Dorian was dead. His eyes were closed. His body was still. Tentatively, Hanna reached down and touched the arm he had held up to his face. She jumped as it fell to his side, arranging itself in a soft claw on his thigh. She had to be certain, so, terrified that at any moment he might wake up and grab her, Hanna knelt down and levered her fingers under the palm of his large hand and lifted. It flopped back down onto the brown gabardine fabric of his trousers. All at once she was both sickened and relieved. Then she saw the blood pouring down from the top of his head, down over his shirt, pouring, pouring from the gaping wound on his face into a gathering stream on the floor, spreading into a river, oozing over her hand. She jumped back, scraping the blood onto her apron, quickly moving her feet away from the puddle.
She had to run but felt paralysed. She had to get away but where could she go? Who could she turn to? There was nowhere – nobody. As much as she hated him, Dorian was her life. He was dead. She had killed him. When Dorian did not turn up for afternoon surgery in an hour, his nurse would telephone. Everyone at the surgery was strictly forbidden from calling to the house unannounced but if there was no reply from the phone after an hour, and with patients waiting, surely they would come here. If she didn’t move fast, move now, they would find her. Even if she could lift the body she could not get rid of it in that time. Get rid of the body. It made her stomach turn. They were the sort of words you found in Agatha Christie thrillers – not words you ever uttered in real life. She looked at Dorian, as if searching for an answer and was shocked, again, to see that his nose was broken, smashed. Had she really done that?
She had to get out of here but she couldn’t move. She had killed a man. A voice – of her mother, her father perhaps – suddenly spoke in her mind. Think, Hanna, think. You can’t get caught. You mustn’t get caught. Remember why you did this. Dorian ruined half your life. Don’t let him take the rest of it. Nobody will believe it was self-defence. You’ll spend the rest of your life rotting in jail for killing a monster. If only she could move. Hanna looked at the dead face and reminded herself of what he had done to her. Any jail would be better than the jail he had her imprisoned in. Move, Hanna, move. Move your legs – just MOVE. Now! Run before it’s too late. RUN! She forced herself to recall some of the terrible things he had done. The beatings, his filthy touch, the repugnant things he made her do. Her eyes closed and she thought about that terrible night, the night her mother died… The first time. Righteous anger rose inside her and took hold. She was not trapped here. She would get herself free. Make it look like a robbery.
She ran through rooms upending furniture and opening drawers, concocting her story. When was the last time she had been seen in public? Mass the previous Sunday. Two weeks. The grocer had called to the house with a delivery on the Monday, but, as usual, simply left the grocery box on the steps. She had not waved at him through the window. Good. That was good. She could have been away from the house for fifteen days and nobody would be any the wiser. The beginnings of her story began to develop. She had been away. Where? Dublin? Yes. Getting papers ready to go to America. Or just abroad. No forwarding address. Disappear. She would disappear but she had to close off the trail otherwise they would come looking for her. She jacked open the desk drawer in Dorian’s office with the fire tongs, stuffing all the money she could find into her apron pocket, then went upstairs and emptied the contents of every bedroom drawer onto the floor until she found Dorian’s mother’s jewellery. Into a small suitcase she threw enough clothes to legitimise her story that she was away, plus the jewellery, the money and her diary. She grabbed a jacket and realised she was still wearing the bloodied apron. In that moment, the truth hit her in a sudden wave of nausea, and she barely made it to the bathroom to throw up into the toilet. She had a flashback to a moment when Dorian had smashed her head against the ornate porcelain sink. She grabbed at the memory and ignited enough of a snap to haul the apron over her head, roll it up then run back into the bedroom and stuff it into the case. She could burn it later. Hanna ran out the back door, smashing the glass panel with the coal shovel as she went and upending the bin. Angry burglars. Nobody would ever be as angry as she was now. Anger and fear: that was all that was inside her. That was all she was now. That was what he had reduced her to: an animal. Adrenalin pumped through her as she ran across the fields like a hunting dog. Except she was not chasing – just running. Her small case banged against her leg, bruising it, but it didn’t weigh her down. Her desire to run was too ferocious.
Hanna didn’t know how far or for how long she ran. Out across the open fields, stumbling into invisible bog holes, tripping on large stones, slipping on patches of damp, flat heather-coated rocks. She ran hard and long, until, breathless, she stopped at a bleak stretch of bog-lined road, throwing her case down beside her. She closed her eyes and rested for a moment. The heat of her body prickled against the salty sea air. She could not see the water but she knew it was beyond the horizon, where the land dipped at a cliff edge down to the wild Atlantic. Even though they lived near the sea, she had not seen it since she was a child, when she was with her mother. Dorian had no taste for nature and less still for walking, and he never let her out of the house without him. When they first moved here, Hanna and her mother stood at the cliff edge that bordered this stretch of road, looking down on the rolling waves, wondering at the magnificence of God’s work. Both of them were wishing that her father was there to share it with, but they also knew that they would never have come to this wild corner of the world if he had not died. Hanna felt something jolt inside her at the memory. As suddenly as the urge to escape had come, it was snatched away by the realisation that as surely as her own father was dead, she had killed her stepfather. Dorian was a terrible man. But did he deserve to die? Hanna began to shake from the inside out. She pressed her arms around herself in a hug, to try to stop the shivering. Her body was pleading to curl itself into a ball. I am not a murderer, she told herself. I am…
What else did she even have to define her? Who was she, after all? All she had ever been was Dorian’s wife. Not even his real wife. Not even by choice. Hanna had no schooling, no accomplishments – no family, aside from him. Apart from cooking, cleaning and giving her body to Dorian, there was nothing else. Now, even that was gone.
