Say You're Sorry(27)

“Don’t you know how lucky you are?” he’d scream. “I could have killed you. I could have buried you.”

At other times, he’d wheedle and coax her, brushing her hair and fussing with her clothes. She kept him happy. She went upstairs when he asked and did what he asked, but I should have seen what was happening. I should have noticed the changes in Tash.

Whatever she ate upstairs made up for downstairs—where she ate nothing. She started biting her nails until they bled. She began losing weight. She stopped brushing her hair or cleaning her teeth.

When she cut up the magazines she created weird monsters, hybrids with animal heads and human bodies. And she stabbed out the eyes so they were empty.

Each time she climbed back down the ladder, there seemed to be less of her, as though George took a piece or she left it upstairs.

One night she wet the bed. I found her shivering in sodden clothes. Peeling them off, I heated water in a saucepan and washed her. She didn’t say a word. Didn’t cry. Didn’t whimper.

“I think it’s going to be a beautiful day,” I told her. “I can hear the birds.”

It was around that time that Tash came up with her plan. We were going to escape, she said, whispering because we couldn’t be sure if George was watching or listening.

Tash pulled me beneath the ladder. “I’m going to do it with this,” she said, reaching behind her back where she’d tucked something into her jeans. She unwrapped it carefully. “I found it upstairs when he wasn’t looking.”

It was an old screwdriver with a broken handle. Tash had bound the damaged end in an old rag so the sharp edges wouldn’t cut her hand. She plunged it through the air in a stabbing motion.

“How are you going to do it?” I asked.

“I’m going to creep up behind him and stab him in the neck.”

“What if he doesn’t turn his back?”

“I’ll pull him towards me and shove it into his guts… or in his eye.”

“When?”

“Next time.”

For hours she sat beneath the ladder and practiced, stabbing the metal tip into the wood, carving out her initials. At other times she lay on her bunk, listening. When the time comes, she said. When the time comes there will be no more time.

We waited, lying on our bunks, thinking our own thoughts.

“If something happens to me.”

“Nothing is going to happen.”

“If it does.”

“It won’t.”

“Don’t let him touch you, Piper.”

“I won’t.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

That’s when we heard the furniture shifting and we knew George had come back. The trapdoor opened and we went through the routine with the water and food. He lowered a bucket and we emptied the bedpan.

Then it was time for Tash.

I couldn’t see George’s face in the darkness above. He was just a voice, like Morgan Freeman playing God in all those movies.

“I want Piper this time.”

Tash looked at me. I was rocking from foot to foot, cold all over.

“Take me,” she said.

“It’s Piper’s turn.”

“No.” Tash thought quickly. “It’s her time of the month.”

George didn’t say anything for a while. Tash climbed the rough wooden ladder and raised her arms. Her cardigan rose up above the waistband of her jeans and I saw the screwdriver tucked against the small of her back.

I wanted to tell her not to do it. Don’t risk it.

I sat down on the bunk and huddled against the back wall. Every shadow held a withered body.

I prayed. I don’t pray very well. We’re not a very religious family. My dad says nine out of ten religions fail in their first year.

While I was praying, I was listening, trying to hear what was happening upstairs. I imagined the worst things. Holes being dug and bodies buried. Hideous screams. That’s what he always threatened to do: bury us deep where nobody would find us.

I don’t know how long I waited. Dozing. Waking. Listening. I shouted at the ceiling.

“Give her back, you bastard! Don’t you hurt her!”

I stood on the bench and looked out the crack in the window. There was a moon somewhere and I could just make out the trees and hear the wind moving the leaves.

I woke in the dark again, shivering violently. I sat up. Still alone. I reached across to her bunk. Felt her cold blankets. When I woke again it was almost light enough to see. I threw back the blankets and climbed the ladder, trying to balance, but I couldn’t reach the trapdoor.

I stood on the bench. Looked through the crack. I could just make out a wire fence and the edge of another building with a broken window. Rubbish. Weeds. Silence. Nothing moving.