December 28th
I wake, gasping. You are crushing the air from me. You are in the breath I breathe out. You are in me, still. I cough, and pain flares in my throat.
Ty.
Your sweat in my sheets, your arms on my shoulders.
You and me.
Everything I can’t have.
I reach out and find the bedside table. Here is the lamp, and the glass of water. I drink it down, replace the glass, then clench my fingers into a fist and imagine pushing a knife. I stumble from the bedroom and into the kitchen.
The letter is still on the table, propped against the cyclamen.
Soon I’ll have to read it. Whatever happens, I need to do that first.
As I water the pot plant, I avoid looking at my name on the envelope. My anxiety is bad, as bad as before. I should tell Rhiannon. Or Mum.Anyone. I feel the familiar buzzing dread work up from my stomach as I remember my plans for tonight: seeing Nick. It’s meant to be joyful, seeing someone new, someone handsome and funny, who actually seems to like me. Though he’s not that new anymore. He’s about to cross thethreshold as the person I’ve been with for the longest time; he’s about to break your record. Perhaps you’re showing your anger by sending me a letter. Or perhaps the letter is to inform me that you’ve died. The dread turns to fluttering, a sharp-beaked bird trapped in my chest. If it’s true, I will mourn, and I know it will feel wrong.
But it can’t be true. You do not die. You cannot die.
Sal isn’t here today, or doesn’t come out when I go down to the courtyard. I leave food for her and go back inside. Now it’s only a few minutes until nine, and I can’t open the letter before work.
I turn on my laptop and check the briefings. The best sales are predictable—Caribbean, Tunisia, Turkey. But there, in the second tier of sales, Australia, too. It would be, wouldn’t it?
There is a note in my inbox from Charli, the area manager, telling me what to push for and attaching the requisite stock answers that I will copy and paste when the questions come.
Is this fully refundable?
What sort of alcohol is included?
Can I pay in instalments?
It never matters if the questions come from the student site, the package holiday company or the bespoke adventures: everyone always asks the same things. Like Nick’s messages, Charli’s email finishes with a kiss. It looks so strange—a slip of her fingers no doubt. She wouldn’t kiss me in real life, not even on the cheek. I remember Nick’s lips. Gentle and soft. Christmas Eve. At the tube. He was hesitant, and I was surprised by the stab of emotion that came with it. Love?No.Now, I touch mylips and they are chapped and dry, winter all through them.
When I lick them, I taste yours. Your lips in the hospital when I said goodbye. Salty. Earthy. Dirty. I kissed you then, remember—my choice, not yours. And they told me it was all Stockholm syndrome. A ‘psychological alliance’. A way to survive. Are you amused to know that I objected to that term then, just as I object to it now? Those words were just another way to make me a victim, another way of silencing me, moulding me into the shape of a good girl, the female they expected. To everyone else, we only had one story: you, the evil kidnapper, and me, the helpless victim. I was innocent and you the opposite. But it was always more complicated, wasn’t it? Our story never fitted nicely into police terminology and courtroom procedure, and nobody ever listened hard enough to understand what any of it was really like. Besides, I wasn’t helpless. It took me years to see it, but as Rhiannon always tells me, I was a girl who survived something traumatic, survived your coercive control. And I did it through love. Heroic, really.
I shut my eyes and have the moment: if I had stayed and if you hadn’t released me, if things had been different…if you had only been good. But maybe you were. Is it possible the judge and the newspapers and my parents were wrong? Maybe you were the best thing that ever happened to me—how would I ever know?
Try to have a lovely festive season, hey?
Charli x
Try?Am I really so obvious?
I focus on answering the work chat-box questions, but every few moments I think I smell burning: the words insidethe envelope going up in smoke. I glance over at the table to check, but the letter remains unchanged.
I’ve been in this flat for almost the same amount of time that you’ve been inside. But what was my crime? That I let you get inside me, you and nobody else? Not even Charli knows who I really am. To everyone at Travel Solutions, I’m just a name at the end of an email chain or at the top of a chat window:Kate Stone.
Do you like my new name?
You won’t find me here. You don’t even know thathereexists. I could hide here for the rest of my life, and you’d never realise. I shake my head, trying to shake you out. I’m stupid to think like this, to talk to you. I try not to, but there’s something wrong with me, something missing. Or perhaps it’s not actually something missing, it’s something extra: an extra bit of brain that other people don’t have. I’ve got you.
But you don’t help me at all.
Another ping from a chat, the student site this time. I look back to the screen, take off my jumper. I’m hot and tingling all over; there are embers under my skin.