chapter fifty-three
STUART, SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
I wake up in a room I don’t recognize.
I’m not even sure I’m in Thornwood.
The rst thing I’m aware of is the terrible clotted feeling of dulled pain and a slight deafness in my left ear. I put my hand against it and inch. It’s bandaged.
The bandage goes all the way under my chin and appears to be tied in a knot at the back of my head where I can feel it digging in slightly. My vision on that side is blurred too, as if there is gauze over it. I run a nger across my eyelid and inch again. It feels as though there is something in there. Something sharp. My body aches all over, the way it does when I have the u, but mostly it is the left side of my face that feels broken, unhuman. I want to see it. I need a mirror. I look around this room that I don’t recognize and it’s only when I spy the chimney stack of the house on the other side of us through the low dormer window that I know that I am still here, at Thornwood. I must be in the locked room on the attic oor.
I slowly swing my legs out from under the thin duvet and pull myself up to sitting. Blood shifts from place to place in my head, clouding my vision, forcing a sudden rush of dull pain all through my sinuses and the back of my head. I say a quiet “ow” to myself and then look around again. A dresser with a bowl and a jug, a small armchair, some books on built-out skirting, a tiny replace with nothing in it, an old wooden mantel over it built into the wall, but no mirror
above. I see that someone has placed three plastic bottles of water on the oor next to my bed, and a box of tissues. I recognize them as the brand I buy for the family when I do the big shop. It takes me a minute or two to nd the strength to stand, and when I do, I immediately sit down again, my head spinning, my
legs weak.
I call out. “Hello?”
My voice is a puny rasp. I open a bottle of water and glug from it and then I try calling again. “Hello!”
The house seems silent, empty. I pull myself up again and this time I stay on my feet. I go to the door and lift the old-fashioned latch, pull the door toward me, pull again. It’s locked from the outside. I bang my sts against it and shout louder now. Louder and louder. My voice has found itself.
A moment later I hear soft, slow footsteps on wooden stairs. Then I hear something clicking, and a thin, fearsome face appears in a crack in the door followed by two small hands clutching a knife.
Then I hear the words: “Stuart, get away from the door and get back into bed, right now, or I’ll cut o your other fucking ear. OK?”
