The Locked Door: The Secret Room Behind the Kidnap Thriller

By Madeleine Watson

This book is about my kidnap thriller, The Locked Door.

It is my second of four novels and none are really novels at all but something far more sinister.

The idea was confinement.

Why, I didn’t know; I just felt a need to express it.

Naturally, I made it into a kidnap thriller.

During my writing, I connected with this ‘strand’. This strand grew addictive, compulsive, shameful, deathly and creepy. Little did I realize the source of this strand.

Not until the age of 51 when I learned something truly terrible about myself.

The précis to The Locked Door reads:

“This hostage has a secret.

“Gemma would appear to have everything: money, a devoted husband, a lively son, and a fulfilling career. But her life takes a nasty turn when she is kidnapped and trapped in an upstairs room by three thugs demanding a huge ransom from her rich father.

“In a bid to escape, she cuts a hole in the bedroom floor. From there, Gemma spies on her kidnappers below. That's when their hostage starts playing games with them. That’s when her spying pulls her into a treacherous psychological game that endangers her sanity.”

As the story progressed, the captive’s life began to feel as real as mine. She became like an avatar that I would enter when I craved escapism from my otherwise mundane life.

With the terrible truth now known, I have analysed The Locked Door. I am appalled at what I have found.

This novel appears to possess a shadow novel beneath the apparent one.

During the writing, I was completely oblivious to it.

In order to convey the intensity of my other world, I have included illustrations and diary excerpts within this account.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madeleine Watson
• Release date: Mar 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463055687

Madeleine Watson

Madeleine Watson lives in the UK and writes under a pseudonym.At the age of 51, she discovered she had been repeatedly raped at the age of 3 by an uncle who shared her toddlerhood home.During oblivion, she kept a diary, wrote children’s mysteries, novels and short stories. She also went to art school for 5 years. Unbeknown to her, clues to her horrific toddlerhood had seeped into her creations.How she finally learned the truth is described in her books along with further revelations. Having lived through this experience, she is able to describe what life has been like for someone whose toddlerhood has been brutalised prior to the dawning of her conscious awareness.

Book preview

Part 1: Prelude to The Locked Door

Cover design for my novel

This story is true.

This book is about my novel, The Locked Door.

I wrote it between 2007 and 2016.

I have written and published four novels in total and The Locked Door is my second.

The titles of the novels given in this account bear different titles to those that are published. This is because they and their associated pseudonym provide a lead to my identity.

I wish to remain anonymous.

The Locked Door isn’t really a novel at all but something far more sinister.

The same applies to all my novels.

The dictionary lacks a word for what my novels really are, but for the sake of this account, I shall call The Locked Door a ‘novel’ for now.

Under the belief my novels were fiction, I published them without family and friends knowing. This was due to shame. The source of this shame seemed to stem from elements of taboo within. In truth, I didn’t really know the source of my shame nor the fuel behind my writing.

Not until October 2016 when I was 51.

Intrusive Storylines

The lead up to my penning of The Locked Door informs upon the nature of this so-called ‘novel’.

It is truly bizarre and enlightens upon the mechanics behind my writing compulsions.

In 2006, storylines started to plague me. I didn’t know where they came. Some were bizarre; others unsettling. All burned brightly in my head as though this world really existed.

In fact, storylines have been there my entire life. I accepted them, as I had known no different. However, this ‘episode’ grew particularly invasive.

I had just moved house with my partner and three children and I was about to start a training course. My two youngest children were about to start new schools and my oldest child, a job.

It was a busy time.

But silently, these storylines continued to trickle into my head. I could be shopping, washing up or lying awake at night.

They wouldn’t stop.

Before long, scenes began to string themselves together. A novel seemed to be forming before my eyes.

My Secret Affair

I wasn’t new to novel writing.

I had already written one before. It was a crime thriller called The Lessons and it had taken me almost thirty years to complete. I kept a detailed diary at the time, so I know I had begun this novel on 23 April 1985. I was nineteen and in my second year of a Fine Art Degree course in the City. I was quite a prolific art student, producing large oils of landscapes and animals. A fantasy world was burning in my head then too. I blamed my disturbed thoughts upon acute homesickness, as I missed my family, especially my identical twin, Eve. I was seeing less of my then boyfriend, Mark too.

