SUMMER
Thursday, January 20th (Present)
Poppy woke me up in the morning by stroking my hair and whispering, “Lily.” Summer, Summer, Summer, Summer, Summer! I squeezed my eyes closed and a tear escaped, dripping onto the pillow. Wrapping the cover around me tightly, I pressed my face into the pillow. Leave me alone. “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t cry. He’s already gone,” Poppy said. I heard her put something down on the bedside table. I raised my head and saw a hot mug of tea and a plate of toast. I could eat here? And he was gone?
“What?” I asked, blinking rapidly to clear the tears in my eyes. We never ate in the bedroom.
“He’s already been down for breakfast. We told him you’re not feeling well so you were sleeping in. Try and eat something, okay?” I nodded my head. I felt sick but my stomach groaned, begging for food. “I’ll leave you to it. Call me if you need anything.” She walked out of the room and closed the door. I gulped down the panic at her leaving me. I wanted to be alone, but I didn’t feel safe. None of us were safe down here, but we were safer together. He couldn’t just magic his way in here—appear in front of me—but it still scared me. He had so much control over us.
I sat against the wall and pulled the cover over me for protection. The steaming mug of tea looked so inviting; I picked it up and took a sip. After a few mouthfuls, I felt a little more human. My gran was wrong, though: a cup of tea couldn’t fix everything. It was just a normal thing to do and normal didn’t happen down here much.
Yesterday felt like it was a bad dream. Did it really happen? Sometimes I thought about something so much that it didn’t seem real anymore. Or something was so shocking that it couldn’t seem real. I knew I should keep myself busy to take my mind off it, but I was too drained. I felt like I had nothing left inside me. Summer was slipping away, and I clutched at that carefree, stubborn teenager with my fingertips. I wouldn’t let her go. I couldn’t be Lily.
My skin crawled and a shudder of disgust rippled through my body. I jumped out of bed and grabbed clothes and a towel. “I’m showering,” I muttered on my way through to the bathroom.
“Okay,” Rose replied, looking up from her book the sofa.
I turned the shower on as hot as it would go and sat on the floor and waited for the steam to tell me it was hot enough. Would I ever feel clean again? Don’t think about it…Summer. Stripping out of my clothes, I stepped into the shower. The water burned as it hit my skin, and I gasped in shock. I clenched my teeth together and held on to the wall, digging my short nails into it. The water was unbearably hot; it felt like being stung all over by bees, but I wouldn’t move.
When I was red and sore, I got out and loosely wrapped a towel around my aching body. The soft material rubbed against my delicate skin. It stung so much it brought a tear to my eye. The mirror on the wall next to the shower had steamed up and, thankfully, I couldn’t see myself in it. I used to think they were crazy to happily shower twice a day, but maybe they just didn’t feel clean down here.
The only tight fitting clothes I had were a pair of white cotton trousers and a thin, light green long-sleeved top. I brushed my hair, dragging it from the roots to the tips, counting to one hundred. My mum used to tell me to brush it one hundred strokes when I was little. I treated it as a game—shouting the numbers out until I reached one hundred. This time I did the same and counted in my head. I wanted to go back there, to when I was a little kid sitting on my daddy’s lap combing my damp hair.
“Lily, are you okay?” Rose asked, the second I walked out of the bathroom. I nodded in reply, even though what I felt was the furthest thing from okay.
Poppy sat on the sofa as Rose got up, and I followed her. I had a feeling she didn’t say certain things in front of Rose, and I wasn’t sure if that was because she didn’t trust her or she didn’t want to upset her. “It will get better, I promise. You won’t always feel like this.”
“Won’t I?” I replied.
“You won’t. It gets…bearable. I hate it too, Lily. You just need to find something to focus on while it’s happening.” I tried. “I think about what I want my life to be and for those few minutes, I’m in a different world,” she said, smiling fondly at whatever that image was.
“What do you want your life to be?”
