Chapter 37

I'd set off for my run later than usual, because Em had been laid low with morning sickness again, and I'd stayed with her until she'd got a piece of toast down, and kept it there for half an hour. The sun was shining, but the night's heavy rain had softened the front path, which was why I noticed footprints heading towards the front door that hadn't been there when I left. Who would come calling at this time of day? Not the postman because he drove up to inner gate, and this trail seemed to start from the road. Unconcerned for the first few seconds, I began my warming down stretches against a favourite tree, but then I noticed that the front door was ajar. Em was never that casual, doors were open when they needed to be open, closed when they should be closed. Her near obsessive sense of privacy dictated that, and I went along with it pretty much, despite the years I'd spent behind doors that were closed against, not for me.

I wiped my forehead with my tracksuit top, flexed my shoulders, and with the first early stirrings of unease approached the house. The hall was the only space that still appeared as it should. The library looked like it had been hit by a book-hating whirlwind. My heart jumped to the back of my throat, and I heard the dreadful pumping of panic in my ears.

"Em? Are you all right? Where are you Em?" I called, but quietly, senses on total alert now.

I crept from once scene of devastation to the next. The kitchen was a battleground of broken crockery and spilled food, footprints outlined in instant coffee and the crunch of sugar, those same footprints, but with others, signs of scuffle and ... violence ... a small splash of blood at the backdoor, on the frame below the shattered glass panel. This door was open too, and the footprints headed with chaotic purpose towards the shed. The Punishment Shed, which was almost empty, de-commissioned in readiness for conversion into the new wing, my own apartment within the borders of the house in the woods.

Now I was scared, very scared. Something had gone through the house with astonishing force, and taken Margaret with it. A wandering psychopath? God forbid that it was one of the women from the Hall. Surely, please god not that! It was like the seconds before an accident when the world slows down as the brain speeds up. Should I call the police first, or find Margaret? Who and what had taken her? Could I save her by myself, or would I need a small army? My instincts led me slowly forwards into the yard on silent trainer-ed feet. I heard the sound of a whip before I heard any voices. Oh no ... My thoughts jumbled madly, Em, the baby ... Em's voice, a howl of pain, and then a deeper voice, not Em. I dithered, terrified but needing to save my lover with every cell of my body.

"Does she do this for you? Does she make you come like I used to? No, she's too soft, too sweet ... much too good for ... You!"

A hiss, a crack, and I flinched in the second before Em's scream. Someone was using a whip on a pregnant woman, someone whose voice prompted my memory urgently. I knew that voice, it was unfamiliar now, but I knew it from long ago ... I found enough nerve to creep closer, flattened against the side of the shed, near the open door. The light was on, heavy footsteps shuffled on the bare concrete...

"Where is she Margaret? You must tell me ... I'll make you tell me, and enjoy doing it, because now it doesn't matter ... I'll never have to do this again, so I might as well..."

CRACK! And another howl from Em.

" ... make the most of it ... you didn't used to make that kind of noise ... you used to beg me like the slut you are ... you haven't got the appetite for this any more have you? I can tell. But I have ... I've been waiting for so long..." CRACK!

Spots danced before my eyes, I fought to deny what I suddenly knew. It wasn't fair; it just wasn't bloody fair on any of us!

"I've come for her because she's mine ... I've had a long time to think about it, and she was the one who never betrayed me, who loved me enough to..." CRACK!

" ... go to prison for me ... she would die for me ... I wouldn't even have to ask." Sarah.

I was frozen to the spot. For the first time in years I nearly peed myself with fear. I didn't even try to think how she came to be here, just that she was, the woman who had changed my life forever in so many ways good and bad, was holding my lover hostage, was torturing her, and thereby torturing her unborn child. The fates were playing a very sick game with us, and it was all I could do not to run in there and throw myself at Sarah's mercy in the hopes the she would free Em, if she had me.

I had dealt with too many damaged souls. I knew too much to let myself react with first instincts. I was the conciliator, the one who walked in to those rows up at the Hall and poured the oil, smoothed the waters, the one who had been on both sides of the prison wall, who knew how it felt to be wronged, raped and humiliated by faceless authority, victimised by petty, stupid representatives of that authority. I had survived, and my job was to help others to survive, but how could I deal with this? The lover of my past was slowly killing the lover of my present.

I gritted my teeth, slowed my breathing, and risked a darting split-second peek into the shed. I was glad and sick at what I saw. Glad because Sarah had her back towards me, sick because Margaret was suspended, naked, red whip-marks striping her white skin, one across the slight curve of her four and a half months pregnant belly, within which dwelled our future.