On the day I made the decision to write The Lessons, I was struck down with a mysterious illness. Sore throat, nausea and migraine descended from seemingly nowhere and prevented me from writing a word.

But I was determined to begin my novel.

As soon as I got better, I purchased notebooks, pens, thesaurus, dictionary, the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, and a second-hand typewriter. I kept my novel secret from everybody but my twin.

So now, I was a ‘serious’ novel writer.

On completing my degree course, I would marry Mark and live in a flat. Throughout the five years of living with him, he knew nothing of The Lessons or of my fantasy world.

I had the peculiar notion I was having an affair.

In a sense, I was.

The Strand

The Lessons, which was originally titled, The Upstairs Room, was fuelled by a psychological strand – just like The Locked Door.

I allowed this strand to fuel and guide my writing. It feels deep, compulsive, exhilarating, shameful, deathly, depressing, creepy and devastating.

I grew addicted to this strand.

Little did I realize the source of it.

Since learning the truth about myself, The Lessons has undergone a full analysis. I am horrified at what I have found. My analysis has been published in my other book, The Lessons: The True Story of a Parasitic Novel.

Upper image: my small diaries of the 1990s and 2000s, which have been used for this book. Lower image My early diaries, which began in 1977.

My writing goes back further.

Between 1975 and 1981, I wrote a dozen children’s mysteries. They bear haunting titles like Hollow Hill, Deathly Passageways and Windswept High. I truly believed they reflected my innocent and cosseted life in the seventies, having grown up in a cottage with five siblings and fraught parents. I was often minding my youngest sister and other children; I was Sunday school teaching, going on bike rides, devising quizzes, toy pantomimes, drawing and painting.

I was also keeping a diary.

It began in 1977. I was 11. It was at first small. I recorded my first period and starting senior school. The following year, I had a bigger diary. Soon, I would be recording all sorts of things, such as what I wore, what I ate, the weather and mood. I was obsessed with nature’s fury, embarking upon huge science projects including natural disasters.

Moving Away

In September 1983, I would move from home to begin my Fine Art degree course in the City. My artwork would become a big part of my life. I am no longer a church-going schoolgirl keeping weather records or babysitting. I have become an angry and horribly troubled teen who doesn’t understand herself. I smoke, have drinking bouts and bleach my hair. My handwriting had become scruffy with swear words and suicidal thoughts. I am painting distorted cats’ faces and graffiti-ridden railway tunnels. I descend into full-blown depression. I wrongly blamed it on homesickness.

My childhood seemed miles away and I could no longer remember what my early stories were about. I was writing ‘silly’ dark romances for my twin for a laugh before disposing of them. In fact, tortured men, derelict houses and pursuit were central theme. Surprisingly, these dark romances and my children’s mysteries had come from the same source.

The strand.

An analysis of my children’s stories can be found in my other book, Tales from Daler Cottage: Unearthing the Hidden Messages within my Children’s Stories.

The Second of ‘Four’

I began The Locked Door in my mid-forties.

I hadn’t written a word in six years. I had abandoned The Lessons in 2000 shortly after getting nowhere in a literary competition. Throughout the nineties, I had worked for a huge law firm. I had divorced Mark and my troubled student years seemed a distant memory.

On the surface, my life seems settled, but I am deeply discontented. It wasn’t the job or my new partner – just something about me. It had been there my entire life and I couldn’t define it.

A New Life

Starting a family in 2001 seemed to have put a lid on my writing. I suffered pregnancy sickness, migraines, lethargy and was left battered after two caesareans within eighteen months of each other.

For a time, I couldn’t walk.

But in 2006, the nightmare was behind me. I was ready to begin a new life in our new home. And another writing episode would descend upon me.

The Locked Door would be the second of four novels. I would then write screenplay adaptations, further versions and short stories.

Kidnap with Hidden Meaning

The idea was confinement.

Why, I didn’t know; I just felt a need to express it.

Naturally, I made it into a kidnap thriller.

The idea had at first disappointed. Couldn’t I come up with something original? There are plenty of kidnap thrillers out there. I was assured, however, that the emotional intensity and the psychology would set my story apart. The protagonist, Gemma, is shut in a room. Three nasty captors manoeuvre against one another to gain the upper hand. But in the dark, Gemma has schemes of her own.

