others and, when I look closely, I see that it’s been lightly shaded in pencil.
Something about it jogs my memory and, going back a few pages, I find the word ‘thing’ highlighted in the same manner, but so lightly I’m not convinced I would have noticed had I not been looking for it. I flip back a few more pages and come across the word ‘every’, which I recognise as the word that had caught my attention earlier, although I had put its darker background down to a printing problem. Intrigued, I carry on turning back the pages and eventually find a tiny ‘is’ nearer the beginning of the book.
I run it together—‘Is everything alright’.
My heart starts beating faster as I consider the possibility that Esther has sent me a message. If she has, there has to be more. With a mounting sense of excitement, I scan the rest of the book for evidence of shading and find ‘do’, ‘you’, ‘need’ and, on the second to last page of the book, ‘help’.
The elation I feel, that she has recognised my predicament and wants to help, is short-lived, because how can I reply to Esther when I don’t have access to something as mundane as a pencil? Even if I had one, I’d be at a loss as to what to reply. A mere ‘yes’ wouldn’t be enough, a ‘yes, get the police’ would be futile, because, as I know to my cost, Jack has them in his pocket. Like the staff at the hotel in Thailand, they know me as a manic-depressive, given to accusing my devoted and brilliant lawyer husband of keeping me prisoner. Even if they arrived at the house without warning, Jack would have no trouble explaining away this room, or any other room in the house for that matter. Anyway, he would never let me return the book to Esther without checking it first, just as he always checks my bag before we go out to make sure it’s empty.
It suddenly occurs to me that he wouldn’t have let me have the book in the first place if he hadn’t gone through it thoroughly, which means he’s almost certainly seen the shading. It’s an appalling thought, not least because Esther could be in danger from him. It also means I’ll have to be careful what I say to her when we next meet as, knowing that I can’t get a message back to her in kind, Jack will be listening to every word I say. He’ll probably be expecting me to say something along the lines of ‘I thought the message the author was trying to get across was quite pertinent.’ But he’s going to be disappointed. I might have been that stupid once, but not anymore. It might be difficult to get a message back to Esther, but I refuse to feel downhearted. I’m so grateful that she has understood so quickly what nobody else ever has—not my parents or Diane or Janice or the police—that Jack controls everything I do.