I closed my eyes and still saw the image. Sarah from behind was not at all as I remembered her. Now she was almost square, a huge block of woman, fat or muscle, it didn't matter, she had a monolithic bulk, and long grey-streaked brown hair rat-tailing down her back. She was wearing some kind of dungarees, prison issue, and in her hand was the bull-whip, the tool I feared most in Em's hands, that she had only used on me a handful of times, in the most extreme circumstances. Our lives were still in slow motion. Each crack of the whip seemed to take hours to come, during which I thought furiously fast, listened to every sound, chased plan after plan into oblivion. Every word Sarah spoke cut me to the quick, but helped in the end.

"You took her from me ... then you gave her to that whore in Holloway, I know, I heard ... you knew they'd all go with her, you knew what that fucker Steve was like..."

I swallowed hard.

CRACK!

" ... that's why I had to kill her ... no option you see,"

CRACK!

"All I want is Jill ... I don't care about all the others ... All I've ever wanted is her ... it just took me a long time to understand that."

In a strange way, it was like hearing Em, after Steve's murder. I tried not to sob. Was this really all down to me? Was I that bloody irresistible? Come off it! I was just simple Jill Gaskell, just a human female as prone to the foibles of love, lust and fate as any other. This was not my fault, even if the willing victim inside me wanted to believe it.

"You've turned her into you ... she dresses like you, she talks like you, I've seen her on the telly, I've read about her in the papers ... but you won't keep her, because I've got you where I want you now, you dried up old cunt!" CRACK!

CRACK!

I peeked again, and there were two more stripes across Em's belly. It was time to act, time to take charge of this ludicrous and horrific scenario. Sarah's voice was deeper than it used to be, but I could still hear the thickness of arousal. Whipping Em was exciting her, turning her on, making her want ... Me. I had a minute or two at the most. The time between blows was already shorter, and Sarah's rhetoric suggested she was building herself up to a violent climax. I tiptoed back to the house, a path suddenly clear to me, a chance, as good or bad as any, but a chance, a plan that would use Sarah's desire.

I ran upstairs - there was less damage here, and in the trunk on the landing I found the garments I needed. I tore off my tracksuit, slipped into an old mini-skirt, thanking my dedication to fitness that it still fitted. I found a t-shirt, one I had kept for sentimental reasons since the summer I fell in love with Sarah. I doffed my bra, and shrugged it on, quickly pinching my nipples to make them stand out. An inspiration took me to the bathroom, and grimacing I squirted half a bottle of baby oil into myself. I did the same with my arse. Quickly wiping the excess away, and tightening to try and hold the oil in, I scampered hurriedly back down stairs, and made my way back towards the shed. In my head was the geography of the interior. There was a garden bench in there, against the wall and near the door. If I could reach it and sit down ... In the hand behind my back was a solid iron weight from the kitchen scales. This time I wasn't going to hide.

No more than two minutes had passed. The whipping had stopped but Em was whimpering. Sarah stood close to her, a hand down between her splayed thighs. I heard a metallic click, like the sound of our collar closing multiplied a thousand times. A gun being cocked. Sarah was re-enacting an old and disgusting scenario ... this exactly where I had walked in last time. In 1973 I had made the wrong choice, this time, I had grown up.

"Sarah..." I said, trying my very best to purr like the love-struck sexy kitten she thought she still knew.

Her head jerked back, Em gasped. Sarah turned, and in the folds of solid flesh was the face of the woman who had taught me how to love, my first, for years my only and everything.

"It's me you want, isn't it?" I leaned on the doorframe, lifted a leg and bent it, propping myself up in a provocative pose. "You don't need her anymore ... I'm here ... I've been waiting for you..."

She was confused. Now I could see her eyes, and they were dull, heavy, moving with slow deliberation. She looked drugged, and I remembered the last reports. Largactil, ECT. They were what kept her quiet, eating away her beauty, and breaking her mind. And that gave me a chance that I would never have had with a Sarah who was young and on the ball. She would have seen straight through my pantomime, but this Sarah, with her bovine weight and slightly open mouth, breath coming noisily, this monster-woman might be dazzled by a vision from her past. Her lover returned, miraculously still the same as she was in those first deliriously happy days...

I lowered my leg, stretched, arching, so that my nipples pushed rudely at the t-shirt, and sauntered into the shed, wiggling my hips outrageously to keep her eyes away from the solid lump of iron I had concealed in my right hand. The bench was against the wall as I remembered. I sat on it, and with a perfect imitation of a sexy sigh, I parted my legs, and the mini-skirt rode back. The baby oil made me look moist, as if already excited by my old lover's return. I tried to not look at Margaret. I needed all my concentration to be on Sarah, on seducing her, on convincing her as much with body language as with words, that she was my one true love, and she had rescued me. I managed to put the weight down on the seat behind me. Now I needed to bring her closer. I began to caress myself, slick fingers rubbing until all was shiny.

"I've missed you so much darling ... no-one has ever made love to me like you did..." I slid fingers into myself, feeling nothing while biting my lips like a naughty girl, a cheap parody of desire that I prayed would convince.