As the story progressed, her life began to feel as real as mine. She became like an avatar that I would enter when I craved escapism. Gemma had in a sense become ‘me’.

This blinded me to the truth about The Locked Door. What I didn’t realise was that my novel holds a message. During the writing, I was completely oblivious to it.

Only on discovering the truth about myself, would I notice an undercurrent running throughout. It is like watching reflections upon the water’s surface only to notice objects at the bottom. A different mode of focus is required.

Since noticing this undercurrent, my novel no longer feels mine. It has been written by a force I didn’t know existed. The Locked Door is in fact, two novels: an apparent one and a shadowed one. For this reason, I have supplied elements at the end of each chapter. These are: ‘diary entries’ and ‘author’s notes’.

The ‘diary entries’ inform upon my life whilst I was writing this novel. This in itself tells a story. My entries omit noisy life events and those of no relevance, centring only upon the silence of The Locked Door and my secret world.

The ‘author’s notes’ draw attention to the unsettling subtext of this novel – the undercurrent. Initially, questions are posed. All will be answered as the book progresses. To reflect the intensity of my fantasy world, I have provided illustrations including those of characters. The reader may wish to read the chapters only, to see how the novel was supposed to appear. A staple kidnap thriller was all I had seen.

Part 2: The Beginning

Twelve years after writing The Locked Door, I am ready to analyse it. But the morning I plan to do so, my reading glasses go missing and I feel unwell. I have come to learn my apparent mishaps are directly related to the mysterious illness that struck me on beginning The Lessons. I ‘lose’ things and feel unwell due to the ‘strand’ as described earlier. My diaries have revealed a pattern. Sabotage and my creative urges appear to be linked. It seems to be a mechanism to stop me from learning the truth.

It seems something within me doesn’t want me to begin this analysis.

I have now got new glasses and can see well.

But I am finding this next bit hard to write.

Here is a short précis on what The Locked Door is about.

The ‘novel’ follows.

This hostage has a secret.

Gemma would appear to have everything: money, a devoted husband, a lively son, and a fulfilling career. But her life takes a nasty turn when she is kidnapped and trapped in an upstairs room by three thugs demanding a huge ransom from her rich father.

In a bid to escape, she cuts a hole in the bedroom floor. From there, Gemma spies on her kidnappers below. That's when their hostage starts playing games with them. That’s when her spying pulls her into a treacherous psychological game that endangers her sanity.

THE LOCKED DOOR

Chapter 1

GEMMA sat upon a solitary mattress within a darkened room ten feet square. Her stomach gave a sickening flutter. Footsteps capered at the door spurring a squeak in the floorboards. Fabric whispered before footfalls retreated down the stairs.

A torrent of shrieks splintered the air; crockery crashed. Gemma took shuddering breaths. She deduced an infidelity to fuel the ruckus and wondered if she could use it to her advantage. Her heart thundered in the hope someone would storm out of the house. Not for the first time she’d believed tonight was going to be the night.

She would keep on believing.

Gemma had made her first etch upon the woodchip next to her bed after making an estimate of the days she’d missed. Now, a row of scratches overlooked her sleeping space – eight days and counting. Several times, she had played the activist of failed plans to avoid picking at the scabs of childhood memories, of school, family gatherings, of Megan whom she hadn’t thought of in twenty years.

But what else was there to do in this darkened place where shutters permitted but a slit of light? No newspapers, radio or TV. Woodchip had proved the worst backdrop for nostalgia and Gemma did not want to get wistful; she did not want the past to gnaw into the present like the creeping gloom as evening advanced upon the shuttered window.

If only her captors knew what a bad choice they’d made with one Gemma Fraser, heir to Knight Business Consultancy and Culson Building Contractors, both the biggest of their kind in Britain. Yes, a big pot was to be had, but her parents’ bovine love of wealth went to unsettling depths, including using charity events to further their prospects. Yes, Gemma was a Daddy’s Girl with a tidy price tag. Only, Gemma feared there wouldn’t be a price tag to be had.