“Happy,” she replied simply. “I imagine living in a beautiful little cottage with ivy growing up the walls and around the windows. The garden is equally as beautiful, with colorful flowers and a vegetable patch. My husband’s a great man who works hard to support his family and I stay at home with our children. I imagine what my pregnancies would be like and how my children would look, our family holidays and playing in the garden. We’re happy, you know, really happy.”
I managed to smile a little. “That sounds nice.” I wanted a life in London with a huge flat overlooking the Thames, a good salary, and lots of cocktail bars. Now I’d settle for anything—a cardboard box—if it were outside this fucking cellar.
“It’s silly, I know, but a family and nice little house is all I’ve ever wanted.”
I shook my head. “It’s not silly. You can still have that.” We just needed to get out of here. Would her fantasy of her perfect life be enough to make her help me? With her help, we could do something to him. I had no doubt Violet would be in.
She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t, Lily. It’s just a dream. Do you want another cup of tea?” Before I had time to answer, she walked over to the kettle. Boiling water. We could do a lot of damage with boiling water. “Lily, do you want an extra sugar?”
Why would I want an extra sugar? I frowned. “No, thank you.”
Poppy smiled and went back to making tea. She should be making tea for her husband and juice for her children. She deserved that life. I sat back and for the first time I really realized that it wasn’t just me that was losing out. Rose and Poppy may not have had a family when they were taken, but that didn’t mean they didn’t dream of having one. They could have one now if they weren’t down here.
Tea and toast was placed in front of me. I wasn’t sure if it was fresh toast or the old one from our room—it didn’t matter, though. “Thank you.” I nibbled at the toast but my stomach turned. I felt too disgusting to keep anything down.
The new Violet opened the bedroom door and tentatively stepped out. Her eyes darted around the room. “It’s okay,” I whispered. Wow, I was just like Rose and Poppy, giving false hope to the new girl. She stepped into the room and perched on the arm of the sofa.
Poppy whispered in my ear, “She’s not said a word, and she won’t talk to us or even listen to us.” Probably because she doesn’t want to hear what you have to say. Violet was still in shock; her wide eyes scanned the room. My chest tightened as I remembered that feeling of being completely lost, confused, and terrified. Violet needed someone that understood her, not someone that would tell her to stay strong and endure it from day one.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
Her head snapped to mine so quickly I jumped in surprise. “Layal,” she replied in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Layal’s unusual.”
“I’m from France originally, moved here with my mum to live with my grandparents when I was two.”
I was getting somewhere. At least she had spoken to me. “Why did you move?”
She shook her head, frowning at a bad memory. “My dad was abusive, apparently. I don’t remember him at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose said, and Layal shrugged. Violet, I reminded myself. I couldn’t get caught up in calling her by her name. If I slipped up in front of him, then who knows what kind of screwed-up reaction he would have.
Violet looked up, directly at me, as if she didn’t want to acknowledge Rose and Poppy. “What does he want?”
“We think the perfect family, or something like that. I don’t understand it. I don’t want to understand that psycho.” I ignored Rose’s deep frown. Brainwashed.
Violet look on, turning her nose up in disgust. “He’s so fucked up.” I nodded in agreement. You have no idea. “What did he do to you last night?” I dropped my eyes to the floor and tensed. “He raped you, didn’t he?” she whispered. No! No, no, no, no, no! I tried to ignore the lump in my throat and picked a spot on the floor and stared. I will not cry. “He won’t do that to me.” I curled up, hugging my legs to my chest. I remembered saying a similar thing.
Rose tucked her hair behind her ears. “Would you like something to eat, Violet?”
“Layal,” she corrected. “And no, thanks. Why are we all still here when there’s four of us and only one of him?” Good question. Fear. That was all that stopped me and Poppy from trying to escape. For Rose, though, it was something else.
Violet clearly wanted to get out, so maybe it could work. We still both desperately wanted to escape. Poppy would take a lot of convincing, but I think we could win her around. Rose was a lost cause. Whatever we did, we had to make sure it was well thought out and that Rose didn’t know a thing.
“We could poison him,” Violet suggested.
