And yet for all his probing, all his carefully worded questions, there was only one thing that Jake knew about her for sure. Once, when she was getting dressed, her photo ID slipped from her jacket pocket on to the floor. She snatched it up in a heartbeat – thought he hadn’t seen, but he had. He thought he knew a bit about people, but this one had taken him by surprise. If he hadn’t seen her ID, he’d never have guessed that she was a policewoman.
Amy is squatting a few feet away from me. There’s no awkwardness now and she urinates on the floor without embarrassment. I watch as the thin sliver of piss hits the tiles, tiny droplets of it bouncing back up to settle on her dirty knickers. A few weeks ago I would have turned away at the sight, but not now.
Her urine snakes its way slowly down the slope to join the stagnant puddle of waste that has built up at the deeper end. I’m glued to its progress but finally the last drops disappear and the entertainment is over. She retreats to her corner. No words of apology, no acknowledgement. We have become animals – careless of ourselves and of each other.
It wasn’t always like this. At the beginning, we were furious, defiant. We were determined that we would not die here, that together we would survive. Amy stood on my shoulders, her nails cracking as she clawed the tiles, straining to reach the lip of the pool. When that didn’t work, she tried jumping up from my shoulders. But the pool is fifteen feet deep, maybe more, and salvation seems forever just out of reach.
We tried the phone but it was pin-locked and after we’d tried a few combinations it ran out of power. We shouted and screamed until our throats raged. All we heard in response was our echo, mocking us. Sometimes it feels like we are on another planet, with not another human being for miles around. Christmas is approaching, there must be people out looking for us, but it’s hard to believe that here, surrounded by this terrible, enduring silence.
Escape is not an option, so now we simply survive. We chewed our nails until our fingers bled, then sucked up the blood greedily. We licked the condensation from the tiles at dawn, but still our stomachs ached. We talked about eating our clothes… but thought better of it. It’s freezing at night and all that keeps us from dying of hypothermia is our scant clothing and the heat we glean from each other.
Is it my imagination or have our embraces become less warm? Less secure? Since it happened, we have clung to each other day and night, willing each other to survive, desperate not to be left alone in this awful place. We play games to pass the time, imagining what we will do after the cavalry arrive – what we will eat, what we will say to our families, what we will get for Christmas. But slowly these games have tailed off as we realize that we were brought here for a purpose and that there will be no happy ending for us.