Gemma pressed her ear against the wall. Somewhere, a door slammed. Gemma’s pulse shot into overdrive. Footsteps receded outside; voices. Her clammy fists wrung at her jeans. Tonight was going to be the night. She could feel it.

Gemma thought she had done a good job at acting the clueless Daddy’s Girl they had expected. In truth, she nursed a sick dread.

‘I can’t live in these clothes,’ Gemma had mumbled two days ago. Her Liberty blouse and leather-trimmed boots no longer represented how she felt and did not feel hers anymore. One of her captors, Caleb conceded jeans and T-shirts. Gemma uttered a thanks, more so to her parents who had been excellent tutors in how to act cool. Two days later, Gemma dared to request footwear. In the reflection of the window she saw Caleb’s eyes narrow.

The slippers didn’t materialise, and the hostage cuisine didn’t help. Cereal, toast, crisps and pot noodles formed the staple. The takeaways were the worst – Indian or Cantonese washed down with coke. The room became a graveyard for fast food. It began to smell like one too. Gemma gathered disinfectant from her next trip to the bathroom. Cleaning had a therapeutic value, even though they sneered at her efforts.

That’s when she spotted them: a pair of Reeboks beneath the sink. She stuffed them under her T-shirt before gathering her cleaning kit and exiting the bathroom. Gemma tried them on when she was alone. A tad big on the heel but she wasn’t planning on running a marathon.

Gemma trembled inside as she made her final request. ‘Couldn’t you give me a proper knife and fork? Those plastic ones keep breaking.’

Two evenings back, her final wish had been granted. Gemma messed up her dinner and deposited the previous night’s plastic cutlery onto the plate. She concealed their metal counterparts beneath her mattress. She hoped that Caleb would not be serving his hostage this evening for Gemma found him too observant. Gemma turned over and feigned sleep before her next visitor showed up. She knew by the shuffle that Justin had drawn the short straw. The tinny percussion from his Ipod hissed. She held her breath as he gathered her leftovers. Once done, he made a re-trudge with a moan to the rhythm section. He lugged the door open, likely with his foot, and then let it slam behind him.

Once the bolt had clicked, Gemma had stuffed the metal cutlery through a tear in the mattress. Ready.

Silence had tumbled since the departure of the two-of-three and her soaring adrenalin had reached a plateau. The last embers of sunset now streamed between the shutters. A thin section of trees was all she could see. ‘Not overlooked,’ would be the boastful description of the property if it found its way into an estate agent’s window. ‘Great for keeping hostages.’ Still, Gemma hoped someone might notice a woman going flat-out in baggy jeans and ill-fitting Reeboks.

Gemma flexed her toes within the trainers. The flannelette inners felt reassuring. With a trembling hand, Gemma foraged for the cutlery. They gleamed in the gloom. Knife or fork?

Gemma detected movement on the landing and without thinking, cried out. ‘Hello? Hello? Somebody? I need the bathroom!’

Living to everyone else’s whim was the worst indignity. Kia, the sole female of the trio, often whinged about having to take Her Highness to the throne. ‘Can’t it wait?’ she’d hollered once. ‘I wanna see the end of South Park!’ She would then hiss some hairspray. Gemma kept silent but hoped Kia’s stamina for running could never match her talent with the straighteners.

Gemma hunkered behind the door, cutlery in each hand, lethal only to boiled potatoes. The clunk of footfalls warned Gemma that Kia’s stilettos weren’t the cause. The cutlery slipped in her hands along with hope. They are going to betray me, she thought. They are going to bend and break like the take-away versions made from plastic.

The bolt rattled and Gemma’s face grew still. The bolt slammed back. The doorknob shifted clockwise. A creak and a silent prayer. Gemma trained her eyes to the floor where she guessed a foot might emerge.

Knife or fork?

Diary Entries for Chapter 1

In the summer of 2002, I had written in a small appointment diary:

‘For months I have awoken feeling depressed. It’s devastating. My mind feels locked in a prison to be let out in the day, only to be imprisoned again. It’s the same thing: childhood loss and grief. I busy myself in the day and it goes to the background, only to return upon awakening. I feel there is a place I long for, but it no longer exists. Feel lonely and desperately empty, even with my partner and the baby.’