I am nobody.
Hanna said the words out loud but even as she did they were swallowed up into the vast silence of the black bog. I am not even words, she thought to herself. I truly am nothing. In that moment, Hanna wanted to die. She longed to lie down on the springy ground and gather a blanket of moss about her. Eventually the soft, ancient bog would swallow her up. She could stay here, alone, out in the empty bog, and sleep forever. Then all of this would be over. Her legs were bending to sit down when, over the horizon, Hanna saw something trundling along the road towards her. A bus. She should lie down now, disappear into the land so they would drive past and never see her. But in that moment the same voice that had called to her earlier spoke again.
NO, Hanna. Stay standing. This is your chance. Make your escape.
As the vehicle drew closer Hanna saw it was the Galway bus.
Keep running, keep going.
She flagged it down and climbed on. Her heart was banging against her chest and she kept her head down as she paid the driver. Taking her seat, she counted just three people on it. Nobody she knew. For the rest of the journey, Hanna covered her head with her coat and slept. She dreamt of her parents. They whispered encouragement to her.
Keep running. Freedom is only around the corner. Don’t be afraid.
Hanna woke when they reached Galway and, despite the words of encouragement, she found that she was still afraid. The bus was filled with the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat. She wished she could stay on it. If only she had stayed and slept herself to soft death in the bog. Instead, she got off the bus and walked quickly into the train station where she bought a ticket to Dublin. As her luck would have it, the next train was leaving in only five minutes’ time. She took care to find a quiet carriage. A man sat down opposite her and offered her a cigarette. When she refused, he asked her name. Trying to keep her voice from shaking she paused before answering.
‘Annie.’
The man nodded and she looked out the window, closing her eyes to pretend she was asleep. Annie. That was her name now.
The man opposite her got off at Athlone. Hanna pulled her notepad and pen out of her bag and put her plan into action.
Dear Dorian…
It felt wrong writing a letter to a dead man. Hanna started to feel afraid but then reminded herself, she wasn’t Hanna any more. She was Annie. Annie Austen. Like Jane Austen. Annie Austen could be whoever Hanna wanted her to be. Annie would go to London and start a new life.
… just a short note to let you know that I arrived safely in Dublin, as planned, and have been taking the necessary steps for my ongoing journey to America…
Throw them off the scent, but don’t give too much information. Her pen hovered reluctantly over the page before she put down her last sentence.
Thank you for all that you did for me and my mother.
With gratitude,
Hanna
It was a lie. All of it. Hanna felt the anger rise as she read it back. Part of her wanted to write out all the terrible things he had done. The rape. The manipulation of her mother. She wanted the world to know what a nasty, vicious man he was. But, even more so, she had a desperate urge to expunge it, to get it out of her system. To get him out of her head and start life as Annie with a fresh, unsullied soul.
But that would be asking too much of God. So she left the letter as it was. Dorian would be buried as a kind, gentleman doctor who had rescued a poor orphan girl, instead of the monster he was. With gratitude. The letter would have sounded more convincing if she had said with love, but she could not write the words. Even if it might save her from ever being caught she could not use the word love in relation to him.
When Hanna arrived in Dublin she walked from Heuston station to the city centre. She knew the city from weekends spent there with Dorian and her mother. The sharp tang of the Liffey and the hops from the Guinness factory on the Quays made her heart hurt, reminding her of walking these streets with her mother, in her best coat, full of hope and happiness. She stopped first at the GPO on Connell Street to post the letter, and then took a bus along the Quays to Dublin Port. Here, she bought a foot passenger ticket to Holyhead.
The boat was busy. Queues of people lined up outside the narrow gateway. Young men wearing working boots and carrying knapsacks, ready to work the moment they hit English soil. Young women shivered in short skirts and smart jackets, dressed for London itself instead of the arduous twenty-four hour journey ahead of them.
Once through the door, the crowd dispersed into the bowels of the ship, quickly scurrying up the steep, metal steps like worker ants until the engine started and they all lost their balance. Hanna went straight up to the deck and stood at the front of the boat as it left Dublin Port. She did not look back but kept her eyes firmly on the grey expanse of water stretched ahead of her. As the engines started up and the ship began to plough forward, churning up great lines of angry white foam, her mother’s voice called out again.
Keep running, Hanna. Freedom is only around the corner. Don’t be afraid.
As the ship moved ahead she looked back and watched Ireland recede into the distance. Her mother’s voice grew distant with it as she left Hanna, and all the bad things that had happened, behind.
She was Annie Austen now. And soon, she would be in London.