Sleep Tight (25 page)

She had to be punished.

He could feel the blood rushing to his face, and his hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as he drove down the M6, heading towards the M40. Some idiot in a beat-up old BMW cut in front of him, and he took his aggression out on his horn, opening the window and gesticulating wildly at the driver. He wanted to put his foot down and coast past the smug bastard, but he couldn’t. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over by the police for speeding.

The decision to drive to Poole and take a ferry to Guernsey had been difficult. It would have been so much better if he could have flown from Manchester to get to Olivia as quickly as possible, but the flight was more expensive and he was certain that the police would have alerted the airports to be on the lookout for him. After what he had done to Sophie, he
was sure they would be trying to find him.

The muscles in his stomach clenched as he relived the pleasure of thrusting the knife into Sophie’s leg. He would have dearly loved to kill the bitch for what she had done, but his goal was Olivia and if he became the subject of a full-scale manhunt it would put his plan at risk. They would be searching for him, but not with the same level of urgency that they would hunt down a murderer. At least, that was what he hoped.

Travelling by ferry seemed to be less dangerous to Robert. He was confident his passport wouldn’t be scanned and would only be used to verify his name on the ticket. He’d checked and, as the Channel Islands are part of the UK, he only needed photo ID so he might just make it to Olivia without any warning flags being raised.

Each time he thought of what she had done, his jaw clenched at the injustice of it all. When her parents had been found dead, he’d been the one to take care of her, as he had done every day of his life since then. How dare she throw that all back in his face?

Of course he’d had to make sure Sophie was out of Olivia’s life from the start. She was dangerous. He knew she had written when Olivia’s parents died, because he had seen the British Forces stamp. He had destroyed that letter and all the ones that came later. Olivia was devastated that she hadn’t heard from her friend, and she wrote to Sophie every week for months. In the early days of her grief Olivia rarely left the house, though, and she had asked Robert to post her letters. He smiled at the memory of her trust, and relived the pleasure of holding her while she sobbed at the lack of a response from her friend, claiming that the only person in her life she could trust was him.

Which was exactly the way he liked it.

So how had Olivia and Sophie revived their friendship? How had he missed it?

Sophie was a stroppy bitch, and he had hated her with a passion at university. Who did she think she was? She had seen him watching Olivia, but there was no law against looking at a beautiful girl, was there? And what was it she had called him?
Creepy Guy
. That was it. She had made it so difficult for him. If she was around he’d always had to back off, but he had just been biding his time, waiting until Olivia needed him, was ready for him.

There was one particular night at the university theatre when Robert had decided that Sophie was going to have to pay for her interference. She had caught him trying to take a photo of Olivia as they got ready for a stupid charity pantomime. Sophie had stormed up to him and grabbed the front of his shirt in both her hands, pulling his face close to hers.

‘Fuck off, Creepy Guy. Take that camera out of here before I ram it up your pervy little arse. Leave my friend alone.’

Olivia had shouted out to Sophie. ‘What’s up, Soph? You need to get ready, honey – you’re on in a few minutes.’

Robert had nearly killed her then. He could practically feel Sophie’s neck in his hands; see her face turning mottled red as he choked the life out of her. But it wasn’t the right time. Olivia would have turned to Dan for comfort, and that was more than Robert could bear.

So he’d done nothing. Sophie had shaken him one more time, pushing her angry face closer to his while muttering her final warning, and had gone back into the room, pulling a limp curtain across the doorway. He’d heard her say, ‘It’s that perv: your very own Creepy Guy. Come with me, Liv. Seriously, you need to know who this guy is.’

Olivia had laughed. ‘Okay. Next time you see him, point him out to me. Let’s sort it once and for all.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve not noticed him. Look, Liv, you really do need to be careful. There’s something not right about him,’ Sophie had responded.

Bitch
.

From that moment on, he’d had to keep his distance. He’d still been able to watch her, though. He’d even followed her home one night, but then the wonder-boy Danush had stepped out from behind a tree just at the wrong moment, and Robert had had to slide silently into an open gateway to avoid being seen.