I mistook this for postnatal depression; in fact, this bewildering grief has been there my entire life. In four years, I would begin The Locked Door and fail to see a connection. For now, I am absorbed by motherhood. I had quit my job at a law firm to have Grace and Alexia. My post-caesarean treatment would end with a repair of the anterior wall. However, I would be left with a defect that would destroy my self-image.

The captive room

Author’s Notes for Chapter 1

Escapism into Fiction

I had assumed my writing pursuit a form of escapism. I’ve never been kidnapped and knew little of criminals or victims. How did I conceive Gemma’s schemes for escape? And what about those nasty captors? This story appears to bear no relationship to my life at all. My quest to get the story down curbed any self-analysis or inner query.

Several years later, I would read Emma Donoghue’s Room. What an awful predicament, I’d think, without a thought of The Locked Door. Gemma is at least a grown up and doesn’t have to worry about her child’s welfare.

Only I was wrong about The Locked Door.

Nothing in this novel is what it appears.

Chapter 2

THE prongs made contact. Gristle separated from anklebone. She twisted the fork. Her teeth clenched; nausea slithered in her throat. And then she heard him cry out.

Gemma shot up and shunted the door. The handle ricocheted against her stomach. A thud returned from the other side. Catlike, she bounded up, scrambled at the doorknob and found Caleb prostrate, clutching his face. She stepped over him complete with pronged ankle to dart across the hallway. Gemma galloped down the stairs then burst into a bare living room. Cornflakes crunched beneath her soles as she spurted for the door. She cursed and kicked the panel. The door flew open. She sprinted for the kitchen. Her sights latched onto the back door. She lunged at the handle, happy to never see another door.

The smell of grass and damp engulfed her. Gemma veered left to a terraced road. A frantic scan yielded no one in sight. Her breaths snatched and her soles clapped. Gemma craved for a turning, even to an alley of dustbins. A deadly urge to look back spouted inside. Instead, she took a left and spurted to a door. She hammered with her fist. Thoughts of a Zimmer-framed lady inching her way caused Gemma to make a sickening re-track onto this endless straight.

TV screens behind net curtains flickered. She glimpsed a news presenter, a soap, a recipe for lamb risotto. Nothing ever happens here, the viewers probably thought. She could make out their torpid shadows within another universe. Gemma was about to provide a rude awakening from their evening’s trance when she heard a sound behind her. Pat, pat, pat. Oh my God! Time would not permit another random hammer at the door; he would grab her before anyone answered. Gemma was losing it. Her joints flailed; her soles skittered. Where’s the sanctuary of a police station, a pub, anything?

Gemma dived for a hiatus in the hedge. Her rhythm had gone. Her legs throbbed and her breaths wheezed. She plunged into woods where she pictured herself vanishing from sight. She is the fern, she decided. A fox or a rabbit could pass nearby without detecting a presence out of place. Her heart thrummed to a steady beat.

Silence.

Caleb dropped his jacket over her head. Good move. He could gag her before she could scream. A brawny arm cleaved her view. No. Not an arm, a branch, an oak branch loaded with leaves. The sight infuriated and relieved her. Had she given her position away? The resuming silence suggested not.

Gemma had the dangerous notion that no one was following her. She had lost him, perhaps back at the house. The patting she had heard earlier could have been a middle-aged jogger’s attempt to chase his youth.

And then she heard it: a purposeful crunch, not of these woods. Dismay trickled into her brain in a cold soup.

She could see him. He was standing three trees away. In the moonlight, his angular-jawed profile implied tenacity. Gemma knit her lip until her vision blurred. How did he know? His bloody nose brought a harsh reminder of what she had done. She tried not to dwell upon it – she would apologise to him in the police station. A cloud’s quashing of moonlight took timing with a reality check. She had made the foolish decision of hiding in these woods, and help might as well be on another planet.

Gemma lowered her elbows to the dirt and proceeded to crawl. Stark tableaus of a lap dancer flashed into her head. Great effort, Gemma, but don’t you think your pussycat-moves are inappropriate at this time?

A snort escaped her. The gusset of her knickers snuggled into her buttocks. Not a pretty sight, her inner voice came again, especially in those maxi pants you’re wearing!