I shook my head. “Too much could go wrong. We’d have to do it gradually, so he wouldn’t taste or smell it, but then there would be no guarantee he’d die down here. I don’t want to starve to death.” Stabbing him with something, though there wasn’t anything particularly sharp down here. Hitting him over the head with something hard, but then the only thing hard enough was the frying pan, TV, or a chair, and who wouldn’t see that coming?
“Anyway, how did he find you?” I asked, needing to change the subject because Rose was still around, and I didn’t want her to know how much I’d been thinking about escaping.
“I’ll make some soup for lunch,” Rose announced and abruptly walked away. I watched her go and hoped that when we got out she would be okay. Her family had to come forward and take care of her after everything she’s been through.
As soon as she was busy pulling pans out of the cupboard, I turned to Violet and whispered, “We’ll talk when we’re alone.” She looked up at Rose and her eyes widened a fraction as she understood why. I was determined to get out now more than ever.
When Rose called us for lunch, I made myself sit at the table like normal. Even though I felt the furthest thing from normal. My chest was aching. I wanted to curl up in the corner and lie there until we were found.
“Smells good,” Poppy complimented.
I looked down at the steam rising off the plate, dancing around and making swirling patterns in the air. I watched it rise until it disappeared, wishing I could float off and disappear too.
“Lily, are you not hungry?” Rose asked.
I had only eaten a few mouthfuls and not even touched the bread roll. “No.” Of course I wasn’t hungry. Since I had been down here, I had lost my appetite, and after last night, I felt too sick and disgusted to eat anything more than a few nibbles of toast.
She took my plate. “Well I’ll pop it in a Tupperware and we can keep it in the fridge for later.”
“I won’t want it later,” I replied.
She smiled. “Just in case.”
Rose and Poppy started another one of the daily bathroom cleans. I knew I should help by doing the kitchen or something, but I had no energy or motivation. I wanted to live to get out and see my family again, but with every passing day I cared a little less if I died.
Violet turned to me. “They said he comes down for dinner, right?” I nodded. “We’ll do it then. We’ll both grab something and hit him as hard as we can with it,” she whispered.
My eyes widened. Shit, she was planning to do it just like that? “What? No. We have to actually plan this. We can’t just hit him!”
She frowned deeply in anger. “This is a plan.”
It wasn’t. We couldn’t just hit him without a plan. So many things could go wrong, and it had been tried in the past. “Violet, that’s been done before without planning it through.” I shook my head. “We can’t, not now.”
“Well, we can’t do nothing. We have to. How can you say not now?”
“Have you ever seen someone being murdered right in front of you?”
She frowned. “What? No.”
“Well, I have. That’s how I can say not now.” I stood up and walked into the bedroom. Cleaning seemed like a good idea for once.
***
The cellar door opened right on time, and my blood turned cold. Bile rose to my throat as he walked down the stairs, smiling, holding a bunch of bright purple violets. “Good evening, Flowers,” he said. Those three words had the power to stop my heart. I stepped back behind the table and clung to the chair. Selfishly, I was grateful for Violet being here now; it meant he would take his place at the top of the table—the farthest from me.
Violet stared at him, her lip curled in hate and disgust. Please don’t, I begged her silently. If she did anything, it would get her killed, and I didn’t want that again. This Violet had to live.
Her eyes flicked to the empty vase sitting on the worktop. Too thin—it was far too thin and flimsy to do any damage. I doubted it would even hurt him at all. She caught my eye and nodded. I shook my head, eyes wide.
“Summer,” Violet said, using my old name. Shit. No! My breathing slowed and I shook my head. He hadn’t heard yet. He was too busy being greeted by Rose and Poppy. No, I mouthed. She didn’t listen. Clover was standing sideways on to her. Oh God, oh God.
My breath caught in my throat as Violet swept the vase up and slammed it down on his head in one quick, swift movement. Rose and Poppy gasped as the flimsy plastic broke into only a few pieces and fell to the floor. Clover stumbled forward, but just a few steps.
This was it. My eyes widened in horror as he very slowly straightened up and turned around. Violet’s mouth dropped open. His eyes were hard, cold, and fixed on her. I gulped and my hands shook.