Alle Kapitel von EYES OPEN: Kapitel 121 – Kapitel 130

I come back slowly.Not all at once. In pieces. Sound first, a low hum that might be an engine or might be something else, then sensation, the specific discomfort of a surface that is not soft, then smell, something cold and faintly damp like a room that has not had people in it for a long time.Then everything.I sit up fast and immediately regret it because my head does something violent in protest and I press my hands against the floor and breathe until the spinning stops.The room is small.Not tiny. Enough to stand in, enough to move in, but small in the way of something that was not designed for habitation. Stone walls. One window, high up, narrow, the glass thick and the light coming through it grey and directional, afternoon maybe, which means I have been unconscious for hours.There is a mattress on the floor.I am not on it. I am beside it. Which means someone placed me here and I moved in my sleep.A bottle of water on the floor near the mattress.A door in the far wall. So

I count time by the light.The high window goes from grey to dark to grey again and that is day one. Then dark again and that is day two. I do not know what time it is within those cycles but I know I have been here long enough for Rhys to have realised, long enough for Priya to have called my phone forty times, long enough for the police to have a file with my name on it somewhere in a London station.I know this because I know these people.Rhys does not wait. He does not sit and hope. He moves.I hold onto that.The masked figure comes twice a day.Morning and evening by the light pattern. Always the same. Dark clothing covering everything. The full face mask that leaves nothing visible. The tray. The water. The silence.I have tried speaking."I am pregnant," I said the first evening. "Fourteen weeks. I need to know you understand that."The figure stopped.Looked at me.Something in the posture shifted. A fraction. Barely. But present.Then they set the tray down and left.The fo

Day four I start leaving marks.Not dramatic. Small. A scratch on the stone near the mattress for each day. A method of keeping time that the figures cannot take from me because it is already in the wall.Four scratches.I look at them and think about Rhys looking at the window and I think, I am coming back. I just need more information first.The first figure comes in the morning.I have started calling him the Patient One in my head because everything about him is measured and deliberate and gives nothing away. He moves like someone who has made a decision they believe in. No hesitation, no second-guessing, just the specific resolve of a person who has committed.The second figure, the woman, comes in the evenings.I have started calling her the Angry One because underneath all the controlled clothing and the mask, she is furious. The way she sets things down. The way she stands near the door. The way she never looks directly at me but cannot quite stop herself from looking.She loo

Rhys knocks on Derek's door at seven pm Friday.Felix is beside him.Derek opens it looking like a man who has not slept since Monday, which mirrors Rhys so precisely that under different circumstances it might be something. He looks at Rhys. Looks at Felix. Reads something in both their faces.Steps back.They come in.Derek's rented room at Stanley's house is small and functional and has the specific sparse quality of someone who moved in temporarily and has not decided to stay. A bed, a desk, a chair, Evan's drawings on the wall because Derek put those up immediately.Rhys sits.Felix stands near the door with his arms folded, not threatening, just present, the way he stands near the cello when he is listening to a space."Tell me about Vivienne," Rhys says.Derek goes still."What about her?" he asks carefully."After the miscarriage," Rhys says. "You went to her. How many times?" "Four," Derek says. "Over three weeks. She was in a bad way. She had nobody.""What did you talk abou

Derek.She says Derek.Just Derek.Like it is simple. Like it does not detonate everything I thought I understood about the last month.Derek.I sit with it.Four seconds of sitting with it while the room does its cold stone thing around us and Vivienne watches me from the floor with her eyes doing something that is braced for impact."Derek," I say."Yes," she replies."Derek who came to Evan's birthday party," I say. "Who held my hand when he said goodbye. Who told Rhys he was redirecting what he felt.""Derek who has been in therapy for six months and still came to me every week after the miscarriage," she says. "Derek who sat in my kitchen and talked about you for hours. About how he still wanted you and how he was finding it extremely hard to let go and just move on. About how you clearly have moved on and don't need him anymore. About how happy you were and how right everything was for you and how he was trying to want that for you..." She pauses. "He was not trying, he was comin