Gemma lowered her forehead to the ground and sniggered. And don’t you think that sort of thing will be the last thing on his mind with a bloody nose like that! Gemma showered spittle. What was wrong with her? Had her adrenalin warped her emotional state? Whimpers blurted out that brought her lungs aquiver. Perhaps he was watching her right now. He had snuck up and was standing over her, pleasuring in her ridiculous performance before grabbing her by the collar. She gritted her teeth against the tears of panic pouring down her cheeks.

Head lowered, she allowed the grime and debris to work into her hands, her face, her hair.

A blurred hedge materialised. Beyond, a dirt-track tempted her. Dusk had bled away, leaving only moonlight. Please let it lead to something, she prayed, please let there be light.

She could see no sign of him. Not knowing agonised her. Was he converging upon her position? In the fading light, she could discern a farmhouse. Gemma pictured herself running across that field. Could she do it? Could she pelt towards those trees and slip away unnoticed? For an instant, she saw Caleb in pursuit. Gemma blinked the image away.

A wrought iron gate permitted a gap to scramble beneath. The bars snagged her T-shirt like Velcro. She backed up and lowered herself into the dirt. Triumph greeted her when she had reached the other side.

Her heart notched up. She would reach the cover of trees before he saw her. She would make it, and by God, if he interfered, she would make a racket! She was going to make the dogs bark and the foxes retreat into their holes!

Her legs spurted and pounded the corn of their own accord. The wind roared at her ears and woodsmoke filled her lungs. In that instant, Gemma realised how visible she had become. The corners of her mouth turned down into a deathly grimace. She glanced behind, knowing what she was about to see before the dreaded image pressed upon her eyeballs.

He was fifty yards behind. His shuffling gallop did not stop him gaining upon her and in fact brought sickening determination. A whimper scoured her throat. She had been right. He had been waiting for her; in his profession, patience was mandatory.

Why couldn’t it have been Justin? she lamented, he, the addict of takeaway food with the plastic knives and forks! He would have collapsed in a sweaty heap by now, begging her to stop.

Gemma’s legs floundered at the limits of exertion. Corn splintered from her trainers. Gemma opened her lungs and screamed a non-word, an expression unrecognised by the dictionary, but the oldest sound in human language, a screaming lament from deep within.

The thud of claws scrabbled wood; growls assaulted her ears. Oh, my God. Was she about to be ripped to shreds before being dragged back to her prison? Barbed fencing offered assurance, but her heart turned to stone anyway. She had no choice but to keep on running. Keep running past the copse, the farmhouse and to God knows where.

Lactic acid clawed at her thigh muscles. Agony contorted her face. And to mock her, Caleb was levelling up. His hair had flattened against his skull and his bloodied-nosed face had contorted to a terrible sneer. Despair crushed her. Well, at least he was suffering too. From the set of his jaw, she could tell he was gritting his teeth. And that’s when Sam flashed into her mind.

Since her capture, her son had become an invisible force like gravity or air. She would often awaken hugging her pillow. Black hair, a downy forehead and syllable-muddles of words like hippopotamus left a residue in her head.

Gemma fixed her gaze upon the trees and a strange detachment billowed from within. Her hands no longer clutched into fists but curled like shells; her lungs no longer snatched in desperation but sipped at the air. And her legs? She hadn’t a clue; they seemed to melt into a cloud. Gemma did not have to look to know that she was pulling away. The trees advanced and their canopies enclosed her.

Gemma exploded through a maze of trunks. The dogs had hushed up. She could only hope that the farmer had reported something. Her thoughts broke off when the scent of spoiled apples prickled the air. A bad feeling tumbled over her. If this was an orchard, then…Gemma didn’t want to think it. But no sooner had she done so, could see them – fences, tall fences, and brambles, complete in their barricade.

She would have got away. She would have made it to the other side of this orchard. Frantically, she pressed her Reebok onto a trunk. The foliage rocked. Desiccated bark showered down. The back of her throat pounded with effort. The tear in her T-shirt snagged a nodule. Cramp set in. Damn it, she was going up this tree as surely as this T-shirt’s going in the bin when this is over!

A hand grabbed her foot. Gemma looked down and saw Caleb’s sweaty face glaring up at her. He pulled her foot towards him. Gemma wriggled her foot about. The tree pitched and apples pounded to the ground. She wrenched her foot from the trainer and forced herself upwards as a tear peeled the air.

