Bethany Cane’s hand trembles as she turns the key in the lock. The door opens and she enters her home for the first time in weeks. Beth looks over her shoulder at the car posted outside. Her ‘new norm’ for the foreseeable future in the form of a twenty-four-hour security detail. Beth is grateful for them.
A few weeks ago, she was rescued from a mental health ward. This secure medical facility had been told by her kidnappers that Beth had had a mental breakdown. She’d laid low at the unit, showing no signs of aggression, not knowing if the place she was in was real or fake. It could all be part of some elaborate set-up to make her believe she was in an actual hospital. It turned out she was all along. She’d been trained to avoid being tricked in this way, and she knew without doubt that she had been abducted. Just not why or by whom.
She’d just started to believe that this place was real, and was working on the doctor to try and get him to call MI5, when, much to the confusion of the doctors and nursing staff there, her new boyfriend, the pathologist, Elliot Baker turned up with colleagues to free her. He was a much-needed familiar face given the circumstances.
After they found and rescued Beth, her boss, Ray Martin, had launched an investigation into who had put her there and how this had happened in the first place. All the paperwork appeared to be genuine, even the name of a legitimate police surgeon had been used as that of the person who officially sectioned her. The only problem was, this particular man hadn’t even been on call that night. In fact, he’d gone away for a short break with his wife and hadn’t even been in London at the time. It remained, therefore, a mystery as to how the kidnappers had arranged the scam with such skill. All they knew was that the Network – a terrifying conglomerate running a lucrative operation involving the kidnap and brainwashing of children – were behind it, and Beth had been taken as leverage to force her colleague, Michael Kensington, to hand himself over to them.
Life changed a lot after that as Beth and Michael were forced into a safe house to protect them both over the next few weeks.
Now they’re just trying to normalize, something that in Beth’s case has always been easier said than done.
Beth takes a breath and closes the front door. She lives in an end-terrace house, with more garden than most have in the outskirts of London. She looks down the hallway. Just to the right are the stairs leading up to the three bedrooms and family bathroom. To her left is the living room, and further down on the right is a small water closet built in under the stairs. Beyond, and directly ahead at the end of the hallway, is the kitchen. She heads towards it, passing all of the other closed doors.
Beth glances around the kitchen. The room is so familiar and yet it is strange to be back here after all these weeks – almost a month – of being cooped up with only Michael and bodyguards for company. But the kitchen is almost as she left it. She notes the differences. A checked tea towel is folded, and not scrunched as it was before, on the counter top. The mug she’d used for hot chocolate is now washed and left upside down to dry. And the window that had been broken by her assailant has been fixed – all thanks to Elliot.
Beth glances at the back door, wondering if she’ll ever feel safe here again as a painful anxiety churns her stomach.
‘But of course, I will,’ she says aloud in order to dispel the nervousness.
Her voice trembles, giving away the falseness of her bravado. She hasn’t been back to work since the first night when they brought her back to Archive’s offices, in the MI5 building near Borough Market. Despite insisting she feels well, she’d had to have the obligatory counselling to help her deal with the trauma of a home invasion.
She’d been to see a woman called Mary Blake a few times since.
‘Just because you weren’t physically hurt, doesn’t mean you aren’t traumatized,’ Mary had explained. ‘In fact, this sort of attack can create all sorts of deep-rooted emotions that can have a terrible impact on your mental health. That’s why you’re here, Beth. To try and make sense of them, talk them through so they no longer have an effect on you.’
Beth had listened, and talked, and shared how she felt, but always remained aware that she really couldn’t show any intense signs of anxiety, because this could have a bearing on her ability to do her job. Or at least might be viewed that way by her superiors. Nothing had meant more to her than her position at Archive until recently, not even her two sons whom she’d given up in a divorce agreement. Even now Beth has no regrets about that. How much better it was that Cal and Philip hadn’t been there that night. The thought of them seeing anything, or even being taken, was almost too much to bear, and it reminds Beth that she does in fact love her children. She just wasn’t the full-time mother sort. Hence she’d allowed her ex, Callum, to have full custody. And now, while she may still be in danger, it is even more important that they stay away from her.
Beth puts the kettle on before taking her suitcase into the utility room. Once there she unloads her clothing into the washing machine. Although the safe house has a machine, this week Beth hadn’t bothered to use it, storing her clothing for her own washer as though she knew she had to do something normal when she got home. Now, she sets the machine going, adding detergent, then she takes her suitcase upstairs.
