Seven Days. Alex Lake

though.

      The door handle turned and, with a click of the lock, it opened. He stepped inside, his bare shins sticking out from under the bathrobe, the ankles mottled and dark.

      He locked the door, the key – as always – suspended on a chain around his wrist.

      He was tall, certainly taller than her father, who was six foot one, which put him at what – six three? Six four? – and he wore thick-rimmed, old-fashioned glasses. The lenses were always perfectly polished, and she had a recurring image of him sitting in a floral-patterned armchair, news on the radio, his glasses in one hand and a cloth in the other. When he wasn’t in his bathrobe, he dressed in shapeless grey trousers and white or blue short-sleeved shirts, which, although clean, were faded and shabby, and carried a musty odour, as though they had been left in the wardrobe too long.

      He looked at her, his gaze resting on her face, before moving down over her breasts and then legs. It was an appraising look, like the look a farmer might give a cow.

      He nodded at the mattress where Max was sleeping. ‘Move the child.’

      She picked up Max and laid him on the carpet next to the barrel-bath. She put a pillow under his head and stood up.

      The man put his hands on her shoulders and turned her away from him, then pushed her face down on to the mattress. He tugged at her shorts and underwear, then waited as she pulled them down. She heard the noise of tearing as he opened a condom packet – he always used one when the boys were alive, only getting rid of them when she was childless, for reasons she had never understood – and then she felt his weight on her back.

      She closed her eyes and thought of the light beam. Of the Man in the Moon. Of Australian beaches she had only seen on soap operas.

      There had been a time, early on, when he had tried to kiss her before he raped her. He’d had a strange look on his face, a kind of nervous yearning, which had hardened into his usual scowl when she turned her head away.

      He had not tried again.

      It had confused her, at first, but afterwards she had understood what had happened. He wanted a relationship. He wanted her to enjoy it, as though they were girlfriend and boyfriend. Wife and husband.

      The idea sickened her. The idea terrified her. It showed her just how delusional he was.

      When it was over, he stood up. She turned to look at him. He gestured to the plates, and she scrambled to pick them up. She walked to him and put them in his outstretched hands. Up close his skin was sallow, his face badly shaved. His eyes were sunken and red-rimmed and he looked tired.

      He looked ill.

      Maggie had a sudden sense that things had changed, that she – and Max – were becoming a burden to him. Maybe he no longer wanted her there. Maybe he would welcome the chance to be rid of them. After all, he was getting older, and he must be wondering what to do with them.

      Hope surged in her. There was – perhaps – a crack in the wall. She could offer him a way out. Make it easy for him.

      This was it. This was her chance.

      ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

      The man looked at her. After a few moments he nodded.

      ‘Why don’t—’ now she was saying it, it seemed absurd, the right words hard to find – ‘would you consider – is there any chance – would you – would you let us go?’

      There was a long silence. The man blinked, almost as if he had not understood the question. Maggie carried on.

      ‘I wouldn’t say anything,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t tell a soul, I promise. You could drop us off hundreds of miles from here and I’d tell people I didn’t know where we’d been. I’d say I had no memory, and Max is too young to say anything. I don’t want to get you in trouble. I don’t hate you. I just want us to be free. It would work, it really would.’

      He stared at her, motionless.

      ‘And then you’d be rid of us,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t have to be back and forth all the time, bringing food, worrying how we were. You could get on with your life, and we would never mention you. I mean, I don’t even know your name!’

      He tilted his head, and for a moment she thought she saw a softening in his expression, and she was sure he was going to say yes, he was actually going to say yes.

      And then he spoke.

      ‘No,’ he said, his voice low and toneless. ‘That’s impossible.’

      ‘It’s not! It’s easy! All you’d have to do is take us somewhere far away and leave us—’

      ‘That can’t happen.’

      ‘It can,’ Maggie said. ‘Of course it can, and you were thinking about it. I saw you. You were considering it. Please. Please. It’s a good idea. Please.’

      He shook his head. ‘No. I can’t.’

      ‘Why? Why not?’

      He pointed at Max. ‘Because of him.’

      ‘Max?’ Maggie said. ‘He’s still a baby! He has no idea who you are. How can it be because of him? He won’t say anything!’

      ‘He doesn’t need to. He’s my son.’

      Maggie felt a growing confusion. Was he saying that he felt some paternal instinct towards Max? That keeping him here was some weird parenting method, and that he didn’t want to be apart from him?

      ‘You can see him whenever you want,’ she said. ‘I prom—’

      ‘That’s not it,’ he said. ‘He has my DNA.’

      ‘I don’t understand,’ Maggie said. ‘I don’t see how that’s a problem.’

      ‘They’ll look at his DNA and it will lead them to me. They have my DNA in their system. They take it for anything. So the answer is no.’

      ‘They can’t do that! It’s not possible!’

      ‘Maybe not. But it might be possible, and that’s enough. I can’t take that risk.’

      ‘Then I won’t let them have Max’s DNA. I’m his mum. I can stop them taking it.’

      ‘They will anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not going to happen.’

      Maggie watched him walk across the room, his thick ankles clicking above his slippers. He took the key from the chain around his wrist and unlocked the door, and then he was gone.

      Maggie sank on to the bed. Tears welled up; for a moment she’d believed that the end of this nightmare had come, but, like every other hope she’d had for the last decade it had come to nothing.

      She looked at the calendar.

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