SOPHIE
We still went out, in the early days. The first time he woke me one evening, I think I must have been dozing, curled up on the mattress. I was still dressed, so it can’t have been that late. You wouldn’t think you’d get so tired, when you’ve nothing to do. But I’d get cold quickly, when I wasn’t moving around so much, so I’d crawl under the duvet even in the daytime.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Quick.’ I didn’t ask what the rush was about. Even then, I knew he didn’t like me to ask so many questions.
I followed him through the door and down the stairs, off balance. I felt a spike of anticipation, even nerves, as he unlocked the second door, using the same set of keys. I didn’t know he kept that one locked, too.
The blueish light from his phone barely pierced the shadows. It had been so rushed when I came here, I’d barely paid attention. But again I had a sense of space, something in the sound our footsteps made. He led me down more stairs, then made me put a blanket over my head as we went out to the car, the same as when I arrived.
So no one could see me, he said. I couldn’t even hear traffic.
His car was the same dark saloon. He told me to sit in the back seat.
I had a vivid flashback, to when he used to pick me up from school, before he said it was too risky. This time, he told me to lie down, so no one could see me.
I nearly fell asleep, lulled by the movement of the car, but after half an hour, or maybe it just seemed that long, he told me to sit up. I felt almost disappointed, stretching my stiff limbs. We were just driving through country lanes, the car lights picking out hedgerows and winding tarmac, nothing more.
‘Can we stop somewhere, maybe?’ I asked. ‘I want to walk around.’ I was desperate suddenly to run again, feeling the pent-up energy of weeks inside.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘Someone might see us, then what would we do?’
I didn’t think they would. But I didn’t want to complain too much.
And it worked. Afterwards he took me out again. I think he was already getting sick of our place, the stuffiness, the silence, the air thick with dust and neglect no matter how much I cleaned.
It was always the same routine. We never went far, just round the quiet back lanes, never where the street lights got closer together. And where was there for us to go? Sometimes, I found myself just falling asleep again. I felt safer in the car, almost back in the world again.
But then one time, bright lights woke me up. I kept still and peeked out under my lowered eyelids, my head lolling back against the headrest. We were at a petrol station. I listened to the noises: he filled the car up, paying for the petrol with his card in the keypad machine. The thought occurred to me then: I could just step out, hammer the window, scream for attention. There would be people in the station, or somebody. I remember my whole body tensed, poised, and then – he got back in and switched on the ignition.
We drove off. Shock flooded my body, at the strength of my reaction – just how much I wanted to go. I was fine. This was what I’d wanted. Wasn’t it?
Still, I wonder: I don’t know if I was as close as I thought, not really. Because a couple of times after that, I tested the handle when his attention was on turning a corner, or going through a junction, just to see. The child lock was always on.
Anyway, there were only a handful more night drives, two or three, if that.
I knew it would be the last time as soon as it happened. I had been quiet, that evening, not the cheerful girl he liked me to be. I was lonely, left alone all day. I’d actually told him that. Maybe that’s why he did it – to punish me, a little. Or to test me, see how I’d react.
We pulled up by a house I hadn’t seen before, a little cottage in a terraced row, with a smart dark green door. We must have driven half an hour, maybe more. He parked up across the street from it, away from the orange puddle of the street lamp and then waited, the engine off.
It was cold, but I knew better than to ask why we were there. His actions, I’d realised, didn’t always seem entirely, well, reasonable. So I just sat on my hands to keep them warm, hunkering into my baggy sweatshirt. All the clothes he’d brought me were too-big castoffs. They’d last me, he said.
I turned my face to the window, breathed on it to make a cloud on the glass, drew a flower. Then I rubbed it off and peered into the darkness. There was movement in the cottage door opposite, a slow figure, carrying dark shapes – bin bags.
Something in the old man’s shoulders, his tired slump, told me. I pressed my hand to the window, got as close as I could. Steadily, not too fast, without a trace of panic, the car pulled away.
‘Was that my grandpa?’ I remember saying. ‘Was that him?’
He didn’t answer, just kept driving, as I tried to calm myself down.
He’d always ignored my questions, like he never even heard me. He prefers to tell me things – to teach me. It was one of the things I liked about him, at first. I thought he was so clever, so certain about what everyone should do, and what everyone was getting wrong. The banks, politicians, teachers, my parents. Me.
But this time I kept talking: ‘Why did you do that? That was him, I know it.’ I was almost crying, my voice getting higher. ‘Is he OK? He looked so … so old.’
He turned in his seat to look at me, his face furious.
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘I mean it.’
I stared at him, open-mouthed. He never spoke to me like that.
‘You knew what this would mean.’ Then his voice softened, as his eyes returned to the road. ‘We’ve both had to make sacrifices. But isn’t this enough, what we’ve got together?’
I didn’t know what to say. ‘It is,’ I stuttered. ‘More than enough.’ I just wanted him to go back to normal, like he’d been before. ‘Honestly, it was a shock, that’s all.’
He needed so much reassurance. I leant forward between the seats and put my hand over his, tense on his thigh, and felt it stiffen then relax. ‘You’re more than enough. I promise.’
After that, the trips outside stopped. Not forever, he said. Just until it was safe.
‘Look what happened,’ he said. ‘It only upsets us both.’
It’s you who took me there, I thought. But of course I didn’t say that.