I knew this would happen. I wish I had just died in that river, then no matter what happened to R, I wouldn’t have to deal with this guilt. I don’t feel bad for him; I feel bad for anyone who tries to help me. I’m not worth all this trouble. Simon is gone now because of me. I still see the images of him in my head. Are they real, or am I creating them to fill in the blanks?
He’s bloody, he reaches out to me, then he stops moving. I remember him staring at me, eyes fixed, one pupil blown and his face barely recognisable. I did that to him. My selfishness. R told me there was no way out. I should have listened to him. Am I this weak that I can’t just leave on my own and disappear?
Maybe I can sell my belongings and put some cash together to start a new life. I don’t have access to the jewellery in our safe; only R has the combination for that. I know he doesn’t trust me with anything of value, but I know even my shoes could fetch a couple of hundred pounds each if I sold them. I don’t have a bank account, though, so unless I get paid in cash, I don’t see how I can do this. I can’t sell anything on the internet. All my documentation is in the safe with the other things that might help me to get away. He has thought this through. I am nothing but a pet.
I need to stop this madness – hope has only ever got me in trouble before.
I hear a car on the gravel outside and look to see the police pull into the driveway. It’s DS Grey and another officer who I haven’t seen before.
Where is Adrian Miles? My mind immediately thinks the worst, but on closer examination of DS Grey’s face, she doesn’t look grief-stricken, so maybe there’s a good reason for him not being here. Still, I have that sinking feeling. What if R has done something to DS Miles?
I feel sick at the thought of someone else getting hurt because of me. If only I could make R happy, make it so he doesn’t want to hit me anymore, then maybe we could be happy. I could accept my place here and no one would feel sorry enough for me to get involved. Part of me wonders if some of the reason R does the things he does is so that people will interfere, like he is looking for a reason to hurt people. It wouldn’t surprise me. I am exhausted trying to think of ways to fix this. I can’t.
Maybe I need to tell the police more. This will go on and on until R finally tries to kill me again.
I remember. What do I remember? I remember R telling me that I had gone too far this time and that he was going to kill Simon and make me watch. I can’t believe that he would let me go after that, but I just can’t remember how I ended up in the river.
DS Grey is different without her partner around. She seems softer, somehow. I wonder how much of her energy goes towards managing DS Miles when he is around. I notice women doing it a lot with their partners, trying to instigate damage control for some imaginary scenario that hasn’t even happened yet. I do it with R, so maybe that’s why I recognise it in her.
Even though I didn’t get educated past my GCSEs, I am not stupid. I might look stupid, and I know people constantly underestimate me and think of me as some gold-digging airhead who is just in it for the money. But they have no idea how wrong they are. I couldn’t give a shit about R’s money.
When I talk with the detective, I realise she has absolutely no concept of what it is she is asking me to do. But then I think about Simon and how much he wanted to help me, too. He would tell me to be brave and speak to DS Grey. R told me brave was just another word for stupid.
I genuinely don’t recall anything useful about the night Simon died, but I remember another man who tried to help me once. Clive Osborne worked for R and he saw me with some bruises that were difficult to explain away. He promised I wouldn’t have to spend another day in that house. He left to get the things we needed to get away, but he never came back. Maybe the truth was too much for him. I always figured he got scared, but now I think I was being naive.
Back then, I didn’t know the depths of R’s evil. I still had a rose-tinted view of him, as if somehow if I loved him enough that would change him, but it never did. All it did was change me into a person I can barely stand to look at.
I am all but erased – changing a little each day to accommodate his demands but never being quite good enough. I wonder if anything will ever be good enough for R. He tells me often enough that there is no one else for him but me. Those words are like a noose around my neck. He likes to make sure I know he can take my life from me whenever he wants to. I wonder how he will react when he finds out that I have told the police about Clive. Maybe he will be so angry that he finally finishes me and I can finally get out of this hell.