Captive

Chapter Eight

The sun was shining through the window, it's dappled reflection creating patterns across the walls and ceiling of her room and oddly comforting as she looked around her after the darkness of the night before. Rubbing her eyes she sat up slowly and reached for her pills automatically as she did every morning. Once she had swallowed them with the water left from the night before she stood up a little shakily and stretched, looking at the clock and seeing it was half past six in the morning. It would be a warm day by the looks of it, a good day for doing laundry as Rebecca used to say. A small smile formed on her lips as she remembered her stepmother singing to herself as she hung the washing out on the line. She had loved a sunny day, loved the smell of the washing blowing in a summer breeze, brushing off Michael's irrational concern about what would happen if anything dropped off the line, that it would need washing again and cause her double the work. Her dad had always been something of a pessimist, seeing the worst case scenario even where there was little likelihood of that becoming a reality. She wondered briefly what her dad would be doing now that he was completely alone, without her or her brothers or Rebecca and her heart ached at the thought of his loneliness and what that could lead to. Sudden panic set in and she brought a hand to her heart automatically, trying to remember the breathing exercises she had been taught and just managing to get herself under control before she lost the ability to inhale. Closing her eyes she forced herself not to think of her dad, but instead her mind wandered to the night before and the nightmare which had woken her from her sleep to find Bret, half naked in her room at turned midnight.

"Oh dear," she murmured to herself as she realised he was likely to be even more curious today, even more likely to ask her questions she did not wish to answer. Shaking her head she made her way into the bathroom and switched the shower on, cleaning her teeth while she waited for the water to run hot. Juliet had never talked about what had happened, what had caused the scars to her wrists. Talking about it made it real and she had no desire for any of it to be real. She had tried to block out all memories of that time and everything that had happened. It had been traumatic, enough she believed to have caused the angina she now suffered from, though her doctor had been dismissive of this notion. Maybe if he had known what had happened to her he would have been less dismissive.

Standing under the jets of water, Juliet felt the hot flow soothe away the aches and pains from the night before and gradually the residue of her panic ebbed away as if draining away with the water. She massaged the shampoo into her hair, enjoying the scent of raspberries and vanilla as she rinsed it away. The scent reminded her of home and she wondered not for the first time how Bret had known exactly which shampoo and shower gel to buy, but it was sometimes best not to think about these things. He knew far more about her than should have been possible but his methods for getting information were not always ones she would approve of. Probably best she didn't know.

With her thoughts returning to her captor she sighed as she shut the water off and wrapped her towels around her head and her body, drying off and dressing in the bathroom as had become her habit because she did not want to risk him walking in on her half undressed. Bret might be quite happy to walk around in his underwear but she was not. Juliet hoped he wouldn't ask too many questions but she thought it highly likely that that was all he would want to do when he saw her this morning. She cursed herself for revealing it had been a memory the night before. What on Earth had possessed her? If she had left it as a nightmare he might not have asked questions and if he had she could have told him she had dreamed of ghosts or spiders or monsters... the latter was not too far from the truth.

The door opened at dead on eight o'clock and Bret stood by it as she passed him to go down to the kitchen, her head bowed hoping to avoid any questions. He watched her pass him, saw the slightly wary look she shot in his direction and shook his head. He hadn't been all too sure how she would be with him this morning, given what had happened in the night but he'd thought she might be a little less uptight. If anything though she was even more so than she'd been before which he didn't like. Once she had made their breakfast he waited for her to sit down before he spoke.