Seven Days. Alex Lake

on her, his face puce with anger, his cheeks lined with scratches. He screamed at her and for a moment she thought he was going to kill her – he could, no one knew she was here – but then he breathed deeply and turned around and walked out.

      And a few minutes later the lamp went off.

      The only light source was gone. She had assumed that the only switch was the one on the wall, but it turned out she was wrong. The man had one on the outside, or maybe he’d turned off the trip switch. Her dad – an electrician – had showed her how they worked a few years back, explained how they kept the electrical system safe. Since she was young he had included her in his work, and, when she was fourteen he had let her change the light fitting in her bedroom from a simple overhead fitting to an angled downlighter.

      So she knew a bit about electrical work, but it didn’t help her. The room was in darkness.

      And it stayed that way for a long time. Days, maybe. She lost track of time, became disorientated, screamed until she couldn’t hear herself. She lay on her bed shaking, visions swimming through the dark.

      It was a terrible few days. To this day she didn’t know how long it had lasted. She had it marked as three on her calendar, but it could have been one, or seven. She’d see what the real date was when she got out of here and find out how many days had gone missing.

      If she got out of here.

      Eventually the light had fizzed back on. The man appeared in the doorway minutes later.

      Don’t do that again, he said. Or it will be twice as long.

      She had tried again, though, and the memory of the punishment after that attempt still made her blood run cold. It had been worse than darkness, even darkness for twice as long.

      Much worse.

      She picked up the jeans and the needle and thread and began to sew the button back on. The plastic hoop at the back of the button had cracked and was going to fall off again soon, so she wrapped the cotton thread tightly around the plastic to secure it before sewing the button into place. She felt jaded, foggy, like she’d barely slept. It was the lingering effect of the disappointment the night before. For a moment she’d been sure the man was going to agree to let them leave – she’d seen it in his face, a tiredness at having to keep them there and a desire to embrace her suggestion and let them go – but then he had said no.

      They have my DNA.

      Which meant what, exactly? What little she knew about DNA had come from watching television shows in which cops used it to catch criminals and daytime chat-show hosts used it to prove paternity. Was that what he was afraid of? That the cops would take Max’s DNA and match it to his? But how would they even know?

      There was only one way. They had his, in some database, and that meant he had done something – or been a suspect for something – like this before.

      Her hands stopped moving, the needle part way through the waistband of the jeans. Was she not the first to be down here? She looked around the room, picturing another mother sitting on the bed, her child playing on the floor. It was hard to imagine someone else in here. She associated it so much with her and Seb and Leo and Max.

      And he’d said, years ago, when she was first here, that he’d built it for her.

      So maybe he had done something else, committed some other crime, and, when he was caught, had decided to make sure he could never be caught again.

      By building this hidden room that no one could ever find.

      And keeping her here forever. If she hadn’t known it before she did now – this was forever.

      She had to do something, and soon. She looked at Max, her son who would be three in five days.

      Five days.

      She had to do something now. And she had – she thought – the first glimmerings of an idea.

      ‘So,’ Max said, oblivious to the tragedy of his surroundings and the fact that, in five days, even this would be taken from him. ‘Are you ready to come on the light beam, Mummy?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

      But her mind was elsewhere. It was on what she was going to do.

       2

      The man stood in the door, a tray in his hand. When he was leaving food or water or cleaning supplies he never came into the room. He put them on the carpet, picked up anything Maggie had left for him – nappies, plates, cleaning supplies – and left. It was only when he was in his blue bathrobe that he locked the door behind him, secured the key on a chain around his wrist, and entered the room properly.

      It was the morning, so there was no bathrobe. He lowered the tray to the floor and stood up. There were two paper plates, each covered with creased tinfoil. He liked the tinfoil to be folded and placed back on the tray; Maggie assumed he re-used it.

      He was that kind of person. Neat, particular, fastidious. She pictured his house as a museum, the rooms fixed and unchanging, almost unlived in, with patterned wallpaper on the walls and lace curtains filtering the daylight. It was a sham, a face to the world. His life was down here.

      The thought made her shudder.

      When he walked out she noticed a stiffness in the way he moved. She’d seen brown spots on his hands, the skin loose and sallow. He was still strong but there was a growing unsteadiness in him. He was getting older.

      Weaker. More vulnerable. One day she would be able to overpower him.

      Today, maybe.

      Today she might get out of here. She pictured the newspapers: MISSING GIRL FOUND DECADES LATER. She’d be reunited with her parents. In her mind they were the same as when she had been abducted, but, like the man, they’d be older too. Fifty-three now. She tried to imagine what they looked like. Would Dad be bald? Mum grey? Were they still together?

      Still alive?

      And James would be twenty-six. He might have kids. She wondered what music he listened to, what books he read, what job he did. He’d have cast his first vote, lost his virginity, gone to university, all of it a mystery to her. She didn’t even know who the prime minister was. Was it still Blair? Surely not. Probably someone from a whole new generation of politicians. Maybe the country was at war; maybe it had adopted the euro. She knew nothing.

      She closed her eyes. She’d missed so much. It was weird, though: without the man there’d have been no Seb, Leo or Max, and she couldn’t imagine life without them. Especially without Max.

      She looked at him. He was sleeping on the mattress, his mouth parted. She picked up the calendar, took her pencil and crossed out another day.

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