A sound from the hall. A terrible battering and screaming. Fists pounding, her mother wailing. Suddenly Marie was back in the room. She marched straight past Anna, looking crazed and ragged.
She was opening the window. Because they were in a tower block, the windows were hinged in the middle and only opened a bit so you couldn’t throw yourself out – a smart move given the desperation of the inhabitants. But you could get a bit of a breeze on your face if that was what you wanted.
Now Marie was shouting, begging for help. Yelling for someone – anyone – to come and rescue them. And it was then that Anna knew. They were prisoners. That’s what her mother wasn’t telling her. Ella had locked them in, imprisoned them. They were trapped.
This was why her mother was shouting at the night. Hoping against hope that someone would pass by and hear her. That someone would care. But Anna knew from experience not to count on the kindness of strangers. As her mother slumped to the floor defeated, Marie finally realized that they were entombed in their own home.
Should they cancel Christmas? It had been Sarah’s first question to Peter once she’d got him home from hospital. She didn’t ask about his health – she could see he was making slow but steady progress – nor did she want to talk about what had happened. Nobody wanted to talk about that. But she did want to know what to do about Christmas. Would Peter like to have it at theirs as normal, with the usual assortment of cousins and parents? A kind of life-goes-on, we’re-glad-you’re-alive Christmas. Or did they want to acknowledge that life had suddenly become very dark and that there was no cause for celebration?
In the end, they’d decided to carry on as normal. Every fibre of Peter’s being wanted to avoid friends and relatives. He couldn’t stand their solicitous cooing and the unasked questions that filled their heads. But the thought of being alone with Sarah at Christmas was even more terrifying. Every second he was left alone was a second in which dark thoughts and darker memories could start to proliferate. He must keep his mind occupied, focus on the good things, even if it was all so much hypocrisy, tedium and anxiety.
At first, he’d been tempted to hate his wife. She was clearly at sea, unsure how to handle her killer husband. She couldn’t compute what had happened, so fluttered around doing a million small things to show that she cared – all of which were entirely pointless. And yet as the days passed, Peter realized that he loved her for all her small kindnesses and because she clearly didn’t