sixty-five

I was woken up from my dream by a scream coming from the distant corner of the house, then the shouting of two women’s voices, one higher pitched than the other, one belonging to Juliette the other to Justine. I couldn’t work out the words but I could hear furniture being banged and the crashing of china being smashed to the ground. Then silence fell.

I heard footsteps coming down the corridor towards my room. The key turned in the lock, but the door remained shut. Footsteps walked back down the corridor and quickly afterwards the shouting started up again. I looked down at the chain that bound my leg: to my surprise the chain had gone. But then I remembered, the chain had only been part of my dream. In reality I had never been chained. I cautiously stood up off the floor, my legs unsteady. I pressed the door and it opened easily and silently. The corridor had been lit with the dull blue glow of gas-light. The shouting suddenly became louder and I could hear clearly the words, ‘Stop playing these games with him’ spoken in the hysterical tone of Juliette. And then the cool relaxed note of Justine’s laughter in response. The words were coming from a room a few doors up from me on the left. I could tell that the door was ajar as light was pouring through the chink into the dimness of the corridor. I walked quietly down the corridor and peered round the edge of the door.

Inside was a huge, high-ceilinged room – a four-poster bed framed in crimson old velvet streaked with dust stood in its centre. The painting of Leda and the swan hung on the wall. The carpet was faded to the colour of the walls: an old fawn beige. Books had been flung across the room, their leather bindings split and the pages torn. Pieces of bone china lay scattered across the room.

Juliette was standing to one side of the room, facing in my direction, speaking to the armchair where Justine was sitting. Justine was obscured from my view by the back of the armchair. A candle on the bedside table offered the only light but I could make out enough of Juliette’s face to see that the structure was contorted by anger and pain.

‘Are you incapable of expression? tell me what you are thinking, Justine. Don’t just sit there with your secret cold schemes, leaving me all alone in the dark.’

Juliette lunged for the armchair and for a moment I thought she was going to violently attack Justine. But instead she tore off the arm covers and began ripping up the rose-­covered fabric into pieces. They scattered round the room like confetti. Underneath the chair was an intricate structure of wire and hair, like a monstrous piece of machinery.

Juliette turned and started to walk in my direction. She seemed to be looking straight at me, but was still talking to Justine. ‘How long are you going to go on with this pretence of being abducted? Inventing phantom characters as if you were writing a book. Using fiction for your own malicious ends.’

Justine did not reply.

So the abductor had just been a fictitious character of Justine’s mind. His existence had been a fabrication. I was part of a far larger plot. Justine had not been kidnapped. I had.

I returned unquestioningly, of my own accord, to my room. The fact that the outside world had locked me up only seemed the natural consequence of the inside of my mind. I no longer needed to leave. But to which sister’s plan did I belong and to what end? It never occurred to me to wonder that if there had been no abductor, then who had asked me to murder Jack?