He was glad he had hurt Sophie. She deserved it for what she had done to him.

Now he pushed thoughts of Sophie from his mind. He needed to focus on Olivia; she was the only one who mattered.

Robert used the whole journey to Poole to devise his plan. Once the ferry arrived at Guernsey, he would have to find out how to get to Alderney. Even though a boat was going to add a further three hours to the journey, it seemed the safest option.

And then he would find her.

Olivia was going to get the surprise of her life. He smiled at the thought. She had been clever, but she had underestimated him.

Somebody must know where she was hiding. Taking the children out of the school system was a clever trick, but he would start wherever there were the most people – the town centre, if there was such a thing, or maybe he could ask in some of the bars. Somebody was bound to know.

You can’t hide from me, Olivia
.

And when he’d found her?

He’d told her two years ago exactly what he would do if she ever left him. And now he would prove to her that he had meant every word.

38

Sophie and I had devised my escape strategy in secret. I had uncovered each of the schemes Robert had devised to bind me to him, and I was aware of all the methods he was using to scrutinise my every move. I couldn’t afford to overlook any part of his master plan. Sometimes I had to allow him to make me look stupid. I knew what he was trying to do, but I had to go along with it, or he would have stepped up his game.

His first trick was with the school, and it was so successful that he repeated it more than once. He promised to pick the children up, and then he didn’t. He left them there, thinking their mummy had forgotten them. He diverted the home phone to his mobile so that when the school phoned to say the children were waiting, he could intercept the call and leave it unanswered. They would believe I had gone out and forgotten my children, or maybe I wasn’t capable of answering the phone. So then they would have to call Robert and explain that I hadn’t turned up.

After the first time I knew what he was doing, but what choice did I have? If I had gone to the school in spite of everything, he would know that I understood his game and he would have devised something worse. And the children were safe. I had no doubt he would finally collect them, acting the role of the caring father struggling to cope with a slightly demented wife.

I knew exactly how he would play it. He would race up to the school gates and apologise, stumbling over his words in his apparent anxiety, giving the clear impression I had forgotten my children – or perhaps that I had a problem: drink, drugs, or some sort of mental instability.

He told Nadine Stokes – the school’s head teacher – that he was going to try to call me each day to check that I’d remembered to pick the children up, and he would do his best to make sure it didn’t happen again. He tried to make me believe that I was the one at fault, and if it hadn’t been for Sophie I might have started to think he was right. He would lull me into a false sense of security for a while, confusing me by telling me that I was doing well,
making me question my own sanity. Then he’d do it again.

I know he had a word with one or two of the other mothers, asking them to keep an eye out in case I came for the children and then wandered off, or left with only two of them instead of all three. He put it down to me going through a rough patch. I wouldn’t have known about this, but Robert chose badly. One of the women was a natural bitch – all women recognise them, but men rarely do. While most of the mothers he had spoken to treated me with sympathy if a little suspicion, the bitchy one couldn’t wait to have a dig – to undermine me with the odd comment, thinly veiled with saccharine sweetness and a smile that failed to hide the glint of pleasure in her eyes at somebody else’s apparent downfall.

Still I played along. Even when he suggested that dreadful schedule on the kitchen wall, I agreed it would be a good idea. Any fool could see that it wasn’t there to remind me of what I should be doing. It was there to control me, so that if Robert came home unexpectedly, which he liked to do sometimes to ‘surprise’ me, he would know exactly where I was. When he dialled 1471 on the telephone to see who had last called, he needed to be sure I had logged every call. Otherwise, he would have been suspicious.

