They pass at the foot of the stairs, as Gabe leaps down to see about the banging and Sarah flees upwards to escape it.
‘Don’t let him in,’ she says fiercely, urgently, waving the pregnancy test. ‘Let me do this.’
Gabe gestures to the Keeper’s Cabin. ‘Take the key here, lock it. Do what you need to do.’ And he’s away down through the kitchen, through the reception to the frosted door that Jack is pounding with his fist as he yells and bellows to be let in.
‘Calm down,’ Gabe yells through the door. ‘You’re not getting in here until—’
But Jack is smashing something hefty and grey against the glass, a cornerstone from the garden wall, flaking the toughened glass on the other side. It might not hold – can it hold? Now he’s jumping up against the door with his shoulder. Right. Deep breath.
Gabe grabs the door handle tightly. One, two and open . . . and he times it right. Jack falls through the door that is not there any more, and flies past Gabe and lands hard on the floor and rolls over and pulls himself up against the wall, snarling, ‘You bastard.’ He’s in the house now, prowling and roaring and calling her name and opening rooms, tearing open the doors, turning over desks, ripping off covers, pulling over wardrobes.
‘Sarah!’
Gabe tries to restrain him and gets the back of a hand across his face, cutting his brow, filling his eye with blood. Jack is wild, searching, screaming for her.
‘Sarah!’
Gabe blocks the doorway to the tower and Jack comes at him with a broken chair, stabbing with the splintered wood, lashing out at his head and missing. Gabe grabs Jack’s waist, swings him down to the floor and pins him there, but pain rips into his hand and he sees bite marks. Jack is through the door, up the stairs, into the tower kitchen, turning over the table with a heave, clattering the pans, smashing the dirty crockery.
‘She’s here! That’s her scarf. Where is she? Sarah!’
‘She’s safe. Calm down, for God’s sake, just let me talk . . .’
But there’s no talking to be done, no space left for words in Jack’s bushfire mind, and he’s getting closer. She can hear him coming, hear the crash and bang and the shouts. Is the door locked? Yes, it won’t give. It’s thick and strong. Sarah is fit to bursting, but what the hell is she supposed to pee in? There’s a wash basin without a plug, a wide-mouthed bottle as a tooth mug, with gunk in the bottom. A razor with hairs in the blade. Books, lined up tightly on the shelf. Broken spines, frayed pages. Can’t pee in those. The bed’s unmade, the shape of Gabe’s head in the pillow. Another book on the floor: Tommy Cooper. Unexpected, reminds her of a clip she saw once, he was funny. But a pint glass, there is a pint glass with an inch of vodka in it – she sniffs, no, it’s water – that will do. Ridiculous bloody situation. Bottle or glass? Glass, bottle? Glass. Sarah pulls her jeans down to her ankles, puts her back up against the wall and slides down into a crouching position. If that door opens, she will die. The thought makes her shudder. She holds the pint glass between her legs to catch the first urine of the day, and feels a warm splash on her hand. The glass warms too, as it fills. Such relief. Then the sound of a miss. Overflow. Never mind, it is done. That will stink, but he can clean the carpet later, if they get out of this. The pregnancy test is like a pen with a little window on the side where the result will show. She dips one end into the wee and starts to count, under her breath, backwards from thirty. ‘Twenty-nine, twenty-eight . . .’
How blue is a blue line? She does not dare to straighten up or pull her jeans up. How clear does it have to be? There won’t be one anyway. Never is. Something smashes in the kitchen, a mug perhaps. The shouts get louder.
‘Fifteen, fourteen . . .’
The door of the cabin booms under the weight of Jack’s hand, then again. It is solid in the frame, locked hard. The keepers must have put good locks on when they were all going mad with each other. Concentrate.
‘Ten, nine . . .’
Jack has gone, it sounds like. Upstairs. Sarah is still crouching over the glass, her jeans still down, her elbows on her haunches.
‘Five, four . . .’
I can cope, she thinks. I can do this. I’m strong. I am not barren. I am not this or that or anything else they say. I am enough, I am myself. The daughter of my mother and my father. Sarah Hallelujah Jones, beautiful and proud and strong. I can do this. Please God. Half blinded by tears now, she blinks them back to look down at the test pen in her hand and sees the result, which is in this moment truly a matter of life or death.