that her skin grew loose and she could almost see the shape of the bones in her arms and legs – but it didn’t stop the man coming to the basement and gesturing to the bed in the corner with that curt little nod of his, then waiting for her to lie down and undress before he lay on top of her and did what he did while she closed her eyes and waited for it to be over and for him to be back upstairs in his house where she didn’t have to look at him.
And, of course, the thing she had feared most came to pass. Another child. She tried to stop it. Tried to starve the baby to death inside her, but all that happened was she grew thinner and thinner herself until the man figured out what was going on and forced her to eat. Why, she didn’t know. Why he wanted the baby to be born was a mystery to her, but then most of what he did was a mystery to her. How could you understand a man who locked a fifteen-year-old girl in a basement for years, then stole her son? Why even try?
And then the new baby was born. A boy again. Pink and beautiful and red-haired. She hadn’t wanted him, but now he was there she loved him uncontrollably. Leo, she called him. Leo the lion, with his mane of red hair.
He was different to Seb. Smaller. More watchful. Quicker. By the time he was two he could talk, whole sentences. At two and a half he could read the alphabet. She had taught him by writing out tiny letters on a scrap of paper.
At three he was gone. On his birthday, the man came. He pointed at Leo.
Give him to me, he said.
No, she replied. Not this time.
Yes, he said, in his heavy, slow voice. Yes.
This time she fought, but it was no use. It had never been any use, not since the first time she had tried and he had taught her – in the most awful, awful way – never to try again. But she had. She had held Leo to her chest, but the man hit her and forced her on to her back and held his forearm against her throat then prised her arms apart until he had Leo and she was unconscious. The last thing she saw before she passed out was her beautiful boy wriggling from his arms and running away.
But there was only one place for Leo to go, and he went there.
Through the open door and up the stairs, to the place the man lived.
The next time she saw him she didn’t bother asking where Leo was. There was no point.
And then, as though the universe was punishing her, the cycle repeated itself. The door opening. The nod at the bed. The disgusting act.
Then the missed period and the cramps and the feeling of being bloated and uncomfortable. And nine months later, another baby.
Another boy.
Max, after the boy in Where the Wild Things Are.
Max, the curly-haired, ever-smiling, bright-eyed button of joy who she loved with an intensity that surpassed anything she had felt before, even with Seb and Leo, if only because since the day he had arrived she had known she would only have three years with him, three short years into which she had to cram a lifetime of love.
Max, who would turn three on Saturday, 23 June.
She looked at him, sleeping on the mattress they shared, spread-eagled on his back, mouth slightly open and she shook her head.
It couldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.
But it would. She was powerless. The man would come and open the door and take Max from her, whatever she did. And even if she stopped him somehow, it would only be a temporary respite. He would put sleeping pills in her food or knock her unconscious and take her little boy.
She couldn’t fight him every day of Max’s life.
And so she had seven days left. Seven days with her son.
Seven days until he was ripped from her arms.
Or seven days to find a way to save him.
Twelve Years Earlier, 7 July 2006
Maggie pulled on the baby-blue Doc Martens her boyfriend, Kevin, had bought her for her fifteenth birthday. She’d had mixed emotions when she unwrapped the present a week before; she really, really wanted the boots, but they were expensive, and although Kevin was sweet and she was very fond of him, she already knew he wasn’t the one – she couldn’t see him as the first person she’d have sex with. What they had wasn’t special enough, at least not to her, and she’d decided she was going to break up with him. Knowing that, accepting the boots didn’t seem fair. She’d seen it on her mum’s face, too. When Maggie pulled the boots from the box, her mum had glanced at her, her forehead creased in a frown.
For a moment, Maggie had considered refusing, but that would have been even more awkward. She’d have had to explain why, and she wasn’t quite ready for that, wasn’t quite ready to break his heart, not on her birthday.
Besides, they really were amazing boots.
She stood up and looked in the hallway mirror. She pulled her hair – recently dyed jet black from her natural copper-tinged brown – into a ponytail, considered it, then let it fall loose around her neck. She could never make up her mind what was better. It was long and thick, and wearing it down showed it off. It meant more care though, or at least a more expensive haircut, and she didn’t feel like asking her parents for money. Though they both worked, things were tight – they didn’t talk about it in front of her and James, her little brother, but she picked up on comments they made about being careful buying groceries and saw how her dad only put in ten pounds’ worth of petrol at a time.
Anyway, that didn’t matter at the moment. She was going to see Anne, her nineteen-year-old cousin, to get some advice on what to do about Kevin. She grabbed her backpack and walked down the hall.
‘Maggie!’
It was her dad. She paused at the front door. He was probably going to tell her to tidy her room or ask if she’d done her homework. If she left immediately, all he would hear was the door closing. When she got home she could say she hadn’t heard him.
She gripped the handle. Behind her, the door to the living room opened.
‘Maggie.’ Her dad was standing there, a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Before you go, we need to talk.’
She rolled her eyes. She knew it was immature, and she hated it – she wasn’t a little girl any more, she had grown-up decisions to make about things like Kevin, and when it was right to have sex with someone, which was one of the things she was going to ask Anne about – but somehow her parents always brought out her childish side. She hated it, but she simply couldn’t help it.
Ironically, on the way home from Gran’s the other day, her mum had admitted, You know, Mags, I’m forty-one years old, but I still feel like a naughty teenager when I’m talking to your gran.
So maybe it would always be this way.
‘What is it, Dad? I’m late.’
‘Oh,’ he
