I wore the handcuffs all night. No one came to unlock them. Even though tiredness burned behind my eyes, I didn’t sleep. I sat on the bed, knees tucked to my chest, listening to the creaking bones of this old house. Now, I watch shadows move across the room. The sun has risen. It’s sweltering again, the heat rubs against my skin like a hot, sweaty hand.
At the sound of the bolt being slid free, my heart drums against my ribs. Bryony steps inside holding a tray and gives me a small smile. She’s wearing a blush-pink wrap dress, her feet bare, her hair pulled up into a high ponytail that swishes as she crosses the room. She sets the wooden tray down on the bedside table. It’s laden with two paper plates of fruit salad, yoghurt-topped granola and two icy glasses of orange juice. I eye the flimsy, wooden spoons. Even if I snap one in half, it would be useless as a weapon. I haven’t eaten anything substantial since the pasta that Gideon, or Heath, made days ago, but my appetite is lost.
‘Got something for you,’ she says, taking a small key off the tray. She unlocks my cuffs and I rub my wrists. They’re ringed with blackberry bruises. ‘I heard all the commotion last night, are you … OK?’
‘Wonderful. I’m really enjoying my stay, actually,’ I offer, voice thick with sarcasm. ‘Though the food looks fantastic, the cutlery could do with an overhaul and the handcuffs are a little industrial for my liking.’
‘But the host is so sane,’ she deadpans.
Laughter bursts from me. It’s a kind of shrill, nervous laugh that rises like hiccups. The reality of my situation is starting to settle in my bones like poison. The fact is, as far as the police are concerned, Simon Briggs, the man they believe is responsible for my sister’s abduction, is dead. Killed himself. They aren’t investigating anymore. And, thanks to Heath’s meticulous planning, the police will follow the crumbs he has left and reach the conclusion that I’ve thrown myself in the river. A ribbon neatly wrapping up the tragic story of the Arden sisters. Heath managed to hold Olivia here for sixteen years and Bryony a year longer than that, without anyone ever suspecting him. I don’t stand a chance. What will my life look like now, imprisoned in this house for the next ten years, the next twenty. I feel a rising helplessness, a mounting urge to cry that I give into. My laughter bleeds into sobs. Bryony climbs onto the bed beside me. She doesn’t touch me. Just sits close enough to let me know I’m not alone.
‘I wish I could tell you it gets easier,’ she says quietly.
She isn’t glancing nervously at the door this time, which means there’s no one listening. I wipe my eyes. ‘How did you end up here?’
She pulls the throw onto her lap and starts twisting the tassels around her fingers. ‘I wanted to go to this party but my mum wouldn’t let me. We argued. I snuck out. Walked there by myself.’ She’s shaking her head, as though she can’t believe her own stupidity. ‘I didn’t realise he’d been watching me. Waiting for me to be alone. I never made it to that party. He came out of nowhere. All I remember is the hideous mask and then … nothing. I woke up here.’
I do the maths, as vague as it is. Heath is somewhere in his late thirties which means he was in his very early twenties when he took Bryony and Olivia. I’m about to ask Bryony what she knows about Heath’s past when she says, ‘I wondered if you knew anything about my family? If there was anything on the news or …’ Her blue eyes are wide and brimming with hope.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say gently. ‘I would’ve been nine years old when you went missing. Things like that happened way above my head.’ Her face falls and my heart aches for her. ‘What’s your surname?’
‘Danvers.’
For a second, I consider lying just to save her feelings, telling her they’re still looking. That there’s a chance she’ll be found. But I have suffered so many lies, and the pain of having them unearthed, it isn’t worth it. I shake my head. Her shoulders sag. She seems to shrink beside me. ‘What were your family like?’ I ask, hoping talking about them will make her feel better.
‘I came from a happy home. My parents are doctors. We played boardgames every Thursday. I was the best as Scrabble.’ She smiles. Then she falls quiet. She has pulled a tassel thread so tightly around her finger, it’s going blue. Her smile withers on her lips. ‘I’ve lost my parents’ voices now, though. It’s like knowing the lyrics to your favourite song but forgetting the tune. I have a sister, too,’ she says. ‘She was three when I was taken. She’d be twenty now.’ She looks up at the ceiling and I can see she’s fighting back tears.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I lift my hand to lay it on hers, then stop myself, not sure she wants to be touched. She takes the plates from the tray and hands one to me along with the spoon. I’m not hungry, so I just push the fruit around. ‘Heath says he has a sister.’
‘Elinor.’
‘You’ve met her?’
‘No. And you won’t, either.’
‘She ran off with an Irishman?’
‘No she didn’t.’ Her laughter is brittle and humourless. ‘I don’t think she ever left Ledbury Hall.’
‘You mean … she’s a prisoner here? In one of the locked rooms?’
She gives me a pitying look. ‘I think he murdered her.’
Fear live-wires through my body. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘He has nightmares. He calls for her and when he wakes, he clings to me, sobbing like a child. Sometimes, when he’s had too much to drink or he’s coming round from another night terror, he calls me Elinor. Not surprising that he chose us because we look like her.’
‘We? You mean, you and Olivia?’
She nods. ‘There are photographs of his sister all over the house.’ Bryony leans in. When she starts speaking again, her voice is low-slung. ‘I think they were closer than siblings should be.’
Revulsion slithers into the pit of my stomach, followed by a surge of dread. ‘He could kill me. Could kill any of us.’
‘He works very hard to keep himself under control. He won’t be happy with himself that he lashed out at you.’
‘Why do you think he’s collecting girls that look like his sister?’
‘I think he regrets killing her. We’re like his purgatory or maybe even proof to himself that he can love something without destroying it.’
