Behind Closed Doors: A Novel

The following month, we went back to Thailand, but I didn’t dare try to escape again. I knew that if I did, Jack was capable of arranging for me to die while we were there. We went to the same hotel and had the same room and were greeted by the same manager. Only Kiko was missing. I spent my days as I had spent them before, locked on the balcony or kept in the room, only being allowed out for photographs. My experience the second time round was made even worse by the knowledge that when Jack wasn’t with me, he was exhilarating in someone else’s fear. I didn’t know how he got his kicks, but I presumed it was by doing something he couldn’t do in England and, remembering the story he had told me about his mother, I wondered if he came to Thailand to beat up women. It seemed inconceivable that he would be able to get away with it but he once told me that in Thailand, as long as you had money, you could buy anything—even fear.

Maybe that was why, a week after we got back, I smashed him over the head with a bottle of wine in the kitchen, half an hour before Diane and Adam were due to arrive for dinner, hoping to stun him long enough to escape. But I didn’t hit him hard enough and, incandescent with rage, he controlled himself long enough to phone and cancel our guests, pleading a sudden migraine on my part. As he put the phone down and turned to me, I was afraid only for Millie, because there was nothing left he could deprive me of. Even when he told me that he was going to show me Millie’s room, I still wasn’t afraid for myself because all I presumed was that he had stripped it of its beautiful furnishings, as he had done mine. As he pushed me into the hall, my arms twisted painfully behind my back, I felt desperately sad for Millie because it was the room she had always dreamt of having. But, instead of taking me up to the first floor, he opened the door that led down to the basement.

I fought like mad not to go down the stairs but I was no match for Jack, his already powerful strength inflamed by fury. Even then, I had no idea what was waiting for me. It was only when he dragged me past the utility room where he had kept Molly, through what seemed to be a storeroom and came to a stop in front of a steel door cleverly hidden behind a stack of shelves that I began to feel real fear.

It wasn’t some sort of torture chamber, as I’d first feared, because there were no instruments of torture as such. Devoid of furniture, the whole of the room, including the floor and ceilings, had been painted blood red. It was terrible, chilling, but it wasn’t the only thing that caused me to cry out in distress.

‘Take a good look,’ he snarled. ‘I hope Millie will appreciate it as much as I do because this is the room where she’s going to stay, not the pretty yellow bedroom upstairs.’ He shook me hard. ‘Look at it and tell me how scared you think she’s going to be.’

I could feel my eyes rolling in my head as I tried to look anywhere but at the walls, where the portraits he had forced me to paint for him hung.

‘Do you think Millie is going to like the paintings you’ve done specially for her? Which one do you think will be her favourite? This one?’ His hand on the back of my head, he pushed my face hard up against one of the portraits. ‘Or this one?’ He dragged me over to one of the other walls. ‘Such beautiful handiwork, don’t you think?’ Moaning, I screwed my eyes shut tight. ‘I hadn’t intended to show you this room just yet,’ he went on, ‘but now you can try it for size. You really shouldn’t have hit me with that bottle.’

After giving me a final shove, he went out of the room, leaving the door to slam shut behind him. I scrambled to my feet and ran to the door. When I saw that there was no handle, I began hammering on it with my fists, screaming at him to let me out.

‘Scream all you like.’ His voice came through the door. ‘You don’t know how much it excites me.’

Unable to control my fear—that he would never let me out, that he would leave me to die there—I became hysterical. Within seconds, I found I couldn’t breathe and, as I began to hyperventilate, the pain in my chest brought me to my knees. Realising that I was having some sort of panic attack, I fought to regain control of my breathing, but the sound of Jack laughing excitedly from the other side of the door only increased my distress. Tears streamed from my eyes and, unable to catch my breath, I honestly believed I was going to die. The thought that I would be leaving Millie at Jack’s mercy was truly terrible and, as a picture of her wearing her yellow hat and scarf came into my mind, I clung on to it, wanting it to be the last thing I remembered.

It was a while before I noticed that the pain in my chest had eased, making it possible for me to draw in deeper breaths. I didn’t dare move in case I started everything off again; instead, I stayed as I was, my head on my knees, and concentrated on my breathing. The relief that I was still alive, that I could still save Millie gave me the strength to lift my head and look for another way out of the room. But there wasn’t even a small window. I began searching the walls, running my hands over them and moving the paintings aside, hoping to find some sort of switch that would open the door.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Jack’s voice drawled, making me jump. ‘It can’t be opened from the inside.’ Just knowing he was on the other side of the door made me start shaking again. ‘How do you like the room?’ he went on. ‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself in there as much as I am listening to you out here. I can’t wait to hear what Millie thinks of it—hopefully she’ll be even more vocal than you.’

Suddenly exhausted, I lay down on the floor and curled myself into a ball, wedging my fingers in my ears so that I wouldn’t have to listen to him. I prayed for sleep to take me but the room remained brightly lit, making it impossible.

As I lay there, I tried not to consider the possibility that he would never let me out of the hell he had created for Millie, and when I remembered how I had truly believed, on the strength of a beautiful yellow bedroom, that somewhere deep inside him lay a tiny shred of decency, I wept at my stupidity.