As she reaches the landing, Beth has a momentary flashback. Someone grabbing her from behind, the chloroform-soaked cloth pressed over her mouth and nose. She can still smell that distinctive chemical odour, and her stomach roils with the recollection. She shudders as she approaches her bedroom door.
Then she hears Mary Blake’s voice, soft and reassuring, in her ear. ‘Take the bull by the horns…’
Beth strides forward and pulls down the handle, pushing the door wide open. She pauses at the door for a split second and then she walks in with forced confidence. She looks over her shoulder, as though she expects her abductor to still be waiting for her and then takes a deep breath.
The room has a smell, she’s not sure what it is. She sees the curtains are still closed, and she goes to the window and pulls them aside. Then she opens the window letting in a waft of fresh air. This done, Beth already feels like she has begun to reclaim the room.
The bed is as she left it, bedding kicked back as though she’d just got up. She strips the bedding away, throwing the duvet cover, bottom sheet and pillow cases into a pile on the floor. Then she goes back out onto the landing and retrieves her spare set. After remaking the bed, she feels more in control. But the room where her attack took place still doesn’t feel hers. There is black dust on all of the surfaces, where forensics had dusted for prints. Going into the ensuite, Beth gets a disinfectant spray from under the sink. She uses it on all the tops and sides of her furniture, removing the murky smears. After that she starts to feel better about her bedroom. The cleaning is an important process, in helping to settle her nerves as she wipes away the memory and fear of the attack with her cloth and spray. She does the same in the bathroom. And then she spends the afternoon cleaning every room in the house.
By tea time Beth is feeling tired, the house is fresher. She’s thrown out all the turned food from the fridge, and cleaned the inside ready for when her shopping delivery arrives the next day.
As she puts away all of the cleaning products, there is a knock on the front door.
Beth goes out into the hallway and stares at the door.
‘Hey Beth. It’s me!’ calls a voice from the other side of the door, though she isn’t sure who ‘me’ is.
She takes her phone from her pocket and looks at it. There is a text from Elliot, saying he’s planning to call after work. Beth goes to the door. She puts the chain on before opening.
Elliot is standing on her doorstep.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Can I come in? I brought take-away.’
He holds up a bulging white plastic bag.
Beth removes the chain and lets Elliot in. He hugs her, giving her a light kiss on the lips.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he says.
Though Elliot was with MI5 when she was released from the psychiatric ward, they haven’t seen each other since that night. They’ve shared texts and phone calls, but that is all, since it was impossible to continue their relationship while she was at the safe house: a place even Elliot wasn’t allowed to know the location of.
Beth is pleased to see him, but there’s also an underlying stress with this unexpected meeting. He’s been here and fixed things for her, at her request, but they’d never been together in her former family home before. It was something she had been avoiding and hadn’t planned on. At least until her divorce was finalized. In the circumstances though, all of these worries don’t matter anymore.
‘Come in the kitchen,’ Beth says.
Beth indicates the small four-seater table and Elliot places the bag of food on the top. ‘Hope you like Chinese,’ he says.
‘I love it,’ she says.
Beth gets plates and cutlery and places them down. Elliot pulls a bottle of Merlot from the bag, as well as several food cartons.
‘I didn’t know what you liked so I went for some safe options. Sweet and sour chicken, prawn curry, egg fried rice and of course some fortune cookies.’
‘Sounds perfect,’ Beth says. She puts two glasses down on the table and sits opposite him.
Elliot opens the screw-top bottle and pours the wine.
As Beth removes the lids from the food cartons she bursts into tears.
‘Oh God! Sweetheart!’ Elliot says. ‘I’m sorry, have I gone too far?’
‘It’s such a relief not to be alone here.’
Elliot moves to the chair next to hers and reaches for her. He holds Beth until the tears dry up. One hand strokes her back, while the other smooths her hair back from her face. When she finishes crying, she looks at him, embarrassment colours her cheeks.
‘Feel better?’ he says.
Beth nods.
‘Here, have some wine and let’s eat this food. Then, later, I’m going to take you upstairs and make love to you. Is that okay?’
Beth leans into him, kissing him on the mouth.
‘You’re amazing,’ she says.
‘Well, I’m working on it,’ he answers.
They eat in silence. Beth sips at the wine and for the first time in weeks she feels safe. She glances at Elliot as he eats the food with a great deal of gusto. She can’t believe how lucky she is to have met him.