Well, obviously I had to plan it a little bit. There were certain things I had to think of in advance. I cleared that room for a start. Had to make sure it was safe for her: no sharp objects, that kind of thing. And I bought in some nice juice for her because I knew what sort of family they were, I knew they were all organic this and that, I knew she’d expect something nice or she’d probably just take a sip and then leave the rest. Just like your Sara-Jade. Generation Fussy. So I bought in the nice elderflower stuff for her. Then of course there was the drugs; that was easy-peasy. I’ve been prescribed the sleeping stuff before, I just needed to show up at the GP’s looking dreadful and waffle on about insomnia. Thank you very much, Dr Khan.
So, you know, there was planning involved. But honestly, when I look back on it, I can’t quite believe I did it, can’t quite believe what I was capable of. Especially the violence. Oh my goodness, the violence! I throttled that poor girl, stood with my hands to her throat and squeezed and squeezed. I mean, she might have died!
But on the whole, as the time passed by, I think we rubbed along together OK, me and Ellie, once she realised that we were a team, once she knew that I did not want to hurt her, that she was safe with me.
And giving her those animals was a masterstroke, I think. Oh my word, how she loved those animals. They gave her a purpose. Something to focus on. She was lovely with them, maternal and caring, just as I’d known she would be. It warmed my heart to watch her. What were they called now, those first ones? I can’t remember. But it turned out they weren’t a pair of girls after all. No, they were not. So many came afterwards, so many that it was impossible to keep track of them all. She knew their names, though. Even when there were cages full of them. She knew each and every one by name. She was amazing like that. Is it any wonder I was obsessed with her? Is it any wonder I did what I did?
And yes, clearly I knew what I was doing. Of course there was a bigger picture. Of course there was. I had a truly audacious plan.
And my goodness me if I didn’t go and pull it off.
Forty
Then
The days had lost their structure, their edges, their middles. At first she’d been aware of the passing of time, had distinctly felt the shape of the hours and days moving by. Friday had felt like Friday. Saturday like Saturday. Monday had felt like the day she would be sitting her history and Spanish GCSEs. Tuesday had been the day she should have been taking her first maths paper. The weekend after had come and gone and she’d still had a grip on it. It was next Monday. She’d been here for eleven days. Then twelve days. Then thirteen. It was her sixteenth birthday. She didn’t tell Noelle.
After fourteen days though, she lost count. She asked Noelle, ‘What day is it today?’ And Noelle said, ‘It’s Friday.’
‘What’s the date?’
‘It’s the tenth. I think. Although it might be the ninth. And it might be Thursday. Me and my daft, fuzzy head.’
It all spiralled away from her then, her peg in the map of time was irretrievably lost.
Noelle still brought her gifts. Fruit pastilles. A sugar-topped doughnut. A packet of tiny pencil erasers in the shapes of animals. Lipstick with glitter in it.
She brought her things for the hamsters too. Bags of straw and little toys and chews and biscuits. ‘The babies,’ she called them. ‘How are the babies today?’ Then she’d take one out of its cage and hold it in the cylinder of her hand and stroke its tiny skull with a fingertip and make kissy noises at it and say, ‘Well you are the prettiest little thing I ever did see, you truly are,’ and then sing it a song.
Still, though, Noelle Donnelly would not tell Ellie why she was here or when she would be leaving. Still she’d tantalise and tease and talk about her amazing plan and how everything was going to be just woopitydoo, just you wait and see.
Ellie still carried round the raw wound in the pit of her belly, the place where her mother lived. Constantly, she pictured her mother alone at home, touching Ellie’s things, lying down with her face pressed against Ellie’s pillow, circling an empty trolley around a supermarket, black-faced and wondering why why why her perfect girl – because Laurel had always made it abundantly clear to Ellie that she perceived her as such – had gone and left them.
She’d picture Hanna, too, her infuriating big sister, always trying to pinch brownie points from her, always snatching back little chunks of Ellie’s glory with barbed comments that she didn’t even mean. How would she be feeling now, now that Ellie was gone and she had no one left to play out her childish power struggle with? She would be hurting. She would be blaming herself. Ellie wanted to reach through the walls of this house and into hers, place her arms around her sister’s body and hold her tight and say, I know you love me. I know you do. Please don’t blame yourself.
And her father? She couldn’t think about her father. Every time he came to mind she saw him in his towelling gown, with bed hair. She saw the softness of his morning stubble, his bare feet, his hand reaching up to pluck the coffee jug from the shelf in the kitchen. That was how her father existed now to her, trapped in an amber tomb in his dressing gown. And Jake – she saw Jake as a free spirit, she saw him when he was a young boy, in the garden, playing football, slouching to school in his oversized blazer, a weighty school bag slung across his small boy body, picking up his pace at the sight of his friends up ahead.
And it was surprising to Ellie how little she thought about Theo during those first few days of captivity. Before Noelle had taken her she’d thought about him virtually every living moment of every living day. But now her family had taken centre stage. She missed Theo but she needed her family. Ached for them. Curled herself into a ball with her hands pressed hard into her stomach and cried for them.
Ellie’s days were longer than twenty-four hours. Each hour felt like twenty-four hours. Each minute felt like thirty. Dark came late at this time of year and the sun rose early and the time in between was spent in a violent swirl of dreams and nightmares, twisted bed sheets and sweat-drenched pillows.
‘I want to go home,’ she said to Noelle one morning when she came to deliver her breakfast.
‘I know you do. I know.’ Noelle squeezed Ellie’s shoulder. ‘And I’m sorry about all this. I truly am. I’m trying to make this as nice for you as I possibly can. You can see, can’t you, you can see the effort I’m making? The money I’m spending? You know, I’m going without myself to pay for you.’
‘But if you let me go home you wouldn’t have to pay for me. You could just go somewhere and I’d never tell anyone it was you. I’d just be so happy to be home, that’s all I’d care about. I wouldn’t tell the police, I wouldn’t …’
And then crash.