Land of the Living Read Online Free PDF

jealous, if that’s what it would do, might not be a good idea. ‘I remember my flat. Doing something in my flat. I woke up here and I’ve no idea how I got here or how we met. I wanted you to tell me.’
    There was a long pause. I almost wondered if he had gone but then there was a whinnying sound, which I realized with a shock was a wheezing laugh.
    ‘What?’ I said. ‘What did I say? What?’
    Keep talking. Maintain communication. I was thinking all the time. Thinking, thinking. Thinking to stay alive, and thinking to stop feeling, because I knew dimly that if I allowed myself to feel I would be throwing myself off a cliff into darkness.
    ‘I’ve got you,’ he said.
    ‘Got me?’
    ‘You’re wearing a hood. You’re not seeing my face. You’re being clever. If you can make me think you never saw me, then maybe I’ll let you go.’ Another wheezing laugh. ‘You think about that, do you, while you’re lying there? Do you think about going back to the world?’
    I felt a lurch of misery that almost made me howl. But it also made me think. So we did meet. He didn’t just grab me from behind in a dark alley and hit me over the head. Do I know this man? If I saw him, would I know his face? If he spoke naturally, would I recognize his voice?
    ‘If you don’t believe me, then it doesn’t matter if you tell me again, does it?’
    The rag was jammed into my mouth. I was lifted down and led over to the bucket. Carried back. Dumped on the ledge. No wire. I took that to mean that he wasn’t going out of the building. I felt his breath close on my face, that smell.
    ‘You’re lying in here trying to work things out. I like that. You’re thinking that if you can make me believe that you can’t identify me, I’ll play with you for a while, then I’ll let you go. You don’t understand. You don’t see the point. But I like it.’ I listened to his scraping whisper, trying to recall if the voice was in any way familiar. ‘They’re different. Like Kelly, for example. Take Kelly.’ He rolled the name round in his mouth as if it was a piece of toffee. ‘She just cried and fucking cried all the time. Wasn’t a bloody plan. Just crying. It was a bloody relief just to shut her up.’
    Don’t cry, Abbie. Don’t get on his nerves. Don’t bore him.
    The thought came to me out of the darkness. He’s been keeping me alive. I didn’t mean that he hadn’t killed me. I had been in this room now for two or three or four days. You can live for weeks without food but how long can a human being survive without water? If I had just been locked in this room, unattended, I would be dead or dying by now. The water I’d gulped down had been his water. The food in my gut was his food. I was like an animal on his farm. I was his. I knew nothing about him. Outside this room, out in the world, this man was probably stupid, ugly, repulsive, a failure. He might be too shy to talk to women, workmates might bully him. He could be the silent, weird one in the corner.
    But here I was his. He was my lover and my father and my God. If he wanted to come in and quietly strangle me, he could. I had to devote every single waking second to thinking of ways to deal with him. To make him love me, or like me, or be scared of me. If he wanted to break down a woman before killing her, then I had to remain strong. If he hated women for their hostility, then I had to reassure him. If he tortured women who rejected him, then I had to… what? Accept him? Which was the right choice? I didn’t know.
    Always and above all I had to stop myself believing that it probably didn’t matter what I did.
    I didn’t count the time without the wire. It didn’t seem to matter. But after a time he came back in. I felt his presence. A hand on my shoulder made me start. Was he checking I was still alive?
    Two choices. I could escape in my mind. The yellow butterfly. Cool water. Water to drink, water to plunge into. I tried to re-create my world in my head. The