And then there were the cameras. He hid them well, but not quite well enough. I’ve always hated housework with a vengeance, but I did it. It was my job, after all, and I did it well. If I had to live in a cage, it might as well be a gilded cage in every sense. I was living in relative luxury with no freedom, so whenever I thought I was going to cry, I would get down on my hands and knees and scrub the kitchen floor. If I sat still and did nothing – because really, once the house was clean there was precious little that I had to do – a sense of dejection and hopelessness would descend on me. So I would immediately set to and polish the furniture. I knew every nook and cranny of that house, which meant that nothing within those four walls was a mystery to me. Not even his precious locked study. But once more I acted dumb and let him get on with his games, while all the time planning my escape with Sophie’s help.

Getting out of the house was easier than I thought. There were no cameras in the hall or on the landing, or – thank God – in the children’s bathroom. And there was no bath in our en suite. So I got into the habit of taking long baths every couple of days. I would go into the bedroom and play a game of pretending to grab a bathrobe, twist my hair up in a knot, select some toiletries from my dressing table and disappear off camera for an hour and a half. Then I would reappear in my bathrobe and lie on the bed reading a book. A perfectly relaxed day.

I had no idea how I was going to make my final escape, though, because I didn’t have a pound to my name. I couldn’t take any money from my household allowance, because Robert knew where every penny went. I had to earn some, and earn it quickly.

Sophie and I toyed with so many ideas, only drawing the line at prostitution. And yet, in
many ways I’d been doing that for years – having sex with a man I didn’t love who kept a roof over our heads. What’s the difference, really?

Sophie offered to lend me the money – my escape fund – but how would I ever be able to repay her? Anyway, it wouldn’t have been enough. I needed to have sufficient money to support us until we were safe. And I didn’t know how long that might be.

Finally we came up with a plan that stood a small chance of success. It was risky, and there was every possibility that it wouldn’t work, but I had to try something. So I borrowed just five thousand pounds from Sophie, and gambled it all by becoming an online trader. I had studied economics, for goodness sake; surely I could make some money this way? I bought the smallest laptop I could find and hid it in the blanket box in the spare room, under all the bedding we’d bought for when we had guests; all still in its packaging and unlikely to ever come out. I knew Robert wouldn’t find it. Sophie had already used her unbelievably extensive contacts and had set up my false identity and bank account, and all transactions were online so it was remarkably easy to get going.

To start with, though, it was a disaster. I was basing my decisions on short-term information, and not really thinking and planning ahead. I realised I needed to look at the economic landscape as a whole, and by using my knowledge and working hard at it, the decisions became more educated. The first four thousand pounds disappeared in no time at all, but finally I got the hang of it. I started balancing my risk and things began to look up. The money had nearly gone though, and fear was making me too cautious. I was gaining, but too slowly. So Sophie lent me more – another ten thousand – money I might never have been able to repay if I’d failed in my task. I needed to make enough to escape, and gain the confidence to believe I could continue earning in the future, because Robert must never find us.

But now I’ve done it. I’m free and I feel as if the tight clamp that was holding my body and mind together has been released. It finally feels safe to sleep at night, and gradually I have stopped waking every two or three hours to check that my children are still here, still safe, still with me. It’s been two weeks now, and we’ve hidden our tracks so well. The kids have been great. They’ve adapted brilliantly to island life, and even though I’m teaching them at home at the moment, hopefully they’ll soon be able to mix with the other children – when they are used to their new names.

They thought it was such fun to start with when I asked them to pick a name from their favourite characters in books or on television. These were to be our holiday names. And they stuck with it. Billy is now Ben, Freddie is George – potentially the most difficult choice but as he’s only four I don’t think we need to worry so much – and Jaz is Ginny. She really wanted to be Hermione, but I told her to choose another name from Harry Potter, because Hermione was too memorable. Ginny is apparently Ron Weasley’s sister, and so guaranteed to be cool in Jaz’s eyes. I’m now Lynn. I would have chosen something more exotic, but
Lynn’s an easy name and enough like Liv that I’m comfortable with it.

There were a couple of dodgy moments when the children used their pretend names at home, but Robert never paid them that much attention so he probably put it down to the normal silliness of children. And there was the time when the Alderney hedgehogs came on the television. Jasmine’s look of horror was such a giveaway, poor child. But I don’t think Robert noticed.