After he rescued me from being hit by the car, he told me some people can’t love without destroying what they care for most. Bryony’s right, that’s what this is about. The ultimate test of control.
Last night, I goaded him and he lost it. When Bryony and Olivia were brought here, they were just girls. Young and inexperienced, facing off against an adult man. He isn’t used to dealing with women. With someone who is old enough to have lived, to know their own mind. He slapped me last night but he could beat me to death tomorrow. I have to get out. I have to get all of us out of Ledbury Hall. ‘Do you have access to the kitchen?’ I ask, eyeing the plate of food in my lap. ‘To knives and forks? Anything we can use as a weapon?’
She pops a slice of mango into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. ‘No. Olivia does though. She prepares all the food but he’s banned her from coming to see you. Today she gave me this tray with both our breakfasts and told me to make sure you eat something. My room is just next door to yours.’
I put down my spoon. ‘Is the door to this room unlocked? Could we run?’
‘Olivia deadbolted it behind me. Even if it was left wide open, all the doors in this house are locked. You’d only be able to run along the hallway and down the stairs to the front door.’
‘Which is also locked …’
She nods.
Despair opens up inside me like a trap door, dark and endless. I snap it shut, refusing to give up so soon. ‘I saw the padlocked room, what’s in there?’
‘Elinor’s bedroom. I wandered in there once, before Olivia was brought here, and he was furious. He locked it up after that.’
‘Have you ever tried to run?’
She uses her spoon to cut a cherry in half. ‘A few times. Never successful, obviously.’
‘And what did he do?’
‘Am I your crystal ball?’ Her smile is rueful but there’s an edge to it. ‘Are you trying to see your future?’
‘Yes,’ I admit.
She’s quiet for a while and I’m wondering whether she’ll answer at all. I appreciate I’m not dredging up happy memories for her, but I need to know what he’ll do to me if I’m caught. ‘He was rougher with me than usual.’ Her words hang in the air like a noose I am not willing to dip my head into. Still, fear cuts a valley from my throat to my stomach at the horrors both Bryony and Olivia have endured. What I might have to endure. ‘He restricted my access to the house, too. Kept me locked in my room for weeks with nothing to do. No one to talk to. I was so lonely, when he eventually said I was allowed out of my room, I practically skipped down the stairs to the formal suppers.’
‘Formal supper?’
She pulls a face. ‘A Ledbury-family tradition. We eat together in the dining hall every evening. Though, I’m usually bound to a chair.’
‘But Olivia isn’t?’
‘No.’ Her tone is clipped. ‘He trusts her because she’s in love with him.’ She stabs at a piece of nectarine.
‘She’s sick,’ I say gently. ‘She has Stockholm syndrome. It’s when a captive develops an irrational bond with their—’
‘I know what it is,’ she hisses.
Her mood has darkened considerably at the mention of Olivia. This isn’t the first time talking about my sister has made her angry. I get the impression if I ask her directly about the tension between them, it’ll be like rubbing salt in an open wound. Still, I don’t want her to blame Olivia for something she can’t control. ‘It’s how she’s coped with being held here. A survival technique.’
‘Well her survival technique got me caught,’ she says, sneering hatred in her voice.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Heath wears a master key on a chain around his neck. All the other keys are kept in a brass tin in his bedroom.’
‘Are you sure?’ My heart races at the thought of getting my hands on that tin. ‘How do you know?’
‘Over supper, Olivia asked if she could use the piano but it’s locked away in the reception room. Heath, forever doting on her, told her where to find the key. It took me weeks to convince him I’d finally fallen for him. That I wanted him. I coaxed him into taking me into his bedroom.’ She shifts uncomfortably. ‘When we were … done … and he’d fallen asleep, I crept from the bed, took the keys and I ran. Then Olivia caught me halfway down the stairs and started screaming.’
Her hostility is palpable. And even though Olivia feels like a stranger to me now, I defend her because she’s my sister and it isn’t her fault that Heath Ledbury has crawled beneath her skin like a cancer. ‘She’s ill, Bryony.’
‘I hate her,’ she says, her words shot through with venom. ‘I could’ve escaped this place seven years ago if it wasn’t for her.’
I want to defend Olivia further but know it will only serve to aggravate Bryony, and I need her on side. ‘Look, I can convince her to leave him. She’ll help us get out of here.’
‘That’s never going to happen.’
‘Tell her I want to see her.’
She drops her spoon too. ‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Heath forbade her from coming anywhere near you.’
‘That’s because he’s afraid that if I spend time alone with her, I’ll break the hold he has. Please give her the message. Tell her I want to see her.’
Her lips press together into a thin line of frustration. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’ll kill my sister or, worse, bring her here.’ She surges to her feet and slaps her paper plate down onto the tray. ‘After he caught me racing down the stairs with his tin, he dragged me to my room and vanished for two days. When he came back, he had photographs of my sister. He’d stalked Lucy. Warned me if I ever disobeyed again, she’d suffer the consequences.’
She snatches the tray up with shaking hands. I lick my dry lips, trying to think of something I can say to convince her to help me. I don’t want to put her sister in danger, obviously I don’t, but we have no chance of escaping unless we work together. ‘Lucy won’t be safe until we get away from Heath.’
She’s staring at me, knuckles turning white around the tray, mouth working as though she is crunching on broken teeth. ‘You know what is so maddening? I have done everything in my power to keep my little sister away from this hellhole but your sister has deliberately dragged you into it. She doesn’t love you as much as she loves him. He will always come first.’ Her scornful words spring at me like blades. ‘Helping you and your sister means condemning mine. I won’t do it. Ask me one more time, and I’ll tell Heath you’re plotting to poison his perfect doll. Then you’ll never see Olivia again.’