Caleb lodged his heel against the trunk to receive a pounding of apples. One glanced his forehead.

He wiped his bloody nose on the back of his sleeve and watched her. Gemma shook the branch just above to release a second shower. The pelting afforded her satisfaction.

‘Come down,’ she heard him utter.

The nodule of earlier snagged the stitching on her sock. Suddenly, the only thing that existed was the tourniquet strangulating her big toe. She grappled at the ribbing and vertigo washed over her. The moon caught her eye and the landscape lurched. Her free hand grappled at twigs. The stitching pulled tight; the tree whispered. Gemma slipped. Foliage gave way to her. She fell backwards, downwards and into air. Her hair and the flaps of her T-shirt, useless as wings, eddied in the wind. When the ground came up to meet her, her lungs exploded.

For the first time in her life, she could see the Milky Way. Hippopotamus, she thought, and her breaths promptly resumed.

Caleb’s head appeared over her. He observed her. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

His ordinarily grey eyes appeared black. He had a handsome face, she hated to admit, but he had a sneery expression, desperate, as though nothing good ever happened to him. He would never get the girl or win the day, but he might meet a sticky end. She spat at him. ‘I hate you!’

Caleb wiped the spit onto the back of his arm. Unrattled, as always, he uttered, ‘Get up.’

Gemma didn’t defy him exactly; she just made the decision not to move.

Gemma

Diary Entries for Chapter 2

I have put my terraced house on the market. I plan to buy a bigger place to share with my partner and children. Saying goodbye to the place was like saying goodbye to my former self.

Including my self-image.

My post-caesarean shape torments me.

My oldest child, Adam was borne by other means irrelevant to this account, but he would live with us after the birth of my two children. My first caesarean was an emergency due to failed induction; my second was elected, due to fears of rupture. In postpartum, I was left with a protuberance that sunk into my lower abdomen. The fullness pushed against my jeans and I felt like Humpty. I hated it. I try Pilate, running; I see a nutritionalist and go on detoxes. I lose weight and I miss several periods as a result.

Despite everything, my stomach feels too big for my frame. I assumed other women felt the same after having children. But the depth of my self-loathing was bewildering. At night, I imagine getting out the shears and cutting my stomach clean off.

Author’s Notes for Chapter 2

Privy Woods in the Village

I opted for an explosive start to draw the reader in. A chase felt ideal. A big one. Somehow, I knew exactly how it felt. I had assumed my memory banks had selected a forgotten game of tig or being chased by a dog. I had intentionally based the woods upon a patch in the village called Privy Woods. It was located across a recreation field to the east of my childhood cottage and would have provided a shortcut to school.

Only since learning the truth about my past would I realise I seldom ventured to these woods. In fact, I recall going to Privy Woods only once: I was with my older siblings and I fell in nettles. However, my diary entry of 21 August 1987, reports of taking my then fiancé Mark to these woods. I had written:

‘Mark and I walked around the village and through the recreation ground, through the trees and to the school. Haven’t been there since school. It brought memories. Mark can be stifling at times. I wanted to get away from him. He wants to hold my hand and gets jealous for no reason.’

I don’t remember going there with Mark at all. And why would I suddenly feel stifled by him and want to get away? Two months later, we would marry.

Still, so what? My novel is fiction with a real-life locale thrown in, now built over.

Sam Blond or Sam Dark

In the woods, Gemma thinks of her son, Sam. He provides her the inner strength to survive. I imagined Sam as having blond hair, but due to a blond boy in my previous novel, I made Sam dark. However, despite this decision, I kept seeing Sam as blond. For me, Sam is a blond-name. Why, I didn’t know.

After the chase, a man’s face rears over her. Gemma’s lungs felt like exploding.

Chapter 3

THE lower landing retreated. Her feet brushed against each riser. He continued upwards with a rhythmic clunk. Caleb only had to retrace his steps out of the orchard to complete the last section to the house. She hoped a mile would feel a hundred when burdened with a woman. He had stopped to adjust his shoulder-carry whereupon she noticed an inverted ‘The Red Lion’ sign across the road. The village pub just as she’d imagined. She supposed an onlooker might think they were a couple engaged