Ava had no idea how long she’d spent with Rory. It was impossible to gauge time. But she knew Isaac was six now. She knew that much, because her husband had bought a cake with six candles, and they both sang Happy Birthday to him. He still wasn’t speaking, and Ava was waiting patiently for the day he would. But Rory was teaching him sign language. Did he think he would never talk?
‘He’ll need to go to school soon,’ she’d said. ‘It will be good for him to mix with other children.’ But Rory said there was no need for that. ‘Isaac’s a bright boy. I’ll teach him all he needs to know.’
Ava had come to accept her strange existence – living in a room with no windows. It was almost perfect. And one day, Rory said, she would be able to live in the main part of the house, where he and Isaac lived, and she could cook for them, eat with him. But she had to understand she must never go outside. If she went outside, she would have to be punished. She didn’t like being punished.
She couldn’t remember much about before she came here. Sometimes memories floated in about a man called Peter, but they never stayed long. She remembered Willow though. She would never forget her darling girl.
‘She died,’ Rory had told her. ‘Don’t you remember?’
She couldn’t recall her darling girl dying, and every time Rory reminded her she would sob for days.
‘You must look after Isaac,’ he would say, crashing his fist into her body. ‘Willow has gone forever.’
Sometimes a flash of faces would appear in her mind – strangers, and yet somehow familiar. Her past was somewhere inside her head, but impossible to reach. Like she knew Isaac had grown inside her, and yet she had no idea how he got there. Rory said they’d made love. That’s how he’d got there. But the memory was buried so deep, she felt sure she would never remember.
He was a good husband, most of the time, but she hated it when he slept with her. He was rough – hurt her. But if she tried to stop him, he got angry, would hit her, and worse, hit Isaac.
Ava had decided a long time ago she would accept her fate.